Timesact alternative: EZ Preorder compared

The short version

At a glance

One price list for every store

EZ Preorder has five plans and one price list: Free, then $10, $20, $30 and $50 a month. A store on Shopify Plus pays what a store on Basic pays.

Timesact prices in two ways. Its Fixed plans have no order limit and are priced against your Shopify subscription: CORE Fixed is $23 a month on Basic Shopify, $47 on Grow, $73 on Advanced and $117 on Plus, and PRO Fixed is $27, $57, $87 and $147. Its Flexible plans start at $5 (CORE) and $7 (PRO) a month for 10 orders and step up with the volume you pick, to $107 and $127 for 1,000 orders. Orders past your volume cost $0.20 each on CORE and $0.30 on PRO.

How that compares depends on your store. At a few hundred preorders a month of lower priced products, EZ Preorder comes out ahead of Flexible: Professional ($30) covers 300 preorders or $10,000 in preorder sales and Scale ($50) covers 500 or $20,000, where CORE Flexible is $37 at its 250 order tier and $73 at 500. On Advanced Shopify or Plus, every EZ Preorder plan costs less than CORE Fixed. And below Scale the plan price is the whole bill: when an allowance is used, the buttons pause until it resets or you move up.

Timesact is the lower priced choice at the two ends. Its free plan covers 20 orders every month and CORE Flexible starts at $5. On Basic Shopify its Fixed plan is $23 a month with no order limit, which a high volume store, or one with expensive products, will not match on EZ Preorder’s allowances.

Country targeting without the top tier

If you only ship a preorder to some countries, you need to control where the button shows. EZ Preorder includes this on Growth ($20). On each product you choose the countries that can preorder it, variant by variant, and shoppers elsewhere see the product as sold out unless you switch that off.

Timesact’s documentation makes picking specific countries a PRO option: on Free and CORE a preorder applies in every market. PRO Flexible starts at $7 a month for 10 orders and is $27 at its 100 order tier, and PRO Fixed starts at $27 on Basic Shopify. EZ Preorder Growth is $20 and covers 150 preorders or $5,000 in preorder sales.

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.

Timesact has badges, start and end dates and preorder discounts on every plan. It lists no preorder page and no free gift with preorders, and while a preorder is active on a variant it hides the theme’s dynamic checkout buttons, such as Buy it now.

Where each feature sits

The lowest plan, and its monthly price, on which each app includes a feature. Timesact’s column follows its own pricing page and 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 Timesact to EZ Preorder

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

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 Timesact 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 Timesact 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 Timesact 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.