It could be the beginning/end of a sale, discount, offer, launching a new product or unveiling a new concept or idea to the market.

A countdown essentially introduces some sort of emergency that bolts a user into action. It also creates a subconscious awareness in the user as the human mind is sensitive to elapsed time.

In a way, you can say it’s a sleazy tactic to corner a customer but hey, all that stock isn’t going to fly off by itself and now you know the psychology. Now let’s see which are the best shopify apps that would do it the best for you.

1. Countdown Sales Timer

Couldn’t have more obvious of a name. Countdown Sales Timer does exactly what it says. It has multiple designer dials that can fit well with any theme like Flash Sales, Winter Sales, Christmas Sales, etc.

You can also customize the dials to your liking to make it fit well with the design of your website. They also have a performance monitor that tracks all the views and clicks to monitor how effective your countdown strategy was.

Now, coming to the price. You have 2 plans:

• The Basic Plan that lets you publish 1 timer at a time and 6 themes to choose from

• The Premium Plan will give you unlimited timers, 17 themes to choose from, performance tracking, advanced targeting, and much

2. Cart Timer

With Cart Timer, you can set end dates for hours, days, and even up to years. Not only that, you can also get coupon codes next to the timer, custom text/button, redirect a custom message when the countdown expires, reset the timer for every new visitor, etc.

Cart Timer also offers POWR that you can use to create your own custom timer to add to any website. They have competent customer support for any help regarding use, tips or solve grievances.

For pricing, you have 4 tiers:

• The Free Plan is great for simple occasions when setting up a simple countdown but it lacks a lot of essential features

• The Starter Plan costs $4.99/month that removes that POWR tag, custom button, automatic repeat, animation effects, etc.

• The Pro Plan costs $11.99/month and includes the Starter Features and Countdown Per Visitor, Count up Per Visitor, and Custom CSS

• The Business Plan is $79.99/month and you get all the pro features and business upgrade on al POWR apps, which is cool but doesn’t work with the price

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3. Countdown Timer Ultimate

Yes, the names are going to be that similar. They have 12 clocks, customizable fonts, customizable colors, all which are packed in a mobile-friendly environment. It can be used for all your typical flash sales, special day sales, daily deals, etc.

Customization options also transition styles like double flip, single flip, single fade out, pull out center, etc. You can get a 3-day free trial with all the features and a 24/7 customer support.

There are 2 plans to choose from:

• The Free Plan covers literally everything you’d find in the pro with the only exception being the KILATECH badge. But you can probably make the case that most people won’t notice it

• The Paid Plan costs $3.95/month and could be worth it if you decide to go with CTU for the long term which can’t really hurt either

4. Urgency Bear

Urgency Bear comes ready-to-go out of the box, no additional setup required. Further you can customize it to your brand’s liking with color, text, and design. You can also customize the timer placement on the page.

There’s also language support to fit with your store and you decide to show/hide the timer on desktop or mobile. If there are any nitpicks about the timer that you don’t like, you can customize that too with the custom CSS and JS.

As for pricing, Urgency Bear has no paid plans so everything with the customer support and concierge setup is free for use.

5. Sales Countdown Timer Bar 2.0

Yep, an upgrade from the 1.0. Apart from all the other apps we mentioned, Sales Countdown Timer Bar has the least options for customization. This could be a turn off for some people who want to match it with their website.

But when you think about it, a timer that feels a little out of touch with the rest of the website could certainly attract more people to it. With that said, you can do basic editing like colors, fonts, and dialer animations.

You have 3 options for pricing here:

• The Free Plan lets you use individual timers for 1 specific product or page with a limitation to scheduled and fixed-length countdown timers

• The Unlimited Plan costs $8.95/month and provides you with unlimited number of products and specific pages with all the free plan features included

• The Priority Support costs $17.95/month, you get the unlimited plan features, a dedicated manager, priority customer support, additional assistance, and much more

6. Widgetic

Widgetic is your evergreen timer that resets and loops forever with a short buffer. You can customize it to fit with your website, and to get a little more personal you can also customize your own time-up message.

Responsive on every device, and added customization for the CTA link that you can embed in the countdown. Many users report the customization options to be a godsend among other features.

It’s not the most feature-rich app on the list but for what it offers, it certainly is free.

7. Perfect Countdown Sales Timer

And not only sounds perfect, Perfect Countdown Sales Timer offers unlimited timers for both of its plans which is along all the other features like scheduled event/daily timers, customizing options, responsiveness for mobile/desktop, etc.

You can manually set timers to whether they appear on every page or specific pages only which is known as Page Targeting. You can also set device-specific user priority, like users on mobile won’t be able to see the timer or visa-versa, known as Device Targeting.

There are 2 plans to choose from, one of which being free…

• Well, not free forever. The Free Plan is a 30-day trial and only allows event timers. But for 30 days, you can set as many as you want so probably hold this for a huge sale

• The Professional Plan costs $5.99/month and offers pretty much everything, including device and page targeting which is excluded from the free plan

8. Smart Countdown Timer

What’s so smart here? Well, it is easy to install, no coding required, responsive for every device, custom scheduling, custom colors and fonts, and customized messages for visitors. You also get a lot of themes readily installed.

Ideal for every opportunity of sales and discounts with which they also provide 24/7 customer support for any assistance or grievances.

There are 2 tier of pricing, including a free plan which is also a trial:

• The Free Plan offers a typical countdown timer with less to none customization features

• The Basic Plan costs $2.99/month all features with unlimited timers and full priority support

9. Ends Soon

The name itself could make you think like you’re running out on a timer. In simple words, it does everything you’ve been reading up to but under the most affordable price. WIth that said, customization options on offer are great.

All in all, it does feel like a high-quality app but the user reviews include many complaints including one user’s store being damaged. This is concerning but the customer support has reached out to all of them.

There is one tier of pricing with a 3-day trial available:

• For $0.99/month you’ll get every feature, customization, and unlimited timers for every occasion

10. Scarcity

Urgency and Scarcity go hand in hand. Especially if you want a customized countdown timer that reminds the customer of receding stocks. It’s just a one-click install and modify, support for all carts and themes, and requires no coding.

The timer resets as soon the page is refreshed to keep things dynamic. Beyond customization, you can also decide what happens once the timer ends like the cart will auto-delete itself if not checked out.

There are 2 tiers for pricing available:

• The Free Plan works only for test sites and no regular instances. But for what free is worth, you have unlimited timers available

• The Basic Plan costs $1.99/month and allows addition of a timer at the click of a button, compatible with all carts and themes, and complete online support

What’s your favourite Shopify countdown timer app?

One thing worth mentioning is that you can on the official pages and see that they provide an example store to give you a taste of what you’re getting. It also depends what you’re going for because your timer could look really pretty and still not move your sales.

In our opinion, we’ll say the Urgency Bear is a great freebie to have and for paid ones, Scarcity is the one that’ll get you there and if you don’t believe us then let the reviews do the talking. But regardless, do check out each before making a decision.

If there are any essential ones we might’ve missed out on then do let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.

Author Bio: I’m Chris Wagner, Head of Content @ HostingPill. I regularly write about Hosting, Web servers and WordPress. I have more than 9 years of Industry experience.