Ask to Buy vs. Wishl Favorites Wishlist: Detailed Comparison

Introduction

Shopify merchants face a hard truth: many useful growth tactics require apps, and there are thousands to choose from. Picking the right tool for wishlists, cart sharing, or customer engagement can affect conversion rates, average order value (AOV), and long-term retention. This article compares two focused Shopify apps—Ask to Buy create & share cart and Wishl Favorites Wishlist—so merchants can decide which tool fits their needs. It also shows when a single-purpose app is enough and when an integrated retention platform makes more sense.

Short answer: Ask to Buy create & share cart is an efficient, single-purpose tool designed to let visitors and sales reps create and share pre-filled carts so invitees land in checkout ready to pay—best for stores that need cart-level sharing or gift registry workflows. Wishl Favorites Wishlist is a more mature wishlist tool with automated email reminders, social sharing, and price-drop tracking—best for stores that want to capture demand signals and bring shoppers back. For merchants wanting fewer apps and broader retention features—loyalty, referrals, reviews, and wishlist—an integrated platform often delivers better value and less maintenance than stacking single-function apps.

Purpose of this post: provide a feature-by-feature, outcomes-focused comparison of Ask to Buy create & share cart and Wishl Favorites Wishlist, evaluate pricing and integrations, and explain when a merchant should pick a focused app versus an all-in-one retention suite.

Ask to Buy create & share cart vs. Wishl Favorites Wishlist: At a Glance

Deep Dive Comparison

This section walks through core product areas merchants care about: features, UX and implementation, analytics, pricing/value, integrations, support, and likely business outcomes.

Features

Core capabilities and product intent

Ask to Buy create & share cart is focused on moving a partially completed purchase to a paying customer by allowing one shopper to prepare a cart and share it with an invitee who completes payment. Typical use cases include teens without payment methods, gift registries, and B2B-like sales rep workflows that prepare a cart for a customer.

Wishl Favorites Wishlist targets the earlier stage of the funnel—capturing interest and making it easy for shoppers to save products for later. It emphasizes persistent wishlists, email reminders, price-drop alerts, and insights into which variants attract attention.

Both are built around the wishlist/cart category, but they solve different shopper intent states: Ask to Buy treats the shopper as “ready, but needs someone else to pay,” while Wishl treats the shopper as “interested, not yet ready.”

Feature comparison highlights

• Share & cart flow
  • Ask to Buy: Native buttons to create/share carts, invitees land in checkout with pre-filled shipping, inviter gets notified after purchase, group share supported.
  • Wishl: Primarily social/shareable wishlists; no cart pre-fill to force immediate checkout.
• Persistence & accounts
  • Ask to Buy: Cart creation can bypass full account creation—aims to pre-fill checkout and redirect.
  • Wishl: Encourages wishlists tied to an account or saved via email sign-up for permanent storage and future reminders.
• Re-engagement
  • Ask to Buy: Notifications to inviters when invitee completes purchase; limited automated re-engagement.
  • Wishl: Automated wishlist email reminders and price-drop tracking to bring customers back.
• Analytics & insights
  • Ask to Buy: Tracks cart shares, conversions, and generated revenue from shares.
  • Wishl: Provides wishlist counts, most-added products and variants, and engagement from reminder campaigns.
• Customization & branding
  • Ask to Buy: Customizable AskToBuy buttons; can tailor welcome experience on checkout.
  • Wishl: Mobile-responsive wishlist UI and share features; customization likely focused on look and reminders.
• Advanced marketing hooks
  • Ask to Buy: Useful for sales-team workflows and gift registries; limited native marketing automation.
  • Wishl: Built-in reminders and price alerts make it useful for capturing dormant purchase intent and converting it.

Pros and cons (feature-level)

Ask to Buy create & share cart

• Pros:
  • Solves a narrow but powerful checkout friction: pre-filled carts that go straight to payment.
  • Tracks conversion tied to shared carts—useful for quantifying this channel.
  • Simple UX for invitees: minimal input, fast checkout.
• Cons:
  • Narrow scope: mostly addresses cart sharing and guest checkout handoff.
  • Limited re-engagement features compared to wishlist apps with reminders.
  • Smaller user base (7 reviews) and fewer public signals on long-term reliability.

