Planster vs Shopify Admin
Stocky stopped working on August 31, 2026. Purchase orders, transfers, receiving and adjustments now live in Admin, and Sidekick, Shopify's built-in assistant, will suggest what to reorder from your sales data and draft the PO. Shopify doesn't document safety stock, lead-time order dates, or planning for the channels you sell through outside Shopify.
Shopify Admin details last reviewed
The short answer
No tool wins for everyone. Here's the honest split.
Brands past roughly $10M that sell beyond Shopify and need a forecast, reorder points, and safety stock math on top of Admin — plus scenario planning and retail-deal demand Admin was never meant to handle.
Shopify merchants who mainly need to run inventory operations — POs, transfers, stocktakes, receiving — with Sidekick's reorder suggestions on top. It is native, included, and for most former Stocky users it is genuinely the right landing spot.
Feature-by-feature
| Capability | Planster | Shopify Admin |
|---|---|---|
| Inventory operations (POs, transfers, receiving, adjustments) | Places and tracks POs through delivery; inbound shipment tracking | Native, included, and now the system of record after the Stocky migration |
| Demand forecasting (velocity + seasonality) | Best-fit statistical model per SKU (Prophet, ETS, SARIMA, regression), auto-selected and re-evaluated as patterns shift | Sidekick helps "forecast demand" from your sales data when you ask it. Shopify doesn't document the method, seasonality handling, or per-SKU model choice |
| Reorder points & safety stock | Reorder points and order quantities per SKU; safety stock in days of cover, converted to units from the forecast for the weeks ahead | Sidekick recommends what to reorder and drafts a PO within your min/max limits. No safety-stock setting or calculation is documented |
| Lead-time-aware ordering | Applies supplier lead times, MOQs, and container quantities to order timing | Not documented. Sidekick suggests what to reorder; Shopify doesn't say it dates the order from supplier lead time |
| Channels beyond Shopify | DTC, Amazon, Walmart, retail, wholesale + 150+ WMS/3PL systems via Trackstar | Shopify's own sales channels — your wholesale and retail demand lives elsewhere |
| Scenario planning with a cost preview | Model scenarios; see the POs that move and the cash committed before approving; version history and roll-back | None — Admin records what happened, it does not model what might |
| Retail-deal pipeline → demand | Deals overlay the plan at full volume with order-by dates and capital-at-risk math | None |
| Overnight agent | Nightly check of every SKU, PO, and channel; ranked morning digest with draft POs waiting for approval | Sidekick answers when you ask it. Shopify doesn't document a scheduled check that runs on its own |
| Price | Plan $999/month for the full app; published tiers, unlimited users | Included with your Shopify plan |
Where Planster pulls ahead
See what a decision costs before you commit
Planster's Master Plan runs every scenario through the same ordering calculation as your live plan and shows which POs move and how much cash the change pulls forward, before anyone approves it. Most planning tools tell you what to reorder; Planster also shows what a whole scenario commits.
Plan the retail launch, not just the reorder
Planster's Pipeline puts retail deals into the demand plan at full volume and calculates the order-by date to make the launch and the cash at risk if the deal falls through. Whether to buy before the buyer decides is a question a reorder tool does not answer.
Checks run overnight; decisions stay with your team
Every night Planster checks every SKU, PO and channel and emails a ranked morning digest with draft POs attached. Your team changes what it wants changed and approves in the app. It cannot approve a plan or an order, or send anything, on its own, and no setting changes that.
Why the planning gap appears at peak season
Moving off Stocky is an operations project, and Admin handles it. Purchase orders still work. Transfers still work. Nothing visibly breaks the day Stocky goes dark — which is exactly why the real gap goes unnoticed for a quarter. It surfaces the first time you plan a peak season. Sidekick will suggest a reorder from your Shopify sales if you ask it. Shopify doesn't document it using the retail and wholesale orders that live outside Shopify, or safety stock math, or a lead-time-aware order-by date. So the big pre-season buy still comes down to last year's numbers, a spreadsheet, and a gut call on a purchase order large enough to matter.
Pricing
Pilot $99/month, Plan $999/month, Produce $2,499/month — unlimited SKUs, users, warehouses, and integrations on Plan and Produce.
Included with your Shopify plan at no additional cost. Nothing Planster does changes that, and for operations you should keep using it.
This is not a like-for-like price comparison and we won't pretend otherwise. Admin runs inventory operations for free. Planster is a planning layer you add on top when a wrong buy costs more than the software — a single week of stockout on one product can run $5,000+, and a planning hire runs $150K+.
When Shopify Admin is the better fit
No tool wins for everyone. Here's where Shopify Admin is the honest choice.
- You mainly need inventory operations — POs, transfers, stocktakes, receiving. That is exactly what Admin absorbed from Stocky, it is native, and it is free. Use it.
- You sell only on Shopify and want reorder suggestions without another tool. Sidekick recommends what to reorder from your sales data and drafts the PO, and it comes with your plan.
- You run retail stores on Shopify POS. Store transfers and stocktakes belong in Admin; Planster does not replace that.
- You are Shopify-only under roughly $5M with steady, predictable demand — a spreadsheet against Admin's data may be honest enough, and Shopify apps in the $39–199/month range cover basic forecasting for far less than Planster.
- You need to migrate Stocky records right now. Planster is not a Stocky migration tool — export your POs and supplier data before access ends (suppliers cannot be exported directly, so budget time for that) and follow Shopify's migration path into Admin.
Common questions
Does Shopify Admin do demand forecasting?
Partly, through Sidekick. Shopify says you can "use Sidekick to help you forecast demand, identify which products need replenishing, and make more informed inventory planning decisions", and that Sidekick drafts the purchase order or transfer within your min/max limits. Shopify doesn't document the forecasting method, safety stock or service-level targets, lead-time-based order dates, or demand from channels outside Shopify. (Source: Shopify's Stocky transition guide, accessed 2026-10-02.)
Is Planster a Stocky replacement?
Not in the direct sense, and it would be misleading to say so. Shopify moved Stocky's operational half — purchase orders, transfers, receiving, adjustments, inventory history — into Admin, and that is where those workflows now belong. For reorder suggestions, Shopify now points former Stocky users to Sidekick. Planster is a planning layer that runs on top of Admin rather than instead of it: one forecast across Shopify and your other channels, safety stock, and order dates set by supplier lead time.
What happened to Stocky, and when?
Shopify removed Stocky from the App Store on February 2, 2026, and Stocky APIs stopped working on August 31, 2026. Historical Stocky data, such as old purchase orders and stocktakes, doesn't move into Shopify automatically. Suppliers can't be exported from Stocky, and historical purchase orders can't be imported into Shopify. (Source: Shopify's Stocky transition guide, accessed 2026-10-02.)
Do I have to leave Shopify or change my setup to use Planster?
No. Planster runs alongside Shopify rather than replacing it. It connects to Shopify through Trackstar and pulls sales, inventory, and product data automatically, so Admin stays your operational system of record while Planster handles the planning layer on top. Most brands are running in days.
I already moved to Shopify Admin. Is it too late to add forecasting?
No — and moving to Admin was probably the right call. The two decisions are independent. Admin runs your inventory operations; a planning layer sits above it and reads the same data. Adding one later costs you nothing you already did, which is why most brands only go looking once they hit a season that punishes a bad forecast.
Add forecasting and reorder planning to Shopify Admin
Keep Admin for operations. Add one forecast across every channel, safety stock math, and lead-time order dates — before peak season makes the gap expensive.