Ask to Buy create & share cart vs. Fish Wishlist & Quote Request: An In-Depth Comparison

Introduction

Navigating the extensive Shopify App Store to find the right tools for a specific business need can be a significant challenge for merchants. With hundreds of options vying for attention, understanding the nuanced differences between apps that seem to offer similar core functionalities is essential for making informed decisions that support sustainable growth. Choosing the right app impacts not only immediate operational efficiency but also the long-term customer experience and profitability.

Short answer: Ask to Buy create & share cart focuses on enabling collaborative shopping experiences and gift registries, simplifying the path to purchase for invited users directly to checkout. Fish Wishlist & Quote Request offers a robust wishlist solution alongside critical B2B features like quote requests and POS integration, ideal for businesses with diverse customer segments. Both apps address specific needs, but merchants seeking a broader, integrated approach to customer retention may find a multi-function platform offers less operational overhead. This article aims to provide a detailed, objective comparison of these two Shopify applications.

The purpose of this guide is to offer a feature-by-feature comparison of Ask to Buy create & share cart and Fish Wishlist & Quote Request. By dissecting their core functionalities, pricing structures, integration capabilities, and ideal use cases, this analysis seeks to equip merchants with the clarity needed to select the application best suited for their unique business models and customer engagement strategies.

Ask to Buy create & share cart vs. Fish Wishlist & Quote Request: At a Glance

Deep Dive Comparison

Understanding the nuances of each app’s design and functionality is crucial for merchants. This section provides an in-depth look at Ask to Buy create & share cart and Fish Wishlist & Quote Request, examining their core offerings, strategic implications, and suitability for various business scenarios.

Core Functionality and Target Audience

The foundational difference between these two applications lies in their primary focus and the specific customer journeys they aim to optimize. While both touch upon the concept of shared interest in products, their execution and target audiences diverge significantly.

Ask to Buy create & share cart

Ask to Buy create & share cart is designed to streamline the collaborative purchasing process. Its core functionality revolves around allowing visitors and sales representatives to create and share pre-filled shopping carts. The typical user for this app is a shopper who needs assistance with payment, such as a teen sending a gift list to a parent, or someone creating a gift registry to share with friends. A key feature is the ability for invitees to land directly on the checkout page with pre-filled details, requiring only payment. This reduces friction and potential drop-offs, making the purchase as simple as possible for the final payer.

For businesses, this app facilitates a unique customer journey where the initiator of the cart is not necessarily the payer. This can be particularly beneficial for:

• Gift-giving scenarios: Allowing customers to build a wish list that is then turned into a shareable cart for friends or family to purchase directly.
• Family purchases: Empowering younger demographics or individuals without their own payment methods to compile orders that parents or guardians can easily finalize.
• Sales-assisted commerce: Enabling sales representatives to curate specific product selections for their clients, sending a direct link to a personalized, ready-to-pay checkout page. This can significantly reduce the manual effort involved in B2B or high-touch sales processes.

The app also provides tracking for shared carts, conversions, and generated revenue, offering insights into the effectiveness of these collaborative purchasing flows. Group sharing is also supported, indicating its utility for multiple recipients.

Fish Wishlist & Quote Request

Fish Wishlist & Quote Request, as its name suggests, places a strong emphasis on traditional wishlist functionality combined with robust B2B capabilities. Its target audience extends from individual shoppers desiring a personal product collection to businesses operating in the B2B space requiring quote management.

The "Express Wishlist" feature allows customers to create and manage lists of desired products. These wishlists are fast to set up and integrate with checkout and account widgets, enhancing the overall shopping experience. Crucially, the app includes "Request a Quote" functionality, B2B pricing options, and draft order integration, making it a powerful tool for business-to-business transactions. This allows B2B buyers to compile large orders and request custom pricing, a common requirement in wholesale or enterprise purchasing.

