Smart Wishlist vs. First Wish ‑ Wishlist & Boards: An In-Depth Comparison

Introduction

Choosing the right wishlist app can feel like a small decision with outsized consequences. Wishlists influence conversion, recovery, and repeat purchase behavior, but picking a tool that fits a store’s experience, budget, and growth plans is tricky when options range from single-function widgets to full retention suites.

Short answer: Smart Wishlist is a compact, low-friction wishlist built for quick setup and one-click saving—good for merchants who want a lightweight, focused tool. First Wish ‑ Wishlist & Boards targets catalog-heavy stores that want curated boards and basic analytics, but its sparse review history and low rating suggest caution. For merchants who want more than a wishlist—loyalty, referrals, tiering, reviews, and a single source of truth—an integrated retention platform provides better long-term value.

This article compares Smart Wishlist (Webmarked) and First Wish ‑ Wishlist & Boards (Vellir) feature-by-feature, evaluates pricing and support, and helps merchants pick which app fits specific needs. The comparison is data-driven and practical; wherever relevant, the apps’ review counts and ratings are used to signal maturity and reliability.

Smart Wishlist vs. First Wish ‑ Wishlist & Boards: At a Glance

Feature Comparison

Core Functionality

Wishlist capture and user experience

Smart Wishlist emphasizes speed and minimal friction. The selling points are one-click saving and guest access—customers can save items without logging in, which reduces drop-off for casual browsers. The app supports wishlisting directly from product, collection, search result, and cart pages, ensuring capture opportunities across common touchpoints.

First Wish also allows both anonymous visitors and logged-in customers to save items. Its distinctive feature is curated boards: customers can group items into themed lists and share those boards on social platforms or via messaging. For brands that trade on curation (gift registries, wedding registries, seasonal wishlists), this is a differentiator.

Practical implications for merchants:

• If the objective is to capture low-friction intent and turn window shoppers into saved prospects, Smart Wishlist’s one-click model serves that goal.
• If the store wants user-created collections that can be promoted socially or used for gifting, First Wish’s boards are more relevant.

List management, sharing, and social behavior

Both apps support sharing, but the way they encourage social reach differs. Smart Wishlist focuses on shareable lists as a simple extension of saved items. First Wish’s social angle is stronger thanks to curated boards that customers can keep private or publish to social media.

Sharing behavior drives organic discovery and can become a source of referral traffic. Curated boards are more likely to be shared because they tell a shopping story (e.g., “My wedding registry” or “Summer looks”), whereas single-item wishlists are more transactional.

Display, placement, and customization

Smart Wishlist provides hooks across product pages, collections, search results, and the cart. It advertises a lightweight payload and promises to avoid breaking themes upon uninstall—an important claim for merchants who want to avoid technical debt when testing apps.

First Wish’s documentation highlights customizable labels and a dashboard for administrators, but published details about placement and theme compatibility are less explicit. Merchants should confirm on a test store how button placement, styling options, and theme fallback behave before deploying live.

Account sync and cross-device continuity

Smart Wishlist supports guest and logged-in experiences and offers APIs (JavaScript and REST) to meet advanced requirements. First Wish advertises synchronization for logged-in customers across devices, which is essential for mobile-heavy audiences that switch between phone, desktop, and tablet.

Key trade-off:

• Guest-first, one-click models favor immediate intent capture and lower friction.
• Account-sync models favor continuity and, when combined with loyalty and CRM, can power personalized re-engagement.

Analytics, Reporting, and Admin Tools

Neither app is positioned primarily as an analytics platform, but First Wish explicitly includes an admin dashboard with usage metrics and activity reports. That adds basic insights into which products are frequently wishlisted and how customers use boards—helpful for merchandising and promotional planning.

Smart Wishlist focuses more on the customer-facing experience than on providing deep admin metrics. It offers APIs that can be used to forward wishlist events into external analytics systems, but out-of-the-box reporting appears limited in scope.

