Swish (formerly Wishlist King) vs Wishlister: In-Depth Comparison

Introduction

Choosing the right wishlist app is a common decision point for Shopify merchants trying to improve conversion, recovery, and long-term customer value. Wishlist tools can increase engagement, capture purchase intent, and feed marketing automation—but not all wishlist apps are equal. Some are full-featured platforms with analytics and integrations; others are lightweight and low-cost. The right choice depends on business size, technical setup, and growth goals.

Short answer: Swish (formerly Wishlist King) is a robust, enterprise-capable wishlist solution with advanced integrations, generous onboarding, and a perfect fit for merchants that need polish, analytics, and headless/Hydrogen support. Wishlister is a minimal, low-cost option for stores that need a simple wishlist with basic sharing and categorization but comes with limited reviews and fewer features. For merchants that want to reduce tool sprawl and buy an integrated retention stack that includes wishlist, loyalty, referrals, and reviews, an all-in-one platform like Growave often offers better value for money and easier long-term growth.

This article compares Swish and Wishlister feature-by-feature, examines pricing and integration differences, and outlines which app suits which merchant profile. After a fair comparison, the piece explains why consolidating several single-purpose tools into one platform can reduce maintenance, improve data cohesion, and increase customer lifetime value.

Swish (formerly Wishlist King) vs. Wishlister: At a Glance

Feature Comparison

This section examines the two apps on the features merchants care about most: core wishlist functionality, customization and UX, notifications and automation, analytics and insight, and the developer/technical capabilities required for larger or headless stores.

Core Wishlist Functionality

Wishlist creation & persistence

Swish supports unlimited wishlists and saved items across sessions and accounts, explicitly advertising persistent saved items and unlimited sessions on every plan. Persistence is critical for converting intent into purchases; customers who can return to a list and resume a journey are more likely to convert.

Wishlister offers the baseline functionality merchants expect: customers can create wishlists, categorize items, and save them securely with user login. That covers the essentials for stores that simply want customers to bookmark products for later.

Practical takeaway: For stores that need robust session persistence and no artificial limits on items or sessions—especially those with higher traffic—Swish is the safer choice. For a micro-store that simply wants a "save for later" button, Wishlister can be adequate.

UX & Customization

Swish emphasizes full customization and theme compatibility. It advertises free setup and customization, and the team positions the product for merchants who care about on-brand wishlist experiences. This includes integration with any theme and options to match the store aesthetic—important for higher-converting merchandising.

Wishlister claims seamless integration with any Shopify store but does not highlight white-glove setup or deeper UI customization. Its focus on category-based lists is useful for shoppers organizing multiple gift or project lists, but stores seeking pixel-perfect theme integration may find limitations.

Practical takeaway: If UX design and brand consistency are important—especially for premium stores—Swish’s customization and onboarding support provide tangible advantages.

Notifications & Automation

Swish supports automated, personalised wishlist notifications, which increase the chance of converting wishlisted items into purchases (price drop, back-in-stock, or abandonment reminders). Integration with Klaviyo and Meta means those notifications can be woven into broader email and retargeting flows.

Wishlister does not emphasise notification automation in its description. Shareability and categorization are its headline benefits rather than proactive re-engagement automation.

Practical takeaway: Automated wishlist notifications are a clear conversion lever. Brands that depend on re-engagement and email flows should prioritise a wishlist solution that integrates with their ESP and supports triggered messages—Swish has an advantage here.

Analytics & Insights

Swish advertises advanced analytics and wishlist curation tools to help merchants understand product demand and wishlist behavior. These features help merchandising and planning, enabling stores to prioritize restock, promotions, or bundling based on wishlists.

Wishlister does not list analytics or deep wishlist reporting as core features. Merchants that rely on data-driven merchandising will find Wishlister limited.

Practical takeaway: For teams that optimise assortments or run frequent promotions, wishlist analytics are a critical capability; Swish is positioned to deliver this out of the box.

Customization, Integrations & Technical Compatibility

Third-Party and Marketing Integrations

Swish lists direct integrations with Klaviyo, GA4 and Meta—three platforms that matter for acquisition and retention workflows. These integrations allow wishlist data to trigger campaigns, feed analytics, and power social retargeting.

Wishlister’s product description does not list specific marketing tools, focusing instead on login-backed lists and sharing. A merchant relying on advanced email segmentation or marketing triggers will likely need extra work to extract wishlist signals.

Practical takeaway: If wishlist events must be present in existing marketing automation and analytics stacks, choose the app with native or documented integrations to reduce engineering work. Swish is the stronger fit.

