Swish (formerly Wishlist King) vs. Cupid ‑ Social Wishlist: An In-Depth Comparison

Introduction

Shopify merchants face a common decision: pick a focused tool that solves one problem well, or invest in a broader platform that reduces the number of apps to manage. Wishlist apps sit at the crossroads of conversion optimization and post‑purchase engagement, so choosing the right one affects site speed, customer experience, and long‑term retention.

Short answer: Swish (formerly Wishlist King) is a strong pick for merchants who want a full‑featured, enterprise‑ready wishlist with hands‑on setup and proven customer satisfaction. Cupid ‑ Social Wishlist is tailored to teams emphasizing headless performance and social sharing, but the lack of public reviews increases implementation risk. For merchants tired of stacking single‑purpose apps, Growave offers an integrated retention stack that reduces tool sprawl while combining wishlists with loyalty, reviews, referrals, and VIP tiers.

This post provides a feature‑by‑feature comparison of Swish and Cupid, evaluates pricing and technical tradeoffs, and outlines which merchants each app suits best. After the comparison, the article explains the limits of single‑function apps and presents an alternative approach to improve lifetime value and retention without adding more integrations.

Swish (formerly Wishlist King) vs. Cupid ‑ Social Wishlist: At a Glance

Feature Comparison

Product Discovery and Wishlist Behavior

Swish: Rich wishlist interactions

Swish positions itself as a full‑featured wishlist system designed to keep shoppers engaged throughout long, non‑linear shopping journeys. It supports unlimited wishlists and saved items, enabling shoppers to save across sessions and devices. Key behaviors include item saving from catalog or PDP, wishlist curation and analytics, and automated notifications to reengage shoppers at the optimal moment.

Benefits:

• Shoppers can maintain long‑term wishlists that inform personalization and back‑in‑stock or price drop messaging.
• The ability to curate wishlists allows merchants to identify top demand items and plan promotions.

Considerations:

• Full feature sets often require merchants to decide which workflows to activate to avoid clutter.
• Advanced automation requires configuration to avoid overnotifying customers.

Cupid: Focus on shareability and multiple wishlists

Cupid emphasizes social functionality: saving to one or many wishlists and sharing them with friends. It explicitly supports recipients purchasing on behalf of a user, which suits gifting use cases. Cupid’s product messaging stresses minimal frontend impact and headless friendliness.

Benefits:

• Multiple wishlists enable shoppers to organize preferences by event or recipient.
• Social sharing and the ability for third parties to purchase from shared lists create strong gifting usability.

Considerations:

• If a merchant’s priority is data‑driven reengagement (e.g., automated segmented wishlist emails), Cupid’s public feature set is less explicit on automation capabilities compared with Swish.

Notifications, Automation, and Conversion Tactics

Swish: Personalized and automated notifications

Swish highlights automated and highly personalized wishlist notifications as a core revenue driver. Integration with email and ad platforms (Klaviyo, Meta) allows merchants to trigger targeted messages such as back‑in‑stock, price drop, or reminder sequences. The app’s analytics and wishlist curation data help tailor these automations.

Why it matters:

• Timely, relevant notifications can convert passive interest into purchases and meaningfully increase average order value (AOV).
• Out‑of‑the‑box integrations reduce the engineering time needed to stitch wishlist events into email flows and ad audiences.

Cupid: Less emphasis on automation, more on sharing

Cupid’s public description focuses on sharing and pagespeed. While it lists dashboard metrics in the Base plan, the emphasis is less on automated lifecycle messaging. Merchants relying on wishlist automation may need to build custom flows or verify available triggers and event payloads.

Why it matters:

• Automation is a lever for converting saved intent; lacking native automations increases manual work or dependence on third‑party automation engineering.

Analytics and Insights

Swish: Advanced analytics and wishlist curation

Swish advertises advanced analytics and curation tools, which can surface wishlist trends, high‑demand SKUs, and shopper behavior. This supports merchandising decisions and targeted retargeting.

