EZstock ‑ Inventory & Orders
Inventory management & purchase orders for Shopify
Six weeks ago I posted here about launching EZStock — a simple Stocky replacement for Shopify merchants (Stocky shuts down August 31). Back then it did inventory tracking, suppliers, reorder points, PDF purchase orders, and basic demand forecasting. I even wrote in that post: "No barcode scanning. No warehouse management."
It does barcode scanning now. Here's what changed and why.
The short version: one merchant built my roadmap for me.
I have a real paying merchant — a body jewelry store running ~5,000 variants. He emails me when something's slow or missing. Instead of guessing what to build next, I just built what he asked for. Every feature below traces back to a real message from a real user.
What I added since launch
Barcode scanning — the thing I said it wouldn't do. Keyboard-wedge scanners plus native camera scanning on the Shopify mobile app, across three places: counting stock, building a PO, and receiving a PO. Match by barcode first, fall back to SKU.
ABC product grading — auto-classifies your products A/B/C by sales value so you know which SKUs actually matter.
Stock On Hand report — inventory value, margins, markup, low-stock and out-of-stock flags, CSV export. One-click "Order" button on anything running low.
Editable costs on purchase orders — my merchant asked to fix prices right on the PO before sending, because supplier costs drift. Small ask, real workflow.
Payment & invoice tracking — mark POs paid, track what's owed, overdue alerts.
Full stocktake workflow — count inventory with live discrepancy tracking, then sync the corrections straight back to Shopify.
What I spent most of my time on (that nobody sees)
Honestly? Not features. Reliability.
At ~5,000 variants, the naive version of this app was making ~184 API calls to Shopify on every page load. It was slow, it was expensive, and a couple of times it broke for my one merchant — which when you have one paying customer is 100% of your customers.
I rebuilt the data layer to cache inventory and update it through webhooks instead of re-fetching everything live. Pages that took 14 seconds now load near-instantly. I also found and killed a billing bug where a merchant could subscribe, get sent to the dashboard, and briefly still see all the paid features locked — long enough to think it didn't work and cancel. That one hurt to find.
What I learned
I launched with a feature list I thought merchants wanted. Six weeks of one engaged user telling me what he actually needed produced a better roadmap than any amount of my own guessing. The unglamorous stuff — speed, not breaking, fixing the bug that quietly loses you a customer — turned out to matter more than any new feature.
Still grinding on the cold-start problem (App Store reviews are the wall). But the product is genuinely better than the one I launched, and I can point to exactly why.
Stocky shuts down August 31. If you're a Shopify merchant still on it — https://apps.shopify.com/ezstock
Vladislav Gerasimchuk
Tomorrow night at midnight I'm launching EZStock on Product Hunt — a Shopify inventory management app I built solo to replace Stocky, which Shopify is shutting down on August 31.
The opportunity
In July 2025, Shopify announced they were discontinuing Stocky — their free built-in inventory management tool. August 31, 2026 is the hard shutdown date.
There's a 2,700+ view community thread on the Shopify forums of merchants asking "what do I switch to?" Most of the alternatives are $50-100/month enterprise tools. Nobody was building the simple, affordable replacement. So I did.
What EZStock does
Track inventory levels across your Shopify store
Manage suppliers with contact info, lead times, currencies
Set reorder points and get low-stock alerts
Create and send purchase orders as PDF directly to suppliers
Demand forecasting based on 30-day sales velocity
Free plan available. Paid plans start at $19/month.
What I built this on
Remix + Shopify App Remix + Prisma + PostgreSQL + Railway. Same stack I use across all my apps — once you know it, you can ship fast. The whole app took about 6 weeks of evenings and weekends.
What I did to prepare for the launch
14 SEO blog posts live on the landing page
Shopify App Store ads running (inventory management, stocky alternative, purchase orders)
LinkedIn warm-up post going out today
Product Hunt General forum thread about the Stocky shutdown ready to post
What I'm not sure about
Whether the PH launch will actually convert to installs, or just be a backlink + vanity metric. I've seen both outcomes. Hoping the Stocky angle gives it a real hook.
If you're a Shopify merchant or know one affected by the Stocky shutdown — the Product Hunt link goes live June 9 at 12:01 AM PDT:
https://www.producthunt.com/products/ezstock-inventory-purchase-orders
Would love any support, feedback, or brutal honesty.
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What's this??? I just read your headline right now, the one that says "The Stocky Replacement
Shopify Merchants Trust" man honestly I can tell how much you put into this to come up with this valuable tool yet the headline completely confused me right now it still explains what the tool does instead of giving me an emotional reason to use it, not to mention that the headline is currently too abstract and unclear I mean... "the stocky replacement"?? what does that even mean, but hold on I figured it out let me show you what I brainstormed can I?
Shopify is shutting down Stocky on August 31. I launched the replacement. Here's week 1.
