Introduction
Choosing the right wishlist app for a Shopify store often feels like picking one tool from a pile of near-identical options. Merchants want a solution that improves product discovery, increases saves, encourages sharing, and — crucially — moves saved items toward purchase. Two popular single-purpose choices are K Wish List‑Advanced Wishlist (by Kaktus) and Ultimate Wishlist (by Config Studio). Both focus on helping customers save and share favorite products, but they differ in features, limits, customization, and the kinds of stores they serve best.
Short answer: K Wish List‑Advanced Wishlist is an excellent choice for merchants who need a straightforward, easy-to-install wishlist with strong UI controls and social sharing; Ultimate Wishlist is better suited for brands that want deeper item limits, more email reminder options, and an emphasis on analytics and guest wishlists. For merchants who want to reduce tool sprawl and get wishlist functionality as part of a retention suite, a consolidated platform can offer better value for money and less operational overhead.
This post provides an in-depth, feature-by-feature comparison of K Wish List‑Advanced Wishlist and Ultimate Wishlist. The goal is to clarify strengths, weaknesses, and practical use cases so store owners can choose the right tool — or consider an all-in-one retention platform to avoid juggling multiple single-purpose apps.
K Wish List‑Advanced Wishlist vs. Ultimate Wishlist: At a Glance
| Aspect | K Wish List‑Advanced Wishlist (Kaktus) | Ultimate Wishlist (Config Studio) |
|---|---|---|
| Core Function | Fast, customizable wishlist with float button & nav icon | Fully customizable wishlist with guest options, analytics, and reminders |
| Best For | Stores wanting a lightweight, brandable wishlist with easy install | Stores needing higher monthly item limits, email reminders, and stronger reporting |
| Rating (Shopify Reviews) | 4.7 (81 reviews) | 4.9 (34 reviews) |
| Free Tier | Yes — core wishlist features | Yes — up to 500 wishlist items/month, guest wishlist |
| Paid Plans | $6.70/mo and $19.99/mo tiers | $4.99 to $14.99/mo tiers with email reminder and Facebook Pixel in higher tiers |
| Notable Strengths | Floating button, fast setup, social sharing, simple UI | Guest wishlist, email reminders, per-user reminders, strong reports |
| Notable Limits | Smaller review base, fewer advanced email options | Item limits based on plan, email quotas tied to plan |
Deep Dive Comparison
Feature Set and Core Capabilities
Wishlist UX: Buttons, Icons, and Placement
K Wish List‑Advanced Wishlist is built around a few core UX elements: a floating wishlist button, a header/nav icon, and an Add to Wishlist button on product pages. The app emphasizes quick saves and immediate visual feedback with add-to-wishlist notifications. Merchants can display the wishlist as a dedicated page, popup, or embedded section. This setup is ideal when the goal is to make saving frictionless and visually prominent without heavy development.
Ultimate Wishlist offers similar placement options — wishlist buttons on product and collection pages — but with broader support for guest users and cross-device persistence when customers log in. Its customization of text and color is strong, and it explicitly includes wishlist placement on collection pages within the free plan. The UX choices are slightly more flexible when targeting shoppers who browse collections and expect to bookmark items from category listings.
Key considerations for merchants:
- If the priority is a highly visible, always-available save button (floating icon), K Wish List is strong.
- If the store wants collection-level saves and cross-device continuity for logged-in users, Ultimate Wishlist provides clearer options.
Sharing and Social Integrations
Both apps allow shoppers to share wishlists via social networks. K Wish List highlights social media sharing for events like gift buying and seasonal promotions. Ultimate Wishlist supports Facebook, Twitter, and email sharing and includes customizable email templates for reminders at higher tiers.
Practical outcomes:
- Social sharing can drive referral traffic and gift purchases. For stores that run holiday or gift-guided campaigns, both apps will support viral visibility.
- Ultimate Wishlist’s email sharing plus scheduled reminders make it a better choice where list recovery (nudging saved items toward purchase) via email is important.