Headless & Hydrogen Support

Swish advertises Shopify Hydrogen and headless support, with advanced plan features for Shopify Plus customers including Hydrogen & headless stacks and dedicated support. That makes Swish suitable for merchants on progressive storefront architectures.

Wishlister does not advertise headless or Hydrogen compatibility. For merchants using headless technology, confirm compatibility or be prepared for custom development.

Practical takeaway: Headless stores and ambitious frontend stacks are better supported by Swish.

Works With — Compatibility Checklist

Swish lists direct "Works With" compatibility: Checkout, Hydrogen, Markets, Klaviyo, Customer Accounts, Search, Recommendations. This breadth signals the vendor has operationalized wishlist events across the customer journey.

Wishlister lists no "Works With" items in the provided data. Merchants should request integration details and API hooks before choosing it for anything beyond trivial use.

Notifications, Automation & Lifecycle Support

Automated re-engagement paths and lifecycle messaging are high-impact features for wishlist apps. The ability to trigger messages on events such as "item back in stock" or "price drop" translates wishlist intent into sales without manual segmentation.

Swish markets "highly personalised + automated Wishlist notifications"—important in recovering sales and increasing repeat purchases. Those automations combined with Klaviyo integration allow for more sophisticated flows (e.g., a sequence that sends a back-in-stock notice, then a discount near cart abandonment).

Wishlister’s primary value is list management and sharing; it does not emphasise notification automations, which means merchants will need to build their own signals or forego proactive recovery.

Practical takeaway: For merchants who value lifecycle automation (recovering wishlists into sales), Swish provides clear advantages.

Pricing & Value

Pricing decisions should be rooted in incremental revenue and operational cost trade-offs. Price alone is not the only consideration—feature breadth, onboarding, support, and the cost of maintaining multiple tools all factor into true value.

Swish Pricing Overview

Swish offers tiered pricing aligned to Shopify plans:

• Basic Shopify: $19/month — includes all features, free setup, unlimited wishlists & saved items.
• Shopify: $29/month — same features for the Shopify plan.
• Advanced Shopify: $49/month — same features for the Advanced plan.
• Shopify Plus: $99/month — Plus exclusives: free white-glove onboarding, priority support, dedicated account manager, Hydrogen & headless support.

These prices reflect a feature-rich wishlist that uses onboarding and integrations as part of the product value. For merchants with higher cart values or sophisticated retention programs, the monthly investment can be justified by improved conversion and recovery of lost sales.

Wishlister Pricing Overview

Wishlister lists a Basic plan at $2.99/month. No additional tiers are present in the data provided. The low price point makes Wishlister attractive to merchants with very tight budgets or who need only a basic wishlist widget.

However, the low monthly fee likely corresponds to limited features, minimal onboarding, and sparse integrations. The lack of multiple plans also suggests limited enterprise support or advanced features like headless compatibility.

Value for Money Considerations

• For small merchants that want only the simplest wishlist and minimal maintenance cost, Wishlister is attractive as "better value for money" for bare-minimum needs due to its low monthly price.
• For merchants that require scale, integrations with marketing tools, analytics to inform merchandising, and professional onboarding to ensure the wishlist matches the brand, Swish offers more value for money despite its higher monthly price.
• Total cost of ownership matters: adding a second app for notifications or analytics to a cheap wishlist increases the tool count and total monthly fees. In many cases, paying a higher single-app fee for integrated features results in lower total cost and better results.

Practical takeaway: Consider three cost layers—monthly fees, engineering/time for integration, and potential revenue impact. If the wishlist must drive significant revenue and fit into a larger retention engine, Swish’s pricing tends to produce higher ROI for mid-market and enterprise merchants. For a micro-store that simply needs a save button, Wishlister’s $2.99/mo could be the best option.

Scalability & Future-Proofing

Swish’s tiered approach and headless support suggest a product roadmap that scales as the merchant grows, particularly for stores moving to Shopify Plus or headless architectures. The availability of a dedicated account manager at the Plus tier reduces long-term friction.

Wishlister’s single low-cost plan could be limiting for stores that scale up and eventually need better integrations or analytics. Migrating away from a minimal app later creates switching costs and potential customer experience disruptions.

Practical takeaway: Evaluate the likely growth path. If the store will scale and requires stronger retention tools, prioritizing a scalable solution avoids repeated migrations.

Integrations & Technical Support

Integration capability and support responsiveness directly affect implementation time and the quality of the live experience. This section reviews onboarding, documentation, and the ecosystem fit.

