StockPing — A Merchant's Guide to Never Running Out of Stock Again

Meet James — he runs a kitchenware online store on Shopify with 1,400 SKUs, two warehouse locations, and a team of three. This is his story.

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First, Let Me Tell You About My Problem Today

I run a kitchenware online store — cast iron skillets, ceramic bowls, bamboo utensils, linen napkins, that kind of thing. We carry about 1,400 SKUs across sizes and colors, do roughly $900K/year, and ship from two locations: our main warehouse in Austin and a 3PL in New Jersey for East Coast orders.

Here’s what keeps me up at night: I don’t know when we’re running out of stock until a customer tells me.

Last month, our best-selling 10” Cast Iron Skillet in Matte Black went to zero inventory at our New Jersey location. I didn’t find out for three days — not from a notification, not from a report, but from a customer complaint on Instagram: “Why does your website say 2-week shipping? It used to be 2-day.” Turns out our East Coast orders were all routing to Austin because Jersey was out of stock. We lost an estimated $2,800 in sales from customers who bounced when they saw the long shipping time, and our ad spend that week was essentially wasted because we were driving traffic to a product we couldn’t ship quickly.

Here’s my current “system” for catching low stock: every Tuesday and Friday, I open Shopify admin, go to Products → Inventory, and manually scan through our products sorted by quantity. Both locations. All 1,400 SKUs. It takes about 45 minutes each time, and I’m basically playing “Where’s Waldo?” with small numbers. Last month I missed the skillet because I was scanning quickly and it showed “12 units” at Austin — which looked fine — but I forgot to check the New Jersey tab.

Shopify has inventory reports, sure. But they’re just numbers on a screen that I have to remember to look at. They don’t come to me. They don’t say “Hey, your best seller is about to run out at your East Coast warehouse.” They just sit there, waiting for me to remember that inventory management is a thing I need to do between handling customer emails, updating product photos, planning the next launch, and every other thing a 3-person team juggles.

I’ve tried setting calendar reminders. I’ve tried delegating it to my operations person. I’ve even tried a spreadsheet with reorder points. Nothing sticks because the fundamental problem is the same: it’s passive monitoring in a world where I need proactive alerts.

What I need is dead simple: tap me on the shoulder when something’s running low, tell me where, and let me deal with it before it becomes a crisis. That’s it.

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What StockPing Actually Gives Me (And Why Each Piece Matters)

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1. Multi-Channel Alerts — “Tell me where I already am, not where you want me to be”

The Problem I Had

I check my email at 7am. My warehouse manager lives in Slack. And when I’m at a trade show or running errands, the only thing I see instantly is my phone’s lock screen. No single notification channel covers all three scenarios. Shopify’s built-in low stock report? It’s a page I have to visit inside the admin panel. That’s the one place I’m not looking when I’m away from my desk.

I tried another inventory app last year — it only did email. My warehouse manager in Austin never saw the alerts because he doesn’t check the store email. We had a $1,200 stockout on ceramic bowls because the alert went to my inbox and I was at a trade show all week.

What StockPing Does Instead

StockPing lets me set up three notification channels running simultaneously:

• Email — Goes to me every morning. I scan it with my coffee. Both plans support up to 5 email recipients — my ops person gets the same alerts I do, so there’s no single point of failure. On Free I get 20 alerts per month; on PRO it’s unlimited.

• Slack — Goes to our #inventory channel. My warehouse manager sees it instantly. He’s the one who can actually walk to the shelf and verify. This is on both Free and PRO — no paywall, which honestly surprised me because other apps charge $10+/month just for Slack integration.

• Push notifications — Goes to my phone’s lock screen via a free open-source app called ntfy. Setup took 90 seconds (scan a QR code in StockPing, download the ntfy app, done). When I’m away from my desk, I see low stock alerts within 1-2 seconds of them being triggered. It’s the closest thing to a warehouse manager tapping me on the shoulder.

Why This Matters for My Business

When the Matte Black Skillet went to zero, three people should have known: me (email), my warehouse manager (Slack), and me again on my phone (push). With StockPing running on all three channels, the alert would have hit us within minutes of inventory crossing our threshold. That $2,800 in lost sales? Prevented. The embarrassing Instagram complaint? Never happens.

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2. Smart Threshold Cascade — “Not every product needs the same warning”

The Problem I Had

When I first thought about low stock alerts, I assumed I’d set one number — “tell me when anything drops below 10 units” — and be done. That lasted about five minutes before I realized how wrong it was.