Wishl Favorites Wishlist

• Pros:
  • Strong wishlist lifecycle: save, share, remind, and notify on price changes.
  • Multiple pricing tiers for volume of wishlists and reminders; fits growth stages.
  • Higher review count (32) and higher average rating (4.8) suggests robust user satisfaction.
• Cons:
  • Does not provide pre-filled cart checkout handoff—invitees must re-add items or rely on direct links to product pages.
  • Growing wishlist volume may require segmentation with other marketing tools to extract full value.
  • Requires email reminders and ongoing flows to convert saved items into orders.

UX, Implementation, and Merchant Experience

Installation and setup

Both apps install through the Shopify App Store. Setup complexity differs by scope:

• Ask to Buy: Setup emphasizes adding AskToBuy buttons and configuring the pre-fill fields and welcome checkout experience. Expect configuration of which pages show the button and how shared links are generated.
• Wishl: Setup emphasizes placing wishlist buttons, enabling persistent wishlists, and configuring email reminder cadence and price tracking. May require creating reminder templates and syncing with store email settings.

Because both are single-purpose, initial configuration is usually straightforward, especially if minimal styling/customization is acceptable.

Front-end experience for shoppers

Ask to Buy produces a short path to payment: inviter adds items, fills shipping, shares link, invitee completes payment. This reduces friction for situations where the payer is different from the shopper.

Wishl emphasizes saving and later consideration. Wishlist access and mobile responsiveness are critical since many wishlist interactions come from mobile browsing. Wishl explicitly calls out mobile-responsiveness and social sharing options.

Developer needs and customization

• Ask to Buy: Custom welcome experience on checkout and custom buttons likely require limited front-end customization, possibly through theme edits or small script embeds.
• Wishl: Theme placement, customization of wishlist icons, and email template branding may need standard theme work. Price-drop tracking and analytics should be plug-and-play.

Both apps claim basic customization; for merchants who need deep theming or headless setups, a full platform with APIs could be preferable.

Analytics and Measurement

Both apps present metrics, but the type and depth differ.

Metrics Ask to Buy emphasizes

• Number of cart shares
• Conversion rate of shared carts
• Revenue generated from shared carts
• Notifications for finalized purchases (so revenue attribution possible)

These metrics are particularly useful for quantifying a sales rep or social sharing channel where the cart is the conversion vehicle.

Metrics Wishl emphasizes

• Number of wishlists created
• Items added per wishlist
• Most coveted variants (product-level demand signals)
• Email reminder opens/clicks and conversions from reminders
• Price-drop alert performance

Wishl’s metrics help merchants understand product-level demand and prioritize inventory, merchandising, or targeted promotions.

What to track for outcomes

Both tools influence long-term outcomes like retention and LTV. Suggested KPI focus:

• Wishlist-to-order conversion rate (Wishl)
• Shared-cart conversion rate and AOV uplift (Ask to Buy)
• Revenue attributable to shares or reminders
• Repeat purchase rate for customers acquired via these features
• Email reminder engagement (open, CTR, conversion)

Tracking these KPIs allows merchants to compare cost per incremental sale across tools.

Pricing & Value

Pricing must be evaluated as a function of features, expected incremental revenue, and maintenance overhead.

Ask to Buy create & share cart

• Basic plan: $15 / month (based on provided data)
• Value proposition: pay for a tightly scoped capability that reduces checkout friction when the buyer and shopper are different people.

Ask to Buy’s pricing reflects a single capability. For merchants with a clear, recurring need (gift registries, sales reps), the predictable $15/month can be a low-cost test.

Wishl Favorites Wishlist

• Basic: $9.99 / month — Up to 2,000 new wishlists per month + email reminders.
• Premium: $17.99 / month — Up to 4,000 new wishlists per month + 2,000 email reminders.
• Premium Plus: $29.99 / month — Up to 22,000 new wishlists per month + 6,000 email reminders.

Wishl’s tiering is usage-based and provides scaled reminder capacity and wishlist volume. For stores building demand capture and re-engagement, the pricing can be cost-effective when reminders convert at respectable rates.

Cost considerations beyond monthly fees

• Opportunity cost: stacking multiple apps (wishlists, reviews, loyalty) can increase monthly outlay and increase theme/script conflicts.
• Integration cost: maintaining multiple vendor relationships and ensuring consistent data flow to email and CRM systems.
• Conversion lift vs. maintenance overhead: a focused app may convert in one channel, while an integrated platform can create compounded effects across loyalty, reviews, referrals, and wishlists.

