Ultimate Wishlist vs. Growave: Loyalty & Wishlist Comparison

Introduction

Choosing the right apps for a Shopify store is a common pain point for merchants. The marketplace is full of niche tools that solve a single problem well, and broader platforms that bundle multiple retention features into a single product. Picking between focused apps and all-in-one suites requires weighing short-term needs, long-term growth goals, and the operational cost of managing multiple integrations.

Short answer: Ultimate Wishlist is an excellent option for merchants who need a simple, focused wishlist tool with strong customization and an inexpensive entry point. Growave: Loyalty & Wishlist is a broader retention platform that includes wishlist functionality plus loyalty, referrals, reviews, and VIP tiers—making it better suited for brands that want to consolidate retention features and scale customer lifetime value. For most scaling DTC brands, Growave often represents better long-term value because it reduces app sprawl and connects retention features into a single, data-driven program.

This article provides an in-depth, feature-by-feature comparison of Ultimate Wishlist and Growave: Loyalty & Wishlist to help merchants choose wisely. The goal is to present an objective analysis of both options—strengths, weaknesses, price/value trade-offs, integrations, and recommended use cases—followed by a discussion of how an integrated retention platform addresses app fatigue and increases lifetime value.

Ultimate Wishlist vs. Growave: Loyalty & Wishlist: At a Glance

Deep Dive Comparison

This section compares the apps across critical merchant concerns: features, pricing and value, integrations, support and onboarding, scalability, privacy, and operational overhead.

Features

Both apps support wishlists, but they occupy different positions in a merchant’s tech stack. One is built strictly to add wishlist functionality; the other treats wishlist as one module within a retention platform.

Wishlist Core Functionality

• Ultimate Wishlist
  • Core capability: add-to-wishlist button on product and collection pages.
  • Guest wishlist capability (no registration required), plus account-linked wishlists for logged-in users.
  • Synchronization across devices for logged-in users.
  • Customizable text and colors to match store branding.
  • Social sharing: Facebook, Twitter, and Email.
  • Free tier includes basic wishlist placements and up to 500 wishlist items per month.
• Growave
  • Wishlist is one module in a suite that includes back-in-stock and wishlist-driven email flows.
  • Wishlist ties into Loyalty and Reviews modules for cross-program campaigns (e.g., reward points for adding items to wishlist or referral via wishlist).
  • Built-in integration with POS and checkout workflows in higher tiers.
  • Back-in-stock wishlist emails are available on Growth plans and above.

Comparison summary: For merchants that only need a simple wishlist, Ultimate Wishlist covers core needs with lower price points. Growave’s wishlist is more powerful because it links directly to loyalty and automated retention flows, making it more valuable for lifecycle marketing.

Customization & UX

• Ultimate Wishlist
  • Emphasis on easy visual matching: customizable text and appearance, non-English support.
  • Email templates can be customized on paid tiers.
  • Lightweight UI additions with minimal design overhead.
• Growave
  • Customization extends beyond look-and-feel: branding across loyalty widgets, review widgets, and customizable loyalty pages on Growth/Plus plans.
  • Advanced developer tools, API and SDK options on Plus for headless storefronts.
  • Checkout and account extensions available for Shopify Plus merchants.

Comparison summary: Ultimate Wishlist makes it simple to visually integrate a wishlist. Growave provides deeper customization across multiple retention touchpoints, which matters when the brand experience needs to be consistent across loyalty pages, review galleries, and POS.

Analytics & Reporting

• Ultimate Wishlist
  • Dashboard tracks wishlist adds, page views, and added-to-cart metrics related to wishlist items.
  • Useful for product interest insights at the SKU/variant level.
• Growave
  • Cross-module analytics that tie wishlist behavior to loyalty engagement, referral conversions, and review collection.
  • Ability to export data and connect to external tools (e.g., Klaviyo) for deeper lifecycle analytics.

Comparison summary: If the objective is to learn which SKUs customers are bookmarking, Ultimate Wishlist provides straightforward stats. For a merchant trying to quantify how wishlist activity affects repeat purchase rate, LTV, or referral conversions, Growave’s integrated analytics are more actionable.

