Back-in-Stock Alerts

When a product sells out, the shopper who wanted it leaves and probably doesn’t come back. You restock a week later and have no way to tell the people who were ready to buy.

Back-in-stock Alerts adds a “Notify me” form to out-of-stock products and variations. Sign-ups are confirmed by email, and when stock returns each confirmed person gets one availability email.

Configure the Form

Go to Stackless → Settings → Back-in-stock Alerts:

• Form heading: defaults to “Email me when it is back”.
• Guests: let visitors without an account sign up. On by default.
• Signed-in customers: skip the confirmation email when a signed-in customer uses their account email. On by default.
• Backorders: also notify when a product becomes available on backorder. Off by default.
• Sign-ups per visitor per hour: limits abuse of the form. Defaults to 8, between 1 and 100. Store managers are never limited.

What Shoppers See

The form appears on the product page of an out-of-stock simple product, below the add to cart area, on classic and block themes. On a variable product, it stays hidden until the shopper selects a variation that’s out of stock.

The shopper enters an email address, ticks “Send me one email when this is available again.” and clicks Notify me. Signed-in customers get their account email filled in. The form needs JavaScript.

Confirmation Emails

A sign-up stays pending until it’s confirmed:

1. The shopper gets a “Confirm your alert for product name” email with a Confirm my alert button.
2. The link opens a page with a button to confirm. Only that button press confirms, so email scanners that open links don’t confirm by accident.
3. The confirmation link expires after 7 days.

Signed-in customers using their account email skip this step when the Signed-in customers setting is on. Every email also has a link to stop the alert.

When Stock Returns

When a product or variation goes back in stock, the plugin queues the availability emails in the background with Action Scheduler:

• Emails go out in batches of 50, one per confirmed sign-up, with the subject “product name is back in stock”.
• The email links to the product and says stock is limited and items aren’t reserved.
• Stock is re-checked every 10 emails. If the product sells out mid-batch, the rest wait for the next restock.
• Each person is emailed once per sign-up. They can sign up again after that.

The Stock Alerts Screen

Stackless → Stock alerts shows the demand per product or variation:

• Totals for Sign-ups, Waiting for stock, Awaiting confirmation, Emailed and Mail failed.
• A table per product with its stock status, counts per status and the last sign-up date, searchable by product, SKU or email and filterable by status.
• Check products in stock now: stock changes queue emails automatically, but run this after a bulk inventory import that may have skipped WooCommerce’s stock events.

Good to Know

• Alerts work on simple products and variations.
• Deleting a product deletes its sign-ups. Alerts are included in WordPress’s personal data export and erase tools.
• Back-in-stock Alerts pauses itself while WooCommerce Waitlist, Back In Stock Notifier for WooCommerce or WooCommerce Back In Stock Notifications is active.