ESC Wishlist vs. GP ‑ Wishlist & Upsell Suite: In-Depth Comparison

Introduction

Choosing the right wishlist tool is a common decision point for Shopify merchants who want to recover interest, increase average order value, and make product discovery easier. The marketplace contains both single-purpose apps and multi-feature suites, and the right pick depends on product mix, traffic profile, and long-term retention strategy.

Short answer: ESC Wishlist + Save for Later is a very low-cost, focused widget that fits merchants who only need a basic save-for-later or wishlist button under the cart. GP ‑ Wishlist & Upsell Suite is a far more feature-rich option — offering reminders, back-in-stock alerts, upsells, bundles, and analytics — and is better for stores aiming to increase AOV and re-engage potential buyers. For merchants who prefer to minimize app sprawl and build retention across loyalty, referrals, reviews, and wishlists, an integrated platform like Growave can deliver better value for money than adding multiple specialized apps.

This article provides an objective, feature-by-feature comparison of ESC Wishlist + Save for Later and GP ‑ Wishlist & Upsell Suite. The goal is to clarify strengths, trade-offs, and recommended use cases so merchants can decide which tool — or combination of tools — matches their growth priorities.

ESC Wishlist + Save for Later vs. GP ‑ Wishlist & Upsell Suite: At a Glance

Feature-by-Feature Comparison

Core Wishlist Functionality

ESC Wishlist + Save for Later

ESC positions itself as a simple way for shoppers to save items they’re interested in and return to buy later. The key points:

• Saves appear under the cart, making them visible at checkout and theoretically lowering friction to convert.
• Offers unlimited wishlists so customers can categorize items.
• Includes social sharing to increase reach.

Strengths:

• Extremely simple concept and placement (under cart) reduces the learning curve for shoppers.
• Very low monthly fee ($5/month), which makes it attractive for new or lean stores.

Limitations:

• Feature list is minimal; the app lacks automated re-engagement tools like reminders, back-in-stock alerts, or price-drop notifications.
• Small review base (2 reviews) and a low rating (1) create uncertainty about reliability and support quality.
• No visible advanced analytics or export capabilities for marketing use.

GP ‑ Wishlist & Upsell Suite

GP expands wishlist functionality into a retention and conversion toolset.

• Supports guest wishlists and social sharing.
• Allows exporting wishlist data for marketing and segmentation.
• Wishlist actions can trigger reminders, price-drop messages, and back-in-stock alerts.

Strengths:

• Wishlist is a source of actionable data, not just a UI element. Exports and reminders enable recovery campaigns.
• Guest wishlist support increases adoption among non-logged-in visitors.
• Positive user feedback (11 reviews, 4.8 rating) suggests reliable execution and customer satisfaction.

Limitations:

• More features mean more configuration and potential for misalignment if not set up with a strategy.
• Some advanced wishlist workflows (e.g., deep personalization) may require integration with external marketing stacks.

Verdict on core wishlist: For basic list saving and minimal cost, ESC is a simple pick. For wishlist-as-marketing-asset and re-engagement, GP offers substantially more utility.

Upsells, Bundles, and Average Order Value (AOV)

ESC Wishlist + Save for Later

• Focus is not on increasing AOV via upsells or bundles.
• No native upsell flows or product bundle creation tools.

Implication:

• Merchants that want to grow AOV must pair ESC with a separate upsell or bundle app, increasing the number of integrated tools.

GP ‑ Wishlist & Upsell Suite

• Native upsell offers available on product pages and cart pages.
• Product bundles with discounts and volume discounts are supported.
• Smart recommendations can suggest complementary items to wishlist users.

Implication:

• GP helps merchants increase AOV from the same audience that engages with wishlists, creating a cleaner conversion loop.
• Built-in tracking for orders and revenue attributed to upsells makes ROI measurement easier.

Verdict on AOV: GP is clearly designed to drive higher cart values; ESC would require an additional app to achieve comparable results.

Re-Engagement: Reminders, Alerts, and Email Automation

ESC Wishlist + Save for Later

• No built-in reminder emails, price-drop notifications, or back-in-stock alerts are listed in the feature set.
• Social sharing provides passive reach but not active re-engagement.

