A “Sales Pop”, or Recent Sales Notification, gives your website Social Proof in real-time. Sales Pops display information about recent purchases made on your site – showing potential customers that it is both trustworthy and popular. Alongside this, the notifications help to create a “buzz” of activity that encourages new customers to make a purchase.
The Best 14 Shopify Sales Pops (2020)
Social Proof is an essential part of eCommerce, but it expires quickly. According to a survey by Brightlocal, 84% of online shoppers discount reviews and ratings older than 3 months. Shopify Sales Pops create Social Proof on a minute-by-minute basis, enhancing the reviews and testimonials that you already have on your website.
A Sales Pop is generated by a small piece of Javascript code that is activated when your webpage loads. The code is connected to your database of sales and the selections you have made in the app’s interface.
For Shopify, this is quite straight-forward – since your website, your sales and your app are all contained within the platform. You can even connect these elements to your stock database, in order to show when an item is running out.
Sales Pops are a “soft” form of customer engagement, because they do not require your visitors to perform an action. They rarely contain a CTA and do not interfere with the browsing session, which makes them much less intrusive than a traditional pop-up.
What Happened in January 2019?
One of the earliest exponents of Sales Pop notifications for Shopify was the software company Bekeeting. However, in January 2019 Shopify de-listed Bekeeting from its App Store, citing a series of technical malfunctions (including a high-profile incident on the weekend of Black Friday/Cyber Monday in November 2018).
Over the subsequent 6 months, Shopify worked with Bekeeting to find solutions to the app’s technical problems. Unfortunately, there was another problem – Bekeeting’s Sales Pops did not differentiate between “Custom” and “Sync” notifications – which meant many store owners were building fake Social Proof with artificial Sales Pops. From August 2019, Bekeeting stopped working with Shopify – forcing any of its users with Shoify stores to look for Bekeeting alternatives
Because Sales Pops are a soft form of customer engagement, it is impossible to track their impact on your conversion rate precisely. However, in the same way that Google Analytics attributes sales and conversions to blog content, some Sales Pop apps track “Assisted Conversions”.
The impact of a Sales Pop depends on what you sell, how your site works and the traffic you attract. Even so, websites have achieved significant increases in conversion rates simply by adding Sales Pops as part of their Social Proof marketing strategy. An uplift of around 15% is not uncommon – even for established online retailers.
“Sales Pop, Recent Sales, Order Soon, Stock, FOMO Notifications”
 | FREE | PLUS | PRO | BUSINESS |
| $/Month | 0 | 9 | 29 | 89 |
| Sales Pops | 1000 | 10,000 | 100,000 | 1,000,000 |
Nudgify was released as a simple Shopify Sales Pop app in April 2018. Since then, new features have been added so that the app now includes “Low Stock”, “Urgency” and “Free Delivery Nudges”. The number of different notification styles, combining your store’s data to produce a range of highly-persuasive messages, sets Nudgify apart from any other Sales Pop available on Shopify.
To distinguish between the Nudges that use live data and Custom Nudges (which are designed by the user), Nudgify adds “Verified by” and “Powered by” labels to each notification.
“Social Proof App That Increases Conversions, Sales, and Trust”
 | SMALL (startup) | SMALL | MEDIUM | |
| $/m | 9 | 29 | 99 | |
| Skills | 3 | 10 | 20 | |
| Max Revenue/m | $5000 | $20,000 | $50,000 |
Fera, previously known as “Banana Stand”, allows you to fully customise your Sales Pops and comes with a variety of additional notifications. It is one of the more expensive apps, but also one of the most versatile.
Unlike most other apps available for Shopify, Fera incorporates your monthly revenue into their pricing scheme. That means stores with a low Average Order Value will get more value from it than those with a high AOV.
“Grow sales with loyalty & rewards, reviews, wishlist, and UGC”
 | FREE | STARTER | GROWTH | ENTERPRISE |
| $/m | 0 | 59 | 119 | 299 |
| Max Orders/m | 100 | 500 | 1500 | 4500 |
Growave is a complete customer engagement solution, rather than a straightforward Shopify Sales Pop app. Alongside Recent Activity notifications, the app generates a Wishlist for your customers, automates your reviews process and can even create customer loyalty programmes.
“Social Proof, Sales Pop, Newsletter Email Pop Ups & MailChimp”
 | ENTREPRENEUR | KICK STARTER | SMALL BUSINESS | HIGH TRAFFIC |
| $/m | 0 | 15 | 29 | 79 |
| Visitors/m | 1000 | 5000 | 10,000 | 50,000 |
| Campaigns | 1 | 2 | 5 | 10 |
ProofFactor combines the Social Proof generated by Sales Pops with email marketing and on-page gamification. Alongside the conventional activity-based Sales Pop, you can also add a live visitor counter to your website.
“Fomo Increases Conversions with Social Proof Notifications”
 | PRO | BUSINESS | ADVANCED | ENTERPRISE |
| $/m | 19 | 49 | 99 | 199 |
| Notifications/m | 30,000 | 240,000 | 1,200,000 | 1,200,000+ |
FOMO is one of the most popular Social Proof apps for commercial websites, with heavily stylised Sales Pops among other automated notifications. The only downside for this Shopify Sales Pop app is that a number of the notifications require additional integrations. This, and the cost of basic subscriptions, makes some of the better-known FOMO alternatives an attractive option.
Recent Sales Pop, Discount & Email Popup, Urgency & Cart Timer
 | INSTALL | BASIC | GROWTH | ENTERPRISE |
| $/m | 0 | 29 | 99 | 249 |
| Impressions/m | 1000 | 10,000 | 100,000 | 500,000 |
Nextsale provides four kinds of customer engagement pop-ups. Alongside the Shopify Sales Pop, you can add a top-bar with an offer timer, a promotional pop-up and a lead-capture pop-up to your site. notifications.
