Ultimate Wishlist vs. Wishl Favorites Wishlist: An In-Depth Comparison

Introduction

Choosing the right wishlist app is a common pain point for Shopify merchants looking to boost conversions, recover intent, and gather product demand signals. With single-purpose tools proliferating on the app store, merchants must weigh functionality, pricing, and long-term scalability before adding another point product to their stack.

Short answer: Ultimate Wishlist is a strong choice for merchants who want a simple, highly customizable wishlist with a friendly free tier and granular per-plan quotas, while Wishl Favorites Wishlist offers a polished one-click wishlist experience with price-drop tracking and somewhat higher monthly limits at higher price points. For merchants seeking long-term retention, combining wishlist features with loyalty, reviews, and referral capabilities in one platform—such as Growave—delivers better value for money and reduces tool sprawl.

This article provides a feature-by-feature, data-informed comparison of Ultimate Wishlist (Config Studio) and Wishl Favorites Wishlist (Golden Rule Ventures). The goal is to clarify strengths, trade-offs, and ideal use cases so merchants can decide which tool fits current needs — or whether a single integrated retention platform is the smarter route.

Ultimate Wishlist vs. Wishl Favorites Wishlist: At a Glance

Feature Comparison

Core Wishlist Functionality

• Ultimate Wishlist supports guest wishlists and logged-in user sync across devices. That flexibility makes it easy for shoppers to save items without creating an account, while still allowing account-based persistence for signed-in customers. Sharing via Facebook, Twitter, and email is built in. The app emphasizes full customization and non-English support.
• Wishl emphasizes speed and simplicity: shoppers can create a wishlist with a single click and later sign up to save it permanently. Sharing and annotations (notes) are included, plus price drop tracking. The app appears optimized for mobile experiences and frictionless capture of intent.

Both apps support the core expectation of wishlists: letting customers bookmark products for later, share lists, and receive reminders. The key difference is workflow focus: Ultimate Wishlist centers on customization and guest workflows; Wishl optimizes for speed and price-tracking features.

Customization and User Experience

• Ultimate Wishlist markets itself as "fully customizable" — merchants can edit text, colors, and language to match store branding and handle non-English stores. That makes it easier to keep wishlist UI consistent with a store’s design language and global audience needs.
• Wishl has a mobile-responsive design with streamlined one-click behavior. Customization appears more limited compared with Ultimate Wishlist, favoring a fast, uniform experience across stores.

For stores that treat branding and internationalization as priorities, Ultimate Wishlist provides more control. For merchants prioritizing ease of use and a fast mobile conversion path, Wishl’s streamlined interface can be advantageous.

Email Reminders and Re-engagement

• Ultimate Wishlist includes email reminders across paid plans with granular caps: Basic allows up to 500 email reminders/month, Pro increases to 2,000, and Premium up to 5,000. Pro and Premium allow personalized reminders to individual users. This tiered structure gives merchants a way to buy incremental reminder capacity.
• Wishl offers wishlist email reminders in its paid plans and pairs reminders with price drop tracking. Pricing includes reminder volume as part of plan caps (for example, Premium includes 2,000 reminders).

Both apps provide the core re-engagement mechanism that converts saved intent into sales. Ultimate Wishlist’s variable caps and per-user reminders give finer control, while Wishl combines reminders with price-change signals for a nudge that often converts.

Price Drop Tracking

• Wishl explicitly advertises price drop tracking as a feature. For stores with frequent dynamic pricing or promotional events, notifying shoppers when a saved product drops in price is a high-impact capability for recovery and conversion.
• Ultimate Wishlist does not emphasize price-drop alerts in its core feature list; instead it focuses on sharing, customization, and analytics.

If price-change-driven recovery is an important part of a private-label or promotional strategy, Wishl has the edge.

Analytics and Demand Signals

• Ultimate Wishlist highlights a "powerful dashboard" with analytics for wishlist adds, page views, and added-to-cart events. That helps merchants identify coveted products and variants to promote or restock.
• Wishl also offers stats such as the number of wishlists, items added, and most-wanted variants, but its analytics appear more basic and oriented around product popularity and wishlist volume.