What this means for merchants:

• Stores that rely on native app metrics for merchandising will find First Wish more useful.
• Stores with established analytics stacks (Klaviyo, Google Analytics, or BI tools) can use Smart Wishlist’s APIs to centralize data.

Performance, Theme Safety, and Uninstall Behavior

Smart Wishlist promotes a lightweight payload and states it "doesn't break your theme upon uninstall." That’s an attractive claim because many merchants experience leftover code or broken UI when uninstalling shop apps.

First Wish does not explicitly advertise uninstall safety in the provided description. Given its small review footprint, merchants should test uninstall behavior in a staging environment to confirm theme integrity.

Performance considerations:

• Any external script increases page load risk. Smart Wishlist’s emphasis on payload size is beneficial for conversion-focused merchants.
• First Wish’s additional UI elements for boards may require more front-end assets; testing performance impact is recommended.

Customization, Extensibility, and Developer Tools

Smart Wishlist provides JavaScript and REST APIs for advanced requirements. That allows developers to integrate wishlist events into custom flows—email automation, personalized pop-ups, and product recommendations.

First Wish’s customization mention focuses on label translation and display options. It’s not clear if it provides the same breadth of APIs, so merchants requiring tight backend integration may favor Smart Wishlist unless First Wish confirms API availability.

Developer trade-offs:

• Smart Wishlist is better suited for merchants who plan to extend wishlist behavior programmatically.
• First Wish may be sufficient for stores that want out-of-the-box boards and basic configuration without heavy custom work.

Integrations and Ecosystem Fit

Smart Wishlist lists SendGrid and ShareThis as works-with partners; its APIs imply the ability to integrate with broader stacks. First Wish doesn’t list third-party integrations in the provided data.

A wishlist’s value increases when wishlist events feed email flows, abandoned wishlist reminders, and personalized recommendations. Merchants should ask either vendor whether they can send wishlist events to ESPs or CDPs natively or via webhook.

Practical integration guidance:

• If a store uses SendGrid and needs a straightforward push, Smart Wishlist may offer faster out-of-the-box compatibility.
• Stores with complex stacks should request API documentation from both vendors to assess integration effort.

Pricing & Value

Pricing is central to deciding which wishlist app fits the budget and growth trajectory.

Smart Wishlist

• Standard: $4.99 / month

First Wish ‑ Wishlist & Boards

• Free: Free tier with 1,000 wishlist adds per month (anonymous & logged-in customers)
• Beginner: $9.90 / month (5,000 adds, unlimited boards, shareable boards)
• Advanced: $19.90 / month (20,000 adds)
• Pro: $29.90 / month (50,000 adds)

Value analysis:

• Smart Wishlist’s single paid tier at $4.99/month is attractive for merchants who just need consistent, low-cost wishlist capture without tier-based limits.
• First Wish’s free tier can be appealing for very small catalogs or pilot projects, but the incrementally higher tiers suggest the app monetizes based on wishlist activity. Merchants with high catalog interaction should model expected wishlist adds to predict monthly costs.

More-than-price considerations:

• For stores expecting rapid growth in wishlist interactions, First Wish’s tiered structure can become a meaningful ongoing cost. It may still be better value if the merchant uses boards extensively and derives measurable sales uplift from social shares.
• Smart Wishlist’s simplicity and low fixed cost can be better value for turnover-focused merchants who do not want plan complexity.

Reliability Signals: Ratings and Review Counts

Marketplace reviews offer a proxy for maturity, reliability, and support responsiveness, though they are imperfect.

Smart Wishlist

• Reviews: 81
• Rating: 3.6 / 5

First Wish ‑ Wishlist & Boards

• Reviews: 1
• Rating: 1.0 / 5

Interpretation:

• Smart Wishlist’s larger review base (81 reviews) suggests it has been tested across many stores and scenarios. A 3.6 rating indicates mixed feedback—there may be feature gaps or support concerns but also many merchants who find it useful.
• First Wish’s single review and 1.0 rating signals limited adoption and a red flag for risk-averse merchants. Low review count reduces confidence in consistent performance, long-term support, and product roadmap.