Guest Wishlist, Account Persistence, and Cross-Device Use
Ultimate Wishlist explicitly supports guest wishlists and allows users to log in later to sync wishlists across devices. The free plan already includes guest wishlist functionality. K Wish List supports customer wishlists (customers' wishlists listed in the feature set) but positions itself more toward quick saves and public sharing. If guest flows and cross-device continuity are critical (for marketplaces with high guest traffic or stores that expect shoppers to return on different devices), Ultimate Wishlist tends to be stronger.
Email Reminders, Templates, and Automation
Email capability is where the apps diverge meaningfully. Ultimate Wishlist has tiered email reminder capabilities:
- Free: basic sharing via email.
- Basic/Pro/Premium: increasing quotas of email reminders, per-user reminders, and customizable templates. Higher plans enable more reminders/month and targeted nudges.
K Wish List’s feature list includes wishlist sharing and notifications, but it does not advertise tiered email reminder quotas or built-in reminder scheduling in the same way. For conversion-led campaigns that depend on email nudges to recover saved items, Ultimate Wishlist offers a more complete solution out of the box.
Analytics and Reporting
Ultimate Wishlist advertises a "Powerful dashboard with analytics" capturing wishlist adds, page views, and items added to cart — all pivotal metrics for product prioritization and merchandising. K Wish List mentions tracking wishlist usage to gain customer interest insights, but the depth and format of the analytics are less explicit in the public feature set.
What merchants should weigh:
- Stores that want wishlist data to influence merchandising, inventory decisions, and email campaigns should prefer the app with more explicit reporting (Ultimate Wishlist).
- For smaller stores that only need surface-level insight (most-saved products), K Wish List’s tracking might suffice.
Customization and Localization
Visual and Text Customization
Both apps emphasize customizable icons, labels, and colors to align with store branding. Ultimate Wishlist promotes full-text customization and non-English support — a useful feature for multi-language stores. K Wish List allows icon and label customization and different wishlist display types to match brand aesthetics.
Multi-Language and Non-English Support
Ultimate Wishlist specifically notes Non-English support and customizable text as a selling point. K Wish List does not explicitly highlight multilingual support in the summary. For stores selling across geographies or using languages other than English, Ultimate Wishlist offers clearer native features to manage localization.
Pricing & Value Analysis
Pricing Structures (Overview)
K Wish List‑Advanced Wishlist:
- Free plan: core wishlist features including float button, header icon, add-to-wishlist button, social sharing, popup & embedded types, and customer wishlists.
- Growth: $6.70/month — same core features (likely adds higher usage limits or branding removal; check the app for exact plan differentials).
- Growth 2: $19.99/month — same listed features; pricing suggests incremental usage or priority support.
Ultimate Wishlist:
- Free plan: up to 500 wishlist items/month, guest wishlist, wishlist on collection page, sharing, customization, non-English support, full reports.
- Basic: $4.99/month — everything in Free plus up to 1,000 wishlist items/month, custom email templates, up to 500 email reminders/month.
- Pro: $9.99/month — adds per-user reminders, up to 5,000 items/month, up to 2,000 reminders/month.
- Premium: $14.99/month — up to 10,000 items/month, up to 5,000 reminders/month, Facebook pixel integration.
Value Considerations
- For stores with low save volume and basic needs, both apps’ free tiers are attractive. K Wish List’s free tier focuses on UI and sharing; Ultimate Wishlist’s free tier enforces a monthly item quota (500) but adds reporting and guest wishlists.
- For active stores that rely on email reminders to convert saved items, Ultimate Wishlist’s tiered email quotas add direct conversion potential and justify the incremental cost.
- K Wish List’s pricing positions it as a minimal overhead add-on; Ultimate Wishlist’s tiered limits make costs predictable when scaling wishlist activity.
Merchants should evaluate value through these lenses:
- Expected monthly wishlist saves (if above a free tier’s cap, factor in paid plans).