Onboarding & Setup

Swish explicitly offers free setup and customisation service across all plans. White-glove onboarding at Plus level and free styling help reduce the time-to-value and avoid design inconsistencies. Free setup is a real differentiator for merchants without strong engineering resources.

Wishlister does not advertise free setup or bespoke onboarding. Merchants may need to install and configure the app themselves, which can be acceptable for simple setups but risky if the theme requires custom coding.

Practical takeaway: Merchants with limited technical resources or those who prefer supported installs should value the onboarding service; Swish provides it.

Support Channels & Responsiveness

Swish provides priority support and a dedicated account manager on higher tiers; this matters for Plus merchants who need SLA-backed responses. Adequate support reduces downtime and keeps wishlist features aligned with marketing campaigns.

Wishlister’s support story is unclear from the provided data. With only two reviews and a low overall rating, prospective customers should proactively ask about SLAs, response times, and support channels before committing.

Practical takeaway: For mission-critical wishlist functionality, confirm support expectations before choosing a lower-cost app.

Developer Friendliness & API Access

For stores using headless frontends or bespoke integrations, API access and developer documentation are essential. Swish advertises headless and Hydrogen compatibility as Plus-tier features, suggesting an API or SDK to integrate wishlist events into non-standard stacks.

Wishlister does not list developer-oriented features; merchants with custom frontends should verify API availability.

Practical takeaway: Confirm API availability early if the store has non-standard architecture.

Implementation Considerations

This section advises on practical implementation choices, migration, and potential pitfalls for both apps.

Time-to-Live & Testing

• Swish: With free setup and customization, an implementation can be faster and better tested. The vendor’s onboarding reduces theme conflicts and edge-case issues.
• Wishlister: Likely faster for a straightforward install, but testing for sharing, logins, and edge cases falls on the merchant.

Recommendation: Allocate dedicated QA time to test wishlist behavior across mobile, customer accounts, guest checkout, and any payment flows that might be impacted by saved items.

Data Ownership & Migration

Merchants should confirm export formats for wishlist data and customer associations before adopting any app. Wishlist data can inform merchandising and retargeting; losing that data during a switch is painful.

• Swish: With analytics features, it is likely to provide exported reports or integrations with analytics tools; confirm export formats and retention policies.
• Wishlister: Confirm whether wishlists are stored in Shopify customer metafields, an external database, or other storage that can be migrated.

Recommendation: Ask vendors for data export samples and retention policies during evaluation.

A/B Testing & Measuring Impact

To estimate ROI, track key metrics before and after installation: wishlist adds, wishlist-conversion rate (percentage of wishlisted items that convert), average order value for orders influenced by wishlist messaging, and incremental revenue from notifications.

Swish, with analytics and direct integrations, makes measurement easier. With Wishlister, measurement may require custom events or manual analyses.

Recommendation: Set up a 30–90 day experiment window with baseline metrics and measure the impact of automated notifications if possible.

Use Cases & Merchant Profiles

No single app is best for every merchant. This section clarifies which app suits which merchant profile.

Best Fit for Swish

• Mid-market to enterprise brands that want wishlist as a growth lever and part of the retention stack.
• Stores using Klaviyo, GA4, or Meta and desiring native wishlist events in those tools.
• Merchants with limited engineering resources who value free setup and white-glove onboarding.
• Stores planning to use headless frontends or Hydrogen where specialized support is required.
• Merchants who want actionable analytics on wishlist behavior to guide merchandising and replenishment.

Why: Swish combines customization, integrations, dedicated onboarding, and reporting. Those features accelerate time-to-value and reduce engineering friction for brands that plan to activate wishlist signals across marketing and analytics.

Best Fit for Wishlister

• Small or micro merchants that need a very low-cost way to offer wishlist capability.
• Stores focused on simple customer convenience (saving items, sharing wishlists with friends) without the need for deep marketing automation.
• Early-stage stores that prioritize minimizing monthly fixed costs above integrated features.

Why: Wishlister delivers basic wishlist functionality at a minimal price. For stores that truly only need a "save for later" widget and social sharing, the simplicity and low cost are compelling.

Performance, Trust Signals & Social Proof

Ratings and review counts are relevant indicators of maturity, user satisfaction, and reliability.

• Swish: 272 reviews with a 5.0 rating. High rating and substantial review volume suggest reliability, consistent performance, and satisfied customers. The volume of reviews also indicates wider adoption.
• Wishlister: 2 reviews with a 2.5 rating. Very low review count and middling rating signal limited adoption and possible user experience or support issues.
• Third-party alternative (for context): Growave shows 1,197 reviews with a 4.8 rating, indicating strong adoption for a broader retention suite.

