Skip to content

Alerts overview

Plan: Starter and up. On Free, alerts are not sent (Free includes 0 alert emails a month and no Shopify Flow triggers).

Cove watches the products shoppers have saved and tells them when something worth knowing happens: the item is back, it got cheaper, or it is about to sell out. You choose how those messages go out: Cove can email shoppers itself, your own Shopify Flow workflows can act on them, or both.

Alert Fires when Who hears
Back in stock A sold-out variant becomes available to buy online again. Shoppers who tapped “Notify me when available” for that variant, and signed-in customers who saved it.
Price drop A saved variant’s price falls by at least your price-drop threshold. Signed-in customers who saved it.
Low stock A saved variant’s stock falls from above your low-stock level to that level or below, while still above zero. Signed-in customers who saved it.

Both thresholds are set on Settings › Alerts & emails (details):

  • Price drop alert: default 5%, any whole number from 1 to 90. The drop is measured against the price Cove last saw for that variant, so one price change has to reach the threshold on its own.
  • Low stock alert: default 3 units, any whole number from 1 to 50. Only variants whose inventory Shopify tracks can be “low”; an untracked variant is always treated as available.

When “back in stock” really means back

Section titled “When “back in stock” really means back”

Shopify also reports a variant as “in stock” when, for example, you turn inventory tracking on for something that never sold out. So Cove only tells savers an item is back when it really was unavailable before, or came back within the last 24 hours. Shoppers who tapped Notify me always hear, because they asked while it was sold out.

A shopper can save a product without choosing a size or colour. For them:

  • Back in stock goes out only when the whole product had sold out (no other variant was available) and a variant comes back.
  • Price drop goes out once, about the biggest drop, when several variants drop at the same time.
  • Low stock goes out only when the product has a single variant: “only a few left” of one size says nothing to someone who saved the whole product.

An alert email is checked once more just before it goes out. If the variant sold out again (back in stock, low stock) or its price went back up above the dropped price (price drop), it is not sent.

  • Signed-in customers who saved the item get alert emails only if they are subscribed to email marketing in Shopify, checked at send time, and only while Email signed-in customers about items on their wishlist is on (Alert emails). A customer who unsubscribed from Cove’s emails gets none.
  • Notify me subscribers asked for one back-in-stock email about one variant (Notify me). Guests leave their email address; signed-in customers don’t need to. Each request is used once and then deleted.
  • Guests who only saved an item never get alerts: Cove doesn’t know who they are.
Channel What it does Set up on
Cove alert emails Cove sends the email itself, from your store’s name, in your design’s colours. Alerts › Alert emails
Shopify Flow triggers Cove starts your Flow workflow; your workflow decides what to send (Shopify Email, Klaviyo, a tag, a Slack message). Shopify Flow

The two channels are independent: each keeps its own record of who it already told, and they don’t dedupe each other. If you use both for the same alert, a customer can hear twice. Pick one channel per alert kind, or switch the matching email off on the Alert emails tab.

Flow triggers go to signed-in customers who saved the item only; Notify me requests are answered by Cove’s emails alone. Flow also has a fourth trigger, Item added to wishlist, with no email counterpart.

Each person hears about the same item, for the same alert kind, at most once every 7 days, per channel. For a product saved without a variant, that is once per product.

Every alert email and wishlist reminder counts toward your plan’s monthly email limit. The month is the calendar month in UTC.

Plan Alert emails a month
Free 0
Starter 200
Pro 2,000
Premium 5,000

When the month’s emails are used up, the rest wait and go out from the 1st of next month (still checked first, so nothing outdated is sent), and the Alerts page shows a “Monthly email limit reached” banner with how many are waiting. Confirmation emails for double opt-in, your own test emails and the summary email don’t count. Shopify Flow triggers don’t count either.