Implication:

• Reliant on manual marketing or integration with a separate email provider to re-contact interested shoppers.

GP ‑ Wishlist & Upsell Suite

• Automated reminder emails and back-in-stock alerts are core features.
• Price-drop notifications allow merchants to drive urgency when inventory or pricing changes happen.
• Reminders can be a simple, effective way to recover lost interest with minimal lift.

Implication:

• GP functions as an engagement layer that can reduce abandonment and win back attention without requiring additional apps.

Verdict on re-engagement: GP provides clear, built-in tools to re-engage shoppers; ESC does not.

Customization & Front-End UX

ESC Wishlist + Save for Later

• Offers a broad range of customization for how the app looks on the storefront.
• Placement under the cart is consistent but may not match every theme out-of-the-box.

Considerations:

• Merchants with simple themes will likely find customization options sufficient.
• Brands that need a fully branded wishlist experience or unique placement (e.g., dedicated wishlist page, floating buttons) may find the app limited.

GP ‑ Wishlist & Upsell Suite

• Customizable wishlist styling and support for multiple placements across product and cart pages.
• Guest wishlist experience and social sharing increase convenience.

Considerations:

• More complex UI options can lead to better conversions when implemented well, but require design and QA work to align with brand standards.

Verdict on customization: GP provides a deeper set of front-end options for brands that need a polished experience; ESC is serviceable for basic customization needs.

Analytics, Reporting & Data Export

ESC Wishlist + Save for Later

• No advertised advanced analytics or export functionality.
• If exporting wishlist data is a priority, merchants will likely need an alternative path.

Implication:

• Marketing teams will have limited visibility into who is saving what and cannot easily segment wishlist users for email campaigns.

GP ‑ Wishlist & Upsell Suite

• Includes analytics on clicks, orders, and revenue attributed to wishlist and upsell interactions.
• Export capability for wishlist data to power marketing campaigns.

Implication:

• Data-driven merchants can convert wishlist engagement into segmented lifecycle campaigns.
• Measurement of wishlist-driven revenue is feasible without manual tracking.

Verdict on analytics: GP is the stronger option for merchants that treat data as an operational input.

Integrations & Compatibility

ESC Wishlist + Save for Later

• Works as a storefront wishlist. No detailed list of integrations is published.
• Likely sufficient for merchants who only need a front-end widget.

Limitations:

• Lack of built-in integrations to ESPs, CRMs, or checkout extensions reduces its usefulness in more complex stacks.

GP ‑ Wishlist & Upsell Suite

• Works with checkout and enables data export for deeper marketing integration.
• A better fit for merchants that rely on email automation and want to feed wishlist events into external systems.

Verdict on integrations: GP is better suited to connect wishlist behavior to broader retention and marketing flows.

Pricing & Value for Money

ESC Wishlist + Save for Later

• Price: $5 / month (Monthly plan).
• Extremely low entry cost makes it accessible for very small stores or for experimentation.

Value considerations:

• Low monthly fee gives immediate upside for stores that only need the basic “saved for later” UX.
• When the business needs reminders, analytics, or revenue-driving features, the merchant must adopt additional apps — which changes the value calculus.

GP ‑ Wishlist & Upsell Suite

• Free tier available with a significant feature set: guest wishlist support, styling, back-in-stock alerts, reminder emails, upsells, tiered discounts, bundles, and smart recommendations.
• Because many revenue-driving features are included, GP delivers strong value for merchants looking for single-app coverage of wishlist plus conversion functions.

Value considerations:

• GP’s free tier can be especially valuable for stores that need an integrated wishlist + upsell solution without immediate cost.
• For stores that outgrow the free tier, incremental value remains strong because the app can replace multiple specialty tools.

Verdict on pricing & value: ESC offers low upfront cost for a narrow feature set. GP provides better value for merchants whose objectives include revenue recovery and AOV growth.