Both apps provide actionable demand signals. Ultimate Wishlist’s emphasis on richer reporting and integration (e.g., Facebook pixel on Premium) suggests stronger capabilities for merchants who want to feed wishlist data into ad retargeting and merchandising decisions.

Limits, Quotas, and Scalability

• Ultimate Wishlist’s plan structure makes quotas explicit: Free tier allows up to 500 wishlists/month; Basic supports 1,000 items/month; Pro and Premium step up to 5,000 and 10,000 items/month respectively, with corresponding increases in email reminder allowances. These hard caps are important for merchants to check against expected traffic and wishlist behavior.
• Wishl’s plans start with 2,000 new wishlists/month at $9.99, scaling to 4,000 and 22,000 at higher tiers, with email reminder allowances tied to plans. If high wishlist volume is expected, Wishl’s top-tier capacity (22,000 wishlists/mo) may be more suitable, but at a higher monthly cost.

Merchants need to evaluate expected wishlist creation rates. A free or low-cost start with Ultimate Wishlist can work for small catalogs with moderate wishlist traffic; high-volume stores might find Wishl’s higher caps attractive despite the higher price.

Integrations and Data Flow

• Ultimate Wishlist’s Premium plan includes Facebook pixel integration. That allows wishlist events to be sent to advertising platforms for remarketing and Lookalike/Custom Audience creation.
• Wishl does not list direct ad pixel integrations in the feature summary, but its analytics and price tracking make it useful for conversion nudges. Both apps can export product demand data via dashboard metrics that can inform manual workflows.

Neither app matches the breadth of enterprise-level integrations typical of multi-tool platforms (e.g., native connections to Klaviyo, Omnisend, or advanced CRM systems). Merchants that require tight automation between wishlist events and email journeys should validate the specific integrations or APIs available.

Mobile Experience

• Wishl advertises a mobile-first, responsive design with one-click wishlist creation. For stores where a majority of traffic is mobile, that streamlined flow reduces friction and increases capture.
• Ultimate Wishlist supports mobile as well but emphasizes customizable text and layout adjustments — useful for stores requiring localizations and specific UX treatments on mobile.

For mobile-first retailers, Wishl’s simplicity can result in higher engagement. For UX-sensitive stores requiring bespoke mobile behavior, Ultimate Wishlist’s customization matters.

Support, Reviews, and Trust Signals

• Ultimate Wishlist: 34 reviews, 4.9 rating on the Shopify App Store. The rating and review count indicate strong satisfaction among a modest sample size. A free plan and low-cost tiers also lower the barrier for merchants to try the app.
• Wishl Favorites Wishlist: 32 reviews, 4.8 rating. Close to Ultimate Wishlist’s review volume and rating, which signals similar merchant satisfaction. Wishl’s paid-only approach (no free plan listed) means merchants should evaluate the return-on-investment before committing.

Review counts are small for both apps compared to large platform players, but the high star ratings show generally positive merchant feedback. Response times and support quality should be validated in pre-installation chats or support requests, particularly for stores that need quick turnarounds.

Security, Data Ownership, and Privacy

Both apps store wishlist data that can include email addresses for reminders. Merchants should confirm:

• Where wishlist data is stored and for how long.
• How unsubscribe and GDPR/CCPA requests are handled.
• What data is passed to third-party services like Facebook pixel.

Ultimate Wishlist offers guest wishlists, which can reduce personal data capture but might also limit personalized re-engagement unless the shopper later signs up.

Pricing and Value for Money

Pricing should be considered alongside expected volume of wishlist creation, email reminders, and the incremental revenue generated by wishlist-to-order conversion.

• Ultimate Wishlist pricing mechanics:
  • Free: Up to 500 wishlists/month, guest wishlist, customizable UI, full reports.
  • Basic ($4.99/mo): Up to 1,000 items, custom email template, 500 reminders/month.
  • Pro ($9.99/mo): Up to 5,000 items, 2,000 reminders/month, per-user reminders.
  • Premium ($14.99/mo): Up to 10,000 items, 5,000 reminders/month, Facebook pixel.