Capabilities users can expect:

• Aggregated wishlist data for best‑saved products.
• Segmentation opportunities (e.g., customers who saved but never purchased).
• Export or integration options for external BI and marketing tools.

Cupid: Dashboard metrics, lighter analytics

Cupid includes dashboard metrics in the Base plan, which covers basic reporting. For merchants who need deep behavioral analytics or rich segmentation, further confirmation of available exports and event streams is necessary.

Practical implication:

• Swish is likely to provide more out‑of‑the‑box insights; Cupid is oriented toward minimalism and speed.

Performance & Headless Compatibility

Cupid: Pagespeed friendly, No External JS

Cupid emphasizes being headless friendly and avoiding external JavaScript, which can meaningfully improve perceived page speed and Core Web Vitals. For merchants prioritizing front‑end performance, especially those on headless stacks or prioritizing mobile experience, Cupid’s architecture is attractive.

Real‑world impact:

• Lower script payloads reduce render‑blocking risks and improve lighthouse scores.
• Headless friendliness allows easier integration into custom frontends (e.g., Hydrogen, Next.js).

Swish: Integrates with themes and supports headless stacks

Swish claims compatibility with all themes and provides Hydrogen & headless options on Plus plans. The app balances feature depth with compatibility. However, full functionality (analytics, notifications) can introduce additional scripts or event hooks that require performance testing.

Real‑world impact:

• Merchants should test the app on staging to measure actual site performance impact and configure lazy loading or conditional scripts if necessary.

Integrations and Ecosystem Fit

Shared integrations: Klaviyo

Both apps list Klaviyo support, which is critical for building automated email flows triggered by wishlist events.

Why it matters:

• Klaviyo integration is a practical requirement for automated lifecycle campaigns tied to wishlist behavior.

Swish: Broader out‑of‑the‑box integrations

Swish explicitly lists GA4 and Meta integrations, which helps form ad audiences and web analytics without additional engineering effort. Plus plans include Hydrogen and headless stack support, along with checkout compatibility.

Business benefit:

• Streamlined integrations reduce developer time and enable marketing teams to act on wishlist data quickly.

Cupid: Focused set of integrations

Cupid lists Klaviyo and Mercury. Its headless approach suggests merchants building custom integrations may still do so, but the default integration surface is narrower.

Business impact:

• Merchants requiring wide integration compatibility should validate fit before committing.

Setup, Support, and Onboarding

Swish: Free setup across plans, white glove for Plus

Swish offers free setup and customization on all plans, with enhanced white glove onboarding and a dedicated account manager for Shopify Plus merchants. A high rating (5.0 from 272 reviews) signals reliable support and positive customer experiences.

Why it matters:

• Free setup lowers friction for teams without internal development resources.
• Dedicated support is valuable for fast, high‑priority rollouts and customizations.

Cupid: Free setup on Pro, unclear support history

Cupid offers free setup and installation on the Pro plan, but public evidence of support responsiveness or long‑term reliability is limited—there are no listed reviews to quantify customer experience.

Why it matters:

• Lack of reviews increases uncertainty; merchants should request references or confirm SLAs before a large rollout.

Pricing & Value

Published plan comparison

Swish pricing is structured by Shopify plan:

• Basic Shopify: $19 / month — includes all features, free setup, unlimited wishlists & saved items.
• Shopify: $29 / month — same feature parity.
• Advanced Shopify: $49 / month.
• Shopify Plus: $99 / month — adds white glove onboarding, priority support, dedicated account manager, and headless/Hydrogen capabilities.

Cupid pricing as listed:

• Base: $25 / month — 14‑day free trial, unlimited wishlists, Klaviyo integration, dashboard metrics, GDPR compliance.
• Pro: $50 / month — adds wishlist sharing by email, free setup and installation, unlimited wishlists.