Beyond B2B, Fish Wishlist & Quote Request also caters to omnichannel retailers through its full integration with Shopify POS. This means that store staff can manage wishlists, view purchase history, and even handle abandoned carts directly from the point of sale, bridging the gap between online and offline shopping experiences. The app supports multi-language and multi-currency, which is essential for stores serving an international customer base. Social proof widgets and sharing capabilities further allow customers to share their wishlists, leveraging social channels to boost sales.

Feature Set and Workflows

A deeper look into the specific features offered by each app reveals their distinct operational strengths and the types of workflows they support.

Wishlist Capabilities

While both apps have "wishlist" in their categories, their approach to it differs.

• Ask to Buy create & share cart: The app's functionality leans more towards a "gift registry" or "shareable cart" rather than a persistent, personalized wishlist for individual shoppers. The focus is on taking a selection of items and turning it into an immediate, actionable purchase for another party. It's a transactional tool for collaborative buying.
• Fish Wishlist & Quote Request: This app offers a more traditional and comprehensive wishlist experience. Customers can create and manage multiple wishlists, save items for later, and track items they've previously purchased or abandoned. The ability to share these wishlists with friends via links and social channels aligns with common consumer behaviors.

Cart Sharing and Collaborative Shopping

This is where Ask to Buy create & share cart truly excels.

• Ask to Buy create & share cart: The app's core value proposition is the creation and sharing of pre-filled carts. The ability to directly link to a checkout page with custom welcome messages and pre-populated shipping details is a significant differentiator. It minimizes steps for the invitee, focusing on converting the shared cart into a completed order efficiently. This workflow is tailored for situations where one person compiles the order and another pays.
• Fish Wishlist & Quote Request: While wishlists can be shared, the app does not emphasize the creation of pre-filled checkout carts for others to simply pay. Its sharing functionality is more about showcasing desired products rather than facilitating a direct, assisted payment process for a specific, pre-determined cart.

Quote Request and B2B Functionality

Here, Fish Wishlist & Quote Request holds a distinct advantage.

• Ask to Buy create & share cart: The provided description does not mention specific quote request features or B2B pricing functionalities. Its sales rep utility focuses on creating pre-filled carts for payment, not on negotiating prices or generating formal quotes.
• Fish Wishlist & Quote Request: This app is explicitly designed with B2B in mind. Features like the "Request a Quote" function, B2B pricing capabilities, integration with Shopify Draft Orders (allowing merchants to easily convert a wishlist into a custom order), and auto-invoicing are critical for wholesale and business clients. The quantity picker on the wishlist further supports B2B purchasing patterns. This makes it a powerful tool for merchants who manage different pricing tiers or require custom orders for their business customers.

POS Integration

The ability to bridge online and offline experiences is a growing necessity for many retailers.

• Ask to Buy create & share cart: Integration with Shopify POS is not specified in the provided data.
• Fish Wishlist & Quote Request: This app boasts full integration with Shopify POS. This means store associates can manage customer wishlists, access purchase history, and even recover abandoned carts directly from their in-store systems. This unified view of customer data across channels can significantly enhance the personalized shopping experience and improve sales conversion in brick-and-mortar settings.

Customization and User Experience

Both apps offer elements of customization, but their depth and scope vary based on their core focus.

• Ask to Buy create & share cart: Merchants can use built-in "AskToBuy" buttons or customize their own. The invitee also experiences a custom welcome experience upon landing in the checkout page. The ability to pre-fill checkout details and streamline the payment process for invitees enhances user experience by reducing friction.
• Fish Wishlist & Quote Request: The app emphasizes "extensive options to create an omnichannel custom wishlist shopping experience." While specific details are not provided beyond "fast setup," this suggests a degree of control over the look and feel of the wishlist, potentially including layout and styling. The "White Glove Installation available by our team" also indicates a commitment to ensuring a tailored setup for merchants, suggesting that some customization might require expert assistance.

Pricing Structure and Value Assessment

Pricing is often a decisive factor for merchants, especially for small to medium-sized businesses. Understanding the value offered at each price point is crucial.