This structure is attractive for small to mid-size shops because a workable free tier exists and incremental upgrades are affordable. The ability to send individualized reminders in Pro may yield higher conversion per reminder than bulk reminder strategies.

• Wishl pricing:
  • Basic ($9.99/mo): Up to 2,000 new wishlists/month + email reminders.
  • Premium ($17.99/mo): Up to 4,000 new wishlists/month + 2,000 email reminders.
  • Premium Plus ($29.99/mo): Up to 22,000 new wishlists/month + 6,000 reminders.

Wishl’s entry price is higher but includes higher baseline wishlist volume than Ultimate Wishlist’s free or $4.99 Basic tier. For stores that need higher wishlist capacity immediately, Wishl can be a better value for money at scale; for low-volume shops, Ultimate Wishlist's free tier offers a lower-cost way to test wishlist functionality.

Assessment of Value:

• For merchants prioritizing tight budget control and incremental scaling, Ultimate Wishlist offers better initial value.
• For merchants expecting mid-to-high wishlist volumes or who require price-drop alerts for revenue recovery, Wishl can be better value when its features align to convert saved intent at scale.

Integrations & Technical Compatibility

Neither app lists extensive plug-and-play integrations with email platforms or help desks in their basic descriptions. For merchants that require automated flows (e.g., triggering an email sequence in Klaviyo when an item is added to wishlist), confirm whether:

• The app exposes webhook events or API endpoints.
• A native integration exists with the merchant’s email provider.
• The app’s analytics can be mapped into ad platforms (Facebook pixel is explicitly supported by Ultimate Wishlist Premium).

If deep platform integration is critical to retention automation, evaluate third-party connectors or consider an integrated retention platform that natively supports those channels.

Support & Onboarding

High ratings (4.9 and 4.8) imply both developers provide satisfactory support, but sample sizes are limited (34 and 32 reviews). Merchants should:

• Use pre-installation channels to ask implementation questions and timing.
• Test customization needs on a staging theme where possible.
• Confirm support SLAs for critical issues during peak sales periods.

Ultimate Wishlist’s lower price tiers and free plan make trial implementations low risk. Wishl’s paid-only approach means testing may require a short pay period; check refund or trial policies.

Which App Fits Which Merchant

• Best for small shops on a tight budget: Ultimate Wishlist. The free plan allows testing wishlist behavior without financial commitment, and low-cost tiers scale affordably.
• Best for mobile-first shops and price-sensitive buyers: Wishl. The one-click wishlist and price-drop alerts are tailored to shoppers who react to real-time discounts and a fast mobile UX.
• Best for merchants needing strong UI/branding control and localization: Ultimate Wishlist. Custom text, colors, and non-English support help match store identity.
• Best for merchants expecting high wishlist volume immediately: Wishl (higher top-tier wishlist limits), though at a higher monthly cost.
• Best for hedging long-term retention costs and avoiding app sprawl: An integrated platform that includes wishlist plus loyalty, referrals, and review features provides better total value. Growave is an example of such a platform.

Practical Implementation Tips

• Track conversion of wishlist reminders: whichever app is chosen, measure the conversion rate of reminder emails and price-drop notices to determine real ROI.
• Map wishlist events to ad campaigns: use pixel integration or exported reports to build custom audiences of shoppers who saved high-value SKUs.
• Test guest vs. authenticated wishlist flows: guest lists can increase capture but authenticated wishlists unlock cross-device persistence; test both to see which converts better.
• Audit request volumes relative to plan caps: estimate average wishlist adds per visitor and set thresholds to avoid hitting limits during peak promotions.

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

As stores grow, adding one specialized app after another creates operational friction—more billing lines, more compatibility checks, more integrations to maintain. This phenomenon, often called "app fatigue," leads to fragmented data, duplicated costs, and lost opportunities to design cohesive retention programs.

