Essent Preorder alternative: EZ Preorder compared

The short version

At a glance

Deposits that collect themselves

A deposit is only half of a preorder payment. The other half is the balance, and who has to remember it. In EZ Preorder you set a payment completion date, either a fixed day such as your launch date or a number of days after each order, and the app charges the balance to the payment method the customer used at checkout. Customers see the date and the amount due when they pay the deposit.

Essent also lets you set a due date, but its help center is clear that the app does not charge automatically on that date. Collection runs when you start it, from the Preorders tab or from a Shopify Flow workflow you build, and collecting from the app needs the Lite plan ($4.95) or higher.

The payment providers differ too. EZ Preorder takes deposits through Shopify Payments and PayPal Express. Essent’s help center says partial payments and balance collection work with Shopify Payments only. In EZ Preorder, deposits are on the Professional plan ($30), and Essent includes partial payments on every plan.

A bill you can predict

Essent is the cheaper of the two. Its free plan covers 25 preorders and 300 back in stock emails a month, and its paid plans are Lite at $4.95, Starter at $8.95, Essentials at $24.95 and Professional at $59 a month with no limits.

Its paid plans below Professional are metered. Lite includes 100 preorder orders a month, Starter 300 and Essentials 500. Past the limit Essent keeps taking preorders and bills $0.25, $0.20 or $0.10 for each extra order through Shopify, and back in stock emails above the plan cost $1 per 100.

EZ Preorder’s paid plans are $10, $20, $30 and $50 a month, and below Scale the plan price is the whole bill. Each plan has an allowance, from 50 preorders or $2,000 in preorder sales on Core to 500 or $20,000 on Scale, whichever comes first. When an allowance is used, the Pre-order button stops showing until it resets or you move up a plan, so the bill never rises by itself.

Tools that help a preorder sell

EZ Preorder puts as much into winning the preorder as into taking it. On Growth ($20), badges mark preorder products on collection pages, a preorder page shows everything you have on preorder in one grid, and a featured preorder section puts a preorder product on your home page with its own button.

On Professional ($30) you can add a preorder discount, give a free gift with preorders (on every preorder product or only the ones you pick, with a cap per order), and switch the Pre-order button to send shoppers straight to checkout.

Essent shows its buttons on product pages and product lists and has preorder discounts on every plan. It lists no preorder page, no free gift with preorders and no direct to checkout preorder button in this app.

Where each feature sits

The lowest plan, and its monthly price, on which each app includes a feature. Essent’s column follows its help center and its own pricing page.

EZ Preorder plans

Start free and move up when your preorders do. Each plan includes everything in the one before it, and plans are billed in USD every 30 days through Shopify.

How EZ Preorder works

• Three rules decide when a product is on preorder. Always, for products that are not released yet. Sold out, to keep selling through a stockout. Specific inventory level, to stop at a set number of preorders. Rules are set per variant, so one size can be on preorder while the rest sell as normal.
• Orders stay ordinary Shopify orders. Shoppers go through your normal Shopify checkout, preorder and in-stock items can share a cart, and you fulfill each order the way you always do.
• A plan is a fixed price with an allowance. Each paid plan covers a number of preorders or an amount of preorder sales per billing cycle, whichever comes first, plus a number of restock alert signups. On Free to Professional there is no charge per order: when an allowance is used, the Pre-order and Notify me buttons stop showing until you move up a plan or the allowance resets with your billing cycle. Scale keeps selling past its allowance, at 1% of each extra preorder and $0.01 per extra signup. How limits work.
• Deposits charge their own balance. On Professional and Scale, shoppers pay a percentage or a fixed amount at checkout and the app charges the rest automatically, on a fixed date or a number of days after each order. Deposits run on Shopify Payments or PayPal Express with Checkout Extensibility, for online store orders, and apply to all of your preorder products once switched on. If a balance charge fails the app does not send a notice yet, so look over unpaid balances after the due date. Partial payments guide.
• Preorders get their own places in your store. On Growth and up, badges mark preorder products on collection pages, a preorder page lists everything you have on preorder, and a featured section puts a preorder product on your home page.
• Restock alerts work per variant. A Notify me button shows on sold out variants, shoppers leave their email, and the app emails everyone waiting on that variant as soon as its inventory is above 0. Each signup counts as one restock alert.
• Customers are kept in the loop. Preorder confirmation emails are on every plan, and if a ship date moves you can email everyone who preordered that product in one go.

Switching from Essent Preorder to EZ Preorder

You can set EZ Preorder up on its Free plan, on one product, before you change anything else in Essent.

1. Install EZ Preorder and turn on the app embed. You can start on the Free plan, which covers one preorder product and one restock alert product. The embed is a switch under App embeds in your theme editor.
2. Use one app per product. Two preorder apps changing the same Add to cart button get in each other’s way, so switch Essent off for a product before you test EZ Preorder on it.
3. Add your products and pick a rule. In Preorders, select the products, then choose Always, Sold out or Specific inventory level for each variant and add a note with the ship date.
4. Set up deposits if you take them. On Professional, choose a percentage or a fixed deposit and the date the balance is charged. EZ Preorder collects balances for the orders it takes, so collect any balances still open in Essent before you uninstall it.
5. Add the Notify me button. Add the EZ Preorder - Notify Me block to your product template and add products to the restock list. New signups are collected in EZ Preorder from then on, so send any alerts still waiting in Essent before you remove it.
6. Turn on preorder confirmation emails. It is one switch under Configuration, in Notification Settings, and the template can be edited.
7. Add the selling tools. On Growth, switch on collection page badges and the custom preorder page and add its link to your menu. On Professional, add a preorder discount, a free gift or the direct to checkout button.
8. Place a test preorder. Open the product on your store, check that the Pre-order button shows where your rule says it should, and run it through checkout.

Each step is covered in the EZ Preorder help center.