The problem: Best Selling still shows sold-out items first
Shopify's default collection sort is Best Selling, and your best sellers are exactly the products that sell out. So during a sale the first row fills with "Sold out" badges. Merchants have been asking for a fix for years: a Shopify Community thread from December 2025 confirms there is "no built-in way", and theme maker Maestrooo's docs say Shopify does not support moving out-of-stock products to the end automatically.
What it costs you
- Wasted first impressions. The first row of a collection gets the most attention; every sold-out tile there is a slot not selling.
- Wasted ad spend. If you send paid traffic to a collection, you pay for clicks that land on things they cannot buy.
- Manual re-sorting that never ends. Dragging products in a Manual collection works until the next restock or sell-out, then you start again.
Why the Liquid snippet is a trap
The common forum answer splits collection.products into available and unavailable and concatenates them. It only sees the products on the current page, so page 1 can still be all sold out while page 3 is full of in-stock items:
How to fix it: 3 options
| Option | Cost | Good for | Catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manual sort, drag by hand | Free | Under ~30 products, rare sell-outs | Breaks every time stock changes |
| Automation (Mechanic task) | Paid app + setup | Stores with a developer | Forum users note Flow alone can't do it now; Mechanic tasks need code-ish edits |
| Auto-sort app (e.g. Rankify) | From $9.50/mo | Any store with sell-outs or seasonal stock | Collection is switched to Manual sort so the app can control order |
How Rankify does it
- Sold-out push-down on every plan, including Basic ($9.50/mo, up to 1,000 products, 3 smart collections).
- Sort by real signals: sales velocity, stock, margins and tags, combined into one weighted score on Plus ($19/mo).
- Pin high-margin products to the top and preview the order before publishing.
- Real-time reordering on Advanced ($49/mo) for big catalogs.
Screenshots: the app's public Shopify App Store listing, 28 Oct 2026. Marketing visuals with sample data.
Who should skip it
- Small catalogs where you can drag five products once a week: stay manual.
- Stores that simply want sold-out items hidden: you can set products to unpublish when inventory hits zero with a scheduler or free automation instead.
- Be aware: Rankify has only a handful of reviews (5.0 from 3 on 28 Oct 2026). Test it on one collection during the 3-day trial.
Verdict
If your best sellers sell out and your collection pages show it, this is a cheap, unglamorous fix that pays for itself the first sale weekend. Under 30 products or rare sell-outs, drag them by hand.
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Rankify is made by XCO Apps, the team behind StoreVetted; we may earn a commission if you subscribe. App facts and prices are from its Shopify App Store listing, checked 28 Oct 2026.