An all-in-one retention platform reduces those issues by consolidating wishlist, loyalty, referrals, reviews, and VIP tiers into a single product. This approach eliminates redundant connectors, centralizes analytics, and makes it easier to create cross-channel campaigns that convert saved intent into long-term revenue.

Growave positions this method as "More Growth, Less Stack." Growave merges wishlist functionality with loyalty and review tools so merchants can capture product interest and immediately monetize it through rewards, social proof, and referral loops.

• For merchants evaluating a wishlist that ties into a wider retention strategy, Growave offers a single dashboard to manage wishlists alongside reward programs and referral campaigns. That avoids the need to sync wishlist events across separate apps.
• Merchants can consolidate retention features and upgrade customer lifetime value without maintaining multiple subscriptions. Compare how wishlist events feed into rewards or referral triggers when everything is under one platform: the path from saved item to redeemed reward to subsequent purchase is more direct.

Growave’s platform details and pricing are visible for merchants assessing consolidated options. Explore how a single platform can replace several single-purpose apps and deliver incremental value by reducing integration work and aligning retention signals. See Growave’s pricing and plan options for a clear sense of monthly cost and included features: consolidate retention features.

Growave’s Wishlist is one component inside a unified suite that also includes loyalty and rewards that drive repeat purchases and tools to collect and showcase authentic reviews. Those features work together to convert wishlist signals into lasting revenue instead of isolated one-off conversions.

For merchants on Shopify Plus or operating multi-store brands, Growave supports enterprise needs and bespoke onboarding. Learn about solutions for high-growth Plus brands to see how consolidated retention can scale for enterprise use cases.

To explore integration possibilities and see how wishlist data can feed into broader retention programs, merchants can book a personalized demo. This direct walkthrough is useful for teams that need to understand implementation timelines and integration capabilities with email platforms, checkout flows, and customer-service tools.

Growave combines multiple retention tools in a single subscription model. For merchants comparing monthly costs across multiple single-purpose apps, the consolidated pricing structure often yields better value for money once more than one retention function is required. Review plan comparisons and sign-up options on the pricing page to model cost versus benefit: consolidate retention features.

Further proof points come from stores that migrated from app stacks to a single retention platform. Browse customer case studies and inspiration to see how integrated features influence retention metrics: customer stories from brands scaling retention.

Growave is also discoverable via the Shopify App Store for merchants who prefer installing through the app marketplace: install via the Shopify App Store.

Hard CTA (early): Book a personalized demo to see how an integrated retention stack improves retention and reduces operational overhead. Book a personalized demo

How Growave Addresses Typical Wishlist App Limitations

• Single source of truth: Wishlist actions, reward attribution, and review prompts are centralized, avoiding data reconciliation across tools.
• Better automation: Wishlist events can trigger loyalty points, review invites, or referral incentives without manual connectors.
• Fewer subscriptions: Replacing three or four single-purpose apps with one platform simplifies billing and reduces hidden integration costs.
• Enterprise readiness: Built-in support for headless storefronts, checkout extensions, and dedicated onboarding for Plus brands smooths scaling pain points.

For merchants who need both wishlist capture and the ability to create reward-driven conversion flows, evaluate how connecting wishlist events to loyalty campaigns could increase average order value and repeat purchase frequency. See how loyalty, referrals, and reviews combine to lift retention by exploring Growave’s loyalty feature set: loyalty and rewards that drive repeat purchases.

Migration and Implementation Considerations

Switching from a single-purpose wishlist app to an integrated suite requires planning:

• Data export/import: Ensure existing wishlists, customer associations, and notes can be migrated or re-collected without harming customer experience.
• Template consistency: Replicate branding and localized copy in the new wishlist UI to preserve brand equity.
• Automation mapping: Map existing reminder cadences and price-drop logic to the integrated platform’s automation engine.
• Testing: Run staged A/B tests to validate that the new wishlist plus loyalty workflow improves conversion without regressions.

