Smart Wishlist vs. Likely ‑ Like Me Button: An In-Depth Comparison

Introduction

Choosing the right app for customer engagement and retention is a frequent and costly decision for Shopify merchants. Single-feature apps can be quick wins, but they also add maintenance, theme complexity, and recurring costs. This comparison looks closely at two focused tools—Smart Wishlist and Likely ‑ Like Me Button—to help merchants pick the right fit for their current goals and long-term growth.

Short answer: Smart Wishlist is a solid, no-friction wishlist tool for merchants who want a straightforward “save-for-later” experience with shareable lists and guest support. Likely ‑ Like Me Button is a lightweight social-proof tool that surfaces product popularity with a like button and simple reports. For merchants aiming to reduce app sprawl and unlock multi-channel retention, an integrated retention platform like Growave offers better value for money and broader functionality across loyalty, referrals, reviews, and wishlist.

This post provides a feature-by-feature, evidence-based comparison of Smart Wishlist and Likely ‑ Like Me Button across functionality, user experience, integrations, pricing, support, and practical use cases. The goal is to clarify which app is best for specific merchant needs—and when it makes sense to consider an integrated alternative.

Smart Wishlist vs. Likely ‑ Like Me Button: At a Glance

Deep Dive Comparison

Core Purpose and Value Proposition

Smart Wishlist: Purpose and positioning

Smart Wishlist aims to convert window shoppers into buyers by giving customers a fast and familiar way to save products. It emphasizes one-click saving, guest support (no login required), shareable lists, and a lightweight implementation that promises not to break themes on uninstall. The product positions itself as a next-generation wishlist with a focus on speed, reliability, and ease of setup.

Strengths in positioning:

• Clear focus on wishlists as a conversion and retention mechanism.
• Guest wishlist capability reduces friction for first-time visitors.
• Shareable lists support gifting and social discovery.

Potential gaps:

• Single-purpose app; merchants need additional tools for loyalty, referrals, and reviews.
• Limited visibility into advanced analytics unless merchants integrate via APIs.

Likely ‑ Like Me Button: Purpose and positioning

Likely targets merchants looking to add a like button to product pages for social proof and increased engagement. It promises a straightforward setup, customizable icons and colors, and reports that surface the most-liked products. The aim is to influence purchase decisions through visible signals of popularity.

Strengths in positioning:

• Social-proof-focused; easy way to highlight popular items.
• Customization for look-and-feel aligns with store branding.
• Exportable like counts for quick reporting.

Potential gaps:

• Also a single-purpose app; lacks wishlist depth (saved lists, sharing).
• Limited integrations; analytics and loyalty tie-ins require additional tools.

Feature Comparison

Wishlist vs. Like Button — What each does

• Smart Wishlist enables customers to save items to one or multiple wishlists, share lists, and use the feature even without creating an account.
• Likely adds a like button that increments a visibility metric for products and provides simple reports about which SKUs collect the most likes.

Both tools aim to influence purchasing behavior, but they act at different stages:

• Smart Wishlist helps retain interest and supports future conversion by creating a persistent list the customer can revisit.
• Likely leverages social proof to speed up the decision-making process in-session by highlighting popularity.

Feature-by-feature breakdown

Smart Wishlist (notable features)

• Wishlist button placement: product pages, collection pages, search results, cart pages.
• Guest and logged-in user support.
• Shareable lists (email or URL).
• Unlimited wishlists per store.
• JavaScript and REST APIs for developers.
• Lightweight payload; theme-safe uninstall.

Likely ‑ Like Me Button (notable features)

• Like button on product pages and featured products.
• Customizable icons and colors to match brand style.
• Reports: most-liked products and total like counts.
• Export functionality for like data.
• Simple installation and unlimited likes even on starter plan.

Customization and on-site UX

Smart Wishlist:

• Appears across multiple locations (product, collection, search, cart) for high discoverability.
• Guest wishlist is a key UX advantage—removes account creation barrier.
• Shareable lists enable gifting workflows or social discovery.

Likely:

• Customizable iconography and colors provide good brand fit.
• Limited placement options focused on product-level visibility.
• The UX is simple: click to like; visual count updates add social proof.

Which offers deeper UI control?