Recommendation based on reliability:

• Merchants should prefer the app with more user feedback unless First Wish can demonstrate active customer success stories or a stable release cadence. Low review quantity increases the importance of testing on a staging theme.

Support, Documentation, and Onboarding

Smart Wishlist markets itself as "super-easy to setup with no coding required." First Wish likewise emphasizes ease of installation and offers an admin dashboard.

What merchants should verify before installing:

• Response time and availability for support (business hours, email, chat).
• Quality of onboarding documentation and troubleshooting guidance.
• Whether the vendor assists with theme conflicts or offers paid installation services.

Given the review data, Smart Wishlist likely has a more established support channel; however, evaluating response time in pre-sales or trial conversations is recommended for both apps.

Data Ownership, Portability, and Privacy

Wishlist data is behavioral and can be valuable for segmentation and re-engagement campaigns. Merchants must confirm:

• Whether wishlist events can be exported or pushed to external systems.
• How guest wishlists are stored and linked to accounts when customers later create an account.
• Data retention policies and compliance with local privacy laws (e.g., GDPR).

Smart Wishlist’s REST & JS APIs suggest better exportability. First Wish offers account sync and dashboard reporting, but portability details are not explicit in the provided description.

Merchants should request:

• A data export demo.
• API docs or webhook examples.
• Details on how guest-to-account merging is handled.

Use Cases: Which App Suits Which Merchant

• Merchants on a tight budget who only want a fast, low-friction wishlist: Smart Wishlist ($4.99/mo) is a solid, low-overhead choice.
• Brands focused on gift registries, curated collections, or social sharing of style boards: First Wish’s boards feature aligns with that goal—but proceed cautiously given limited reviews.
• Stores that need programmatic control, analytics forwarding, or integration into existing automations: Smart Wishlist’s APIs make it easier to route wishlist events into email or personalization platforms.
• Catalog-heavy merchants who want to analyze wishlist trends natively in the app: First Wish’s admin dashboard provides basic usage metrics without custom tooling, assuming the merchant trusts the app’s stability.

Migration, Testing, and Implementation Tips

• Always test wishlist apps on a staging or unpublished theme before enabling on live stores. Verify button placement across product variants, bundled products, and collection pages.
• Confirm uninstall behavior. Smart Wishlist advertises theme-safe uninstall; still run a removal test in a copy of the storefront to check for leftover snippets.
• If migrating from another wishlist solution, request data export/import guidance from the vendor. API access simplifies importing historical wishlists.
• Tie wishlist events into lifecycle emails. Whether using Smart Wishlist or First Wish, pushing wishlist events into an ESP (Klaviyo, Omnisend) enables abandoned wishlist recovery and personalized prompts.

Pricing Scenarios and Break-Even Considerations

When choosing between a fixed‑fee app and usage-based tiers, build a simple model:

• Estimate monthly wishlist adds (based on traffic x conversion to wishlist).
• Project how wishlisted items convert to purchases and average order value uplift.
• Compare incremental revenue attributable to the wishlist against monthly app cost.

Smart Wishlist’s fixed $4.99 fee simplifies modeling. First Wish’s tiered pricing requires forecasting activity; at higher wishlist volumes, the $19.90 or $29.90 tiers may be justified if boards materially increase orders or average order value through grouped purchases.

Risks and Limitations to Watch

• Single-purpose apps create tool sprawl. Each additional app increases maintenance, potential performance drag, and billing overhead.
• Apps with low review counts (like First Wish) carry adoption risk—support, future feature development, and long-term viability may be uncertain.
• Make sure any wishlist solution can integrate with core marketing tools to avoid manual data exports that create operational bottlenecks.

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

Merchants that rely on multiple single-purpose apps often experience "app fatigue": rising subscription costs, fragmented customer data, increased theme conflicts, and complexity when building cross-functional campaigns. Each point solution—wishlist, reviews, loyalty, referrals—can be valuable alone, but integrating those capabilities across different vendors creates operational friction.