Our 10” Cast Iron Skillet sells 40 units/week. If I wait until it hits 10 units, I’ve got less than 2 days of inventory left and my supplier takes 3 weeks to ship. I need to know when it hits 50.

Our hand-painted ceramic serving platter sells 2 units/month. If I get an alert at 50 units, I’m getting a useless notification about a product that has 2 years of stock. For that, I want to know when it hits 5.

And then there’s our seasonal stuff — holiday gift sets that sell like crazy in November and December but barely move in March. I need different thresholds at different times, or at least the ability to adjust quickly.

A flat “alert me at 10” doesn’t work for a store with any variety. But setting individual thresholds for 1,400 SKUs? That’s a full day of work.

What StockPing Does Instead

StockPing uses a 3-level threshold cascade — and the most specific one always wins:

1. Shop default (broadest) — I set this to 15 in Settings. This covers the 80% of products where “15 units” is a reasonable reorder point. One setting, covers 1,100+ SKUs.

2. Location level (medium) — My Austin warehouse handles the bulk of fulfillment, so I set its threshold to 20 (slightly higher buffer). My New Jersey 3PL has a longer restock lead time, so I set it to 30. Products at each location get alerts at the right level for that warehouse’s cadence.

3. Variant level (most specific) — For my top 20 sellers, I set individual thresholds. The Cast Iron Skillet gets 50. The ceramic platter gets 5. These override everything else.

The result: I spent about 30 minutes configuring thresholds once, and now 1,400 SKUs are monitored at the right level. The cascade means I only had to manually configure ~25 products instead of all 1,400. Everything else falls through to the shop default or location default.

Why This Matters for My Business

Before StockPing, I had two options: one threshold that’s wrong for most products, or manually tracking every product individually. The cascade gives me the third option: smart defaults with surgical overrides where they matter. My top sellers get tight monitoring, my long-tail products get reasonable defaults, and I’m not drowning in configuration.

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3. Multi-Location Monitoring — “Every warehouse, one dashboard”

The Problem I Had

We ship from two locations. Shopify shows inventory per location, but when I’m scanning my product list, I’m looking at one location at a time. I have to mentally track: “OK, Austin has 22 of these, but what about Jersey?” Switch location filter. “Jersey has 3. Oh no.”

That’s how the skillet stockout happened — I checked Austin (fine), forgot to check Jersey (not fine). Two locations is manageable if tedious. But we’re adding a pop-up retail location this summer, which means three. And if we start doing Amazon FBA, that’s four. Manually checking each location for 1,400 products is a system that’s already breaking.

What StockPing Does Instead

StockPing monitors inventory at every Shopify location independently. Each location has its own threshold (via the cascade system), and alerts tell me exactly which location is running low.

The alert doesn’t just say “Cast Iron Skillet is low.” It says “Cast Iron Skillet (Matte Black) is at 3 units at New Jersey 3PL (threshold: 30).” I know immediately which warehouse needs restocking.

The Locations page shows all my locations with their thresholds. I set them once. When I add the pop-up retail location this summer, I’ll just set its threshold and StockPing picks it up automatically from Shopify.

Why This Matters for My Business

Multi-location is where the complexity multiplies. 1,400 SKUs × 2 locations = 2,800 inventory positions to monitor. That’s not a spreadsheet problem — that’s a systems problem. StockPing collapses all of that into “we’ll watch everything, you’ll hear about problems.” The cognitive load drops from “remember to check 2,800 things” to “read the alerts that come to you.”

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4. Recovery Notifications — “Tell me when the fire’s out, not just when it starts”

The Problem I Had

Here’s a scenario that happens more than I’d like to admit: I get a low stock alert (in my old manual system, it’s me noticing during a scan). I rush-order from my supplier. Two weeks later, the shipment arrives and I receive it into Shopify. Then… nothing. I forget which products were in crisis mode. Was the Bamboo Utensil Set the one that was critically low, or was it the Linen Napkins? I have to go back and check again.

More importantly, my warehouse manager doesn’t know when a restock arrives for items he’d been manually tracking as “problem products.” He keeps worrying about them even after they’re restocked.

What StockPing Does Instead

When I turn on recovery notifications in Settings, StockPing sends a follow-up alert when a product’s inventory goes back above its threshold. “Cast Iron Skillet (Matte Black) at New Jersey 3PL recovered to 45 units (threshold: 30).”

It’s closure. The incident opened when stock dropped below 30. The incident automatically closes when stock recovers above 30. I see both sides of the story.

Why This Matters for My Business

Recovery notifications turn StockPing from a fire alarm into a complete incident management system. I know when problems start, and I know when they’re resolved. My warehouse manager sees the “all clear” in Slack and can stop mentally tracking that product. For a team of three where everyone’s juggling multiple responsibilities, knowing what you can stop worrying about is almost as valuable as knowing what to start worrying about.