Automated Communications

• Ultimate Wishlist
  • Email reminders: available in paid plans (Basic, Pro, Premium) with varying quotas (up to 5,000 reminders/month on Premium).
  • Templates customizable on paid plans.
  • Focused automation centered on wishlist reminders.
• Growave
  • Email automation spans review requests, wishlist back-in-stock emails, referral triggers, and loyalty program notifications.
  • Integrations allow for advanced flows in ESPs like Klaviyo and Omnisend.
  • Nudges and on-site reminders available on Entry and above.

Comparison summary: Ultimate Wishlist handles wishlist-centric reminders. Growave enables a broader automated communication strategy that can use wishlist behavior as a trigger for loyalty or review campaigns.

Loyalty, Referrals, and Reviews (Growave advantage)

• Ultimate Wishlist
  • No native loyalty, referral, or review suites—focus remains wishlist-only.
• Growave
  • Native loyalty and rewards, referral program with fraud protection, dedicated review collection and UGC management, VIP tiers and points expiration, and point actions that can be customized (Growth/Plus tiers).
  • Review moderation, Google Shopping Reviews integration, and Instagram UGC export on Growth plans.

Comparison summary: Growave’s multi-dimensional retention features are its primary differentiator. Merchants looking to raise LTV through rewards, referrals, and social proof will find an advantage in having those modules tightly coupled with wishlist behavior.

Pricing & Value

Pricing is frequently the deciding factor, particularly for smaller merchants. The two apps follow different pricing philosophies: low-cost single-feature vs. tiered retention platform.

Ultimate Wishlist Pricing Overview

• Free Plan: Free
  • Up to 500 wishlist items/month, guest wishlist, collection page wishlist, share wishlist, customizable text/color, non-English support, full reports.
• Basic: $4.99/month
  • Everything in Free, up to 1,000 wishlist items/month, custom email template, up to 500 email reminders/month.
• Pro: $9.99/month
  • Everything in Basic, email reminders to individual users, up to 5,000 wishlist items/month, up to 2,000 email reminders/month.
• Premium: $14.99/month
  • Everything in Pro, up to 10,000 wishlist items/month, up to 5,000 email reminders/month, Facebook Pixel integration.

Value proposition: Extremely low-cost entry for merchants who need wishlist functionality only. Paid plans scale modestly in price while expanding wishlist and email reminder quotas.

Growave Pricing Overview

• FREE: Free
  • 100 orders/month (500 total orders), loyalty points program, wishlist, product reviews, data import/export, Growave branding, 48-hour email support.
• ENTRY: $49/month
  • Advanced rewards, referral program + fraud protection, nudges, review request series, Shopify POS and Flow, +1 integration, customizable emails, 24/7 email support.
• GROWTH: $199/month
  • VIP tiers, dedicated loyalty page, POS loyalty QR, points expiration & gift cards, account extensions, Google Shopping Reviews & Instagram UGC, back-in-stock wishlist emails, onboarding, 24/7 email/chat support.
• PLUS: $499/month
  • Checkout extensions, headless API & SDK, loyalty page custom design, custom reward actions, unlimited integrations, customer success manager, dedicated launch plan, 24/7 email/live chat/phone.

Value proposition: Higher monthly cost but an integrated stack of retention capabilities. Pricing is aimed at merchants who plan to scale and need enterprise features, integrations, and dedicated support.

Value-for-Money Considerations

• Small shops with minimal growth plans may find Ultimate Wishlist to be excellent value-for-money for wishlist-specific needs at $0–$15/month.
• Merchant math: If wishlist drives a few extra conversions per month, the ROI on Ultimate Wishlist is straightforward.
• For merchants aiming to increase repeat purchase rates, grow average order value (AOV) via loyalty incentives, and drive referrals, Growave’s bundled approach delivers a broader return on investment. The cost-per-feature falls as more modules are used, and the incremental value from cross-feature automation (e.g., reward points for leaving reviews) compounds over time.
• Long-term cost of multiple single-purpose apps should be considered. Adding a loyalty app, a referral app, and a reviews app on top of Ultimate Wishlist can quickly exceed Growave’s mid-tier pricing while increasing integration and maintenance overhead.

Integrations & Ecosystem Fit

Integrations determine how easily an app fits into the existing stack and whether data flows to the tools teams already rely on.

Ultimate Wishlist Integrations

• Focused on wishlist functionality: social sharing and analytics.
• Limited direct integrations with major ESPs, CRM, or headless setups.