An integrated retention platform reduces that friction by centralizing wishlist behavior, reward mechanics, referral tracking, and review collection. The benefit is not just fewer vendor relationships; it is unified customer profiles, consistent reward logic, and consolidated reporting.

Growave positions itself around the idea of "More Growth, Less Stack" to address precisely these challenges:

• Instead of stitching together separate wishlist, loyalty, and review apps, a store can implement a single platform that includes wishlist capabilities plus loyalty and rewards, referrals, and reviews.
• Centralizing these touchpoints simplifies campaigns: a wishlist event can trigger reward points, send a reminder email, and surface user-generated content in product pages—all without moving data between vendors.

Growave’s suite includes native loyalty and rewards, wishlist functionality, referrals, review collection, and VIP tiers. Merchants can explore growth plans and pricing to determine if consolidating tools reduces total cost and operational overhead while enhancing lifetime value. See how to compare plans and pricing.

Benefits of consolidation

• Data flows natively between modules. Wishlist saves can feed into loyalty triggers and email automations without middleware.
• Fewer scripts on storefront pages, reducing page-weight bloat and theme conflict risk.
• Unified analytics and reporting that attribute retention metrics to campaigns across loyalty, reviews, and wishlist actions.

Growave integrates with common merchant stacks and platforms, so customers can keep their preferred ESP or helpdesk while gaining centralized retention capabilities. For merchants on Shopify Plus or larger stores, the platform provides enterprise-grade support and integrations; learn how this supports scale with solutions for high-growth Plus brands.

For merchants who care about loyalty as a growth lever, Growave enables custom programs and advanced reward actions—useful for increasing repeat purchases and lifetime value. See how merchants build loyalty and rewards that drive repeat purchases.

Authentic social proof is another pillar of retention. Growave’s reviews product helps merchants collect and showcase customer feedback and user-generated content, which amplifies conversion. Merchants can see how to collect and showcase authentic reviews.

If a merchant wants to evaluate how an integrated retention stack works in practice, a guided walkthrough is often more informative than reading feature lists. Book a personalized demo to see how combining wishlist behavior with loyalty and reviews streamlines growth operations and boosts retention.

How Growave addresses the weaknesses of single-purpose wishlist apps

• Single source of truth: Wishlist events live in the same system that manages points and referrals—no manual syncing required.
• Predictable total cost: Instead of paying multiple vendors with separate pricing models, consolidated plans simplify billing and can reduce overall cost-of-ownership. Merchants can compare plans and pricing and choose a tier that aligns with order volume and feature needs.
• Enterprise capability without piecemeal assembly: For stores planning to scale, built-in support for multi-language, headless setups, and checkout extensions means fewer compromises when implementing advanced flows. Explore enterprise support and resources for customer stories from brands scaling retention.
• Better analytics and segmentation: Loyalty activity, wishlist behavior, and reviews feed into a single dashboard, making it easier to measure LTV uplift and run targeted campaigns. See more about how Growave supports loyalty and rewards that drive repeat purchases.

Migration and consolidation considerations

Consolidating to an integrated solution requires planning:

• Inventory which single-purpose apps provide critical value and which modules overlap with the integrated suite.
• Map the data flows you currently rely on—wishlist events, reward histories, review metadata—and confirm migration paths.
• Test the integrated workflows in a staging environment to validate that wishlist-triggered automations behave as expected.

If a merchant prefers a guided approach, expert onboarding and a demo can accelerate the decision and migration process. Book a personalized demo to walk through the migration plan and see a live demonstration tailored to the store’s needs.

