PreOrder Globo alternative: EZ Preorder compared

The short version

At a glance

Preorders shoppers can find

A Pre-order button only works if shoppers reach the product. EZ Preorder gives preorders their own places in your store. On Growth ($20), the custom preorder page shows every variant you have on preorder in a collection style grid, with its badge, its deposit options and a Pre-order button. The app creates the page and gives you the link to add to your menu.

The featured preorder section is a block you add in the theme editor. It puts one preorder product on your home page, or any other page, where shoppers can add it to the cart without opening the product page. Badges on collection pages mark the rest.

Globo shows a pre-order badge on collection pages too. Its documentation lists no page that gathers every preorder product.

One way to take deposits

In EZ Preorder there is one deposit setup. On Professional ($30) you choose a percentage or a fixed amount and the date the balance is due, and the app charges the rest automatically to the payment method the customer used. It works with Shopify Payments and PayPal Express.

Globo offers two models, and its documentation sets out the trade-offs. Its Selling Plan model also charges the balance automatically, and also runs on Shopify Payments and PayPal Express. Its legacy model works with every payment method, but the balance is requested by a reminder email with a payment link, and with partial payments customers can only buy one item at a time. Globo includes partial payments from Lite ($9.90).

What the price buys

On price alone, Globo is the lower of the two. Its plans are Free, Lite at $9.90 and PRO at $19.90 a month, and PRO has no limit on presale orders. EZ Preorder’s paid plans run from $10 to $50, each with an allowance of preorders or preorder sales.

What EZ Preorder’s plans buy is the selling side. Growth ($20) adds the preorder page, the featured preorder section and collection page badges. Professional ($30) adds deposits, preorder discounts, a free gift with preorders and the direct to checkout button. The preorder page and the preorder gift are the two Globo does not list.

EZ Preorder also tells you exactly how its limits work: which number counts, when it resets, and that the buttons pause when it is used. Globo’s documentation does not say what happens when a store passes 100 presale orders on Lite or reaches its restock email limit.

Where each feature sits

The lowest plan, and its monthly price, on which each app includes a feature. Globo’s column follows its App Store listing, its own site and its documentation.

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 PreOrder Globo to EZ Preorder

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

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 Globo 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 Globo 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 Globo 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.