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5. Daily Digest — “Give me the big picture without drowning me in individual alerts”

The Problem I Had

When I first imagined getting inventory alerts, I pictured a calm, occasional notification: “Hey, one product is running low.” What actually happens during a busy sales period — Black Friday, a viral TikTok moment, a product launch — is that 15 products all drop below their thresholds within the same day. Fifteen individual alerts would be noise. I’d start ignoring them, which defeats the entire purpose.

On the flip side, during slow periods, I might go weeks without a single alert. Then I start wondering: is the system even working? Did I set it up correctly? Is everything actually fine, or is it broken and I just don’t know?

What StockPing Does Instead

StockPing’s daily digest is a single email (and/or Slack message) that arrives once per day at a time I choose. It summarizes: here are all your currently open incidents. Product name, location, current stock level, how long the incident has been open.

During a busy week, instead of getting 15 individual pings, I get one digest that says “You have 15 open low-stock incidents” with a clean list. I can prioritize which ones to deal with first.

During a quiet week, the digest says “All clear — no open incidents.” That one line gives me peace of mind that the system is working and my inventory is healthy.

It runs alongside real-time alerts, not instead of them. I still get individual notifications for critical items (via push or Slack), but the digest is my daily “state of inventory” briefing.

Why This Matters for My Business

The daily digest solves alert fatigue. It’s the difference between a smoke alarm that goes off for every piece of toast (so you remove the batteries) and a smart system that gives you a morning briefing with a fire report only when there’s something worth reporting. I’ve used the app for weeks now and I’ve never once thought “these notifications are annoying.” That’s the sign of a well-designed alert system.

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6. Alert Cooldown — “Stop telling me the same thing every five minutes”

The Problem I Had

Stock levels change constantly. A product that drops below threshold might trigger an alert, then someone returns a unit and it goes back above, then another order comes in and it drops below again. Without a cooldown, I’d get three alerts in an hour for the same product. Multiply that by 10 products during a sale, and my inbox becomes unusable.

What StockPing Does Instead

Alert cooldown is exactly what it sounds like: after an alert fires for a product at a location, StockPing won’t fire another one for the same product-location pair for a configurable period. On the Free plan, that’s 60 minutes. On PRO, I can set it anywhere from 5 to 60 minutes.

For my business, I run PRO at 15 minutes. That’s tight enough to catch rapidly changing inventory during a sale, but not so tight that I’m drowning in repeat notifications for the same product.

Why This Matters for My Business

Without cooldown, alert systems become noise generators. With it, every alert I receive represents a genuinely new situation I need to know about. It’s a small technical feature with a huge quality-of-life impact.

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7. Bulk Operations — “I have 1,400 SKUs. Don’t make me configure them one at a time.”

The Problem I Had

When I first installed StockPing, my immediate worry was: “Am I about to spend 3 hours clicking through 1,400 products to set them up?” Any tool that requires per-product configuration for a large catalog is dead on arrival for me. I don’t have the time, and even if I did it once, I’d never maintain it as new products are added.

What StockPing Does Instead

StockPing imports my entire Shopify catalog in one click. Every product, every variant, every location — synced automatically. New products I add to Shopify get picked up on the next sync.

On the Products page, I can:

• Filter by vendor, product type, tags, status, stock level, or monitoring status
• Search by product name or SKU
• Select all matching products and apply bulk actions: enable monitoring, disable monitoring, or set thresholds for everything at once
• Set per-product thresholds only where I need them (thanks to the cascade, most products don’t need individual settings)

I had StockPing fully configured in about 20 minutes: import products (3 minutes), set shop default threshold (30 seconds), set location thresholds (2 minutes), set individual thresholds for my top 20 products (15 minutes), configure email + Slack + push (5 minutes). Done.

Why This Matters for My Business

Setup time is a hidden cost of every tool. If an app takes 4 hours to configure, I’ll put it off for weeks, and during those weeks I’m still unprotected from stockouts. StockPing’s 20-minute setup meant I went from “zero inventory monitoring” to “fully protected” in the time it took my coffee to cool down.

