Best Shopify Swatches Apps
Many fashion, apparel, accessory and other store owners on Shopify improve the customer experience by allowing their shoppers to view products and customize orders using a range of different product options.
For instance, when a customer needs to select items from a range of colors or images that can be added to a product.
A Shopify swatches app can help you display accurate images of the chosen products to potential buyers (and remove anything that is not relevant). Customers see the exact product that they have chosen, removing the guesswork and helping you both increase conversions and reduce returns. That’s great for profits.
Shopify swatches apps replace the need for customers to constantly switch between images to compare products and view the precise one they want before they buy.
As well as your preset colors, text and image options, you can even allow customers to submit custom images or text.
Some of these Shopify swatches apps also do other things like enabling the addition of extra features or services to products, such as gift wrapping, adding a message or card, extended warranties, or other product add-ons and cross-sells. Some also have date-picking features and provide various other options via radio buttons and dropdowns.
It’s the smart way to help customers choose the products they want in fashion and design-based stores without it affecting general store performance.
Let’s take look at a few of the best Shopify swatches apps currently available…
Bold Product Options
Bold Apps is a familiar name to most Shopify users, with several useful creations that help store owners improve the user experience.
The Product Options app is one of the most popular and best-reviewed in its field, with many thousands of happy store owners. It is ideal for stores with highly customizable product ranges and who value a tailored experience for their customers.
While its Basic plan will suit smaller store owners, more serious customization and upselling opportunities are available with the Premium version.
Price: $19.99/month for Basic. $49.99/month for Premium (with more advanced features)
Free Trial? Yes – 14-day free trial
Average Shopify Rating (out of 5 stars): 4.6 (2,235 reviews)
Main pros:
- Helps streamline the customer order process
- Provides dropdown menus, checkboxes, radio buttons, color swatches, image/file uploads, text boxes, date pickers, etc.
- Customers can easily upload custom designs, mockups, photos, and logos
- Allows you to build a custom order form using flexible options to provide a quote
- Displays customer picks on order summaries
- Conditional logic to show or hide options (Premium version)
- Image and color swatches (Premium version)
- Increases average order value by adding charges for express delivery, gift wrapping, extended warranties, monograms, engraving, and other product add-ons/cross-sells (Premium version)
- Links options to products that are automatically added to cart (Premium version)
- Can create option sets and apply them to multiple products
- Can add options to products, collections, or your entire store with one click
- Easy to install and very user-friendly
- Style your app to match your site’s branding using CSS
Any cons?
- No free version
- Pricing is higher than most other apps featured here
- A few recent complaints about support
Color Swatch Pug
Color Swatch Pug is a great app for fashion stores that are focused on providing a smooth customer experience when selecting colors and/or patterns for products before they buy.
As color swatch apps go, this one by TechiePugs receives consistently good reviews from users and is used by many Shopify-based brands to add color/pattern variations to products using thumbnail images. The app is great value for its low monthly fee and will suit small and growing stores.
Price: $4.99/month
Free Trial? Yes – 14-day free trial
Average Shopify Rating (out of 5 stars): 4.6 (132 reviews)
Main pros:
- Easily add color and pattern variations to products
- Can replace existing drop-down variant selector on product pages with color swatch buttons
- Show color swatch buttons on collection pages and product pages
- Displays thumbnail images of options
- Three different designs of swatch icons available
- Adjust sizes to match the swatch button designs with your theme design
- Simple-to-use and integrates easilywith your Shopify theme
- Minimal coding reduces the impact on your store’s page-load speeds
- Can test color swatch functionality on your store before committing to any fees
- Support team available by email and live chat
- Free help to install the app if required
- Low monthly fee
Any cons?
- More limited than other full-featured apps reviewed here
- No free version
Variant Option Product Options
Variant Option Product Options by Relentless Apps is a flexible custom product builder app designed for clothing stores, shoe stores, and other fashion stores on Shopify.
It is well-reviewed by hundreds of users and a free plan is available, which is not standard for these types of apps. However, many Shopify store owners will want to unlock extra features with one of the paid plans.
Price: Free plan available. Paid plans at $8.99/month (more options than the free plan) and $18.99/month (with conditional logic and price add-on options)
Free Trial? Yes – 14-day free trial
Average Shopify Rating (out of 5 stars): 4.7 (717 reviews)
Main pros:
- Multiple variants including buttons, swatches, dropdowns and more
- Unlimited variants possible
- Customers can upload images for extra personalization
- Can personalize products with custom text boxes (monograms)
- Control the characters/numbers that users can input
- Add gift-wrappingservices and other advanced product options
- Conditional logic for dynamic product display that hides irrelevant features (Advanced Plan)
- Automatically hides out-of-stock products with conditional logic
- Set up global options settings for all products
- Use the duplication tools to quickly apply swatches across product ranges
- Match the swatches to your theme’s style (no coding required)
- Free plan available
- Reasonably priced paid plans available
- Responsive customer support
Any cons?