Value analysis

Swish demonstrates value for merchants who require robust integrations and white‑glove onboarding at scale. Its lower entry price ($19) versus Cupid’s $25 base suggests better value for stores still on Basic Shopify that need full features and setup support without an elevated monthly bill. For Shopify Plus merchants requiring dedicated support and headless features, Swish’s Plus tier is explicitly positioned to meet those demands.

Cupid’s value proposition centers on performance and social wishlist behaviors. For merchants who care more about pagespeed and headless integration than deep automation or curated analytics, Cupid’s plans may represent better alignment—even if the price sits slightly higher for the Base tier.

Practical considerations:

• If onboarding resources are limited, Swish’s free setup across plans is a meaningful cost and time saver.
• If site performance and low script footprint are critical, Cupid’s No External JS claim may save conversion losses related to slow pages.

Hidden costs to consider

Both apps may present indirect costs that affect the total value:

• Engineering hours required to customize or integrate event data into marketing stacks.
• Potential revenue lost while testing or rolling back a wishlist solution that negatively impacts site speed or UX.
• Opportunity cost of managing multiple single‑purpose apps instead of a unified retention platform.

Security, Privacy, and Compliance

GDPR and data handling

Cupid explicitly lists GDPR compliance in Base plan details, which is important for merchants serving EU customers. Swish does not call out GDPR in the provided data, although platform integrations like Klaviyo and GA4 imply standard data flows.

Recommendation:

• Merchants should request data processing agreements (DPAs) and confirm cookie and consent handling before installing either app.

Checkout and customer account security

Swish notes compatibility with Checkout and Customer Accounts, which implies tight integration for authenticated wishlist persistence. For merchant environments that use stored customer data to personalize outreach, verify how wishlist events are associated with customer profiles and how long data is retained.

Implementation Risk and Support Signals

Swish: Proven track record

Swish’s 272 reviews and a perfect 5.0 rating indicate strong satisfaction, likely reflecting reliable support and predictable feature delivery. This level of social proof reduces risk for merchants who prefer predictable outcomes.

Cupid: Unknown public feedback

Cupid shows zero reviews and a zero rating in the available dataset. That absence of public feedback increases uncertainty—quality, responsiveness, and long‑term maintenance are harder to validate. For risk‑averse merchants, this is a crucial factor.

Practical advice:

• When a product lacks public reviews, ask for case studies, reference calls, and a clear SLA for bugs and data issues.
• Plan a staged rollout and monitor site metrics and customer feedback closely.

Ideal Use Cases by Merchant Type

Who should choose Swish

• Growing brands that want a feature‑rich wishlist, advanced analytics, and out‑of‑the‑box integrations with Klaviyo, GA4, and Meta.
• Merchants that prefer included setup and onboarding to minimize internal development.
• Shopify Plus teams needing white glove support and dedicated account management.
• Teams that value a vendor with proven social proof and documented customer satisfaction.

Who should consider Cupid

• Merchants prioritizing front‑end performance and headless implementations where minimal JS is required.
• Stores where gifting and social wishlist sharing are central to the customer experience.
• Teams capable of verifying the app’s support responsiveness and willing to accept some integration work in exchange for a lighter frontend footprint.

Who might want a different approach

• Merchants seeking consolidated retention strategies (loyalty, reviews, referrals, wishlists) without integrating multiple apps.
• Stores that want to reduce overhead from multiple scripts, billing lines, and integration maintenance.
• Organizations that prefer a single dashboard for customer retention and lifetime value optimization.

Integration Considerations and Technical Checklist

Before selecting either app, merchants should evaluate these technical points:

• Confirm event exposure: Can wishlist add/remove events be exported to analytics and automation platforms (Klaviyo, GA4) in real time?
• Performance testing: Measure Core Web Vitals before and after installation on a staging environment.
• Data ownership: Who owns wishlist data, and can it be exported in a consumable format?
• Theme compatibility: Test on current themes and custom components to verify UI alignment.
• Headless requirements: If using Hydrogen or a custom frontend, confirm available SDKs or APIs and request sample code.
• Support SLAs: Clarify response times, bug escalation paths, and availability during peak times like promotions.

