How to run early-access and limited sales on Shopify: deciding on pre-orders, restock alerts and purchase limits

“I want members to get first access to next week's new product.” “It's a limited item, so I want a cap per customer.” “Once it sells out, I want to switch to restock alerts.” As soon as you try to sell differently from a normal listing, Shopify's settings turn out to be spread across several places, and it is hard to know where to begin.

Every early-access or limited sale comes down to four decisions. When to sell, who can buy, how many each customer can buy, and what happens after it sells out. Work through them in that order for one product and you will know which settings you need, and whether Shopify's built-in features can handle them or you need an app. Adding an early-access window or a fallback for after sellout to a product that would otherwise just wait for launch day is also a way to try a new selling approach without ordering more stock.

The big picture: what each way of selling requires

“Early access” and “limited sale” are not single features. They are combinations of several decisions. Starting from what you want to do, here is what you need. The SellRules screen names are the items in the app's left-hand menu.

A “—” in the table means the Shopify help pages we checked for this article did not mention a matching setting. The sources for the Shopify column are listed later, in “What Shopify's built-in features cover, and where they stop”.

Example: splitting one limited bag into the four decisions

Say you are selling a limited bag in 2 colors like this: members can buy first, everyone else can buy from 3 days later, there is a cap of 2 per customer, and once it sells out you only collect notification signups until the next restock is confirmed. Split into the four decisions, a single table shows where each part goes and whether the Free plan is enough.

Two points in this example need care.

First, purchase limit rules have no date or time field. Eligibility does not change on its own at a set time, so put the change at 20:00 on the 20th in your calendar to end the members-only period. If you disable the whole rule instead, the “2 per customer” cap in the same rule goes too, so change only the eligibility. If you change it to “No restriction”, guest checkouts are not counted toward the lifetime cap, and the only thing left stopping them is the per-order cap. A guest could keep placing orders of 2 and go past the cap, so if you want the per-customer cap to hold after the general release, use “Login required”.

Second, the interaction between sales schedules and the sold-out switch. The user guide says: “If the product has a manual schedule covering the whole product, automatic stock-out switching does not run.” If you want the product to switch to “Back-in-stock notification only” automatically when it sells out after launch, check after it moves to regular sale whether its row is still in Sales schedules, and delete it if it is. A manual whole-product row keeps blocking the automatic switch for as long as it exists, even after regular sale has started. Deleting the whole-product schedule does not delete the whole-product rule on the purchase limits screen (the member tag and the cap of 2 per customer).

Decision 1: when to sell (launch date, pre-orders, sales window)

Timing comes first. If customers should not be able to buy until launch and sales start at that moment, use “Coming soon”. To take orders before stock arrives, use “Pre-order”. To take orders and then make the item, use “Made to order”. All three are created under Sales schedules in SellRules.

The app describes Coming soon this way: “Shows ‘Coming soon’ on the product page and blocks purchases until launch, then switches to regular sale at exactly the sale start time. Pre-orders are not accepted.” You can show the product page and build anticipation while holding back purchases until launch time. If you turn on “Accept notification sign-ups during the announcement”, an email signup field appears on the product page, and everyone who signs up gets a single notification email at the sale start time. A product launching on a Friday at 20:00 can go on sale without you waiting at your computer that evening. The setup is explained in the article on switching automatically at launch time.

A pre-order puts the announcement period, the pre-order window, the switch to regular sale and the end of sales into one schedule. The dates must be in the order announcement start, pre-order start, regular sale start, or the schedule cannot be saved. If you don't want purchases during the announcement, turn on “Block purchases during the announcement period”: customers then can't buy until pre-orders open, whether through the buy button or by going straight to the cart or checkout.

While a product is on pre-order or made to order, the inventory setting of the affected variants switches to “Continue selling when out of stock”, and it switches back when the product returns to regular sale. Orders go through even with no stock, so if you have a fixed number you can accept, enter an “Order limit”. When the limit is reached, pre-order or made-to-order sales stop and the product returns to regular sale; if Shopify's inventory is 0, it simply shows as sold out. However, it can take a few minutes for those sales to stop after the limit is reached. If orders come in at the same time during that interval, you may accept slightly more than the limit. For pre-orders, also put the expected shipping time on the product page. Customers wait longer for these orders, and without a date you will get questions. Preparation before you start is covered in how to start pre-orders, and tracking made-to-order orders through to shipping in managing made-to-order orders.

Note that “let members buy first” cannot be settled by dates alone. It is combined with the next decision, who can buy.