Growave Integrations

• Broad: Checkout, Shopify POS, Customer accounts, Shopify Flow, Page builders (Pagefly, LayoutHub), mobile storefronts (Shopney), and major marketing/automation tools (Klaviyo, Omnisend, PushOwl, Postscript, Recharge, Gorgias, Attentive).
• Integrations create opportunities for cross-channel automation: sending wishlist triggers to Klaviyo, syncing loyalty events to CRM, or showing review widgets on product pages created with page builders.
• Built for Shopify Plus: checkout and account extensions, API/SDK for headless.

Comparison summary: Growave’s integration footprint is significantly larger, which reduces the friction of adding loyalty and review data into existing marketing infrastructure.

Support, Onboarding, and Documentation

Merchant experience is shaped heavily by onboarding and ongoing support.

• Ultimate Wishlist
  • Self-service installation and configuration for most merchants.
  • Support model is typical for a niche app—responds to tickets and provides documentation.
  • Smaller user base (34 reviews) suggests lower-scale support operations than an enterprise-targeted provider.
• Growave
  • 24/7 technical support, dedicated Customer Success Manager (Plus), onboarding packages for Growth and Plus, and world-class documentation.
  • Large user base (1,197 reviews) and multi-channel support suggest stronger operational support for scaling merchants.
  • On higher plans, access to launch planning and a CSM can reduce time-to-value for complex setups.

Comparison summary: Growave’s support model is tailored for merchants that need hands-on help to implement loyalty and cross-feature campaigns. Ultimate Wishlist’s support fits the simpler use cases of its customers.

Scalability & Performance

Some apps perform well at small scale and become problematic as traffic or feature needs grow.

• Ultimate Wishlist
  • Lightweight implementation geared for lower overhead on storefronts; limited to wishlist features so performance impacts are smaller.
  • Pricing caps on wishlist items and reminders may force migrations as traffic grows.
• Growave
  • Built to scale with higher plan quotas, API and SDK for headless, and checkout extensions for Plus customers.
  • Orchestrating multiple retention modules from one platform reduces the risk of cross-app conflicts and duplicated scripts.

Comparison summary: For merchants expecting growth and complex customer journeys, Growave’s architecture and higher-tier features are designed to scale. For a modest store wanting a single wishlist widget, Ultimate Wishlist is performant and simple.

Security, Privacy & Data Ownership

Data handling is a critical consideration, especially for loyalty and reviews that contain customer information.

• Ultimate Wishlist
  • Handles wishlist-related user data and email reminders; data policies depend on Config Studio's app privacy documentation.
  • Lower complexity lessens the attack surface.
• Growave
  • Processes loyalty, referral, and review data; maintains integrations with POS and checkout.
  • Enterprise-oriented plans include features for compliance and data access; merchants should review Growave’s privacy and data processing agreements for specifics.

Recommendation: Merchants should audit privacy and data retention policies for both apps as part of any procurement process, especially if syncing customer data to third-party CRMs or CDPs.

Operational Overhead & App Fatigue

Every installed app adds scripts, support tickets, and vendor relationships that the merchant must manage.

• Ultimate Wishlist: Minimal operational overhead if wishlist is the only required capability.
• Growave: Higher initial configuration overhead but consolidates multiple retention needs into a single vendor relationship.

This trade-off is crucial for teams with limited technical resources. Single-purpose tools are often quicker to install but can cause administrative drag when multiple vendors are involved.

Use Cases & Recommendations

This section translates features into actionable recommendations for typical merchant profiles.

• Small, single-product or boutique merchants on a tight budget
  • Recommendation: Ultimate Wishlist. The free plan or $4.99 Basic plan offers wishlist functionality and reminders at a negligible monthly cost. Ideal when the immediate need is simple wishlist collection and wishlist analytics.
• Merchants that want to run loyalty and referral programs later
  • Recommendation: Consider Growave from the start if the roadmap includes loyalty, referral, and review automation. Migrating data and duplicating customer experience across multiple tools later can be costly.
• Brands that depend on user-generated content and reviews to convert
  • Recommendation: Growave. Native review collection, Google Shopping Reviews integration, and UGC workflows make it easier to scale social proof.
• Shopify Plus or headless storefronts
  • Recommendation: Growave. Checkout extensions, account extensions, and API/SDK support make Growave more suited for advanced architectures.
• Merchants testing product-market fit and looking to measure interest quickly
  • Recommendation: Ultimate Wishlist. Fast to deploy and low-cost; useful for validating demand for particular SKUs.

