When you run a top-performing Shopify store, it’s important to make sure you’re using the best of the best.
The best marketing campaigns, the best design elements, and the best apps.
The right Shopify app can make the difference between a store that moves hundreds or thousands of products per day and a store that barely breaks even.
Today, we’re going to be comparing two of the most popular upsell apps out there: Upsell.com and Zipify OCU.
That way, you can use the information to decide for yourself which one is better for you.
First off, let’s discuss one of the most critical factors for any upselling app: The Features.
Both of Upsell.com & OCU have a few primary features such as thank you page editors and conversion funnels to encourage upsells and bulk offers.
Let’s compare how these features stack up to each other.
To start off, Upsell.com thank you page editor comes with over 16 widgets you can use to customize each page to its full potential. Let’s take a look at some of them (though this list is far from comprehensive):
With the birthday collector and post-purchase surveys, you can collect valuable information for future marketing efforts and retargeting campaigns.
Send out a discount coupon on each customer’s birthday through an automated trigger, or use a survey to find out customer opinions on your offers and optimize them further.
The reorder button widget is particularly useful for products that customers tend to buy in bulk- It allows you to offer a discount if a customer orders the same product again.
We’ve seen it used with great success for stores that sell products like pet food, though it can be used on any product that makes sense to buy en masse.
In the digital age, convenience and customer experience is everything; no customer wants to be left guessing when their product will arrive.
The order tracking widget allows you to directly embed tracking to your thank you page to make it all the more convenient for your customers.
Urgency is a powerful marketing tool, and with the pop-up timer, urgency is easy to add to your funnels.
The pop-up timer allows you to craft specially-designed time-based offers to increase a sense of urgency and offer great deals to your customers.
Want to take advantage of social proof to increase conversions?
Upsell.com social sharing buttons make it super easy for customers to share their orders with friends on social media. You can even allow the social shares to act as discounts, potentially bringing in even more customers.
Overall, the thank you page editor is easy to use, intuitive, and comes with more depth than practically any competitor on the market.
The funnel editor that comes stock with any plan is also highly intuitive without detracting from the depth.
This is largely due to the simple drag & drop UI that allows for simple & visual changes.
Each funnel comes with virtually limitless opportunities for customer segmentation and automated recommendations- but we’ll discuss more of that in some of the future sections.
The Zipify UI is the same for both the thank you page editor and post-purchase upsells- It utilizes a simple drop-down menu list that doesn’t take too long to wrap your head around.
While not the most intuitive, it wasn’t difficult to design offers with it.
The biggest drawback to OCU’s builders is the lack of customizable widgets on offer.
At the moment, OCU offers 0 widgets, though it does come with split testing capabilities.
The split testing feature allows you to test two similar offers against each other to help optimize your funnels going forward.
With that being said, how does the funnel editor stack up?
OCU’s funnel designer is functional, though light on features and customization options.
The editor allows you to move the location of each offer, as well as change the product triggers between a few options. (Though the segmentation of those offers isn’t very comprehensive, we’ll touch on that a bit further down)
Overall, while it isn’t a difficult process to design basic funnels, the UI for OCU doesn’t allow you to design funnels to the same level of depth as Upsell.com.
On top of that, the lack of discount management features and smart recommendations are also significant drawbacks.
Discount management is a cornerstone feature for any upsell app, so how do both of these apps compare?
Upsell.com discount management allows merchants to get down to the most minute level of customization to craft perfectly optimized funnels for their stores.
You can set conditionals for funnels based on order value, user devices, or cart thresholds, but it doesn’t just end there.
Upsell.com also allows for easy distribution and segmentation(more on the segmentation in the next section) of these discounts.
You can create thank you page offers for a customer’s next purchase, send out birthday discounts via email, or allow for customers to share discounts on social media to their networks.
Zipify OCU doesn’t offer discount management through the in-app UI, nor does it offer the ability to create funnel-specific discounts.
This means that you’ll have to navigate to Shopify’s default discount UI and manage all discounts through the native interface.
The downside of this is that it adds an unnecessary layer of complexity if you’d like to create offers that only trigger via your upsell funnels.
One of the greatest advantages of digital marketing is that you don’t have to show the same offers to every customer.
You can use data to determine which offer is most likely to resonate with each specific consumer.
Top-performing stores use this to their advantage to create hyper-specific offers for hyper-specific customer segments.
Which means that they’ll need an upsell app that supports that level of segmentation.
So with that being said, how deep do each of these apps go? Let’s find out.
Upsell.com allows stores to get as comprehensive as it gets when it comes to segmentation.
Using custom funnels, you can show offers to customers based on past purchase data, order value, or even go as deep as offers based on the operating system or device a customer is using at the moment.
How can this all be used?
Let’s look at a few examples.
You could assign an automated funnel for return customers to get 30% off if their order value passes $50.
Do mobile users buy more high-ticket products on your store?
Create a mobile-specific funnel that gives offers for high-ticket upsells while you run a desktop campaign for low-ticket upsells.
Find that customers who visit your jewelry collection often accept your upsell offers?
Create a funnel that specifically shows to customers who’ve purchased from your jewelry collection and then offer them more enticing upsells.
The opportunities are virtually endless with Upsell.com level of segmentation.
Which is to say, since it goes it deep as it gets, Upsell.com is hard to beat in this section.
OCU’s segmentation consists of three trigger options.
You can set offers to trigger for specific products, collections, or storewide.
Unfortunately, this means stores that utilize OCU won’t be able to set offers to show for users based on past purchase behaviors, device types, or even cart values.
The analytics page for Upsell.com looks like this:
And with it, you can get easy access to all the info you need to determine cost-effectiveness, as well as campaign performances.
