Shopify Coming Soon Pages That Collect Emails

You use two states together: Coming Soon puts the product into its pre-launch look, and Back in Stock (Notify Me) collects the email addresses. Coming Soon is a visual state — it replaces the Sold Out button with a non-clickable Coming Soon button, and it is deliberately not a form. The sign-up comes from Notify Me, whose button you can relabel to “Join Waitlist” so it reads like a launch rather than a restock.

That split is worth knowing before you build the page, because it decides what you configure. Most guides describe a “coming soon waitlist” as if it were one feature. It is two features. You switch both on from the Products tab in Timesact, each one carries its own template, and both can run on the same product.

Both states switch on only while the variant shows zero inventory in Shopify. If the product still has stock, it stays purchasable and shows as Pending in the app — that status means the feature is set up correctly and waiting for the stock level, not that something needs fixing. Both are set per variant, so a product can carry one state on one size and a different state on another.

Three setups cover almost every pre-launch page, and the right one depends on what you want to have on launch day.

Anticipation only. Coming Soon on its own. The product is visible, browsable and clearly not yet for sale. You end the pre-launch period with traffic and no list — right for a product you will announce through channels you already own.

A waitlist. Notify Me on its own, with the button renamed to “Join Waitlist”. Shoppers sign up, and when you add stock in Shopify, everyone on the list gets an email. You end the pre-launch period with a list of people who asked to hear from you.

Both. Coming Soon carries the launch styling while Notify Me collects the sign-ups — the setup most launch pages want. Enable both features for the product, and make sure the product is Active in Shopify and both are switched on for the right variants.

Start by enabling the Timesact App Embed on the theme you publish, in Shopify admin → Online Store → Themes → Customize → App Embeds, and click Save in the theme editor. The embed is what lets Timesact elements render, it is set per theme, and it takes effect once the theme is saved. If you later publish a different theme, enable it there too.

Then set the product itself:

1. Set the variant’s Shopify inventory to 0, with inventory tracking on for that variant. Keep the product Active in Shopify and available on the Online Store sales channel, so it has a live storefront page. Tracking is what lets Timesact read the variant as out of stock, which is what puts it into its pre-launch state.
2. Add the product in Timesact. Finish the product’s variants in Shopify first, then open the Products tab, add the product or the specific variants, and switch on Coming Soon, Notify Me, or both. Variants created in Shopify after a product is added here are picked up once you re-sync or re-add the product. Add by Collection covers a whole collection at once — it applies to the products in that collection at the moment you add it, so products you add to the collection later are not picked up automatically.
3. Set the Coming Soon template and assign it to the variant. This is where the customer-facing copy lives: the label on the non-clickable button, and the optional badge and page message. Templates are picked from the dropdowns in the variant’s edit view and saved with the variant, so the one you edit needs to be the one assigned there. The template is what actually renders, so a product enabled without one has nothing to show.
4. Set the Back in Stock template. Button wording (this is where “Join Waitlist” goes), the message shoppers read, and the success message they see after signing up. Separately, on the product’s own Back in Stock configuration, set the Back in stock quantity threshold — the minimum inventory level at which the alert goes out to subscribers.
5. Write the alert email and set it Live. The subject line and body live in the Notifications tab, separately from the template. Set the notification to Live rather than Draft — Live is the state that sends it, and Draft is there for when you want Shopify’s own emails to be the only ones your customers get.

If you are scheduling the launch rather than running it now, you can set a future start date on the feature — those dates run in UTC+0 (London time), so set them against that clock rather than your local one.

There is no payment step anywhere in this setup, and that is by design: neither state is purchasable, so no Selling Plan or charge timing is involved. Those belong to preorders, which are a different state on the same product — a variant runs one state at a time, so moving a product to preorder means switching Coming Soon off for that variant and setting the preorder side up in its own right: assign the Pre-order template that holds the product-page copy, pick the stock-management rule that decides when preorder is live, and assign the Selling Plan that carries the purchase option and the charge timing.

A shopper landing on the product sees your Coming Soon button in place of Sold Out, with the badge and message you wrote, and a sign-up button they can actually use. They enter an email, get your success message, and that is the whole interaction — no account, no checkout.

When you add inventory in Shopify and hit your threshold, Timesact emails everyone who signed up, and the product becomes buyable again on its own. You do not switch anything off manually; the stock level does it.

Sign-ups land on the subscriber list in the app’s Back in Stock section — one list of everyone who has signed up, which you narrow to a single product or variant by searching it — and each subscriber moves from Pending to Sent once their alert goes out, so the list doubles as a record of who was told and when. You can export it whenever you want the underlying rows — Export csv at the top right of the Back in Stock tab, pick the period, and the file arrives as a download link by email — which is also how you get the list into Klaviyo, Brevo or whichever platform runs your campaigns: they read the export, and your launch email goes out from the tool your other campaigns already use.

For demand signals across a whole launch — how many people landed, how many signed up, what converted after — Shopify Analytics and GA4 hold the numbers, since they see the traffic and the orders.

If you are running the waitlist route and want the page to read as a launch instead of a restock, the Notify Me form and its wording are worth setting deliberately, and hiding the sold-out state before a launch covers the styling side in more depth.

A pre-launch page that only builds anticipation ends when the product goes live. One that collects emails hands you a list of people who already raised their hand — and the setup is the same page, with one more feature switched on. Set the two templates, write the alert email, and your next drop starts with an audience.

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