Practical takeaway: Review volume matters. A single negative incident in a small sample can disproportionately affect an average; a larger review base provides stronger social proof. Merchants should read recent reviews for details on onboarding, support, and stability.

Risks & Considerations

Selecting a wishlist app is not only about immediate features—consider the long-term implications.

• Tool Sprawl: Adding single-purpose apps increases the number of vendors, billing lines, and potential integration points. Over time, maintaining multiple apps raises technical overhead and the risk of conflicts.
• Data Fragmentation: Wishlist events living in separate systems make cohesive customer journeys harder to build. This complicates segmentation and measurement.
• Support Fragmentation: Multiple vendors mean multiple support channels and inconsistent SLAs when issues cross integration boundaries.
• Switching Costs: Migrating wishlist data and reconfiguring automations can require engineering time and cause temporary drop in performance.

These risks are not unique to Swish or Wishlister—they are consequences of single-purpose tooling. This is the context in which integrated platforms provide clear operational advantages.

Migration & Future-Proofing

Merchants should ask both vendors about:

• Data exports and formats (CSV, JSON, or direct exports into a merchant’s data warehouse).
• Webhooks or API access to stream wishlist events into analytics and CRM.
• How wishlists behave with Shopify Customer Accounts and guest sessions.
• The plan for staying compatible with Shopify’s evolving APIs and headless options.

Swish’s explicit hydrogen/headless mention and larger review base suggest a roadmap for compatibility. Wishlister should be asked to confirm its roadmap and integration commitments before adoption.

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

Single-purpose apps like Swish and Wishlister can solve immediate needs, but they often introduce long-term operational friction. This section explains how consolidating features into an integrated retention platform addresses the most common problems merchants face when managing multiple apps.

What Is App Fatigue?

App fatigue is the operational burden that grows as a merchant adds more single-function tools to solve discrete problems. Symptoms include:

• Multiple vendor relationships, each with separate billing and SLAs.
• Fragmented customer data across wishlist, loyalty, reviews, and referral systems.
• Increased complexity for front-end implementation when different apps insert scripts and widgets.
• Longer debugging efforts for issues that span multiple systems (e.g., wishlist event triggers failing to appear in an ESP).
• Rising cumulative monthly fees that add up faster than the benefit each tool delivers.

Addressing app fatigue requires either strict consolidation or significant internal engineering resources to maintain integrations. For many merchants, the pragmatic solution is to evaluate integrated platforms that bundle the key retention capabilities.

Growave: More Growth, Less Stack

Growave positions itself as a unified retention platform combining Loyalty & Rewards, Referrals, Reviews & UGC, Wishlist, and VIP Tiers into one integrated suite. The product is built to help merchants increase repeat purchases, average order value, and lifetime value without adding multiple single-purpose apps.

Key aspects to evaluate in the context of app fatigue:

• Unified customer profile: Wishlist activity, reward balances, referral history, and review submissions live in a single system, making segmentation and automation simpler.
• Native cross-tool workflows: For example, reward points can be awarded for leaving a review, referring a friend, or creating a wishlist—automations that are more complex when stitched across vendors.
• Fewer scripts and integrations: One vendor means fewer injected scripts and a lower risk of front-end conflicts.
• Centralised support and billing: A single account manager at higher tiers reduces administrative overhead.
• Built-in integrations to major marketing tools: For merchants that rely on platforms like Klaviyo or GA4, having wishlist and loyalty signals sent reliably to the ESP simplifies campaign building.

Merchants can compare Growave plans and see whether consolidating features reduces tool sprawl and operational cost by reviewing pricing and plan comparisons. For many merchants, the monthly fee for an integrated platform is offset by the reduced spend on several smaller apps and lower engineering time.

Consolidate retention features into a single plan to simplify billing, integrations, and data flow.

How an Integrated Suite Solves Common Wishlist Pain Points

• Measurement: With wishlist events feeding directly into a single customer profile, measuring wishlist conversion and lifetime impact is straightforward.
• Automation: Cross-functional automations—such as awarding loyalty points for wishlist activity and then using those points in a referral campaign—are native capabilities rather than custom-built integrations.
• Customer Experience: A consistent brand experience across wishlist, reviews, and loyalty features reduces fragmentation and boosts trust.
• Support: When issues involve multiple retention features, one vendor owns the end-to-end experience rather than merchants coordinating between vendors.

Merchants interested in seeing how a consolidated retention stack maps to their roadmap can install the app from the Shopify App Store to test workflows quickly.

