Early Bird: Preorder & Restock

Brilliant app, easy to use, and the customer service is above and beyond. The sales were instant from the first day we started our first campaign. Three campaigns in and the sales have been great We have had zero negative feedback from any of our customers, so they've also found it clear and simple to use. I'm very excited to see what we can achieve going forward with this app, in terms of back in stock notifications and preorders. Wish I'd found it sooner.

We needed an app that could help us handle partial payments for add-on products along with the main product. Since we weren’t familiar with how different apps worked, we reached out to several app support teams to understand whether their solutions could meet our needs.

Early Bird: Preorder & Restock stood out the most. With other apps, we had to wait at least a day for a response, and even then, the replies were often vague and didn’t really address our questions. In contrast, Josiah, the co-founder of Early Bird, got back to us almost immediately. Not only was he quick to respond, but he also took the time to understand our business needs and offer a solution that made sense for us.

When running a business, having responsive and helpful support makes a big difference, and Jo went the extra mile to ensure we fully understood how the app works and how it meets our business needs, especially in terms of customer experience.

Functionality-wise, Early Bird is easy to use and integrates smoothly into our existing setup. The partial payment feature works as expected, making it a great option for handling preorders and add-ons.

If you're looking for the best Preorder & Restock solution with reliable support, Early Bird is the way to go.

This app is almost perfect... was easy to install, has great functions for setting up pre-orders and back in stock notifications and the support team is super responsive.

However, the only way for customers to place pre-orders is through our website - there is no straightforward way to take phone or in-person pre-orders and all pre-orders must be paid for using credit card (gift cards are blocked and debit cards are not a payment option through our website). The app does not work with the order creation tools in Shopify admin nor does it work with Shopify POS. As a result, we've had customers annoyed as they don't understand how we are not able to take their phone or in-person pre-orders.

To be fair, the Early Bird developers say these are Shopify system limitations. So, Shopify, if you are listening: stores that have both online and in-store sales channels need to be able to serve their customers properly. Limiting apps like this is very frustrating, since it is clear that many Shopify customers use the POS app alongside the web tools.

It will let the customer purchase into zero and negative amounts without indicating that any purchase of an item when the inventory goes from zero or below will be a backorder. Basically, if a product has an inventory of 1 it will allow the customer to purchase 4, in a single order, without indicating that 3 will be a backorder. The customer is left unaware that 3 items are not in stock, and we the merchants are stuck dealing with this. They require you to check "continue selling when out of stock" to enable the backorder function but did not take into account going zero or below in inventory on a single purchase. Not to mention Google lists your products in stock when inventory is zero or below because of the "continue selling when out of stock" requirement to use the backorder function.

Impressive in its simplicity and functionality. Wish it were more affordable. We're just starting out and the profit margins on our products would require us to sell 20-30 products before we break even. But if you have a store that's already selling well, this is a great product to go with.