Decision 2: who can buy (purchase eligibility)

Who can buy is set by “Purchase eligibility” in the purchase limit rule. It is the core setting for member early access and members-only sales.

There are four eligibility options: “No restriction”, “Login required”, “Tag required” and “Purchases blocked”.

With Tag required, customers who have the tag also need to log in before buying. The tag name itself is never shown to customers. Customers who don't qualify see the text you entered in “Message shown to customers”; if you leave it empty, the placeholder text shown in the field is used as is. At checkout the app compares the customer against its own copy of customer tags, and saving a “Tag required” rule also loads the tags of your existing customers. If a tagged customer still can't buy, use “Reload customer tags” under Settings. How to define member groups, and when to use login instead, is covered in the article on selling only to members.

The flip side of Login required and Tag required is that they stop non-members’ orders at checkout. Non-members can still click the buy button on the product page; the order is only blocked when they proceed to checkout. If you limit the early period to members, decide the date and time of the general release first and write it in the product description. When customers who don't qualify yet can see who can buy and when, they know what they are waiting for.

Decision 3: how many each customer can buy (quantity and purchase caps)

How many each customer can buy is set by three caps in the same purchase limit rule. You don't have to fill in all three; enter only the ones you need. An empty cap means no limit.

For “one per customer”, a per-order cap alone is not enough: a customer can split the purchase into two orders and go over it. Adding the cumulative cap closes that gap, but the cumulative cap and the purchase-times cap only count orders from customers who were logged in when they bought. They don't apply to guest checkouts, and counting starts with orders placed after you create the rule. If you need it to hold, set purchase eligibility to “Login required”. Also, “Max per order” must be equal to or lower than the cumulative cap, or the rule can't be saved.

For products with colors or sizes, also choose “How to count quantity limits”. “Combined across variants (recommended)” counts the total across variants, so it stops combinations such as 2 in S and one in M from going over the cap. “Per variant (independent)” counts each color or size separately.

Orders over the limit are blocked at checkout. The product page only shows a limit message such as “Limit 1 per order” below the buy button, which remains clickable. Customers who add more than the limit to their cart see the reason at checkout and adjust the quantity. For the checkout check to work, “Purchase limits (SellRules)” must be active under “Settings > Checkout > Checkout rules” in the Shopify admin. The settings screen is explained in the article on setting “one per customer”. If you want to sort out the customer and order conditions first, you can also use the purchase limit planner.

Decision 4: what happens after sellout (switch to pre-orders or restock alerts)

Decide in advance what happens after a product sells out, and you no longer have to edit the product page every time something runs out. As a rule of thumb: if the next restock is confirmed, switch to pre-order or made to order; if it is still open, use restock alerts.

In SellRules you create sold-out switches per product (or per color or size) on the “Purchase limits & sold-out” screen. There are three switch targets: “Pre-order”, “Made to order” and “Back-in-stock notification only”. When inventory reaches 0, a schedule is created automatically; when inventory is back to one or more, that schedule is deleted and the product returns to regular sale. “Back-in-stock notification only” takes no orders and only collects email addresses; when stock returns, a restock email goes to everyone who signed up.

For a product with a known restock date, switching to pre-order lets you keep taking orders without a break. On the other hand, taking pre-orders for a product with no restock in sight leaves you with orders you can't give a shipping date for. “Back-in-stock notification only” is the safer choice there. This decision is compared in detail in the article on turning sold-out products into future orders.

Check two things before you rely on the switch. First, the sold-out switch only covers products whose inventory Shopify tracks. Products that aren't set to track inventory, gift cards and products that don't require shipping are all handled as untracked products, and the switch doesn't work for them. The screen also labels them “Doesn't track inventory (switch won't apply)”. For products you want to switch, turn on inventory tracking in Shopify's product editor. Second, as described in the example section, the automatic switch doesn't run while the product has a manual sales schedule covering the whole product.

The sold-out switch screen also has a “Purchase limits (optional)” field. That limit applies only while the product has switched to pre-order or made to order because it sold out, and a limit already set on the purchase limits screen takes precedence for that product. If you choose notifications, check how the signup form looks and what the notification email says beforehand, as described in the restock alert article.

What Shopify's built-in features cover, and where they stop

If you only need one of these decisions, Shopify's built-in features are sometimes enough. Scheduled publishing, which hides a product until a set date and time, and “Continue selling when out of stock”, which keeps accepting orders at zero inventory, are both available in the Shopify admin.