A merchant should run quick tests and calculate payback periods. If a $10–$30 monthly app yields meaningful revenue and fits strategic needs, the app is good value; but if adding multiple single-purpose apps becomes routine, an integrated suite often becomes better value for money.

Integrations & Compatibility

Out-of-the-box integrations

• Ask to Buy: Primarily focused on cart/checkout experience. Integration with checkout and notification systems is inherent, but explicit integrations with email platforms or CRMs are less emphasized in public descriptions. For deeper automation, webhook or custom integration may be necessary.
• Wishl: Designed to work well with email reminder flows; likely integrates with storefront and basic email infrastructure. Price-drop tracking and analytics may require less external integration.

Enterprise and headless compatibility

Both apps are targeted at the typical Shopify setup. High-growth merchants or stores on Shopify Plus might need advanced capabilities: multi-language support, headless APIs, and enterprise-level SLAs. For those needs, consider platforms built for scale.

When integrations matter

• If email marketing (Klaviyo, Omnisend) is central, ensure wishlist/reminder events can be pushed into flows for segmentation and higher personalization.
• If tracking revenue across channels is essential, ensure cart-share conversions are properly instrumented.
• If loyalty or referral attribution is needed, a solution that natively combines wishlist, loyalty, and referrals reduces data friction.

Support, Reliability, and Market Signals

Review counts and ratings

• Ask to Buy: 7 reviews, 4.4 rating. Small review base limits confidence. The rating suggests satisfactory experiences among reviewers, but limited scale makes long-term reliability harder to judge.
• Wishl: 32 reviews, 4.8 rating. Larger review base and higher rating indicate stronger market validation and more merchants reporting success.

Review counts and ratings are only one input. Consider support responsiveness, release cadence, and changelogs when evaluating reliability.

Support expectations

• Single-purpose apps often offer focused support for their core workflows. Problem resolution tends to be quicker because scope is limited.
• Expect support via app interface; check whether onboarding or migration help is included.

Uptime and script conflicts

Any third-party script can cause theme performance hits. Single-purpose apps are smaller surface area but adding many small apps can aggregate into slower pages. Test load times and audit theme scripts when adding new apps.

Security, Data Ownership, and Privacy

Both apps interact with cart and customer data. Key merchant questions:

• Where is customer data stored, and can it be exported?
• How are email reminders implemented (via vendor or merchant-supplied SMTP)?
• Does the app comply with GDPR/CCPA requirements?
• Are webhooks and APIs secured?

Ask these questions in pre-installation chats and review privacy policies. For apps generating sensitive checkout links with pre-filled data, ensure links are secure and remain secure if shared publicly.

Use Cases and Merchant Recommendations

This section avoids fictional scenarios and focuses on objective recommendations for merchant types.

When to choose Ask to Buy create & share cart

• The store frequently sells to guests who need another person to complete payment (gift purchases, minors).
• Sales teams curate carts for customers and need a streamlined payment handoff.
• The primary goal is reducing friction at the final payment step and someone else is paying.

Expected outcome: faster path to checkout for shared purchases, measurable conversion lift on cart-shared traffic, possibly higher AOV if a sales rep curates higher-value bundles.

When to choose Wishl Favorites Wishlist

• The store wants to capture purchase intent and build remarketing funnels for undecided shoppers.
• Wishlist data will be used to inform merchandising, restocking, or targeted promotions.
• The team wants automated reminders and price-drop notifications to nudge conversions.

Expected outcome: higher return visits, incremental conversions from reminder flows, better visibility into product desirability.

When neither single app is enough

• The merchant needs a standardized retention stack: loyalty, referrals, wishlists, reviews, and VIP tiers to increase repeat purchase rate and LTV.
• Maintaining multiple single-purpose apps is creating complexity, script conflicts, or high combined monthly costs.
• The business requires enterprise features like checkout extensions, headless APIs, or a customer success launch plan.

In these cases, an integrated solution that consolidates multiple features often provides better long-term value for money.

Migration, Scaling, and Long-Term Considerations

Migration complexity

• Moving from one wishlist or cart-share app to another requires careful migration of customer wishlists and preserving URLs or tokens. Not all apps provide export/import primitives.
• If switching to an integrated platform, consider whether it migrates wishlist data, loyalty points, or reviews.

Scaling considerations

• Usage limits: Wishl’s tiers are usage-based; ensure projected wishlist volume fits the chosen plan.
• Revenue attribution: As feature use grows, push events into your analytics platform to attribute revenue correctly.
• Technical debt: Each extra app adds to maintenance. A single integrated platform reduces long-term maintenance and integration work.