- The importance of reminder emails (higher ROI if reminders drive purchase).
- Need for analytics to inform merchandising vs. a lightweight save-and-share feature.
- Desire for localization and collection-level wishlist placement.
Avoid viewing price as simply "cheaper" or "more expensive." Instead, consider "better value for money" by aligning features to outcomes: increased conversions, repeat visits, and higher average order value (AOV).
Integrations & Compatibility
Checkout, POS, and Customer Accounts
K Wish List lists "Works With: Checkout" explicitly, implying compatibility with the Shopify checkout flow. Ultimate Wishlist does not list integrations in the provided snippet but supports cross-device wishlists via customer login and includes Facebook Pixel in Premium.
When integration with checkout, customer accounts, or other apps is required, merchants should run a test install and confirm how wishlist data migrates to customer profiles and abandoned cart flows.
Third-Party and Marketing Integrations
Neither app advertises a broad suite of native integrations (e.g., Klaviyo, Omnisend) in the provided descriptions. Ultimate Wishlist includes Facebook Pixel at the premium tier, an important integration for remarketing.
If a merchant relies on advanced email automation or CRM workflows, confirm whether wishlist events (saved item, removed item, wishlist-to-cart) can be forwarded to marketing automation tools. Where native integrations are missing, look for webhook or export options.
Setup, Onboarding, and Ease of Use
Installation and Time-to-Value
K Wish List promises setup in minutes with no coding required — appealing for stores that want immediate impact. A lightweight app that installs quickly and shows a floating icon can produce measurable saves quickly.
Ultimate Wishlist’s free plan and explicit settings for guest wishlist and collection page placement suggest a straightforward setup as well. The difference is in the setup granularity; if a store needs granular email templates, per-user reminders, or advanced reports, expect a slightly longer onboarding.
Theme Compatibility and Developer Work
Both apps advertise no-code setup options. However, real-world compatibility with complex themes, headless setups, and custom storefront builders requires testing. Merchants using page builders such as Pagefly, GemPages, or custom liquid edits should test on a staging theme before deploying to production.
Performance, Scalability, and Limits
Item and Email Limits
Ultimate Wishlist enforces monthly item quotas and email reminder quotas by plan. This is important for high-traffic stores where wishlist activity can grow quickly. Exceeding plan limits may require plan upgrades.
K Wish List’s public plan descriptions do not explicitly list item or reminder quotas in the same way, but verify whether the free tier includes any practical limits (e.g., number of saves, total wishlist entries) or display limits on wishlists.
Scaling considerations:
- High-volume stores need clarity on per-month item quotas and per-user limits.
- Email reminder caps matter when wishlist-driven campaigns are a revenue channel.
Reliability and Page Performance
Lightweight apps with minimal front-end scripts tend to have less impact on page load times. K Wish List emphasizes speed and a simple UI. Always measure app script footprint using tools like Google Lighthouse and the theme’s performance metrics.
Ultimate Wishlist’s analytics dashboard and email functionality imply server-side processing for reminders and reporting. Confirm SLA and performance expectations with the developer if uptime during high traffic periods is a concern.
Support, Documentation, and Community Feedback
Review Counts and Ratings
- K Wish List‑Advanced Wishlist: 81 reviews, 4.7 rating.
- Ultimate Wishlist: 34 reviews, 4.9 rating.
Both sets of ratings are strong. K Wish List has a larger review base, which can indicate broader adoption. Ultimate Wishlist’s slightly higher rating, albeit with fewer reviews, suggests strong satisfaction among its user base. Review counts are informative but not definitive: fewer reviews can reflect a newer app or narrower market focus.
Support Channels and Responsiveness
Both apps list "Knowledgeable Support" or feature-rich dashboards. Specific support channels (email, chat, phone) and SLA expectations should be confirmed before committing. Look for:
- Response time guarantees.
- Availability across time zones.
- Developer willingness to implement customizations or resolve theme conflicts.
User review themes to check:
- Ease of setup.