Ask to Buy create & share cart Pricing

Ask to Buy create & share cart offers a single pricing plan:

• Plan Name: basic
• Plan Price: $15 / month
• Plan Description: The description simply states "basic," implying that this single plan includes all the core features described (creating and sharing carts, pre-filling checkout details, tracking, etc.).

This straightforward pricing model can be appealing to merchants who need the specific functionality offered without worrying about feature tiers or usage limits. The flat fee provides predictable costs.

Fish Wishlist & Quote Request Pricing

Fish Wishlist & Quote Request provides a tiered pricing structure, including a free plan:

• Plan Name: Starter Wishlist
  • Plan Price: Free
  • Plan Description: Includes 2-minute setup, supports up to 100 customers, Shopify Flow Triggers, and Klaviyo Integration. This is an excellent entry point for new or smaller stores.
• Plan Name: Lightning
  • Plan Price: $40 / month
  • Plan Description: Offers unlimited wishlists, free migration from other apps, checkout upsell & account page extension, and features for previously purchased & abandoned cart recovery. This plan targets growing stores that need more advanced wishlist features and greater customer capacity.
• Plan Name: Trade
  • Plan Price: $90 / month
  • Plan Description: Designed specifically for B2B. Includes the Request a Quote function, ability to create Draft Orders from Wishlist, Auto Invoicing, and a Quantity Picker on Wishlist. This is the premium tier for businesses with significant B2B operations.

Comparative Value for Money

• Ask to Buy create & share cart: At $15/month, its value lies in its niche, specialized functionality of collaborative cart sharing and direct-to-checkout experiences. If this specific workflow is a primary driver for a merchant's business model (e.g., gift registries, sales rep support), then the flat fee offers good value. The lack of a free tier means new or very small stores might need to commit immediately.
• Fish Wishlist & Quote Request: Its value proposition is in its tiered approach and feature breadth. The free "Starter Wishlist" plan makes it accessible for small businesses to test the waters. The "Lightning" plan offers robust wishlist features for a growing store, while the "Trade" plan provides comprehensive B2B tools. For merchants with B2B needs or those needing a truly omnichannel (POS-integrated) wishlist, the $90/month "Trade" plan offers significant value, even if it's a higher price point than Ask to Buy. The free migration from other apps for the Lightning plan is also a strong incentive for those looking to switch. For merchants comparing plan fit against retention goals, understanding how these specialized features align with their long-term customer engagement strategy is key.

Integrations and Ecosystem Fit

The ability of an app to integrate seamlessly with a merchant's existing tech stack is vital for efficient operations and a unified customer experience.

• Ask to Buy create & share cart: The "Works With" section is not specified in the provided data beyond its core Shopify integration. This suggests it primarily functions as a standalone utility for cart sharing.
• Fish Wishlist & Quote Request: This app is well-integrated within the Shopify ecosystem and with other popular tools. It explicitly works with:
  • Checkout
  • Shopify POS
  • Customer accounts
  • Shopify Flow
  • Flow Checkout Extensibility
  • Klaviyo
  • Draft Orders
  • POS Arbitrary test link: Test Link The integration with Shopify Flow is particularly powerful, allowing merchants to automate actions based on wishlist activity. Klaviyo integration enables sophisticated email marketing campaigns targeted at wishlist users. Its extensive "Works With" list indicates a stronger play for a harmonized tech stack, especially for merchants leveraging these popular platforms.

Analytics, Reporting, and Operational Overhead

Understanding how an app contributes to data insights and its impact on the overall store's performance is important.

• Ask to Buy create & share cart: The app tracks "cart shares, conversions, and generated revenue." This provides valuable data on the effectiveness of collaborative sharing initiatives. Its single-purpose nature might mean less operational overhead in terms of configuration for complex features, but also requires merchants to use other tools for broader analytics.
• Fish Wishlist & Quote Request: While specific "Analytics and Reporting" details beyond what Shopify itself offers are not explicitly detailed for wishlist behavior, the integration with Shopify Flow and Klaviyo suggests advanced tracking and automation capabilities can be built around wishlist events. The comprehensive feature set, including B2B and POS, might imply a slightly higher operational overhead in terms of initial setup and ongoing management, particularly for the "Trade" plan's advanced features. However, the "White Glove Installation" option can mitigate this. For merchants checking merchant feedback and app-store performance signals, understanding the typical setup for each can inform their decision.

