WooCommerce · Restock & pre-order

Best WooCommerce back-in-stock & pre-order plugins

An out-of-stock product page is a page where a shopper with intent, who has already found you, leaves with nothing. This category converts that dead end into either a captured email or a captured order. Waitlists are the low-risk version — collect the address, notify on restock, and the recovered revenue is close to pure upside. Pre-orders are the higher-risk, higher-reward version: you take money before you can ship, which is a cash-flow advantage and a customer-service obligation.

1 plugin compared · checked 23 August 2026

Same category on Shopify

Same category on BigCommerce

At a glance

PluginRating Active installsPricingBest for
Back In Stock Notifier for WooCommerce | WooCommerce Waitlist Pro 4.7 20,000+ Free plan available The only well-maintained free restock waitlist for WooCommerce
How to choose

What actually separates these apps

Feature lists all look the same. These are the five things that change the outcome once the app is installed.

01 Variant-level waitlists

Sign-ups must attach to the specific variant. A shopper who wants size M notified when size XS restocks is a complaint, not a recovered sale.

02 Notification channels and speed

Email at minimum, SMS and push for hyped drops. The alert must fire within minutes of the inventory change, and the link must deep-link to the right variant.

03 Partial payments and deposits

For pre-orders, check support for deposits or split payments, plus clear expected-ship-date messaging on the product page, in the cart and in the confirmation email.

04 Order tagging

Pre-orders must be tagged so fulfilment does not treat them as normal orders and so mixed carts of in-stock and pre-order items are handled deliberately.

05 Demand reporting

The waitlist is a free purchase-intent dataset. Good apps surface it as a restock priority list you can hand to purchasing.

The ranking

Restock & pre-order for WooCommerce, ranked

One plugin on the WordPress.org plugin directory clears our evidence bar in this category. The rest of the listings have too few reviews to rank honestly, so we have left them out rather than padding the page.

1

Back In Stock Notifier for WooCommerce | WooCommerce Waitlist Pro

by ProPluginsLab
Top pick

Back In Stock Notifier for WooCommerce | WooCommerce Waitlist Pro

4.7 (121) 20k+ installsFree plan availableWooCommerce
Best for: The only well-maintained free restock waitlist for WooCommerce.
What it does well
  • 4.7 across 121 ratings on 20,000 installs
  • Variant-level sign-ups and automatic restock emails
  • Updated within days of this check
Trade-offs
  • Almost no free competition, so there is little to compare it against
  • Email deliverability depends on your own WordPress mail setup, which is often the weak link
Full review WooCommerce listing
Before you install

Read these first

The context an app listing will never give you — what these widgets cost in page weight, and where the free tiers stop.

Pricing

Free vs paid Shopify widgets — where the free tier actually stops

Free Shopify apps are more generous than merchants expect. The catch is not quality — it is the specific wall each category hits.

7 min read
FAQ

Restock & pre-order on WooCommerce: common questions

What percentage of back-in-stock emails convert?
Restock notifications are among the highest-converting emails in ecommerce — click-through and conversion rates well above standard campaigns, because the recipient asked for the message about a specific product they already wanted.
Are pre-orders risky?
The commercial risk is real: you hold customer money against goods you do not have, and card networks have chargeback rules about undelivered goods. Publish honest ship dates, email proactively when they slip, and keep a refund path open.
Should I hide out-of-stock products instead?
Usually not. The URL may hold search rankings and backlinks you would lose, and a waitlist on a ranking page captures demand for free. Hide them only when the product is discontinued permanently, and redirect the URL when you do.
Do these apps work with mixed carts?
Support varies and it is the most common source of complaints in this category. If you sell pre-order and in-stock items together, test a mixed cart explicitly before launch — deciding whether to split the order or hold it all is a business decision the app must let you make.

Get the next category teardown

We install, measure and write up one widget category a month. Page-weight numbers included.