- Responsiveness to bugs.
- Help with custom styling or integration needs.
Security & Privacy
Wishlists often store customer preferences and email addresses. Merchants should confirm:
- Where wishlist data is stored and retention policies.
- Compliance with privacy laws (GDPR, CCPA) and ability to delete user data on request.
- Whether wishlist share links expose personal data.
Neither app’s brief descriptions include detailed privacy statements; review app documentation or contact developers for privacy practices.
Practical Use Cases and Recommendations
When to Choose K Wish List‑Advanced Wishlist
K Wish List fits stores that prioritize:
- Fast installation and a visible floating save button.
- Simple sharing capabilities and brand-matching visuals.
- Minimal overhead and a lightweight feature set.
- An affordable free tier that covers core wishlist functionality.
Ideal merchants:
- Small to mid-size stores that want a clear save UX without complex email automation.
- Merchants running seasonal or gift campaigns who need a visible wishlist for social sharing.
When to Choose Ultimate Wishlist
Ultimate Wishlist is better for brands that need:
- Guest wishlists and cross-device persistence tied to customer logins.
- Tiered email reminder functionality and customizable templates.
- More explicit analytics and reporting to inform merchandising.
- Clear item and reminder quotas that scale with usage.
Ideal merchants:
- Stores that rely on email reminders as part of lifecycle campaigns.
- Merchants who want wishlist data integrated into product prioritization and marketing.
Limitations of Both Apps
- Both are single-purpose tools; to build a full retention program (loyalty, referrals, reviews), merchants will likely need additional apps.
- Integration with marketing automation platforms may be limited or require custom work.
- Scaling costs and limits vary; merchants with rapid wishlist growth should plan upgrades.
Migration & Data Portability
If switching between these two apps or moving wishlist data to a central platform, consider:
- Whether each app provides export functionality (CSV export of wishlist items, user identifiers).
- How wishlist IDs map to customer accounts and product SKUs.
- The effort required to preserve historical wishlist activity for analytics.
Plan a migration window and test exports/imports on a small dataset before full migration.
Support & Documentation Comparison
Documentation Quality
Ultimate Wishlist’s feature set (custom templates, reports, email quotas) suggests more complex documentation is necessary. K Wish List focuses on simplicity, which can lead to shorter onboarding guides. Merchants should evaluate documentation clarity for:
- Theme-specific installation steps.
- Custom CSS instructions for styling wishlist elements.
- API access or webhooks for forwarding events to other systems.
Community and Feedback Loop
K Wish List’s larger review count (81) can mean a broader community for peer tips, while Ultimate Wishlist’s high rating (4.9) indicates strong developer responsiveness for the users it does have. Actively evaluate:
- Developer activity on the app listing (recent updates).
- Changelog transparency.
- Availability of case studies or examples in similar verticals.
Pricing Scenarios: Aligning Cost to Outcomes
Below are example decision lenses — not exhaustive but practical — to help weigh price against expected outcomes.
- If the goal is to increase saves and social shares quickly with minimal setup: K Wish List’s free or low-tier paid plan is likely better value for money.
- If the plan is to recover a meaningful share of saved items via email and measure wishlist-driven conversions, Ultimate Wishlist’s Basic/Pro plans are likely to produce higher ROI when reminder emails drive purchase.
- If a merchant expects thousands of wishlist items per month and needs pixel-level remarketing and advanced reporting, Ultimate Wishlist’s Premium plan covers high volume at a predictable cost.
Always calculate projected monthly saves and email reminders, then model expected conversion rates from saved-to-purchase when estimating ROI.
The Alternative: Solving App Fatigue with an All-in-One Platform
Modern merchants increasingly face "app fatigue": an overload of single-purpose apps that each add a script, subscription, and support channel. Managing separate tools for wishlist, loyalty, referrals, and reviews creates operational friction and complicates customer data flows.