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

Many merchants land here after trying one-off apps for wishlist, reviews, referrals, and loyalty. This is where "app fatigue" shows up: dozens of single-purpose apps, overlapping features, multiple vendor invoices, theme script conflicts, and fractured customer data.

What is app fatigue?

App fatigue is the operational overhead, performance drag, and fragmentation that comes from using many single-function apps. Symptoms include:

• Slower storefront performance due to multiple scripts.
• Repeated theme edits and conflicts when apps inject widgets.
• Fragmented customer data across tools, making it hard to tie loyalty or wishlist behavior to revenue.
• Rising monthly costs and complexity with no central reporting view.

Reducing app fatigue means consolidating features that drive retention and LTV into fewer, better-integrated tools.

Growave’s “More Growth, Less Stack” proposition

Growave positions itself as a multi-tool retention platform that reduces tool sprawl by combining loyalty, wishlist, referrals, reviews, and VIP tiers into a single suite. For merchants who want to reduce complexity and drive repeat purchases, this approach emphasizes coordinated campaigns and consistent data.

Merchants can evaluate this approach by looking at tangible capabilities:

• Loyalty: configurable points, rewards, VIP tiers, and referral incentives to increase repeat purchases. See how merchants build loyalty and rewards that drive repeat purchases.
• Reviews: automation and UGC collection to build social proof and SEO benefits—merchants can collect and showcase authentic reviews.
• Wishlist: persistent wishlists integrated with loyalty and email flows, reducing the need for a separate wishlist app.
• Case studies: review customer stories from brands scaling retention to understand outcomes other merchants have achieved.

Why an integrated platform can produce better outcomes

• Unified data: wishlist actions, loyalty points, referrals, and reviews live in one system, enabling stronger segmentation and personalized campaigns.
• Cross-feature incentives: reward wishlist creation with points, or tie referrals to VIP tiers for compounding retention effects.
• Fewer scripts: a single vendor reduces script load and simplifies troubleshooting.
• Centralized reporting: measure LTV uplift across features rather than in silos.
• Enterprise readiness: Growave supports Shopify Plus and headless setups for merchants that need scale and advanced integrations. Merchants can explore solutions for high-growth Plus brands.

Practical comparisons to the single-purpose apps

• If a merchant’s only need is pre-filled checkout handoff, Ask to Buy is straightforward and lower effort. However, if that merchant also wants to run loyalty campaigns or capture wishlists and reviews, the number of tools and integrations grows quickly.
• Wishl offers robust wishlist workflows with reminders and price-drop alerts, but adding loyalty, referrals, and reviews usually requires additional apps. Combining these capabilities into one platform can reduce monthly overhead and provide richer cross-feature campaigns.

For merchants curious about making the switch or exploring an integrated option, Growave can be evaluated directly in the Shopify App Store—install or trial via the storefront: install Growave from the Shopify App Store. A unified approach also reduces friction for merchants who want to consolidate retention features under one billing and integration umbrella.

Practical next steps for merchants considering consolidation

• Audit current monthly spend and feature overlap across apps.
• Catalog the KPIs each app drives (shared cart conversions, wishlist reminders converted revenue, loyalty-driven repeat rate).
• Prioritize features that jointly drive retention and LTV (e.g., loyalty combo with wishlist and referral).
• Trial an integrated platform while running the single-purpose apps in parallel for a short period to compare incremental uplift.
• For merchants wanting a guided evaluation, book a personalized demo to see how an integrated stack improves retention.

Merchants can also check the Growave app listing for install details: install Growave from the Shopify App Store. For pricing transparency and plan comparisons before switching, review options to consolidate retention features.

How Growave’s features map to the needs discussed earlier

• Wishlist needs: built-in wishlist feature eliminates the need for a separate wishlist app, while allowing wishlist activity to feed into loyalty campaigns. See how loyalty and rewards that drive repeat purchases can be tied to wishlist behavior.
• Reviews and social proof: integrated review collection reduces the need for a separate reviews app and allows leveraging UGC in loyalty and referral campaigns—merchants can collect and showcase authentic reviews.
• Startup to enterprise scale: plans range from an entry-level plan to Plus features for high-volume merchants. Check examples of merchant results and approaches in customer stories from brands scaling retention.

