Stocky Was Free. Its Replacements Cost $100–300/Month. Here's the Math.
Stocky was free. Not "free tier" free — actually included with a Shopify POS Pro subscription you were already paying for. For years, small retailers used it to do three boring, essential things: see what sold, cut a purchase order per vendor, and receive the stock back into Shopify.
Now it's shutting down after August 31, 2026, and here's the migration advice you'll get from every blog, most of which happen to be published by inventory software companies: "Just switch to [our tool], starting at $129/month."
Let's do the math on that.
What you're being asked to pay
Real, publicly listed 2026 starting prices for the tools topping every "Stocky alternative" list:
| Tool | Starts at | Per year | What it's built for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inventory Planner | ~$129/mo | ~$1,548 | Demand forecasting, multichannel |
| inFlow | ~$129/mo | ~$1,548 | Warehouse ops, B2B |
| Prediko | ~$49–119/mo | ~$588–1,428 | AI forecasting for DTC |
| Sumtracker | ~$59/mo | ~$708 | Multi-store sync + forecasting |
And "starts at" is doing heavy lifting. These prices climb with SKU count, locations, and seats. A store with a real catalog is often quoted $200–300+/month by the time it's actually usable.
So the pitch is: your free tool is going away, please replace it with $1,500–$3,600 a year.
For a lot of stores, that's not an upgrade. That's a bill that appeared out of nowhere.
What you actually used Stocky for
Here's the sleight of hand. Those tools are priced for demand forecasting — AI models, sales velocity curves, open-to-buy planning, lead-time variability, safety-stock math. That's genuinely valuable software. For a 3,000-SKU brand feeding a warehouse and three sales channels, it pays for itself.
But that's not what most small retailers opened Stocky to do.
Look at what Shopify itself prioritizes in its Stocky migration guide, and what the shutdown forums are full of people asking about: purchase orders, receiving, and restock suggestions. Not forecasting. The daily job was always the same loop:
- What sold this month?
- Cut a PO to each vendor to replace it.
- Receive the boxes when they show up.
That loop doesn't need an AI model. It needs subtraction. "You sold 12, you have 3, you've got 0 on order — reorder 9." That's the whole calculation, and Stocky basically did that. The forecasting features existed; most small shops never touched them.
So when someone tells you to replace Stocky with a $129/month forecasting suite, they're selling you a feature you weren't using to solve a problem you don't have.
Note on sourcing: we're describing the common usage pattern behind the shutdown discussion and Shopify's own migration priorities — not citing a published usage statistic. Your mileage varies; if you do live in forecasts, the expensive tools are the right call, and we say so plainly in our full alternatives comparison.
The actual math
Say you're a small shop with one or two locations. Here's the annual cost of "replace what sold":
| Option | Monthly | Yearly | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inventory Planner | ~$129 | ~$1,548 | Forecasting you won't use + POs |
| Prediko | ~$99 (typical) | ~$1,188 | AI forecasting + POs |
| Sumtracker | ~$59 | ~$708 | Sync + forecasting + POs |
| FillShelves | $15 | $180 | Restock suggestions + POs + receiving |
The difference between $180/year and $1,548/year is $1,368. For a small retailer, that's a real number — a month of a part-timer, a new fixture, a chunk of your next reorder.
You're not paying that $1,368 for POs. Every tool does POs. You're paying it for a forecasting engine sitting idle in a tab you never open.
"But cheaper means worse, right?"
Cheaper means smaller. FillShelves is $15/month flat — one plan, no tiers, no per-SKU pricing, no per-location pricing — because it does exactly three things and refuses to do more:
- Fill Shelves: pick a window (30/60/90 days), it shows units sold vs. on-hand and suggests "replace what sold."
- Purchase orders by vendor: suggestions become POs grouped per vendor automatically (vendors auto-detected from your Shopify products — the thing you can't export from Stocky). Send by email or PDF.
- Receiving: enter what arrived, it writes the inventory back into Shopify.
No forecasting. No dashboards. No AI. On purpose. That's not a stripped-down version of Inventory Planner — it's a different, smaller product for a different, smaller store. If your problem is "keep my shelves full without a $1,500 subscription," small is the feature.
And if your problem really is forecasting 3,000 SKUs across four warehouses — go buy Inventory Planner. We'll help you compare it. We're just not going to pretend that's most of the people losing Stocky this August.
FAQ
Was Stocky free? Effectively yes — Stocky was included with Shopify POS Pro, so most retailers paid nothing extra for it. That's why the replacement pricing feels so jarring.
What's the cheapest Stocky alternative? FillShelves at $15/month flat is the lowest-priced dedicated replacement for the core restock-and-PO workflow, versus $49–129+/month starting prices for the forecasting suites.
Why are Stocky alternatives so expensive? Most are priced as demand-forecasting platforms — AI models, velocity forecasting, open-to-buy planning — which is expensive software to build and run. If you only used Stocky for restock suggestions and POs, you're paying for features you won't use.
Do I need demand forecasting to replace Stocky? No. Most small retailers used Stocky for restock suggestions, purchase orders, and receiving — none of which require forecasting. If you manage thousands of SKUs across multiple warehouses, forecasting is worth paying for; most small stores don't need it.
Keep reading
- Stocky Alternatives in 2026: Every Option Compared
- Stocky Shuts Down August 31 — The Migration Checklist
- Shopify Admin vs. Stocky: What You Actually Lose
Do the loop, skip the $1,500 bill: Start a 30-day free trial of FillShelves — $15/mo flat, no tiers, vendors auto-detected.