Growave proposes an alternative: a unified retention suite that reduces the number of discrete tools while covering the functions merchants actually use to increase customer lifetime value. This philosophy is summarized as "More Growth, Less Stack" — a single platform that bundles popular retention features to reduce integration work and align data across programs.
Why App Fatigue Matters
- Operational Cost: Multiple apps mean multiple subscriptions, renewal management, and billing complexity.
- Performance Overhead: Each app can add front-end scripts that cumulatively slow page load times.
- Fragmented Data: Customer behavior spread across apps makes cohesive lifecycle marketing harder. For example, a wishlist saved in one app may not surface in a loyalty program run by another.
- Support Complexity: Troubleshooting cross-app interactions often requires coordination with multiple developers and longer resolution times.
Consolidating functionality into one platform reduces these points of friction.
Introducing an Integrated Approach
A unified platform that includes wishlist functionality alongside loyalty, referrals, reviews, and VIP tiers enables merchants to:
- Connect wishlist saves to loyalty incentives (reward points for adding items or for purchases coming from wishlists).
- Use wishlist insights to power product promotions and targeted review requests.
- Trigger referral messages or discounts when popular wishlist items are purchased or shared.
For merchants evaluating consolidation, consider how much time and cost are spent managing individual apps versus the value of integrated workflows.
Growave’s Value Proposition
Growave combines multiple retention features in a single app suite: Loyalty & Rewards, Referrals, Reviews & UGC, Wishlist, and VIP Tiers. It positions itself for merchants who want to reduce their app stack and create coordinated retention programs.
Key reasons merchants might consider Growave:
- Consolidation that reduces the number of subscriptions and third-party scripts to manage.
- Ability to run loyalty campaigns and use wishlist behavior to inform rewards and targeted promotions.
- Built-in reviews and UGC tools to capture social proof from customers who interacted with saved items.
Growave’s product pages provide detail on individual components; for example, merchants can explore how to build loyalty and rewards that drive repeat purchases and how to collect and showcase authentic reviews. Those pages show how wishlist data can feed into broader retention strategies.
Integration & Enterprise Readiness
For merchants on Shopify Plus or those approaching enterprise scale, unified platforms need enterprise-level integrations. Growave supports Plus-level workflows and integrations with common marketing and support tools. For specifics on enterprise capabilities, merchants can review solutions tailored to solutions for high-growth Plus brands.
How Consolidation Improves Outcomes
- Retention: Rewarding customers for wishlist-driven purchases increases LTV.
- Personalization: Wishlist items become inputs for personalized campaigns and VIP offers.
- Efficiency: One dashboard to measure loyalty, wishlist saves, and referral conversions makes it easier to act on insights.
Merchants comparing single-purpose apps to an integrated solution should map expected outcomes (increased retention, higher AOV, fewer tool headaches) against subscription cost differences. For many stores, the higher upfront cost of an integrated platform can translate into lower total cost of ownership and better long-term growth.
Try Before Committing
Merchants evaluating consolidation can compare plans and expected benefits via the vendor’s pricing page. Detailed plan comparisons and feature lists help determine the right plan size for order volume and required integrations. To review pricing tiers and which features map to a merchant’s growth stage, consult the vendor’s pricing page for a side-by-side cost/value analysis of consolidation vs. multiple single-purpose apps: consolidate retention features.
Book a personalized demo to see how an integrated retention stack accelerates growth. (Hard CTA)
Specific Ways an Integrated Suite Reduces Friction
- Single customer profile that aggregates wishlist saves, loyalty points, referral status, and review history.
- Centralized email triggers that use wishlist behavior to send loyalty offers, referral prompts, and review requests.
- Unified analytics that show the lifecycle path from wishlist add → email reminder → purchase → review → referral.
Merchants can learn how other stores used consolidated retention features to scale by browsing customer stories from brands scaling retention.