- Free plan is quite limited in functionality
Vario – Variation Swatches
The Vario-Variation Swatches app by the team at SeedGrow is a flexible app that helps you customize the swatch styles for your product option buttons, colors, and custom images.
It is currently free to install and promises to remain free for the first 500 merchants. How close they are to this number of early adopters is not clear –but the number of positive reviews the app is gathering suggests that they may be getting close.
Price: Free to install.
Free Trial? No
Average Shopify Rating (out of 5 stars): 4.8 (23 reviews)
Main pros:
- Customize the swatch styles for your product option buttons, colors, and custom images
- Select different styles of shape, border, background color, positioning, alignment, etc.
- Design the variant picker buttons to match your store color schemes
- Show variants swatches on product pages and collections pages (new)
- Auto-pick major color HEX for variant color names such as red, green, brown, yellow, etc.
- Auto-populate standard colors and image swatches based on existing product variant images to save time
- Compatible with 80+ free, premium, and custom Shopify themes without coding
- Collections page swatches support 10 free Shopify themes
- Keeps your store snappy – doesn’t impact page load speed
- SEO-friendly – helps you avoid duplicated product description content
- Easy to install and use
- Free to install
- Free support team available for installation assistance
Any cons?
- One of the newer apps – so slightly less “proven” than other apps reviewed here
- A few integration gripes with certain Shopify themes
- Fewer Shopify reviews than other apps reviewed here
Hulk Product Options
Product Options is another offering from the well-established team at Hulk Apps. It allows you to customize product options with unlimited variations and, as well as increasing conversions, it can help you boost the average order value (AOV) from customers.
A free plan is available with limited features. Many growing Shopify stores may want one of the paid plans, which provide a range of features and greater customization options for customers and stores. The hundreds upon hundreds of positive reviews received by this app should provide peace of mind for your investment.
Price: Free plan available. $8.90 per month for Basic Plan. $18.90 per month for Advanced Plan (includes conditional logic and other advanced features).
Free Trial? Yes – 14-day free trial
Average Shopify Rating (out of 5 stars): 4.7 (1,236 reviews)
Main pros:
- Functions as a product filter, product customizer, and product bundler (for upselling)
- Allows customers to personalize the buying experience
- Provides accurate pricing for unlimited product variants
- Can assign a price to any product quantity/custom category
- Includes options and pricing for additional services, e.g., gift wrapping, rush processing fee, etc.
- Unlimited customization options for customers from the product page
- Elegant custom options for dropdowns, checkboxes, radio buttons, file uploads, etc.
- Conditional logic reveals or hides options based on selections made by customers (Advanced Plan)
- Set maximum character length for customers adding text to products
- Tooltips and help text for customers
- Customers can directly edit options from the cart page
- Edit options in one screen and apply to all products in one click (bulk updates)
- Free plan available
- Lots of reviews
Any cons?
- Limited functionality with the free version
- Occasional comments about support and integration with certain Shopify themes
Swatches by Webyze
Swatches by Webyze is another well-reviewed app by Shopify store owners. It is a paid app but the monthly fees certainly won’t break the bank.
This app is one of the simpler ones reviewed here, focusing on replacing the need for dropdown menus and allowing store owners to include color swatches instead. It is ideal for fashion-oriented stores on Shopify – especially startups and stores just getting established,
Price: $7/month
Free Trial? Yes – 7-day free trial
Average Shopify Rating (out of 5 stars): 4.5 (162 reviews)
Main pros:
- Allows product customization with both images and colors
- Create swatches of one color or two colors and include image swatches
- Replaces the typical drop-down menu for color variations with swatches
- Choose from several swatch styles to suit your store
- Auto-install feature
- Fully compatible with Shopify themes and the O.S. 2.0 system
- Easy to use for beginners
- Ideal for fashion and apparel stores
- Simple and affordable pricing
- Support team to help solve any problems
Any cons?
- No free version
- Short trial period (only 7 days)
- A few historical negative reviews but the bugs seem to have been fixed
Boost customization and conversions in your store
Whether you want customers to be able to see how certain text looks on a particular color of tee-shirt or add other buying options to products to upsell and increase order value, Shopify swatch apps can help.
They bring your products to life and help customers window-shop and test out different options without leaving the page or having to switch between tabs or images.
Being able to customize products and view the exact options selected before purchasing is essential for boosting conversions in stores.
The Shopify swatch apps reviewed above help you do that with varying degrees of sophistication and at different price points. Check them out using the free trials and see which one suits you best.