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A Day in My Life With StockPing

7:05am, Monday. I’m making coffee and my phone buzzes — the daily digest from StockPing arrived. I glance at it: “3 open incidents. 1 new since yesterday.” I tap the notification and see:

• Cast Iron Skillet (Seasoned Black) — New Jersey 3PL — 12 units (threshold: 30) — open 2 days
• Ceramic Bowl Set (Cream) — Austin — 8 units (threshold: 15) — open 5 days, recovery pending
• Linen Napkin Set (Sage) — Austin — 4 units (threshold: 15) — new today

The ceramic bowls — I already placed a reorder last Wednesday. Expecting delivery tomorrow. I’ll get a recovery notification when they’re received and the incident will close itself.

The skillet at Jersey — this is concerning. I fire off a message to my supplier. 3-week lead time. I might need to transfer units from Austin in the meantime.

The napkins — just dropped below threshold today. Not urgent, but I add it to my reorder list.

Total time spent: 4 minutes. I know exactly what’s happening across both warehouses and I’ve already taken action on the one thing that matters.

10:30am. My warehouse manager posts in Slack: “Got the StockPing alert about the napkins. We actually have a case in the back that wasn’t received into inventory. Updating now.” Twenty minutes later, I get a recovery notification: “Linen Napkin Set (Sage) recovered to 28 units at Austin.” Incident closed. I didn’t have to do anything.

2:15pm. A push notification hits my lock screen while I’m photographing new products: “Bamboo Cutting Board (Large) at Austin is at 14 units (threshold: 15).” I screenshot it and text my ops person: “Add this to Friday’s reorder.” Done in 10 seconds.

Friday, team meeting. I pull up StockPing on the laptop: “This week we had 4 low stock incidents. 3 resolved, 1 pending restock. No stockouts. No lost sales.” My ops person nods. We moved on to the next agenda item in 30 seconds because there was nothing to discuss — the system handled it.

Compare that to my old process: 45-minute manual inventory scans twice a week, missed stockouts, Instagram complaints, and a quarterly scramble to figure out what went wrong. StockPing replaced all of that with a 4-minute morning routine.

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The Pricing Feels Like a No-Brainer

Plan	Price	What I Get
Free	$0/month	Unlimited products, 20 email alerts/month, up to 5 recipients, Slack notifications, push notifications, multi-location monitoring, threshold cascade, recovery notifications, daily digest, 60-minute cooldown. Genuinely usable — not a crippled trial.
PRO	$8.99/month or $85.99/year (20% off)	Everything in Free, plus: unlimited emails, 5-minute cooldown, priority support. For stores that need tighter monitoring or higher alert volume.

Here’s my math: one prevented stockout on a mid-range product saves me $500-2,000 in lost sales. My Cast Iron Skillet stockout last month cost $2,800. I’m on the annual plan — $85.99/year, which works out to about $7.17/month.

One prevented stockout per year pays for 33 years of the app. The ROI isn’t a question.

And honestly? The Free plan is more than enough for most small stores. Unlimited products with 20 alerts/month to up to 5 recipients covers a store with a few hundred products that doesn’t have high-velocity sales. I’m on PRO because I need the faster cooldown during our busy season and unlimited alerts, but I started on Free and it was genuinely useful from day one. I switched to the annual plan after the first month — 20% off just for committing to something I was already going to keep using. Easy decision.

The fact that Slack and push notifications are free on both plans is unusual. Most inventory apps I evaluated gate Slack behind a $10-15/month tier. StockPing gives it away because it costs them nothing — I’m using my own Slack workspace, my own ntfy app. That’s the kind of pricing decision that makes me trust the company.

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Why This Works Better Than What I Was Doing

	Before StockPing	With StockPing
How I find out about low stock	Manual scan, 45 min, twice/week	Automatic alerts via email + Slack + push
Time spent on inventory monitoring	90 min/week + quarterly deep dive	4 min/day reading the digest
Stockouts per quarter	3-5 (caught late)	0-1 (caught at threshold)
Lost sales from stockouts	$2,000-8,000/quarter	Near zero
Who knows about inventory problems	Just me (when I remember to check)	Me + ops person + warehouse manager simultaneously
Multi-location coverage	Check each location separately, miss things	Every location monitored, alerts specify which one
Setup time	N/A (manual process)	20 minutes, once
Monthly cost	$0 (but ~$3K-8K/quarter in lost sales)	$0-8.99 (pays for itself on first prevented stockout)

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StockPing isn’t complicated. It doesn’t try to be an inventory management system, a demand forecaster, or a purchasing tool. It does one thing — tells you when you’re running low, exactly where, through the channels you actually check — and it does that thing exceptionally well.

For a 3-person team running 1,400 SKUs across two locations, that’s the difference between “we discovered we were out of stock from a customer complaint” and “we knew 3 days ago and the reorder is already on its way.”

Install StockPing free on the Shopify App Store — setup takes less time than reading this post.