Merchant Feedback and Support

App store ratings and review counts provide initial insights into user satisfaction and developer responsiveness.

• Ask to Buy create & share cart: With 7 reviews and a 4.4 rating, the app shows positive initial feedback, though the low review count means the rating is based on a limited sample size. Further investigation into the content of these reviews would be necessary to understand common user experiences or support interactions.
• Fish Wishlist & Quote Request: This app also has 7 reviews but holds a perfect 5-star rating. Similar to Ask to Buy, the small number of reviews means it's challenging to draw broad conclusions about long-term satisfaction or support reliability. However, a perfect rating, even with limited reviews, often indicates strong initial positive experiences and potentially attentive developer support for early adopters. The "White Glove Installation" also points to a hands-on approach to customer success.

The Alternative: Solving App Fatigue with an All-in-One Platform

Merchants often find themselves piecing together a disparate collection of single-purpose apps to achieve various growth objectives. This approach, while seemingly flexible, frequently leads to "app fatigue." This phenomenon manifests as tool sprawl, where a merchant juggles numerous interfaces and dashboards, resulting in fragmented data, inconsistent customer experiences, and increased operational complexity. Each additional app adds integration overhead, potential conflicts, and its own set of subscription costs, creating a higher total cost of ownership than initially perceived.

Recognizing these challenges, a growing number of businesses are pivoting towards integrated, all-in-one solutions. This "More Growth, Less Stack" philosophy aims to consolidate essential functionalities into a single platform, thereby streamlining operations, unifying data, and providing a cohesive customer journey. This contrasts sharply with the individual app comparison, where merchants weigh specific, isolated features. If consolidating tools is a priority, start by a clearer view of total retention-stack costs.

Growave exemplifies this integrated approach, serving as a comprehensive retention platform. It merges critical growth tools—Loyalty and Rewards, Referrals, Reviews & UGC, Wishlist, and VIP Tiers—into one robust suite. This consolidation directly addresses the issues of app fatigue, offering merchants a unified ecosystem to manage various customer engagement strategies. For instance, instead of separate apps for wishlists and loyalty, Growave combines them, allowing for more synergistic programs like rewarding customers with loyalty points and rewards designed to lift repeat purchases when they add items to their wishlist or make a purchase from it.

By integrating these functions, Growave helps merchants achieve several key outcomes:

• Reduced Operational Complexity: Managing one platform instead of five or more significantly cuts down on administrative time and simplifies onboarding for new team members.
• Unified Customer Data: A single platform centralizes customer data, providing a holistic view of their journey across loyalty, reviews, and wishlists. This enables more personalized marketing and better segmentation, leading to more effective retention programs that reduce reliance on discounts.
• Consistent Customer Experience: All customer-facing touchpoints—from loyalty widgets to review prompts and wishlists—share a consistent branding and user interface, fostering trust and a seamless journey.
• Optimized Costs: While an all-in-one platform might have a higher headline price than a single specialized app, it often represents a lower total cost of ownership when factoring in multiple subscriptions, integration development, and maintenance of various tools. For businesses looking at selecting plans that reduce stacked tooling costs, an integrated solution offers a compelling proposition.
• Enhanced Strategic Planning: With all retention data in one place, merchants can gain deeper insights into customer behavior, allowing for more sophisticated strategies to increase repeat purchases and customer lifetime value. For example, combining insights from collecting and showcasing authentic customer reviews with wishlist activity can inform product development and marketing efforts.