Pricing and Trial Options
Before changing technical architecture, consider running a parallel test: keep an existing wishlist app active while testing a consolidated platform on a subset of traffic or a development store. Growave offers multiple plans and a free trial to validate outcomes and integrations; comparing plan features helps determine if consolidation is better value for money than multiple single-purpose subscriptions. Merchants can compare plan levels and decide which features are required by reviewing the pricing and plans page and, if preferred, installing via the Shopify App Store.
Comparing the Two Approaches Side-by-Side
- Feature scope: Single-purpose wishlist apps focus on saves and sharing; integrated suites add loyalty, referrals, reviews, and VIP management.
- Data cohesion: Integrated suites keep customer data in one place, making personalization and lifecycle campaigns easier.
- Operational simplicity: One subscription, one dashboard, and fewer scripts reduce overhead.
- Cost model: Integrated suites often have a higher headline subscription, but deliver more functions that would otherwise require multiple paid apps.
Merchants should model projected revenue uplift from more coordinated retention campaigns (loyalty + wishlist + reviews) and compare against the combined cost of several single-purpose apps.
Conclusion
For merchants choosing between K Wish List‑Advanced Wishlist and Ultimate Wishlist, the decision comes down to use case and scale. K Wish List is a solid, easy-to-install option for merchants who want a visible, brandable wishlist with social sharing and minimal setup. Ultimate Wishlist is a better fit for brands that need guest and cross-device wishlists, tiered email reminders, and stronger reporting to drive wishlist-to-purchase conversions.
Beyond choosing between these two single-purpose apps, merchants should consider whether a consolidated retention platform better aligns with growth goals. An integrated suite reduces app sprawl, keeps data centralized, and enables coordinated campaigns across loyalty, referrals, reviews, and wishlist features — all of which contribute to higher retention and lifetime value.
Start a 14-day free trial to see how a unified retention stack can replace multiple single-purpose tools and help scale repeat purchases. (Hard CTA)
If the primary aim is to reduce the overhead of managing several single-purpose apps while unlocking coordinated retention programs that drive LTV, review the platform’s pricing and available plans to find the best fit: consolidate retention features. For a quick way to test installation or read more about shop-ready integration options, consider installing from the Shopify App Store.
Growave’s product pages provide detail on specific capabilities — such as building loyalty and rewards that drive repeat purchases and how to collect and showcase authentic reviews — and showcase customer examples to help merchants visualize how consolidation works in practice. For merchants on larger plans or Shopify Plus, review enterprise-specific capabilities and integrations for headless or advanced checkout needs on the platform’s enterprise page: solutions for high-growth Plus brands.
FAQs
Which app has a higher user rating and what does that mean?
Ultimate Wishlist lists a 4.9 rating from 34 reviews, while K Wish List‑Advanced Wishlist has a 4.7 rating from 81 reviews. The slightly higher rating for Ultimate Wishlist suggests very strong satisfaction among users, but K Wish List’s larger review base indicates broader adoption. Ratings are useful signals but should be combined with feature checks and trial installs for a final decision.
Can either app replace a loyalty program or referral engine?
No. Both K Wish List and Ultimate Wishlist are single-purpose tools focused on wishlist workflows. To run loyalty programs or referral campaigns, a separate solution is required. Merchants wanting fewer apps should evaluate integrated platforms that combine wishlist functionality with loyalty, referrals, and reviews.
How does an all-in-one platform compare to specialized apps like these?
An integrated platform consolidates retention features (loyalty, wishlist, referrals, reviews) into one suite, reducing tool sprawl and centralizing customer data. This makes coordinated campaigns easier, reduces performance overhead from multiple scripts, and can offer better value for money versus subscribing to multiple single-purpose apps.
If a store is seeing high wishlist activity, which app scales better?
Ultimate Wishlist provides explicit monthly item and email reminder quotas across plans, which offers predictable scaling. K Wish List’s pricing suggests a lightweight model; merchants experiencing high wishlist volume should confirm usage caps and discuss enterprise options with the developer. For very high volume or cross-program coordination (e.g., rewarding wishlist actions), an integrated platform may offer better long-term scalability.