• Likely offers straightforward visual customization for the button itself.
• Smart Wishlist provides broader placement flexibility and functionality around saved lists, but may require developer work to fully style or to integrate advanced features via APIs.

Developer access and extensibility

Smart Wishlist:

• Exposes JavaScript hooks and a REST API, enabling custom integrations (e.g., syncing wishlists with email platforms or CRM).
• Better for teams that want to programmatically handle wishlist data.

Likely:

• Focused on surface-level functionality with reporting and export options.
• Less emphasis on API-first integration; suited for merchants who do not need deep programmatic control.

Analytics and reporting

Smart Wishlist:

• Native insights are typically around wishlist saves and shares.
• APIs enable exporting data to BI tools or marketing platforms for richer analysis.
• Without integration, reporting may be basic.

Likely:

• Provides real-time reports and exportable CSV of like counts and product names—useful for merchandising decisions.
• Good for quick, product-level popularity checks.

Which is better for intelligent merchandising?

• Likely gives fast signals for "what's popular" without complex setup.
• Smart Wishlist, with API access, can provide richer behavioral data when combined with analytics tools.

Performance, Theme Impact, and Reliability

Payload and theme safety

Smart Wishlist advertises a lightweight payload and claims the app won't break themes on uninstall. For merchants worried about site speed and post-uninstall residues, this is an important point. Lightweight scripts reduce the risk of slowing page load times and help preserve Core Web Vitals.

Likely positions itself as simple and lightweight as well, with minimal footprint centered on a small script to render the like button. Likely's smaller scope often translates into lower performance risk.

Practical difference:

• Smart Wishlist may add more DOM elements and scripts (because of multiple placements and shareable list UIs), but the vendor claims a lightweight approach.
• Likely’s narrower scope typically makes it slightly less risky for page speed.

Reliability and edge cases

Both apps promise simple installs and straightforward operation. Smart Wishlist's guest-mode and shareable lists introduce more potential edge cases (duplicate lists, device sync issues), which may require troubleshooting. Likely’s single interaction (a click) has fewer moving parts.

Integrations and Ecosystem

What integrations are available

Smart Wishlist lists integrations with SendGrid and ShareThis, which can help with sharing and email workflows but leave gaps for full-service marketing automation.

Likely has no listed third-party integrations in the provided data; its export feature is a manual route for pushing engagement data into BI or marketing platforms.

Integration implications:

• If a merchant uses Klaviyo, Omnisend, Recharge, Gorgias, or other retention tools, neither Smart Wishlist nor Likely provides deep, out-of-the-box connectors (from available data). That means additional work to sync behavioral events into the merchant’s marketing stack.

How integration needs affect decision-making:

• Merchants with advanced marketing stacks will prefer apps that offer APIs or integrations.
• Smart Wishlist is more extensible via APIs, making it more suitable where data capture and automation are priorities.

Pricing and Value for Money

Price comparison

• Smart Wishlist: Standard plan at $4.99 / month.
• Likely ‑ Like Me Button: Starter plan $1.99 / month; Basic plan $2.99 / month.

Both apps are low-cost and targeted at merchants who want single-feature solutions without large recurring fees. Pricing here is straightforward and predictable.

Analyzing value for money:

• Likely is the lower-cost option, suitable for merchants who only want to introduce social-proof with minimal spend.
• Smart Wishlist costs a little more but offers deeper functionality (shareable lists, guest mode, multiple placements).

Consider total cost of ownership:

• Adding single-purpose apps across wishlist, reviews, referrals, and loyalty can quickly exceed the cost of a unified platform.
• For merchants planning growth, the cumulative monthly cost and maintenance of multiple single-function apps may create friction and inefficiency.

Which app gives better short-term ROI?

• For a merchant who needs a single quick lift (e.g., highlight popular products), Likely offers better immediate ROI because of low cost and instant social-proof.
• For retention and gift-season strategies, Smart Wishlist can generate stronger mid-term ROI through saved lists and shareability.

Support, Reviews, and Trust Signals

Ratings and reviews

• Smart Wishlist: 81 reviews, 3.6 rating.
• Likely ‑ Like Me Button: 10 reviews, 3.6 rating.

Both apps have similar average ratings, though Smart Wishlist has significantly more reviews. Higher review count often signals greater adoption and a larger base of merchants providing feedback, which can translate into more mature support processes and product stability—but not always.