“Sales Popup to boost sales, credibility & social proof”
 | BASIC | PREMIUM |
| $/m | 0 | 6.99 |
| Features | Standard Sales Pops | Customise Sales Pops |
Scale is one of the more basic Sales Pop apps available for Shopify, with limited customisation options and few additional features. However, the app provides unlimited Sales Pops for a very reasonable price.
“Show Recent Orders & Social Proof | Beeketing alternative”
 | BEST VALUE | PREMIUM |
| $/m | 4.99 | 6.99 |
| Features | Standard Notifications | Customisation |
Show Recent Orders is another simple Sales Pop app that provides unlimited notifications for a reasonable monthly price. It has the added advantage of showing “add-to-cart” events as well as purchases – so stores with fewer orders can generate a different kind of social proof.
“Sale Pop urgency, Social Proof, Sales Popup, Sale Notification”
 | FREE |
| $/m | 0 |
CareCart is generally known for its abandoned-cart recovery emails, rather than on-page customer engagement. Whilst this is the only completely free Shopify Sales Pop app on this list, it does come with limited customisation features and an awkward user-interface. The app has also been know to suffer from occasional bugs.
“Create urgency with recent sales notifications.”
 | PRICING |
| $/m | 6.99 |
Bizzy is one of the most popular apps in the Shopify App Store, and it allows you to customise and display an unlimited number of Sales Pops. Co-ordinating the product titles, images and URLs you want to incorporate into your notifications can take some time, but the app has a straight-forward interface to guide you through it.
“The leading social proof, reviews, fomo, sales & urgency app”
 | Free Forever | Starter | Growth | Monster |
| $/m | 0 | 21 | 54 | 109 |
| Visitors | 1000 | 10,000 | 50,000 | 200,000 |
| Notifications | 1 branded notification | unlimited branded notifications | unlimited | unlimited |
Provesource offers a wide range of Sales Pops and notifications, including Currently Viewing and Review notifications. The interface is very user-friendly and the customisation options are flexible. However, the pricing rises quite steeply after the initial Free plan, and the emphasis is on sales rather than customer experience – so growing businesses may prefer a more customer-friendly alternative.
“Higher Conversions with Recent Sales Pop Up Notifications”
 | FREE | GROWTH 10K | GROWTH 50K | GROWTH 100K |
| $/m | 0 | 29 | 49 | 129 |
| Visitors | 1000 | 10,000 | 50,000 | 100,000 |
| Features | Sales Pops | Integrations + CSS | Integrations + CSS | Integrations + CSS |
Cart Kit is a pure Sales Pop app, without the additional notification formats offered by other solutions. However, you can adjust and customise your Sales Pops in a number of ways, and the option of adding your own CSS classes to your notifications is available for a relatively low price.
“Create and Design Social proof Pop Up Notifications”
 | FREE | BASIC | ADVANCE | PRO |
| $/m | 0 | 9.95 | 19.95 | 37.95 |
| Views | 1200 | 5000 | 15,000 | 30,000 |
| Features | Default design | Custom design | Custom design | Custom design |
Popify combines a live visitor count, a traditional Shopify Sales Pop and promotional notifications with clickable links. The customisation options are limited, and some of the default styles are a bit clunky, but this app can be used in a lot of different ways.
“Sales Pop W Recent Orders. Sales Pop has direct add to cart.”
 | ENTERPRISE |
| $/m | 2.99 |
| Features | Customise colour, font size |
Zoomy is a very basic Shopify Sales Pop app that gives unlimited notifications for a reasonable price. It has one feature that most of the other apps on this list don’t have: a direct “Add To Cart” button within the notification. For this reason, it is a great choice for stores selling a certain kind of product.
Our comparison table includes the cheapest and most expensive paid plans, as well as the different kinds of notifications available from each app.
| Free Trial | From | To | Sales Pop | Page Views | Low Stock | Urgency | Extras | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nudgify | Free Plan | $9 | $89 | Friction Nudges | ||||
| Fera | Yes | $9 | $99 | A/B Testing | ||||
| Growave | Yes | $59 | $299 | Wishlist | ||||
| Proof Factor | Yes | $15 | $79 | Spin-To-Win | ||||
| FOMO | Yes | $19 | $199 | Reviews | ||||
| Nextsale | Free plan | $29 | $249 | N/A | ||||
| Scale | Free plan | $6.99 | $6.99 | N/A | ||||
| SRO | Yes | $4.99 | $6.99 | Cart Pops | ||||
| Care Cart | Free | $0 | $0 | N/A | ||||
| Bizzy | Yes | $6.99 | $6.99 | N/A | ||||
| Provesource | Yes | $21 | $109 | Reviews | ||||
| Cart Kit | Free Plan | $29 | $129 | Geolocation | ||||
| Popify | Free Plan | $9.99 | $37.95 | Links | ||||
| Zoomy | Yes | $2.99 | $2.99 | Add-To-Cart |
The Shopify Sales Pop apps available in the App Store can be split into two groups:
- Sales Pops (less than $10/month, only show recent sales)
- Customer Engagement Apps (more than $10/month, include other notification styles).
For very small stores with limited return customers, a basic Sales Pop might be worth the investment. However, considering the low cost of these apps (especially when viewed as a way to increase the ROI from paid advertising) most Shopify stores are probably better off going for the more complete option.
It is also worth mentioning that the Free plans offered by many of the apps on this list are not viable as long-term Shopify Sales Pop solutions. It is best to think of the Free Plan as an extended trial, and move to a paid plan with more features and flexibility.