For quick access or to trial the platform, merchants can also install Growave from the Shopify App Store.

How to Decide: Decision Framework for Merchants

This framework helps prioritize a choice between a focused app or an integrated solution.

• Primary objective is a single friction point (e.g., shared checkout handoff): choose a focused app like Ask to Buy.
• Primary objective is long-term retention and increasing LTV across multiple levers: favor an integrated platform.
• Budget constraints with one immediate use case: pick the focused app and plan for consolidation later.
• Growth trajectory includes loyalty, reviews, VIP segmentation, and wishlist data needs: evaluate an integrated platform now to avoid migration headaches.

Also weigh operational cost against upside: multiple small apps may be cheaper month-to-month initially, but the combined cost and complexity may outweigh benefits as the store grows.

Migration and Implementation Checklist

Before installing or switching apps, merchants should consider the following checklist items to reduce risk and downtime:

• Backup theme and test on a staging theme before live edits.
• Export any existing wishlist or review data if the current app supports exports.
• Instrument analytics to measure baseline metrics (AOV, conversion rate, wishlist-to-order) to measure lift.
• Communicate to customers if switching reminder flows or loyalty programs to avoid confusion.
• Validate that checkout flows are secure, particularly for pre-filled cart links.
• For integrated platform migration, confirm import capabilities for loyalty points, customer reviews, and saved wishlists.

Support and SLAs

• Ask about response time SLAs for support and any onboarding assistance.
• Confirm migration assistance is available for larger stores or complex loyalty setups.
• For high-growth merchants, having a dedicated customer success manager (available on enterprise plans) can accelerate adoption and ensure correct configuration.

Conclusion

For merchants choosing between Ask to Buy create & share cart and Wishl Favorites Wishlist, the decision comes down to specific needs: Ask to Buy is best for merchants that need a straightforward cart sharing and pre-filled checkout handoff (gift purchases, sales rep workflows), while Wishl is better for merchants focused on capturing demand signals, using wishlists to drive return visits, and converting interest through automated reminders. Ask to Buy is a single-purpose solution that can solve a targeted checkout friction, while Wishl provides a broader wishlist lifecycle with reminders and price alerts.

If the business needs extend beyond a single feature—if the goal is to increase retention, lift repeat purchase rates, and reduce tool sprawl—consolidating multiple retention functions into a single platform can be a better value for money. Growave combines wishlist, loyalty, referrals, reviews, and VIP tiers so merchants can run coordinated campaigns that increase lifetime value with fewer scripts and simpler maintenance. Merchants can learn how the suite bundles key retention features or evaluate plans to consolidate retention features.

Start a 14-day free trial to explore an integrated retention stack and see whether consolidating features reduces complexity and improves long-term growth: Start a 14-day free trial.

If a hands-on walkthrough is preferred earlier, merchants can book a personalized demo to see how an integrated stack improves retention.

For quick installation, Growave is also available for merchants to try directly from the Shopify ecosystem: install Growave from the Shopify App Store.

FAQ

• How does Ask to Buy create & share cart differ from Wishl Favorites Wishlist?
  • Ask to Buy focuses on pre-filled carts and sending invitees directly to checkout so someone else can pay. It’s built to reduce checkout friction when the buyer differs from the shopper. Wishl focuses on persistent wishlists, email reminders, price-drop notifications, and product demand insights—designed to capture intent and re-engage shoppers over time.
• Which app is better for increasing average order value (AOV)?
  • Ask to Buy can increase AOV if sales reps or shoppers assemble larger carts that invitees then purchase. Wishl can increase AOV indirectly by enabling coordinated promotions, price-drop nudges, and reminders that encourage larger purchases, especially when combined with cross-sell flows.
• If a merchant already uses multiple single-purpose apps, how does an all-in-one platform compare?
  • An integrated platform reduces script load, centralizes customer data, and enables cross-feature campaigns (e.g., reward points for wishlist actions). It can be better value for money as the number of retention features needed grows. For an example of bundled capabilities, see how merchants build loyalty and rewards that drive repeat purchases and collect and showcase authentic reviews within one system.
• What metrics should merchants track to evaluate these apps?
  • Track shared-cart conversion rates, wishlist-to-order conversion, revenue attributable to reminders/shares, email reminder engagement (open and CTR), repeat purchase rate, and AOV for customers influenced by these features. Merchant case studies and customer stories from brands scaling retention can provide benchmarks and examples.