Migration & Implementation Considerations

• Installing Ultimate Wishlist is straightforward for stores that only need wishlist functionality. Importing historical wishlist data is not usually necessary if starting fresh.
• Migrating from Ultimate Wishlist to an integrated platform requires mapping wishlist data to the new system, re-creating email templates, and possibly re-implementing front-end widgets. These tasks can be straightforward but should be planned.
• For merchants consolidating multiple single-purpose apps into a platform like Growave, plan for:
  • Data migration and integrity checks (loyalty points, referral codes, review history).
  • Reapplied branding and customizations across loyalty pages, review widgets, and wishlist buttons.
  • Review of integrations to avoid double-sending events (e.g., two apps trying to push an event to Klaviyo).
• For larger merchants, leveraging a customer success manager (available on Growave Plus) or an implementation partner speeds up the transition.

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

App fatigue is real: multiple single-purpose apps increase complexity, create redundant data flows, and make marketing automation harder to maintain. Each additional tool introduces scripts that can slow page load, support tickets to triage, and billing lines to reconcile. For retention programs to work effectively, the signals from different customer behaviors—wishlist additions, review submissions, referral clicks, and loyalty redemptions—need to be connected, not siloed.

Growave’s “More Growth, Less Stack” proposition is built around the idea that consolidation reduces friction and amplifies outcomes. Instead of stitching together separate apps for wishlist, loyalty, referrals, and reviews, merchants can run all of those programs from one platform. That has three practical advantages:

• Single source of truth for customer behavior, simplifying segmentation and personalization.
• Cross-feature automations that drive compounding improvements in retention (for example, rewarding customers who leave reviews after redeeming points).
• Reduced technical overhead and improved performance when carefully implemented.

For merchants considering the consolidation option, it’s useful to explore pricing and plan details to understand how the bundled value compares to separate subscriptions. Merchants can compare Growave plans and evaluate how consolidation impacts monthly costs, feature coverage, and integration depth by reviewing the platform pricing and plan structure: compare pricing plans.

Growave’s value is best illustrated by how wishlist behavior can be amplified when it’s directly connected to rewards and review flows. For example, wishlist adds can trigger back-in-stock notifications, which in turn can be tied to loyalty point offers for purchases or for leaving a review afterward. These multi-step journeys are possible because wishlist, loyalty, reviews, and referrals live in the same platform.

Growave’s retention modules include a loyalty engine, referral workflows, and review automation. Merchants interested in loyalty specifics can explore how the platform enables a range of loyalty and rewards strategies, from simple points-for-purchase to tiered VIP programs: loyalty and rewards that drive repeat purchases. Similarly, the reviews module focuses on capturing and amplifying customer reviews and UGC, helping stores to collect and showcase authentic reviews.

If the decision needs input from a product specialist, merchants can book a personalized demo. A short walkthrough helps evaluate how wishlist data flows into loyalty and review automation and what migration steps will be required.

Practical ways consolidation reduces overhead:

• Shared customer profiles: A single customer identity reduces duplicate records and simplifies personalization rules.
• Coordinated messaging: Email flows can reference loyalty balance, wishlist items, and UGC in the same message without syncing events across vendors.
• Fewer integration points: Instead of connecting wishlist app → reviews app → loyalty app → ESP, merchants connect one platform to the ESP and other tools, reducing failure points.

For merchants that want to evaluate the platform quickly, the Growave free plan and entry tiers provide a way to test core features before committing to Growth or Plus plans. A closer look at the trade-offs between entry-level and growth-focused plans can help determine which path delivers the most value for a merchant’s specific goals: compare pricing plans.

Growave includes success stories from brands that consolidated retention tools and saw measurable improvements in retention and LTV. Merchants can review these customer examples for practical inspiration and implementation patterns: customer stories from brands scaling retention.

Growave integrates with major marketing and operations tools so merchants do not lose existing capabilities when consolidating. The platform’s integrations are purpose-built to connect loyalty and review events to email and CRM systems like Klaviyo, Omnisend, and customer service tools like Gorgias—enabling a modern stack that doesn’t require duplicate data pipelines. Merchants who want to see how loyalty, wishlist, and review events can be exported to a marketing platform should review the loyalty product specifics and review product specifics to align with technical requirements: loyalty and rewards that drive repeat purchases and collect and showcase authentic reviews.