Interpreting these metrics:

• Smart Wishlist’s 81 reviews provide more datapoints for reliability and feature trends. A 3.6 average suggests a mix of positive and constructive feedback.
• Likely’s smaller review sample (10 reviews) can be less statistically representative. A 3.6 rating with few reviews may be prone to volatility.

Support options

• Smart Wishlist claims easy setup and no coding required. Developer APIs imply availability for more advanced assistance.
• Likely advertises priority support on its Basic plan; otherwise, support level appears standard.

What merchants should expect:

• Small single-purpose apps often provide email-based support; response times and quality vary.
• For mission-critical flows (checkout behaviors, loyalty extensions), merchants may prefer vendors that offer faster support SLAs or a customer success contact—elements more typical of larger, integrated platforms.

Security, Data Ownership, and Privacy

Data captured by these apps—wishlist items, likes, and possibly email addresses for shares—can be valuable. Both apps should comply with Shopify app security guidelines and support merchants’ GDPR/CCPA obligations by providing access to and deletion of data.

Key considerations:

• Confirm how user data (guest wishlists, likes) is stored and whether it can be exported or deleted on demand.
• Verify that both apps support secure transmission (HTTPS) and adhere to Shopify API access scopes and best practices.
• If sensitive customer behavior is used for segmentation, ensure the merchant has control over data retention and export.

Use Cases and Merchant Profiles

Which merchants should choose Smart Wishlist?

• Small to mid-size stores that want a polished wishlist experience without login friction.
• Stores that sell gifts or high-consideration items where customers save items to revisit (jewelry, fashion, home décor).
• Merchants who plan to sync wishlist behavior into email flows or marketing tools via REST APIs.
• Brands that value shareability for social or gifting use cases.

Why Smart Wishlist fits these merchants:

• Guest support and shareable lists lower friction and enable referral-like behaviors without adding a separate referral app.
• API access allows merchants to integrate events into lifecycle marketing campaigns.

Which merchants should choose Likely ‑ Like Me Button?

• Merchants who want a low-cost, low-maintenance way to show product popularity and increase in-session conversion.
• Stores with high SKU volume that want to surface trending items quickly in merchandising dashboards.
• Brands with limited technical resources that need an out-of-the-box visual cue for social proof.

Why Likely fits these merchants:

• Minimal setup and low monthly cost are attractive for experimentation or A/B testing.
• The exportable like counts help merchandising teams prioritize assortments.

When neither single-purpose app is ideal

• Merchants that need a full retention stack—loyalty programs, referral tracking, reviews collection, wishlists, VIP tiers—will find both apps limited. Siloed apps increase complexity and can lead to inconsistent customer experiences.

Implementation Considerations and Best Practices

How to measure success for each app

Smart Wishlist:

• Track number of wishlist saves, share events, and conversion rate from wishlist to purchase.
• Measure average order value (AOV) for purchases originating from wishlists.
• Monitor abandoned wishlist reminders (if used) and recovery rates.

Likely:

• Track likes per product, conversion rate lift on products with high like counts, and session-level behaves when like counts are visible.
• Use exported like counts to adjust merchandising and promotional priorities.

Practical setup tips

• Test the apps on a staging theme before pushing to live to inspect for script conflicts.
• Review mobile UX carefully—wishlist and like interactions should be thumb-friendly and not obstructive.
• For Smart Wishlist, validate share flows (email, social) to ensure referral tracking or UTM parameters function for analytics accuracy.

Data flow and marketing automation

• Smart Wishlist’s API can send wishlist events to email platforms; set up automated flows that target customers who saved items but did not purchase within X days.
• Likely’s export can be imported to merchandising reports or used to trigger manual promotional campaigns.

Support & Maintenance Over Time

Both apps are designed for low ongoing maintenance. However, single-purpose apps accumulate overhead:

• Each additional app adds more scripts and potential update conflicts when themes or Shopify change.
• Tracking and syncing data across multiple apps increases the chance for lost signals or duplicated campaigns.

Before installing multiple single-purpose apps, consider whether the incremental benefits outweigh the ongoing operational costs.

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

What “app fatigue” looks like for merchants

App fatigue happens when merchants manage many single-purpose apps that individually do small things well but collectively create friction. Symptoms include:

• Multiple monthly invoices and subscription creep.
• Theme bloat and script collisions that affect page speed.
• Fragmented customer data across disparate dashboards.
• More time spent troubleshooting integrations than optimizing marketing.