Reliability, Reviews & Support

ESC Wishlist + Save for Later

• Shopify app metrics: 2 reviews, rating 1.
• The limited number of reviews and low score raise questions about product reliability, speed of bug fixes, and responsiveness of support.

Considerations:

• Smaller or less-established apps can be a risk when it comes to long-term maintenance and updates.
• Merchants should test thoroughly and consider backup options if choosing ESC.

GP ‑ Wishlist & Upsell Suite

• Shopify app metrics: 11 reviews, rating 4.8.
• The higher rating and more reviews point to better user satisfaction and likely more active product support and iteration.

Considerations:

• Better ratings are a proxy for reliability and developer responsiveness, though merchants should still validate support SLAs for mission-critical flows.

Verdict on reliability & support: GP’s public review metrics suggest a more dependable experience than ESC.

Implementation Effort & Ongoing Maintenance

ESC Wishlist + Save for Later

• Quick to implement for stores that simply need a save-for-later feature under the cart.
• Low maintenance while the feature set remains static.

Hidden costs:

• If marketing wants to use wishlist data, additional manual work or tooling will be required.
• Adding separate upsell, reminder, and analytics apps increases integration and maintenance time.

GP ‑ Wishlist & Upsell Suite

• Requires more initial setup to configure upsells, reminders, and bundles effectively.
• Consolidates multiple functions in one app, which reduces the number of vendors to manage.

Hidden costs:

• Proper configuration to maximize AOV and re-engagement requires strategic planning and A/B testing.
• Complexity can be worth the ROI but needs ongoing optimization.

Verdict on implementation: ESC is easier to get running; GP requires more setup but reduces the total number of apps needed.

Use Cases and Recommendations

• Merchants on a strict budget who only want a simple save-for-later widget and are happy with manual marketing can opt for ESC. The low $5/month price makes it low-risk for small catalogs and stores testing the wishlist concept.
• Brands that want wishlist behavior to drive measurable revenue should choose GP. Its built-in reminders, price-drop alerts, back-in-stock notifications, and upsell flows convert wishlist interest into sales and higher AOV.
• Stores with growth ambitions and an eye on long-term retention should avoid adding multiple single-purpose apps. While GP covers many wishlist and revenue features, long-term retention is driven by loyalty, reviews, referrals, and integrated lifecycle campaigns.

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

Understanding App Fatigue

App fatigue happens when merchants layer numerous single-purpose tools on their store to hit feature targets. Each additional app introduces:

• Another vendor to manage.
• More code and potential theme conflicts.
• Incremental monthly costs that accumulate.
• Fragmented data that complicates lifecycle marketing and attribution.

Even when each app is cheap individually, the combined effect reduces agility and increases overhead. For merchants focused on sustainable growth, this fragmentation can erode margin and slow down experimentation.

The Case for Consolidation

Consolidating retention-related features into a single platform reduces complexity and improves outcomes:

• Centralized data: Wishlist saves, referral sources, loyalty behavior, and review submissions live in one place for segmentation.
• Fewer integration points: Less time spent wiring events into ESPs, CRMs, or analytics tools.
• Consistent experience: Unified UI patterns across loyalty, wishlist, and referral flows build trust and reduce friction.
• Better ROI: Bundled capabilities often provide better value for money than the sum of individual apps.

Introducing a Consolidated Option: More Growth, Less Stack

A consolidated approach is embodied by platforms that combine loyalty, wishlist, referrals, reviews, and VIP tiers into one suite. A merchant considering this approach can evaluate whether combining channels increases retention and lifetime value while simplifying operations.