Hard CTA (primary, optional): Book a personalized demo to see how an integrated stack improves retention and simplifies operations: book a personalized demo

How Growave’s Modules Work Together (examples of integrated flows)

• Wishlist → Back-in-stock → Loyalty Nudge
  • A back-in-stock wishlist email notifies the customer and includes a limited-time loyalty point bonus to incentivize purchase.
• Referral → Loyalty Points → VIP Tier
  • Successful referral credits points to the referrer; enough points push the customer into a VIP tier that unlocks exclusive benefits.
• Purchase → Review Request → UGC Reward
  • Post-purchase flow asks for a review and offers points for submitting photos, which then feed into social galleries on product pages.

Each flow above shows how connected modules produce compounding returns that single-purpose apps rarely achieve without complex integrations.

Implementation Checklist

Before choosing which route to take, merchants should consider the following checklist.

• Define the business objective: wishlist collection, repeat purchases, average order value, or referral growth.
• Inventory current tools and integration points (ESP, CRM, POS, page builders).
• Calculate total monthly cost of the current stack vs. a consolidated platform.
• Assess data migration complexity (reviews, loyalty points, customer accounts).
• Confirm support expectations and response SLAs.
• Evaluate how wishlists will be surfaced: product pages, collections, wishlist page, or mobile app.
• Test performance impact of any app scripts on page load and core vitals.

Conclusion

For merchants choosing between Ultimate Wishlist and Growave: Loyalty & Wishlist, the decision comes down to scope and growth strategy. Ultimate Wishlist is a focused, low-friction solution that provides excellent value-for-money for stores that only need wishlist functionality. It’s well-suited to merchants who want a simple widget, social sharing, and wishlist analytics without paying for features they won’t use.

Growave: Loyalty & Wishlist is a fuller retention platform that includes wishlist functionality as part of a broader suite—loyalty, referrals, reviews, VIP tiers, and integrations with POS and checkout. Growave is a better option for merchants who want to consolidate multiple retention needs, reduce integration complexity, and build automated cross-feature journeys that increase lifetime value. The trade-off is a higher monthly cost compared to single-purpose apps, but the combined value often outweighs the expense for scaling brands.

For merchants serious about reducing tool sprawl and building repeatable customer value, exploring Growave’s plans and how they map to retention goals is a practical next step. Review plan features and determine which level aligns with current order volumes and technical needs: compare pricing plans. Merchants who prefer to evaluate the app experience through the Shopify ecosystem can also install directly from the Shopify App Store.

Start a 14-day free trial to test Growave's unified retention suite and measure how wishlist, loyalty, referrals, and reviews work together to increase repeat purchases and average order value: compare pricing plans

FAQ

Q: How do wishlist features compare between Ultimate Wishlist and Growave?

• Ultimate Wishlist focuses purely on wishlist functionality—guest and account wishlists, social sharing, customizable text/colors, and a dashboard for wishlist analytics. Growave includes wishlist features but connects them to loyalty, back-in-stock emails, and review automations, making wishlist behavior actionable across retention programs.

Q: Which app is better for a brand that wants loyalty and referrals as well as wishlists?

• Growave. It provides native loyalty and referral modules that work together with wishlists and reviews. Merchants can create integrated campaigns that reward wishlist engagement, encourage referrals, and collect reviews, all within one platform. For a deeper look into loyalty capabilities, see resources that explain how to build loyalty and rewards that drive repeat purchases.

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

• All-in-one platforms reduce the number of vendor relationships, simplify data flows, and enable cross-feature automations that drive compounding retention benefits. Specialized apps can deliver best-in-class single features at a lower cost, but combining several specialized apps may increase technical debt, page load risk, and administrative overhead. For examples of how consolidation has helped other brands, review customer stories from brands scaling retention.

Q: What should merchants consider when evaluating Growave versus a single-purpose wishlist app?

• Consider current needs and future roadmap, total monthly costs of multiple single-purpose apps, required integrations (Klaviyo, POS, page builders), and support demands. Merchants should evaluate whether they need simple wishlist analytics (where Ultimate Wishlist is sufficient) or a cross-module retention strategy (where Growave’s combination of wishlist, loyalty, referrals, and reviews provides greater long-term value). To explore the reviews and UGC capabilities specifically, see how the platform helps merchants collect and showcase authentic reviews.