Scheduled publishing works by not showing the product until launch. Sometimes you want more: keep the product page live and switch its intake state (announcement, pre-orders open, on sale) on a per-product schedule, sell only to members, cap each customer's lifetime total, or switch only sold-out products to pre-orders or signups. All of these need something that checks the buy button and checkout per product. That is where an app comes in.

That said, installing an app doesn't mean you have to use everything at once. You can adopt only the decisions you need, such as “purchase limits only” or “Coming soon only”.

Managing it all in SellRules

In SellRules, the four decisions are split across two screens. “Sales schedules” handles when to sell, and “Purchase limits & sold-out” handles who can buy, how many and what happens after sellout. Customers who sign up for notifications are listed under “Back-in-stock subscribers”. The “Delivery log”, where you can check each sent email individually, is available on the Standard plan and above.

Purchase limits are one rule per product (or variant). The sales schedule edit screen also has a “Purchase limits (optional)” field, but limits and eligibility saved there are stored as the same product's rule on the purchase limits screen. Whichever screen you use, it is the same rule, so changing a value on one screen changes it on the other. The same goes for removing it. If you save a whole-product sales schedule with every purchase limit field empty (eligibility “No restriction”), that product's rule on the purchase limits screen is deleted as well, including any per-variant rules. And limits entered in a per-variant schedule are removed when you delete that schedule.

For the product page to switch its display, SellRules must be turned on under “Online Store → Themes → Customize → App embeds” in Shopify. It can be turned off right after you change themes. How to check when the pre-order button doesn't appear is covered in the article on a missing pre-order button. Step-by-step instructions for each screen are in the SellRules user guide; this article is about how to make the overall decisions.

We recommend not setting up every product at once, but picking the next product you will launch and trying it there first. Once you have seen how the switching behaves and how the product page looks to customers, you can widen the scope. What to check is listed in the checklist for trying it on the Free plan.

Things to watch when deciding

Combining several settings brings caveats you don't run into when you use just one.

You can't block every way around a limit. The cumulative cap and the purchase-times cap only count customers who were logged in when they bought. Purchases from a different account are not counted as the same customer. Login required narrows the gap. Think of limits as a way to cut the number of orders you cancel by hand, not as something that stops everything.

Pre-order and shipping promises are yours to keep. The app handles intake and switching; it doesn't guarantee restocks or shipping. Set realistic shipping dates and tell customers when they change.

Limits without a reason frustrate customers. A bare “You can't buy this” leaves a worse impression than the limit itself. Explain why you limit purchases, and who can buy when, on the product page and in the Tag required message.

You end the members-only period by hand. As in the example, purchase limit rules have no date or time field. Put the general release in your calendar, keep the rule enabled and change only the eligibility. If you still want a per-customer lifetime cap after the release, use “Login required”; if a per-order cap is enough, use “No restriction”.

Find guides for specific tasks and problems

Once you have decided how to sell, these articles cover individual setup, day-to-day operation and troubleshooting.

• Collect notify-me signups before launch → How to collect pre-launch signups
• Sell products you make after the order comes in → Managing made-to-order orders
• Sell only to members → Members-only sales with customer tags
• Prepare product pages and notifications in several languages → Multilingual pre-order messaging
• Alert staff automatically about pre-orders or shipping delays → Running SellRules with Shopify Flow
• Review pre-orders regularly → A weekly pre-order review
• Handle orders that mix pre-order and in-stock items → Shipping and messaging for mixed orders
• Split a pre-order payment into a deposit and a balance → Setting up deposit and balance payments and collecting the balance (Pro plan)
  • Find out when to collect payment for pre-orders more than a month away → When to collect payment for long pre-orders
  • Find out why expensive items get fewer pre-orders with full prepayment → Why expensive items get fewer pre-orders
  • Decide the deposit percentage and when to charge the balance → How much deposit to take and when to charge the balance
  • Find out whether your store's payment methods work with deposits → Payment methods that do and don't work with deposits
  • See how deposits look to customers on the product page and in emails → Deposit payments from the customer's side
  • Deal with orders whose balance isn't paid → What to do when the balance isn't paid
  • Move pre-orders from full prepayment to a deposit → Switching from full prepayment to a deposit
• Turn off cash on delivery for pre-order items → Hiding cash on delivery for pre-order items
• Pre-orders are “On hold” in Shopify and can't be fulfilled → Why fulfillment holds happen and how to release them
• The pre-order button doesn't show on the product page → What to check when the pre-order button is missing
• Restock alerts aren't arriving → Troubleshooting restock alerts that don't arrive
• Not sure which pre-order app to choose → How to choose a pre-order app
• Switch from your current pre-order app → App migration checklist

Frequently asked questions

Do I need an app if I only want to run an early-access sale?