Shopify officially delisted Stocky from the App Store on February 2, 2026.
On August 31, 2026 — 90 days from now — it stops working entirely. Backend APIs disabled. Every merchant still using it needs to migrate.
I launched EZStock right as the delisting happened. Here's everything.
Why EZStock exists
Stocky did one thing well: it gave small Shopify merchants a simple way to manage suppliers, create purchase orders, and reorder before running out of stock.
The alternatives Shopify points merchants toward cost $50–200/month and are built for enterprise warehouses. A 500-SKU store run by one person doesn't need warehouse management software. They need purchase orders and a low-stock alert.
So I built EZStock.
What it does
Add your suppliers — name, email, lead time, currency
Link Shopify product variants to suppliers, set reorder points
EZStock tracks 30-day sales velocity and calculates exactly how many days of stock remain
When something's running low, create a PDF purchase order in one click and email it directly to your supplier
Mark it received — inventory updates automatically in Shopify
No barcode scanning. No warehouse management. No $99/month. Just the inventory → reorder → receive workflow every product-based Shopify store actually needs.
The stack
Remix embedded Shopify app + Vite
PostgreSQL on Railway via Prisma
PDFKit for purchase order PDF generation
Resend for email delivery
Custom Express server — remix-serve doesn't handle bot filtering or static asset control
Total infra cost: ~$10/month
Auto-deploys from GitHub push to main. Code to live in 90 seconds.
Honest launch numbers
Installs: 3
Revenue: $0
Reviews: 0
App Store ranking: invisible
The Shopify App Store cold-start problem is real. No reviews → low ranking → no organic installs → no reviews. Every new app is stuck here.
Mistakes I caught after publishing
"Inventory management" — the #1 searched term in this category — didn't appear once in my app description. I wrote around it without naming it.
My app name was "EZstock ‑ Purchase Orders" with 5 characters unused out of the 30-character limit. App name is the highest-weighted field in App Store search. I was wasting free keyword space.
Both fixed. Should have caught them before submission.
How I'm breaking the cold-start loop
1. The August 31 window. Every Stocky merchant needs to be somewhere else by September. That's 90 days of merchants actively searching "Stocky alternative" with real urgency. I need to be the answer.
2. Product Hunt launch June 9. External traffic and a DA90 backlink regardless of App Store ranking.
3. Shopify App Store ads. Keywords: "inventory management", "purchase orders", "stocky alternative" on Broad match. Previous keywords showed 0 impressions — replaced with clean singular terms.
4. Shopify Community. There's a "Replacement to Stocky?" thread with 2.7k views still active. My account got flagged as spam on the first post — new account + product link, rookie mistake. Working on reinstatement.
5. Direct outreach to my 3 installs. Not asking for reviews. Asking what's missing, what confused them, whether they found value. Reviews follow real conversations.
What's next
5 reviews before the Product Hunt launch on June 9. That's the milestone that changes everything — it's where the App Store algorithm starts showing the app to more merchants organically.
After that: content targeting every "Stocky alternative" and "Shopify inventory management" search query before August 31.
If you're a Shopify merchant currently using Stocky — what's the one thing you're most worried about losing when it shuts down? That's exactly what I want to make sure EZStock handles well.
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This is a strong wedge because the timing is doing part of the selling for you.
Most Shopify apps have to manufacture urgency. EZStock does not. Stocky shutting down creates a real migration deadline, so I’d make the next 90 days less about general “inventory management” and more about owning the Stocky replacement conversation everywhere merchants are already looking.
The cleanest angle is probably:
“Still using Stocky? Move your purchase orders and low-stock workflow before August 31.”
That is much sharper than competing broadly with every inventory app.
I’d also treat the 3 installs as your most important asset right now. Not because of reviews first, but because each one can tell you the exact migration fear: losing purchase orders, supplier history, reorder points, or just being forced into expensive software.
That language should drive the App Store listing, PH launch, Shopify Community replies, and direct outreach.
Happy to put a compact version in writing if useful. I’d map the Stocky migration angle, review path, Product Hunt positioning, Shopify Community approach, and a 14-day plan to get the first real merchant conversations.
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Thanks Aryan — "Still using Stocky? Move your purchase orders and low-stock workflow before August 31." is sharper than anything in my current listing. Stealing that angle immediately.
The installs-as-research framing is right too. I've been thinking about them as review leads when I should be thinking about them as migration interviews first.
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Exactly. The Stocky shutdown gives you a real timing wedge, so I’d treat this less like a normal app launch and more like a migration sprint.
The useful next layer is turning that into the App Store message, Shopify Community replies, and the exact questions to ask those first installs so the language comes from merchants, not assumptions.
Drop your email and I’ll send over a tighter version. It’ll be easier to make useful in writing than turning this into a full migration plan in the thread.
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