Growave’s "More Growth, Less Stack" position emphasizes reducing the number of disparate apps while covering the primary retention levers:

• Loyalty and Rewards: Customizable programs and VIP tiers to increase repeat purchase rate and customer lifetime value. Merchants can create points-for-actions programs and design reward experiences that convert engagement into recurring revenue. See how merchants build loyalty and rewards that drive repeat purchases.
• Wishlist plus Recovery: A unified wishlist that ties directly into reminder flows, campaigns, and loyalty triggers means wishlist activity becomes part of the retention engine rather than siloed UI data. Growave’s wishlist and notification capabilities can be combined with loyalty to turn saved items into repeat revenue without extra integrations.
• Reviews and UGC: Collecting and showcasing reviews builds conversion lift and social proof across landing pages. Merchants can collect and showcase authentic reviews and integrate those signals into product pages and promotional channels.
• Referrals and VIP Programs: Referral incentives and tiered VIP rewards increase virality and repeat purchases without requiring separate referral plugins.
• Enterprise Features: For merchants on Plus or with larger technical requirements, the consolidated platform supports headless, checkout extensions, and dedicated account support. Merchants can explore solutions for high-growth Plus brands and match feature depth to scale.

How consolidation compares to single-purpose apps

• Data cohesion: With a consolidated platform, wishlist saves, referral actions, and reward redemptions are native events in the same system. This enables precise segmentation and targeted campaigns without exporting CSVs across tools.
• Cost and complexity: While the monthly fee for a consolidated platform can be higher than a single-purpose app, the combined value and reduced maintenance often mean better value for money. See how consolidation can help merchants consolidate retention features.
• Speed of iteration: One vendor means fewer coordination meetings and faster rollout of cross-channel campaigns that span loyalty, wishlist reminders, and referral incentives.

Practical Examples of Consolidated Workflows

• Turn a wishlist save into a points-earning action: Reward customers who save items with loyalty points to encourage return visits and eventual purchase.
• Use wishlists to seed referral campaigns: Allow customers to share wishlists as referral triggers and reward both referrer and referee when items convert.
• Trigger review prompts after reward redemptions: Close the feedback loop by inviting reviews from customers who redeem loyalty rewards, amplifying social proof.

These combined workflows reduce friction and make it easier to measure lifetime value uplift from retention programs, without needing to stitch together data from many vendors.

Where consolidation may not be the right fit

• Ultra-tight budgets at inception: Very small stores with limited SKUs and no marketing budget may prioritize a single $5/month wishlist widget until they scale.
• Deeply custom requirements: Brands that require bespoke front-end experiences or custom backend logic might still prefer specialized apps or custom development.
• Preference for best-of-breed layering: Some merchants accept higher operational overhead to pick category-leading specialists for each function.

Even in these cases, consolidation remains attractive as soon as the merchant prioritizes retention and wants to reduce operational complexity.

Growing With an Integrated Stack

A practical path for merchants who want to avoid app fatigue:

• Start with a consolidated plan that includes wishlist, loyalty, reviews, and referrals to cover the main retention levers.
• Use native integrations to push customer segments into the email stack (e.g., Klaviyo, Omnisend) or support tools (e.g., Gorgias).
• Measure: track retention metrics like repeat purchase rate, average order value, and customer lifetime value to validate the impact. Growave’s pricing and plans provide a way to evaluate consolidation against current stack costs; merchants can compare feature sets and pricing to understand trade-offs and ROI on the consolidated pricing page.

Practical Links for Evaluation

Merchants investigating consolidation should review:

• How loyalty programs are configured to incentivize repeat purchases and VIP behavior by exploring solutions that support loyalty and rewards that drive repeat purchases.
• The review collection and display options, since reviews directly affect on-site conversions and ad creative; review the approach to collect and showcase authentic reviews.
• Case studies and merchant stories to see outcomes for brands that moved from multiple apps to a single retention suite; walkthroughs of customer stories from brands scaling retention can illustrate the before-and-after effects.

For merchants who prefer to try before committing, Growave’s Shopify listing allows direct installation and initial experimentation via the app store; merchants can install from the Shopify App Store to test core features in a live environment. Additional comparison between what a consolidated platform offers and what separate apps provide can be informed by browsing the pricing options.

Migration and Practical Considerations

Migrating from single-purpose wishlist or upsell tools to an integrated platform requires planning:

• Data Export: Ensure wishlist and customer data are exportable from the existing app. GP provides export capabilities; merchants using ESC may need to request or extract data manually.
• Theme and UX: Verify how the new platform injects code into the theme and whether manual UI adjustments are needed to match branding.
• Email Flows: Map existing reminder and back-in-stock flows to the integrated platform, ensuring there are no overlaps or duplicate messages.
• Testing: Run a staged rollout with a percentage of traffic to validate conversion and message sequencing.
• Attribution: Keep a baseline for A/B testing to measure lift after consolidation and to ensure uptime and performance are acceptable.

