Beyond Bulk Editing: Comparing Modern Shopify Product Management Solutions

As a Shopify store owner, you can often lose valuable time each week manually updating your product catalogue. These time-consuming tasks aren’t just tedious but can cost you revenue, often due to outdated inventory and pricing inconsistencies. There’s also much room for human error with manual product management. If you’re looking to stay ahead in e-commerce, it’s super important to get a solution that will handle your product management for you.

In this article, we’ll examine four leading Shopify product management tools: Hextom, Ablestar, Matrixify, and Zap Integrate. These are designed to make your Shopify product management far easier and take away some, or all, of that manual work.

Let’s jump in and explore which platform suits your business best.

Different ways to tackle your Shopify product management

There are essentially three different ways you can manage your Shopify product catalogue, arguably ranging from difficult, easier, to easiest in terms of your time and effort:

1. Manual updates: This involves individually editing each of your products and is pretty time-consuming, error-prone and potentially the most challenging.

2. Bulk editing tools: With bulk editing, you can make mass changes via spreadsheets and imports, which is faster, but still requires manual input.

3. Automated solutions: This involves complete end-to-end automation, providing completely accurate product information with very minimal intervention from you or your team.

The Shopify product management solution you choose really depends on several factors, including how many products you stock, whether you want to expand easily, how important it is to have accurate product information, SEO-optimised listings, etc.

Comparing modern Shopify product management solutions

Hextom Bulk Edit

Hextom bulk product editor helps Shopify merchants to make large bulk changes to their product catalogues.

Key features:

• Batch editing of product details
• Scheduled edits
• Basic undo functionality (on professional plan)
• Sequential processing of edits

Best for: Retailers who just need occasional bulk updates and prefer to have a slightly easier yet still manual approach to their product management.

Ablestar Bulk Editor

Ablestar offers comprehensive bulk editing capabilities through use of spreadsheets for bulk editing.

Key Features:

• Spreadsheet-like interface for bulk editing
• Data validation tools
• Import/export functionality
• Product variant management

Best For: Retailers who are comfortable with spreadsheet operations and need slightly more powerful bulk editing capabilities for their manual updates.

Matrixify (formerly Excelify)

Matrixify is probably the most comprehensive spreadsheet-based management solution on the market, with its advanced import/export functions.

Key Features:

• Comprehensive Excel/CSV import and export
• Template-based updates
• Advanced bulk operations
• Support for multiple Shopify data types

Best for: Businesses who need extensive control over data formatting and imports for their manual product management.

Zap Integrate

Unlike the previous tools that make manual processes easier but don’t remove manual work completely, Zap Integrate takes a fundamentally different approach. How? It automates your entire product management workflow, so you can forget the need for any ongoing manual work or dealing with spreadsheets at all.

Key Features:

• Direct supplier connections with real-time data synchronisation
• Automated data cleaning and transformation
• Smart category mapping and variant relationship management
• Multi-channel inventory synchronisation
• Brand-specific configurations and pricing rules
• Real-time monitoring and error handling

Best for: Growing e-commerce businesses looking to eliminate manual product management entirely through automation. Retailers who just want to know everything is always accurate, up-to-date and free from errors, 24/7 with minimal work required.

Feature comparison table

Choosing the right solution for your business

Choose Hextom, Ablestar, or Matrixify if you:

• Prefer making manual bulk updates
• Need to make occasional one-off large-scale changes
• Have a smaller product catalogue
• Want a more basic solution
• Prefer spreadsheet-based product management

Choose Zap Integrate if you:

• Want true end-to-end automation rather than ongoing manual updates
• Need real-time stock accuracy across all sales channels
• Manage multiple suppliers or data formats
• Plan to scale your product range significantly
• Want to free up staff time from repetitive product management tasks

Zap Integrate: Case study

A motorcycle parts retailer switched from Ablestar to Zap Integrate when scaling from 500 to 5,000 products. While Ablestar had served them well for bulk updates, they still found themselves spending hours each week on product management. Since they switched to Zap Integrate, their product updates are now completely automated, freeing up over 20 hours per week for them to focus on other important business tasks. This doesn’t just save them time but completely eliminates human error, ensuring their stock levels, pricing and product information is always accurate, and improving their overall customer satisfaction.

In summary: automation vs. enhanced manual processes

Hextom, Ablestar, and Matrixify make manual product management easier by enhancing your existing workflows. Zap Integrate, however, aims to eliminate manual product management entirely through automation, replacing your workflow with an automated system.

For businesses with smaller catalogues or those that just prefer hands-on management, the bulk editing approach of Hextom, Ablestar, or Matrixify may be the right choice.

For growing businesses looking to scale rapidly without having to hire more admin staff, the complete automation of Zap Integrate offers a fantastic advantage. It’s your 24/7 admin team that never tires and makes zero mistakes.

Whatever solution you choose, moving beyond one-by-one product updates is essential for any Shopify merchant to stay competitive these days.

This article was written by Kat Korson, director at Red Eagle Tech, the company behind Zap Integrate. Zap Integrate offers a 14-day free trial with no payment required and no obligation to buy, just a chance to find out more with one of their friendly team. Save time, save money, and get ahead with a product catalogue that’s optimised to boost your conversion rates, 24/7.