How restock alerts are sent

You don’t press anything in Waitly. Shopify tells Waitly whenever an inventory level changes. When a variant shoppers are waiting for goes from sold out to available to sell online, Waitly counts it as a restock and starts sending.

Setting the quantity above 0 is the usual way. Turning Sell when out of stock on also makes a variant available, so it counts as a restock too.

Everyone waiting for that variant gets the alert, and so does everyone waiting for the whole product. A shopper waiting for a different variant of the same product doesn’t.

Only shoppers who signed up before the restock are included. Shoppers who unsubscribed, can’t be emailed, or are still holding an earlier alert are left out.

If the variant sells out again before the send starts, or the send can’t start within 24 hours of the restock, Waitly doesn’t send it.

Open Settings and find Notifications. Hold a restock alert for sets how long a shopper has to buy after an alert: from 1 to 168 hours, 48 by default.

During that time the shopper shows as Alerted, still deciding and isn’t alerted again. If they haven’t bought when it ends, they go back to Waiting in their original place in line, ready for the next restock.

Alert one shopper at most sets how many alerts a shopper can get for the same item without buying: from 1 to 10, 3 by default.

When the hold on their last alert ends and they still haven’t bought, they leave the waitlist and show as Expired. Select Save after changing either setting.

Each restock alert counts toward your plan’s allowance for the billing cycle: 100 on Free, 5,000 on Growth and 20,000 on Pro. Confirmation emails aren’t counted against it.

Billing shows how many you’ve used under This billing cycle, and a banner warns you when they’re nearly used.

Once they’re used up, further alerts are withheld: Waitly doesn’t send them, and doesn’t send them later either. Those shoppers stay Waiting and get the alert at the next restock, once you have allowance again.

Open Analytics and scroll to Restock alerts. Each row is one restock’s send: the item, its Status (Sending or Complete), and how many alerts were Queued and Delivered.

A Withheld column appears when a send had alerts held back by your allowance, and Failed when an email couldn’t be sent.