A consolidated platform simplifies many of these steps because events and flows are native; however, the migration still benefits from a checklist and staging plan.

Comparing Costs Over Time

A clear way to evaluate value for money:

• Calculate the total monthly cost of current single-purpose apps (wishlist + upsell + reminders + reviews + loyalty + referral).
• Compare the consolidated plan price and the features covered.
• Factor in saved implementation time, maintenance overhead, and potential conversion uplift from unified user journeys.

Even if a consolidated platform like Growave has a higher monthly price than one single-purpose app, it often replaces several subscriptions and reduces time spent on integrations and troubleshooting.

Merchants can review pricing tiers and the feature allocation for each plan to estimate comparative costs directly on the pricing page. Alternatively, install the consolidated app from its Shopify App Store listing to test the experience in a controlled environment.

Implementation Checklist for Choosing Between ESC and GP

When evaluating ESC vs. GP, merchants should ask:

• Is the wishlist intended to be a passive UX element or an active marketing channel?
• Are reminders, back-in-stock alerts, and price-drop notifications required now or in the near future?
• Will wishlist data be used in lifecycle campaigns or exported to the email provider?
• Is driving higher AOV through bundles and upsells a priority?
• How many third-party apps will be required to match the features offered by an integrated solution?

If answers lean toward active re-engagement, data-driven segmentation, and AOV growth, GP is the more reasonable single-app choice. If minimal functionality and cost are the primary constraints, ESC will suffice as a temporary solution.

Conclusion

For merchants choosing between ESC Wishlist + Save for Later and GP ‑ Wishlist & Upsell Suite, the decision comes down to scope and strategy. ESC provides a very low-cost, minimal wishlist interface suitable for stores that only need item saving under the cart. GP offers a broader toolkit — including reminders, price and stock alerts, upsells, bundles, and analytics — making it better suited for merchants focused on re-engagement and average order value.

Beyond those two options, merchants facing app fatigue should consider a consolidated retention platform. Consolidation reduces maintenance overhead, centralizes customer data, and allows cross-channel campaigns that drive repeat purchases. Merchants can evaluate consolidation options and compare costs and capabilities on the pricing page. To experience how integrated loyalty, wishlist, referrals, and reviews work together in one system, merchants can also install from the Shopify App Store and test core features directly.

Start a 14-day free trial to see how a unified retention stack can replace multiple single-purpose tools and accelerate growth while simplifying operations: Start a 14-day free trial.

FAQ

Q: Which app is better for increasing average order value? A: GP ‑ Wishlist & Upsell Suite includes native upsell offers, product bundles, and volume discounts designed to increase AOV. ESC focuses on save-for-later UI without upsell or bundling features, so AOV improvements would require additional apps.

Q: Which app is more reliable and better supported? A: Public Shopify metrics show GP with 11 reviews and a 4.8 rating versus ESC with 2 reviews and a 1 rating. This suggests GP has stronger user satisfaction and likely more responsive support. Merchants should still validate support SLAs before committing.

Q: How does an all-in-one platform compare to specialized apps? A: An all-in-one platform centralizes loyalty, wishlist, referrals, and reviews into one data model and dashboard. This improves segmentation, reduces integration overhead, and often delivers better value for money when multiple retention levers are needed. Specialized apps can be cheaper initially but may increase long-term costs and complexity.

Q: If a merchant starts with a single-purpose app, can they migrate later? A: Yes. Migrating is possible but requires planning: export wishlist and customer data, map flows (reminders, alerts), and test the new implementation. Because some apps (like GP) provide export capabilities, moving data into a consolidated platform is more straightforward. Merchants may want to test the consolidated approach by installing from the Shopify App Store or reviewing the pricing and plan options to decide whether consolidation is the best next step.