Growave is built to cater to a wide range of Shopify merchants, from growing businesses to those on Shopify Plus. Its enterprise-level features, like customizable loyalty programs and advanced referral campaigns, support advanced storefront and checkout requirements. This makes it a powerful choice for businesses that require capabilities designed for Shopify Plus scaling needs. Furthermore, features such as review automation and sophisticated UGC workflows provide comprehensive tools for review automation that builds trust at purchase time, driving conversion while ensuring brand credibility. Its compatibility with multi-language stores and integrations with popular platforms like Klaviyo, Omnisend, and Gorgias further solidify its position as a robust, scalable solution. For businesses considering what an integrated platform offers, understanding features aligned with enterprise retention requirements is paramount.

Conclusion

For merchants choosing between Ask to Buy create & share cart and Fish Wishlist & Quote Request, the decision comes down to the specific problem being solved and the primary customer journey being optimized. Ask to Buy create & share cart is ideal for businesses focused on enabling collaborative purchasing, gift registries, or sales-rep facilitated direct-to-checkout experiences, offering a streamlined path for invitees to complete a pre-filled order. Its simple, flat pricing and focused functionality make it a straightforward choice for this niche.

Conversely, Fish Wishlist & Quote Request provides a more traditional and robust wishlist solution, alongside powerful B2B features like quote requests, draft order integration, and multi-language support. Its strong Shopify POS integration makes it a superior option for omnichannel retailers, and its tiered pricing, including a free plan, offers flexibility for businesses at different stages. The choice between these two apps hinges on whether the priority is frictionless collaborative cart finalization or a comprehensive wishlist with B2B and omnichannel capabilities.

However, as businesses scale and their customer engagement strategies evolve, managing a growing stack of specialized apps can introduce inefficiencies. The need to reduce tool sprawl and maintain a coherent customer experience often highlights the benefits of an all-in-one platform. Solutions like Growave offer an integrated approach to customer retention, combining loyalty, reviews, referrals, and wishlists into a single, unified system. This consolidation streamlines operations, centralizes data, and ultimately provides a more cohesive and cost-effective strategy for increasing customer lifetime value. Merchants looking for a pricing structure that scales as order volume grows often find greater long-term value in a platform that encompasses multiple retention tools. To reduce app fatigue and run retention from one place, start by reviewing the Shopify App Store listing merchants install from.

FAQ

What is the primary difference between shared carts and wishlists?

Shared carts, as offered by Ask to Buy, are typically designed for immediate, collaborative purchasing where one person fills a cart and another is invited to complete the payment, often with pre-filled details. Wishlists, like those from Fish Wishlist & Quote Request, are more about saving items for future personal purchase, tracking desired products, or sharing product ideas with others without the direct intention of immediate checkout by an invitee.

Which app is better for B2B merchants?

Fish Wishlist & Quote Request is significantly better suited for B2B merchants. It offers specific features like "Request a Quote," B2B pricing, integration with Shopify Draft Orders for custom invoices, and a quantity picker on wishlists, which are critical functionalities for business-to-business transactions. Ask to Buy does not explicitly offer these B2B-specific features.

How does an all-in-one platform compare to specialized apps?

An all-in-one platform like Growave consolidates multiple customer retention functionalities (loyalty, reviews, wishlists, referrals) into a single system. This contrasts with specialized apps, which focus on one specific feature. All-in-one platforms typically offer more streamlined data management, consistent customer experience across touchpoints, and can lead to lower total cost of ownership by reducing the need for multiple subscriptions and integrations. Specialized apps can offer deeper, highly customized features for their niche but may contribute to app sprawl and fragmented data.

Can these apps integrate with other marketing tools?

Fish Wishlist & Quote Request explicitly integrates with Klaviyo and Shopify Flow, allowing for advanced marketing automation and segmentation based on wishlist activity. For Ask to Buy create & share cart, integrations beyond Shopify are not specified in the provided data, suggesting it operates more as a standalone cart-sharing utility within the Shopify environment. The extent of integration with other marketing tools would need to be verified with the developer.