Restoc vs Merchbees Low Stock Alert: fixed thresholds or calculated reorder points

You are comparing two Shopify apps in the same aisle. Both exist so you learn a SKU is running down before a customer finds the sold out button.

A naming note first. The listing most merchants still search for as Merchbees Low Stock Alert sits at the merchbees-low-stock-alert address on the Shopify App Store. It is titled Bee Low Stock Alert & Forecast. Same listing, newer name. We read it on 9 October 2026, and everything in the third column below comes from that reading, in their own words.

Their listing sells an app that tells you before a stockout and works out what to order. Its own line is "Get notified when stock is low and auto-calculate reorder amounts based on inventory forecasting". The capabilities we captured are low stock notifications before stockouts, reorder amounts calculated from maximum stock levels you set, thresholds updated daily from each product's sales velocity, scheduled alerts, and demand forecasting on the Enterprise plan. Pricing starts at a free tier for up to 250 SKUs with one scheduled alert. Professional is "$5.99/month or $59.88/year" for up to 8,000 SKUs with unlimited alerts. Advanced is "$11.99/month or $119.88/year" with bulk import and order-up-to levels. Enterprise is "$39.99/month or $399.96/year". Paid plans carry a 14 day free trial. The listing showed 4.8 out of 5 stars from 130 reviews. Prices in this category move, so read theirs at source rather than trusting a comparison page.

Restoc works from a calculated reorder point. For each SKU it takes sales velocity over a window you choose, 7, 14 or 30 days, and the supplier lead time you enter. That gives the stock level at which the order needs to go in. When a SKU crosses it, Restoc alerts you. Email on every plan, a Slack webhook from Growth up. The weekly reorder report lists every SKU below its reorder point with a suggested order quantity, and exports to CSV. The dashboard shows current stock, days of inventory remaining and reorder status for each active SKU. Starter is $29 a month for up to 200 tracked SKUs, billed by Shopify on your Shopify invoice.

The install is built to do three things in order. It runs Shopify OAuth and registers the webhooks. It reads your products, inventory levels and each product's vendor. Then it backfills roughly the last 30 days of orders, so velocity has something to stand on at the first sync.

So the price gap is plain before you read another line. They publish a free tier and single-figure monthly prices. Restoc starts at $29. What differs is which inputs set the line, and what you hold at the end of the week.

The category name, low stock alert, hides the real decision. An alert is only as good as the line that triggers it. There are three ways to set that line.

A fixed threshold is a number you maintain

You pick a level per SKU, say 20 units. You get told when stock drops under it. Easy to understand, quick to set up. The cost shows up later. That number is a snapshot of one moment in your trading year, and it does not move on its own.

• It goes stale when the SKU speeds up. A line set in a quiet month is too low in a busy one.
• It ignores the supplier. Twenty units means something different for a 3 day reorder and a 6 week reorder.
• It needs revisiting. Every new SKU, every supplier change, every seasonal shift is another row to edit by hand.

A forecast-moved threshold takes the maintenance off you

This is what Bee Low Stock Alert & Forecast describes on its listing. Thresholds updated daily from each product's sales velocity, with reorder amounts worked out against a maximum stock level you set. That answers the staleness problem. It is a genuine third option and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

A reorder point is anchored on your supplier

Merchants went back to doing this arithmetic by hand after Stocky closed. A Shopify Community thread states it as reorder point = (avg daily sales x supplier lead time) + safety stock. Restoc computes the lead-time demand half of that line.

Take a SKU selling roughly 6 units a day over the last 14 days. Lead time is 21 days. That is about 126 units of demand between placing the order and the pallet arriving, so the line sits near 126. A threshold of 20 units would page you long after the decision was lost.

You own the inputs. You choose the velocity window: 7 days to react fast, 30 to stay steadier. That window is store-wide on Starter and Growth. Pro adds a per-SKU override for the odd line that trades nothing like the rest of the catalogue.

Lead time is the input you have to be honest about. It is entered per SKU. Restoc also pulls each product's vendor from Shopify and gives you a vendor lead times screen. Set one lead time for a supplier and it fills every SKU under that vendor that has no lead time of its own. Nobody is typing a number into 800 rows one at a time.

The calculation is a pure function with tests over the awkward cases. Zero-sales SKUs. A SKU with less history than the window you picked. Stock already at zero. The same inputs give the same number every time, and it is the number you see on the dashboard, in the alert and in the report.

One approach asks you to remember a number. One asks you to trust a forecast. One asks you to keep a lead time honest. Pick the maintenance job you will actually do.

We would rather you find these out here than three days into a trial.

• Not launched. Restoc is on a waitlist. There are no merchants using it, no reviews, and nothing to install. If a SKU is about to go dark on you before the weekend, install something that exists today and revisit this later.
• No live install yet. Shopify credentials are not set on our own deployment. The OAuth install, the catalogue and vendor read and the 30 day order backfill are proven by tests and sample data, not by a real store. Treat all of it as intent until we say otherwise.
• No safety stock padding in the calculation. The reorder point covers lead-time demand from your velocity window and your lead time. A store-wide safety stock percentage is approved work, not built, so do not count on it today.
• No real charge has been approved. The subscription call to Shopify's billing API is written and tested, and the SKU caps are enforced server-side at sync time. Every approval so far has gone through an in-app stand-in. Nothing has been billed to anyone.
• Email delivery is still sandboxed. Reorder alerts have been delivered on our own deployment, but the sender currently only reaches our own domain, so delivery to a merchant's address is not yet proven. Slack delivery exists only in tests.
• Alert history stops at the last eight. The dashboard shows the most recent alerts and there is no screen listing more, so you cannot yet review every crossing across a 60 day trial.
• The weekly report is ordered alphabetically. The dashboard sorts soonest to stockout; the report does not yet, so the most urgent SKU can sit at the bottom of the list.
• The report is a snapshot. The dashboard computes live; the weekly report renders the figures taken when it ran. For a fast-moving SKU the two can differ a little, and that is by design.
• Two rough edges on lead times. A vendor lead time cannot be cleared once set by emptying the field, and the apply-to-all-SKUs button is disabled when the value already matches your current default, so clearing per-SKU overrides takes two passes. Both are known and both are on the list.
• Velocity only knows the window it can see. The install backfills about 30 days of orders. A SKU with no sales inside the window you picked has no velocity and no reorder point, so no alert can fire for it.
• One location per store. Every plan, today. Per location reorder points are not part of what we are selling.
• Slack starts at Growth. Starter alerts by email. During the 60 day trial the Slack webhook field and the per-SKU velocity override can be open to you, and they close again if you settle on Starter. Wire Slack only if Growth is the plan you intend to pay for.
• Web only. You connect the store with Shopify OAuth and use it in a browser. No mobile app, no extension. Alerts come by email and Slack.
• You supply the lead times. The calculation is only as good as the number you enter, per SKU or per vendor. Guess badly and the reorder point is wrong in exactly the direction you guessed.
• Reorder alerts, not forecasting. No demand models, no purchase order workflow, no supplier management beyond lead times.
• Sign-in is email and password. No single sign-on, no two-factor, and no independent security certification to point at.

Running out of a hero SKU is a genuine hit to a small store. Merchants who catch the reorder point early can avoid a lot of that pain. We are not going to put a revenue figure on it, because we do not have one worth publishing.