Not if you only want to hide the product until launch and publish it at that time: Shopify's scheduled publishing covers that. If you want the product page visible while the buy button stays off until launch, or a period when only members can buy, you need something that checks the buy button and checkout. In SellRules, that is the “Coming soon” schedule and the “Tag required” purchase eligibility.

Can I choose between pre-orders and restock alerts product by product?

Yes, you choose between them per product. In the sold-out switch, set the switch target to “Pre-order” for products whose next restock is confirmed, and to “Back-in-stock notification only” for products whose restock is still open. “Back-in-stock notification only” takes no orders and only collects email addresses. The deciding question is whether you can tell customers when the item will ship.

Should I set purchase limits on the sales schedule screen or the purchase limits screen?

Either one works, because both save to the same purchase limit rule for that product. Limits and eligibility saved under “Purchase limits (optional)” on the sales schedule edit screen become the product's rule on the “Purchase limits & sold-out” screen. The only exception is the limit you enter on the sold-out switch screen: it applies only while the product has switched to pre-order or made to order because it sold out, and a limit already set on the purchase limits screen takes precedence. Also, if you save a whole-product sales schedule with every purchase limit field empty, that product's purchase limits are deleted, and limits entered in a per-variant schedule are removed when you delete that schedule.

Do purchase limits apply to guest checkouts?

The per-order maximum applies to guest checkouts as well. The per-customer lifetime maximum and the maximum number of purchases only apply to customers who are logged in when they buy, so guest checkouts are not counted. If you need the limit to hold, set purchase eligibility to “Login required”.

How much can I try on the Free plan?

Pre-orders, made to order, back-in-stock signups, purchase limits and the sold-out switch are all available from the Free plan. However, purchase limits can be set on 1 product only, and Coming soon is also limited to 1 product. Pre-order and made-to-order orders are capped at 10 in total since installation, and restock and launch emails at 15 in total since installation; these allowances do not reset each month.

Pricing: start with one product on the Free plan

SellRules has three plans: Free, Standard and Pro. The Free plan costs nothing and includes pre-orders, made to order, back-in-stock signups, purchase limits and the sold-out switch. Standard and Pro have no free trial; the Free plan takes its place.

SellRules plans and pricing

Monthly price	LaunchEvery feature included
Monthly price	US$7.99 per month
Free trial	10 days
Pre-order and made-to-order orders	Unlimited
Back-in-stock and sale-start emails (Notify Me)	Unlimited
Purchase limits	No limit on products
Customizable notification emails	Yes
Deposit payments	Yes

Pre-orders, made-to-order, back-in-stock alerts, purchase limits, stockout switching, deposit payments and order processing are all included in the Launch plan.

The first 10 days are free. If you remove the app during the trial, you are not charged.

Back-in-stock and sale-start emails have no sending cap. The same goes for required messages such as order confirmations, shipping updates and balance reminders.

The Free, Standard, and Pro plans are closed to new sign-ups. Shops already on them keep their current terms.

The Free plan limits that matter for an early-access or limited sale: purchase limits on up to 1 product, Coming soon on 1 product, up to 10 pre-order and made-to-order orders in total since installation, and up to 15 restock and launch emails in total since installation. The email allowance on the Free plan does not grow each month, so for a product likely to collect many signups, emails beyond the limit are not sent and are held instead. Held notifications are sent once you move to Standard or Pro and the allowance is available again, after the app rechecks inventory, sales status and unsubscribes. Notifications sent through “Accept notification sign-ups during the announcement” in Coming soon also count toward this restock and launch email allowance.

If you want purchase limits or Coming soon on several products, keep taking pre-orders, or send notification emails every month, choose the Standard plan at US$9.90 per month. If you need deposit and balance payments, where you collect part of the price up front for a pre-order, they are available on the Pro plan at US$19.90 per month.

Start by choosing the next product you will launch and writing out the four decisions (when, who, how many, after sellout) the way the example table does. You can see the full feature list on the SellRules overview page.

This article was written by JizaiDev, the developer and provider of SellRules, based on the app's screens, the user guide and Shopify's help center. The steps were not re-tested in practice for this article. Features checked on October 19, 2026 (the “Sales schedules”, “Purchase limits & sold-out” and “Settings” screens in SellRules, and the “Start selling pre-orders”, “Keep selling after a stock-out”, “Limit what people can buy” and “When something isn't working” sections of the SellRules user guide). Pricing reflects the plans (Free, Standard, Pro) as of October 19, 2026. Please also check the Shopify App Store listing.