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

A wishlist app's monthly fee is only part of the cost. Include:

• Developer time to implement, test, and customize.
• Time for marketers to build and monitor automations and audiences.
• Potential conversion changes if site performance is impacted.
• Billing complexity and management when multiple single‑purpose apps are used.

Swish reduces some of these costs through free setup and stronger integration coverage, potentially lowering developer time. Cupid reduces potential performance‑related losses but may not eliminate the need for additional tools (e.g., loyalty or reviews), which compounds TCO over time.

Migration and Exit Considerations

• Export functionality: Determine how wishlists and saved items can be exported if switching apps.
• Data continuity: Confirm that saved items map to SKUs and customer accounts in exported formats.
• Client communications: Plan communications for active wishlisters if shifting to a new system to avoid confusion or lost intent.

Both installations should be evaluated for their ability to provide a clean data export and migration path.

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

Many merchants experience "app fatigue": the operational overhead, billing friction, and integration complexity that come from maintaining multiple single‑purpose apps. Wishlists are often only one part of a retention program that also needs loyalty, referrals, reviews, and VIP tiers. Adding separate apps for each capability increases points of failure, slows time to insight, and complicates the customer experience.

An alternative approach is a unified retention platform that combines wishlist functionality with loyalty and review systems. This reduces the number of vendor relationships, lowers integration work, and centralizes customer data for coherent lifecycle strategies.

Growave’s philosophy, "More Growth, Less Stack," is built around this idea. By consolidating multiple retention tools into a single suite, merchants can manage wishlists alongside loyalty programs, referral campaigns, and review collection in a unified environment. That reduces duplication of data flows and simplifies marketing automation.

• To evaluate the financial tradeoffs and compare plans for consolidation, merchants can explore options to consolidate retention features.
• For teams that want to understand how loyalty programs can increase repeat purchases, Growave offers resources on loyalty and rewards that drive repeat purchases. This helps illustrate why combining wishlists with point‑based incentives often increases conversion of saved items.
• For social proof and product credibility, Growave includes tools to collect and showcase authentic reviews, allowing wishlists to feed into review campaigns and user‑generated content strategies.

Growave combines wishlist, loyalty & rewards, referrals, reviews & UGC, and VIP tiers into a single platform. That integration makes it easier to:

• Turn wishlist actions into custom reward triggers (e.g., points for saving items).
• Use referral incentives to drive wishlist sharing and gifting behaviors.
• Leverage review prompts based on wishlist or purchase activity.

For merchants who need to validate the fit with specific technical constraints, the platform offers dedicated plans and support for enterprise needs, including headless and Shopify Plus capabilities. Merchants can review options to reduce tool sprawl and view pricing tiers or choose to install from the Shopify App Store if they prefer testing via the app marketplace.

Book a personalized demo to see how an integrated retention stack improves retention and simplifies operations: book a personalized demo.

How consolidating features reduces implementation risk

When wishlist events, loyalty points, referrals, and reviews live in the same platform, event schemas are consistent and cross‑feature triggers are native. That lowers the need for custom middleware and reduces breakage when APIs or tracking requirements change.

Benefits of consolidation:

• Faster time to value: fewer integrations to build and test.
• Single billing and vendor relationship management.
• Unified reporting that ties wishlist saves to reward redemption and lifetime value.

Examples of integrated flows that single apps struggle to replicate without custom work

• Rewarding customers with points when they create or share a wishlist, automating incentives for social behavior.
• Automatically inviting customers who saved products but didn’t buy to a loyalty campaign with a welcome points package.
• Triggering review requests after a wishlist item becomes a purchase, consolidating UGC collection.