These problems grow with store scale. Single-purpose apps are valuable for experimentation, but the cost in maintenance, analytics fragmentation, and inconsistent user experiences often becomes a barrier to sustainable growth.

More Growth, Less Stack: The case for consolidation

An integrated retention platform reduces the number of tools needed to run core customer acquisition and retention strategies. The principle is simple: consolidate related retention features—wishlists, loyalty programs, referrals, and reviews—so customer behavior feeds into one system and one dataset.

Consolidation benefits:

• Unified customer profiles for more accurate segmentation and personalization.
• Single vendor support and predictable SLAs.
• Reduced script footprint on storefront and fewer theme conflicts.
• Centralized reporting to measure lifetime value and program impact.

Introducing Growave as an integrated alternative

Growave positions itself as a flexible retention platform combining multiple retention tools into one suite. For merchants evaluating wishlist and social-proof apps, Growave extends those capabilities and adds loyalty, referrals, reviews, and VIP tiers.

Key Growave capabilities relevant to this comparison:

• Wishlist functionality that supports saving, sharing, and integration with loyalty flows.
• Loyalty and rewards to turn wishlist interactions into points and incentives.
• Reviews & UGC for collecting and showcasing authentic customer feedback.
• Referrals to convert share behavior into tracked acquisition.
• Enterprise features for Shopify Plus and multi-language support.

For merchants considering consolidation, Growave’s feature set reduces the need for standalone wishlist or like-button apps by centralizing signals and rewards.

Explore how an integrated stack can reduce tool sprawl and consolidate retention features by checking how Growave organizes plans and features: consolidate retention features.

How Growave addresses the limitations of single-purpose apps

From fragmented signals to unified insights

Instead of wishlists sitting in one app and loyalty events in another, Growave feeds customer behaviors into a single dataset. That enables:

• Rewarding wishlist saves with points that nudge customers to convert.
• Triggering review collection after purchases influenced by wishlist or referral activity.
• Building VIP tiers that reflect combined lifetime actions, not just purchases.

Learn how loyalty and rewards can drive repeat purchases by exploring Growave’s loyalty features: loyalty and rewards that drive repeat purchases.

From theme scripts to one controlled footprint

Growave provides a single, maintained integration to the storefront. That lowers the risk of script collisions and simplifies theme updates or uninstall processes. Merchants benefit from fewer scripts and a coordinated upgrade path when Shopify updates require changes.

From guesswork to actionable reviews and UGC

Collecting and showcasing reviews alongside wishlist and referral signals strengthens credibility and conversion. Rather than using separate review, wishlist, and referral apps, a unified platform surfaces verified UGC and applies it intelligently across product pages and campaigns.

Merchants can see how to collect and showcase authentic feedback here: collect and showcase authentic reviews.

Integrations and enterprise readiness

Growave integrates with common e-commerce tools (recharge, Klaviyo, Omnisend, Gorgias), supports Shopify Plus stores, and provides API/SDK options for headless deployments. For brands scaling into complex flows, these integrations reduce custom development and avoid data silos.

Discover solutions for high-growth merchants and enterprise needs: solutions for high-growth Plus brands.

Pricing and value comparison (consolidation lens)

• Single-purpose apps cost little individually ($1.99–$4.99/mo), but a typical retention stack composed of a wishlist app, a reviews app, a referrals app, and a loyalty app often exceeds the price of a unified platform when combined.
• Growave entry-level plans start at $49/month and include multiple retention modules. For merchants using multiple single-purpose apps, Growave usually represents better value for money once two or more apps are replaced.

Compare Growave plans and features to estimate consolidation savings: compare Growave plans.

Practical migration and adoption notes

• Migrating to an integrated platform typically involves mapping current app events (wishlist saves, likes, referral links) to the new platform's data model.
• Prioritize the highest-value flows first (e.g., wishlist → email automation, reviews → product page UGC).
• Use the vendor’s onboarding resources and customer stories for implementation guidance: customer stories from brands scaling retention.

Book a personalized demo to see how an integrated retention stack improves retention and reduces operational overhead: Book a personalized demo to see how an integrated retention stack improves retention.