Growave Feature Highlights (Contextual Links)

• Merchants can build loyalty and rewards that drive repeat purchases with customizable programs, VIP tiers, and actions that tie back to wishlist and referral behaviour.
• Storefronts that want to collect and showcase authentic reviews benefit from review request automations and UGC collection that boost social proof.
• Growave supports enterprise needs through solutions for high-growth Plus brands, offering headless compatibility, checkout extensions, and dedicated launch support.
• For skeptical merchants considering migration, looking at customer stories from brands scaling retention helps illustrate real-world outcomes.

For merchants who prefer a walk-through, book a personalized demo to see how an integrated retention stack improves retention.

Practical Comparison: Consolidation vs. Single-Purpose Apps

• Time to ROI: A single integrated platform can accelerate time-to-revenue by enabling cohesive campaigns that use wishlist, loyalty, and review triggers immediately. With multiple apps, time and engineering are spent integrating and syncing signals.
• Maintenance: A consolidated platform reduces ongoing maintenance and testing burden when Shopify or third-party platforms update APIs.
• Flexibility: An all-in-one solution provides more cross-functional capabilities (e.g., awarding points for wishlist actions), whereas stitching that together across vendors requires tight integration or compromises.
• Cost predictability: Consolidation leads to a single billing relationship and clearer renewal negotiations, rather than multiple incremental costs that escalate unpredictably.

Merchants can explore how consolidation would map to a cost model by using the ability to compare Growave plans and see whether the combined feature set aligns with long-term goals.

Conclusion

For merchants choosing between Swish (formerly Wishlist King) and Wishlister, the decision comes down to scope and ambition: Swish is best for brands that need a polished wishlist with onboarding, analytics, and marketing integrations; Wishlister is better for merchants who only need a simple, very low-cost wishlist offering with basic categorization and sharing.

Swish strengths: strong onboarding, native integrations (Klaviyo, GA4, Meta), advanced analytics, headless/Hydrogen support, and unlimited wishlists at modest monthly pricing that scales to Plus. These features make it a solid choice for merchants that want wishlist to be a growth lever integrated into marketing and analytics.

Wishlister strengths: very low entry price and simple functionality, which suits small stores that just want customers to save and share items without the overhead of integrations or onboarding.

However, the bigger strategic question for merchants is whether to add another specialized tool to an already busy app stack. An integrated retention platform reduces app fatigue by consolidating wishlist, loyalty, referrals, and reviews into a single system that simplifies data, automation, and vendor management.

Start a 14-day free trial to evaluate whether consolidating wishlist and retention tools into one platform reduces overhead and increases lifetime value. Compare Growave plans and install from the Shopify App Store to test the workflows directly. Merchants on Plus stores should review enterprise features and headless readiness via the solutions for high-growth Plus brands page.

Frequently, the long-term value of an integrated stack exceeds the apparent short-term savings of a cheap, single-purpose app. If the wishlist needs to power automated messages, feed analytics, and tie into loyalty or referral programs, consolidation is worth evaluating.

FAQ

Q: Which app is better for a small store with limited budget? A: Wishlister provides the lowest monthly entry price ($2.99/month) and basic wishlist functions like category-based lists and sharing. For very small stores that truly only need a save-and-share flow, Wishlister is an economical choice. For stores that plan to grow or need integrations with email marketing later, investing in a more integrated solution like Swish or a consolidated platform may deliver better long-term value.

Q: Which app is better for integrating wishlist events into email flows and analytics? A: Swish is the stronger choice because it lists direct integrations with Klaviyo, GA4, and Meta and supports automated wishlist notifications. That makes it easier to trigger lifecycle emails and include wishlist data in analytics without building custom event forwarding.

Q: How does an all-in-one platform compare to specialised apps? A: An all-in-one platform reduces tool sprawl by centralising wishlist, loyalty, reviews, and referrals into one system. This simplifies data consistency, enables cross-feature automations (for example, awarding points for wishlist activity), reduces the number of scripts on the storefront, and consolidates support and billing. Merchants should weigh the scope of their needs: specialized apps can be cheaper initially, but an integrated platform often delivers better operational efficiency and higher lifetime value as the store scales.

Q: What should merchants ask before choosing either app? A: Ask for details on data export and ownership, API or webhook availability, support SLAs, onboarding help, and how the app integrates with key marketing tools. For Swish, confirm Hydrogen and headless compatibility if applicable. For Wishlister, confirm how wishlist events can be surfaced to analytics and marketing tools if the merchant plans to grow.