These cross‑feature flows are easier to architect within a single platform where wishlist events are first‑class data.

Technical and enterprise capabilities

Growave supports enterprise needs including headless architectures and Plus stores, with plans that offer API and SDK access, checkout extensions, and dedicated support. For merchants evaluating enterprise readiness, explore how consolidation affects implementation time and request materials to validate engineering requirements. Merchants can compare pricing and plans to understand which tier matches order volume and integration needs.

Learn from others

Merchants looking for real‑world context can view customer stories from brands scaling retention to understand how consolidating retention tools influenced conversions and loyalty.

Why loyalty and reviews matter alongside wishlists

• Loyalty programs increase repeat purchases by rewarding desired customer behaviors. See how integrated loyalty and rewards that drive repeat purchases can convert saved intent into returning customers.
• Product reviews and UGC build social proof on product pages and across marketing channels. Tools to collect and showcase authentic reviews amplify the impact of wishlists that highlight popular items.

Migration Path: From Single Apps to a Unified Stack

Recommended steps for merchants moving from single‑purpose wishlist apps to a consolidated platform:

• Inventory current apps and identify overlapping functionality.
• Export wishlist and customer data; validate schema compatibility.
• Plan a staged migration with a pilot segment (e.g., 10% of audience).
• Map wishlist events to desired loyalty and automation triggers.
• Test performance and customer flows in a staging environment.
• Communicate changes to customers with clear messaging around enhanced features (e.g., rewards for saved items, easier gift purchasing).

Consolidation reduces long‑term maintenance and improves the ability to iterate on retention strategies without coordinating across multiple vendors.

Conclusion

For merchants choosing between Swish (formerly Wishlist King) and Cupid ‑ Social Wishlist, the decision comes down to priorities. Swish is ideal for brands that want a robust wishlist with advanced analytics, free setup, and proven customer satisfaction—particularly for teams that rely on Klaviyo, GA4, and Meta integrations or need Plus‑level support. Cupid fits stores that prioritize frontend performance and headless implementations, with social sharing and multiple wishlists as core requirements; however, the absence of public reviews increases implementation risk.

Beyond choosing between two single‑purpose wishlist apps, merchants should consider the benefits of an integrated retention approach that combines wishlists with loyalty, referrals, reviews, and VIP tiers. Consolidating these capabilities reduces tool sprawl, streamlines integrations, and enables cross‑feature automation that single apps struggle to coordinate.

Start a 14‑day free trial to explore how an integrated retention stack can reduce the number of apps while improving retention and lifetime value: reduce tool sprawl and view pricing plans.

FAQ

What is the main difference between Swish and Cupid?

• Swish focuses on a comprehensive wishlist experience with analytics, automated notifications, and broad integrations, backed by a strong track record of customer reviews. Cupid prioritizes performance and sharing features, emphasizing headless friendliness and minimal frontend impact. Choice depends on whether the priority is automation and integrations (Swish) or pagespeed and shareability (Cupid).

How do Swish and Cupid compare on support and onboarding?

• Swish includes free setup across plans and offers white glove onboarding plus a dedicated account manager for Shopify Plus, with a substantial review base indicating positive experiences. Cupid offers free setup on the Pro tier, but public review data is absent, so merchants should request references and clarify SLAs.

Can wishlist apps replace loyalty and reviews?

• Individual wishlist apps handle intent capture and sharing well, but they do not replace the strategic value of loyalty programs and reviews. Combining wishlists with rewards and review collection amplifies conversion and retention. Merchants seeking that combination should evaluate integrated platforms that reduce multiple installations and unify customer data.

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

• An all‑in‑one platform reduces integration overhead, centralizes data, and enables native cross‑feature automations (for example, converting saved items into loyalty triggers). Specialized apps often excel at a single function but increase the number of integrations, billing lines, and potential points of failure. For merchants aiming to grow repeat purchases and simplify operations, consolidation can offer better long‑term value.