Here are just a few of the primary metrics on display:
Find out how much of your revenue comes from Upsell.com specifically.
Want to know just how much value you’re getting from each dollar spent on Upsell.com? The analytics dashboard makes it easy.
Determine where most of your conversions come from so you can hone in on the funnels that work best while scrapping the ones that don’t
Determine how successful your birthday and survey campaigns are at any given moment.
Upsell.com helps you increase AOV with targeted offers across the full shopping journey, from product and cart to checkout, post purchase, and beyond.
The Zipify statistics tab is functional, though a little less comprehensive:
Overall, you can get a basic top-down view with OCU’s analytics, but larger Shopify stores might find the data a bit lacking in depth.
Upsell.com has integrations with 14+ of the best Shopify apps out there.
From email collections for retargeting campaigns to AI-powered recommendations and easily sharable product reviews- Upsell.com supports it all.
You can use third-party integrations allow you to further “supercharge your funnels with even more apps.
Easy integrations mean that you’ll spend less time configuring apps to work well together and more time optimizing your funnels for maximum profit.
They also mean that if your store runs on any of the most popular apps out there, it’ll be easy to integrate them in without any issues.
At this point in time, Zipify OCU offers no third-party integrations with other Shopify Apps.
One of the most time-consuming aspects when creating a Shopify store is the design process.
Once you’ve decided on a scheme, you’ll need to update each page to match.
And when plugins and apps get involved, it’ll add another layer of complexity to the process because you need to update the apps to match too.
Take holiday sales for instance.
Just a small redesign to match the holiday spirit could be hours of hassle and work. Add a few more hours if you’re using plugins and widgets on your store.
Upsell.com takes that hassle away with the Magic Designer.
The Upsell.com Magic Designer takes your store’s theme and uses it to update each widget automatically.
Which means less manual work and more focus on the tasks that generate direct profit.
Upsell.com pricing scales on a growth-based system rather than the standard tier-based subscription pricing model.
With a 30-day free trial and paid plans starting at $7.99 per month (only necessary if you’re already making 50 or more monthly orders on your store); this ensures that you only end up paying for Upsell.com if you’re already making money for it.
OCU offers a 30-day free trial, after which there are no free plans.
The first plan starts at $24.99 and scales with the amount of revenue the app is generating for your store.
Upsell.com uses a straightforward and easy one-click activation process.
Just download the app, click “enable,” and set it as your default app in your store settings.
Easy activation means you can get right to designing your first funnels rather than wasting time in a complicated onboarding process
OCU’s activation process is excellent. It was easy to get set up and started with it.
The first-time wizard helps to get you set up with your first funnel and enables the app on your store without much hassle.
All in all, there were no major flaws with the activation process.
Between the two apps, both activation’s were relatively equal in terms of accessibilty.
Premade templates help for a few reasons.
First, they allow you to get started with conversion funnels right away while you work on a customized funnel.
Second, they make for great starting points and examples for your own templates.
Upsell.com comes stock with the “Conversion Monster” funnel- which serves as a great default if you don’t want to make a custom one.
Currently, OCU has no pre-made templates on offer.
One of the main design tenets of Upsell.com is the ease of use.
Whether it’s designing funnels or creating a thank you page, even the most complex processes are easy and intuitive through Upsell.com UI.
The visual aspect of the designer means that it’s also easy to get a clear view of your funnels at a glance; there’s no need to have experience with complicated coding or frameworks.
Just drag each piece of the puzzle where you want it and you’re good to publish it.
The preview feature also you to see what each funnel will look like from customer perspectives.
Zipify OCU’s UI is relatively easy to get around and intuitive.
Each funnel and page can be customized with a simple dropdown-style menu.
In terms of accessibility, OCU gets a passing grade.
Though it does seem that the ease of use comes at the cost of depth. Many of the options that larger ecommerce stores come to expect are missing from the app.
A lack of advanced segmentation, drag and drop UI, and the lack customizability is a significant challenge while designing funnels and offers.
Customer support is one of the most overlooked aspects of any Shopify app.
Why?
If an app malfunction occurs midway through the day on a store that’s moving hundreds of products, each minute that passes without support could mean hundreds or thousands of missed dollars.
So, how do the customer support sections of each app compare?
Upsell.com support is top-notch and covers a wide range of channels.
You can choose to contact support through a phone line or an email ticketing system, but that’s not all.
There’s also a 24/7 live chat for quick fixes, with an average response time of just 4 minutes. Which means that you should be able to find a solution nearly instantly.
On top of that, there’s a full FAQ and helpdesk section for many of the most common problems.
Zipify OCU boasts an email support section, a helpdesk, and a live chat for quick responses.
In terms of speed, the usual reply time is within a few hours.
While this isn’t bad, it does mean that you might have to wait quite a while to deal with any issues on your store – even if those issues are urgent.
Let’s take a look at how customers have reviewed each app:
With over 31,000 customers and over 2,900 reviews- Upsell.com still maintains a 5-star rating on the store.
Zipify OCU currently has 181 reviews on the app store and maintains a 4.6 rating.
In terms of accessibility and setup processes, both apps are on relatively even grounds.
But where some of the biggest differences arise is the level of customization on offer.
While Zipify OCU is easy to use, it doesn’t offer the same level of depth when designing funnels that Upsell.com does.
This largely comes down to the lack of widgets, segmentation, and discount management on OCU’s end.
When dealing with large amounts of customers, customization down to the smallest detail is vital for maximum conversions.
Pair that with the 30-day free trial and a pricing model that only scales with orders, and it only becomes increasingly clear that Upsell.com is today’s winner.
Want to try out Upsell.com for your own store?
Click here to start your free trial of Upsell.com today.
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