Two feature-focused examples of how consolidation helps

• Loyalty-triggered wishlist redemption: Reward customers with points when they save or share an item; allow points to be redeemed for discounts on wishlist items. This links discovery directly to repeat purchase incentives and increases LTV.
• Review-driven merchandising: Surface top-reviewed, most-liked, and wishlist-high items in a dynamic “Trending” collection that updates automatically, using the same dataset.

Both flows are cumbersome with multiple single-purpose apps but straightforward within a consolidated platform.

Supportability and scale

Growave’s higher-tier plans include dedicated launch support and a customer success manager for Plus-level merchants. For teams scaling rapidly, having a single vendor that offers these enterprise services can be crucial to avoid running multiple one-off integrations.

For merchants evaluating Growave’s plans and support levels, see the pricing breakdown and plan features: consolidate retention features.

Implementation Checklist: Choosing Between Single-Feature Apps and an Integrated Platform

Use the checklist below to decide whether to adopt Smart Wishlist, Likely, or an integrated platform like Growave.

Ask these questions before installing:

• Is the primary goal a single metric improvement (e.g., social proof or saved items), or is retention a strategic priority?
• How many apps will be needed to cover loyalty, referrals, reviews, and wishlist needs?
• Is there a requirement for API-level integration with marketing/CRM systems?
• How important are support SLAs and a single point of contact?
• What is the acceptable monthly spend for retention tools once the store scales?

If the answers indicate short-term, low-cost experimentation, Likely or Smart Wishlist can be sensible. If retention is a core growth lever and the store plans to scale, an integrated platform often provides better long-term value.

Conclusion

For merchants choosing between Smart Wishlist and Likely ‑ Like Me Button, the decision comes down to function and scope. Smart Wishlist is the better fit for stores that want a fuller wishlist experience—guest saves, shareable lists, and developer APIs. Likely ‑ Like Me Button is an affordable, low-friction option to add social proof and discover “most liked” items quickly.

However, both tools are single-purpose solutions. As merchants grow, multiple single-function apps can create theme complexity, fragmented customer data, and higher cumulative costs. For teams focused on increasing retention, lifetime value, and a consistent customer experience, a consolidated retention platform is a stronger long-term choice.

Growave offers an alternative that combines wishlist, loyalty and rewards, referrals, reviews, and VIP tiers into one platform—aligning customer signals into a single dataset and reducing app sprawl. Multiple Growave plans make it practical for both growing and enterprise merchants; detailed plan comparisons help merchants evaluate consolidation benefits and projected ROI. Explore Growave’s pricing to see which plan maps to store needs: consolidate retention features.

Start a 14-day free trial to explore Growave’s integrated retention stack and see how reducing the number of standalone apps can improve retention, reduce maintenance overhead, and drive higher LTV: Start a 14-day free trial to explore Growave’s integrated retention stack.

For merchants who prefer to install the app directly via Shopify, Growave is available on the Shopify marketplace for a quick evaluation: install Growave from the Shopify App Store.

FAQ

How do Smart Wishlist and Likely ‑ Like Me Button differ in terms of long-term impact?

Smart Wishlist impacts long-term behavior by enabling saved collections and shareability that can be acted upon later, improving repeat purchase potential. Likely influences immediate in-session decisions through visible popularity signals. Both can move the needle, but wishlist behaviors typically feed more directly into retention and lifetime value.

Which app is easier to set up and maintain?

Likely ‑ Like Me Button has a simpler, more lightweight installation focused on a single interface element, which makes it the easier option for quick deployment. Smart Wishlist also claims a no-code setup but includes more features and potential edge cases to manage, especially for sharing and guest behaviors.

How should a merchant choose between a single-purpose app and an all-in-one solution?

If the objective is to test a single tactic with minimal spend, a single-purpose app is appropriate. If the merchant wants a cohesive retention strategy (loyalty, reviews, referrals, wishlist) with centralized data and lower long-term maintenance overhead, an integrated platform is likely the better value for money.

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

An all-in-one platform consolidates data and features, reducing theme bloat and administrative overhead and enabling cross-feature automation (e.g., reward actions triggered by wishlist saves or referrals). Specialized apps can be less expensive upfront and faster to install for single tactics, but they create integration and reporting work as retention needs expand.