Practical scenarios where consolidation wins

• Brands that use wishlist events to retarget customers via email and want to also incent behavior with points (e.g., "Save this item for 50 points"): integrating wishlist and loyalty reduces latency and avoids reliance on external webhooks.
• Stores that collect reviews and want to reward reviewers with points or VIP status: an integrated platform automates reward issuance and reduces reconciliation work.
• High-volume merchants on Shopify Plus that require checkout-level extensions, headless support, and dedicated launch assistance: consolidation reduces build complexity and provides enterprise-grade support.

Comparing Total Cost of Ownership

The cost comparison should look beyond monthly subscription fees and include:

• Developer time for integrations and theme fixes.
• Performance costs tied to additional scripts (impact on conversion).
• Staff time spent reconciling data across platforms.
• Opportunity cost of not having cross-functional campaigns (e.g., linking wishlist saves to a referral mechanic).

An app like Smart Wishlist minimizes subscription cost and technical complexity for the wishlist use case, but every additional single-purpose app a merchant adds increases TCO incrementally. Consolidation with a platform that bundles wishlist, rewards, referrals, and reviews may raise the monthly fee but reduce cumulative costs and deliver strategic upside through higher retention and LTV.

Merchants can evaluate whether the incremental revenue from deeper retention programs offsets the platform price by modeling expected lift in repeat purchase rate and average order value, then comparing that against projected subscription savings and efficiency gains.

Implementation Checklist Before Choosing

• Confirm that the app supports guest wishlisting and account sync as needed for the store’s buyer journey.
• Verify API or webhook capabilities for forwarding wishlist events into marketing automations.
• Test uninstall behavior on a staging theme to check for leftover code or UI issues.
• Request a demo or time-limited trial to simulate real traffic and wishlist volumes.
• Ask for references or case studies if selecting a vendor with few public reviews.

Conclusion

For merchants choosing between Smart Wishlist and First Wish ‑ Wishlist & Boards, the decision comes down to priorities and risk tolerance. Smart Wishlist (Webmarked) is a lightweight, one-click wishlist designed for quick setup and low monthly cost; it benefits merchants who want minimal friction and developer-friendly APIs. First Wish (Vellir) offers curated boards and a dashboard for usage metrics, which suits stores emphasizing social sharing and curation—but its single review and 1.0 rating should prompt careful testing before relying on it for critical flows.

For stores that expect retention and lifetime value to be major growth levers, consolidating wishlist capabilities into a broader retention platform can be a better value-for-money strategy. Growave’s suite combines wishlist functionality with loyalty, referrals, reviews, and VIP tiers—so merchants reduce tool sprawl and centralize customer data. Merchants can evaluate whether consolidation lowers overall cost-of-ownership and improves campaign effectiveness by reviewing plans and features and comparing them to the cumulative cost of multiple single‑purpose apps; see how to compare plans and pricing.

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FAQ

What are the main differences between Smart Wishlist and First Wish ‑ Wishlist & Boards?

• Smart Wishlist focuses on a fast, lightweight wishlist experience with one‑click saves and guest support and provides APIs for custom integrations. First Wish emphasizes curated boards, sharing, and an admin dashboard for usage metrics. Smart Wishlist has broader user feedback (81 reviews, 3.6 rating), while First Wish has very limited public reviews.

Which app is better for social sharing and gift registries?

• First Wish’s curated boards and shareable lists are designed for that use case. However, because of limited reviews, merchants should test board behavior and sharing flows thoroughly before relying on it for core revenue activities.

How do pricing models compare for small vs. growing stores?

• Smart Wishlist is a simple fixed-cost option ($4.99/month), which is predictable for small stores. First Wish offers a free tier and graduated plans that scale with wishlist activity; this can be cost-effective for moderate volumes but could become more expensive as adds grow.

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

• An integrated platform reduces the number of vendors, consolidates data, and enables cross-functional campaigns (e.g., awarding points for wishlist saves, rewarding reviewers). Consolidation can lower total cost-of-ownership and operational friction, and frameworks that include loyalty and reviews alongside wishlist functionality provide more levers to increase LTV. For a deeper look at loyalty-driven retention, explore options for loyalty and rewards that drive repeat purchases.