When evaluating an integrated platform, ask for references or example flows that replicate how wishlists were previously used in combination with email, rewards, and reviews. For merchant stories and examples of combined retention programs, see customer stories from brands scaling retention.

Cost Modeling Example (High-Level)

To decide between a single-purpose wishlist app and a combined platform, approximate these metrics:

• Expected wishlist creations/month
• Expected reminders/month and reminder conversion rate
• Incremental revenue per converted wishlist
• Cost of single-purpose apps combined vs. integrated platform monthly fee

Merchants whose combined cost of multiple single-purpose apps plus integration overhead exceeds the integrated platform’s fee often find that switching yields better long-term ROI. Growave’s plans and pricing are available for modeling: consolidate retention features.

Final Assessment of Ultimate Wishlist and Wishl Favorites Wishlist

• Ultimate Wishlist (Config Studio) — strengths:
  • Very high rating (4.9) across 34 reviews.
  • Free tier suitable for small shops and trials.
  • Strong customization, multilingual support, and explicit per-tier email reminder controls.
  • Facebook pixel integration on Premium plan for ad-based re-engagement.
  Considerations:
  • Item and reminder quotas may require upgrades as wishlist activity grows.
  • Less emphasis on price-drop tracking.
• Wishl Favorites Wishlist (Golden Rule Ventures) — strengths:
  • High rating (4.8) across 32 reviews.
  • One-click wishlist creation and mobile-first UX encourage capture on phones.
  • Price drop tracking and notes add conversion lift for promoted discounts.
  Considerations:
  • No free tier; initial cost is higher.
  • Fewer customization signals versus Ultimate Wishlist.

Both apps achieve the primary goal of capturing product interest and re-engaging shoppers. Choice depends on priorities: customization and low-cost entry (Ultimate Wishlist) versus mobile-first simplicity and price-drop recovery (Wishl).

Conclusion

For merchants choosing between Ultimate Wishlist and Wishl Favorites Wishlist, the decision comes down to priorities and scale. Ultimate Wishlist is better for stores that need a free or low-cost way to add a highly customizable wishlist with multilingual support and incremental reminder capacity. Wishl Favorites Wishlist is better for stores that prioritize fast mobile capture and price-drop notifications, and that expect higher wishlist volume from the outset.

Beyond those trade-offs, merchants should consider whether adding another single-purpose app fits long-term retention strategy. An integrated platform that bundles wishlist, loyalty, referrals, reviews, and VIP tiers reduces integration work and typically offers better value for money as retention needs increase.

For merchants ready to move from multiple single-purpose apps to a unified retention stack, start a 14-day free trial to evaluate how combining wishlist, rewards, and reviews in one platform affects lifetime value and repeat purchase rates. Start a 14-day free trial

Hard CTA (conclusion): Start a 14-day free trial to see how consolidating wishlist, loyalty, and reviews accelerates growth. Start a 14-day free trial

FAQ

Q: Which app has the higher rating and more reviews?

• Ultimate Wishlist has a slightly higher rating at 4.9 across 34 reviews. Wishl Favorites Wishlist has a 4.8 rating across 32 reviews. Both have small but positive review bases.

Q: Which app offers a free plan?

• Ultimate Wishlist provides a free plan (up to 500 wishlists/month). Wishl Favorites Wishlist does not list a free tier; its plans start at $9.99/month.

Q: Which app is better for mobile shoppers and price-driven purchases?

• Wishl Favorites Wishlist is optimized for one-click wishlist capture on mobile and includes price drop tracking, making it well-suited for price-sensitive shoppers on phones.

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

• An integrated retention platform that combines wishlist, loyalty, reviews, and referrals reduces app sprawl, centralizes data, and enables cross-feature automation. For merchants who want to convert wishlist signals into repeat purchases and higher lifetime value without maintaining multiple integrations, a single platform often delivers stronger long-term value. Explore how loyalty and review features can complement wishlist capture to increase retention: loyalty and rewards that drive repeat purchases and collect and showcase authentic reviews.