Shopify Just Killed Stocky. Here's What Actually Fits Now

Jan de Vries · 2026-09-02

If you ran your purchase orders through Stocky, this week was not a fun one. Shopify pulled the app from its store in February and switched it off for good on August 31, 2026. Supplier records could not be exported, so a lot of merchants spent August retyping lead times and contact details into a spreadsheet at eleven at night. I have had three of those conversations already, and each one started with a heavy sigh. The upside is that being forced to choose again is a decent thing. Most stores were using Stocky because it came bundled with POS Pro, not because it fit their operation. It was a convenience, not a strategy. And convenience-based tools rarely survive contact with a growing business. So before you install the first replacement that ranks well in the app store, answer one question: whose inventory are you actually managing? That single answer will split the entire software market in two, and picking the wrong side is how you end up with a tool that feels powerful but never quite solves your real problem. ### Two Jobs Wearing the Same Name Shopify merchants use the phrase inventory management software for two problems that barely overlap. They sound identical in a product demo, but they demand completely different features. The first is owned stock. You bought it, it sits in your warehouse or your 3PL, and the work is forecasting, reorder points, purchase orders and landed cost. Get it wrong and you either tie up cash in dead SKUs or sell out of your hero product in week two of Q4. That is a capital problem, and it hurts your balance sheet. The second is inventory you never bought. Partner brands, distributors and dropship suppliers hold the stock, you list it, and the work is keeping their counts and prices accurate on your storefront in real time. Get that wrong and you sell something nobody has, which costs a customer rather than a spreadsheet line. That is a trust problem, and it hurts your brand. Same phrase, different software. Here is what fits each. ### Carro: For Catalog You Sell But Do Not Stock This is the one most Shopify merchants overlook, usually because they think of dropship as a side experiment rather than a category strategy. At enterprise scale it is neither. It is a distribution model that can double your range without doubling your warehouse rent. Carro connects partner brands directly into your Shopify store. Their products appear in your catalog, sell through your checkout, and ship from their warehouse. You never touch the box, and you never pay for the shelf space. Carro's inventory management for Shopify keeps stock levels, pricing and product data in sync across every connected supplier in real time. That is the piece homegrown dropship setups almost never get right. I have watched merchants try to run this on CSV feeds refreshed nightly. It works fine until a partner has a good day, sells through, and your store keeps taking orders for six hours against stock that no longer exists. Then you get the angry customer emails. The rest of the workflow comes with it: supplier onboarding, catalog ingestion, pricing rules, automated order routing to the fulfilling brand, tracking, supplier payouts and SLA monitoring across the partner network. Larger partners connect over EDI, API or SFTP rather than a portal, which is where most Shopify-native apps stop. That technical depth matters when you are dealing with enterprise suppliers who will not log into another dashboard. The network holds roughly 1.5 million products, and account managers hand-match retailers with brands that suit their category and price point. So you are not cold-emailing suppliers to fill a gap in your range. Pricing is 5% of sales through the channel with no upfront license. Carro reports retailers reaching up to 3x catalog size and up to 180% higher average order value. That math works well for stores with thin margins. **Best for:** Shopify and Shopify Plus retailers widening their range without buying stock, and brands looking for retailer distribution. **Less suited to:** forecasting and purchase orders for inventory you own. ### Inventory Planner: For Forecasting What You Buy If your problem is capital rather than catalog, this is the category you want. Inventory Planner, now part of Sage, does demand forecasting, replenishment recommendations and purchase order creation on top of Shopify sales history. It reads seasonality, lead times and stock cover, then tells you what to reorder and when. For merchants who were using Stocky purely for POs and low stock alerts, it is the closest upgrade, though it costs meaningfully more than the free bundle you just lost. But consider what you gain: fewer stockouts, less dead inventory, and a purchasing team that stops guessing. The subscription pays for itself the first time it stops you from ordering 400 units of a product that is about to go out of season. **Best for:** stores with real working capital tied up in owned inventory. **Less suited to:** anyone managing supplier-held stock or multi-vendor catalogs. ### Cin7: For Multi-Channel Operations Once you are selling across Shopify plus wholesale, retail and marketplaces, you need a system that treats every channel as one connected view. Cin7 does that with inventory tracking, order management and purchasing in a single platform. It is not the simplest tool on the market, but it handles complexity without falling over. A quick word of advice from someone who has watched this play out dozens of times: do not pick a tool because it is popular. Pick it because it matches the inventory you actually own. The wrong choice costs you more in lost sales and wasted hours than any subscription fee ever will.