MBA vs Candy Rack
A polished, Shopify-only upsell and cross-sell widget with a beautiful built-in cart drawer and a black-box "Smart Auto-Upsell" AI, priced by your store's order volume.
When MBA wins
You need recommendation math you can actually audit (support/confidence/lift), profit-aware bundles shipped as real catalog SKUs, multi-platform or B2B reach, first-party data control, or an agent-callable API, none of which a Shopify-only storefront widget can structurally provide.
When Candy Rack wins
You run a single Shopify store, want a gorgeous cart drawer plus native checkout and post-purchase upsells live in minutes with zero rule-building, and value famously responsive 24/7 support that will write custom code for you on the spot.
Feature comparison
Color-striped rows favor MBA, Candy Rack, or are even. We mark each so you can scan for the trade-offs that matter to you.
| Feature | MBA | Candy Rack |
|---|---|---|
| Platforms supported | Five storefronts on one API contract: Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Magento/Adobe Commerce, and OroCommerce. | Shopify only, with the 'Built for Shopify' badge. No BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Magento, or OroCommerce. |
| Source of recommendations | Real co-purchase rules from your own orders via six selectable engines (sql_pairs, FP-Growth default, seasonal_cohort, return_aware, profit-aware HUI, ai_catalog cold-start), plus a co_occurrence fallback, each emitting inspectable support/confidence/lift with synthetic-vs-observed badging. | A hosted 'Smart Auto-Upsell' AI mode plus manual offer templates. The AI picks 'most relevant' products with no exposed support, confidence, or lift, and no inspectable rules. |
| Built-in cart drawer and storefront UX | Theme app blocks and a Shopify FBT surface, but no polished consumer-grade slide-out cart drawer with rewards/progress bar. This is not our strongest surface. | Best-in-class fast slide-out cart drawer with custom blocks, rewards/progress bar, announcement bar, sticky cart, and pop-ups. A genuinely refined, conversion-tuned storefront experience. |
| Checkout and post-purchase upsells | Strong FBT and bundle creation in admin; native Shopify checkout-extension and post-purchase one-click flows are on the roadmap, not shipping today. | Full-funnel and proven at scale: PDP, cart, native Shopify Plus checkout-extension, and post-purchase / thank-you-page upsells, all in one app. |
| Bundles | Creates actual catalog bundles/kits as real products: SKU, pricing strategy (incl. margin-aware HUI ranking), AI copy, draft-to-live lifecycle, and attribution. Not just on-page impressions. | Bundle and FBT offer templates that render as on-page upsell impressions. No real catalog bundle product with its own SKU and lifecycle. |
| Where data and AI live | Mining runs locally inside your own install on Magento and WooCommerce; AI is bring-your-own-key direct to Anthropic/OpenAI (default claude-haiku-4-5 / gpt-4o-mini, selectable up to claude-opus-4-8 / claude-sonnet-4-6 / gpt-4.1). Note: OroCommerce is a thin hosted client that proxies mining to our backend. | Hosted SaaS with vendor-controlled AI. No bring-your-own-LLM-key and no on-store mining option for data-residency-sensitive merchants. |
| Agent / MCP / API access | Public REST API plus a 19-tool MCP server (18 off Shopify) callable from any MCP host (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, OpenAI Agent SDK) and ACP discovery/endpoints. The intelligence layer agents can act on. | None. It is a storefront widget, with no public recommendations API, no MCP server, and no agent-callable surface. |
| Pricing predictability | Flat, transparent pricing: free $0 tier, Plus $99/mo (or ~$79/mo on annual). No order-volume tiers, no GMV or revenue share. | Tiered by 30-day order volume, $29.99 up to $399.99/mo plus custom Enterprise. Same feature set across tiers, so high-volume stores pay a lot more for the same app (GMV-proxy pricing). |
| Support, social proof, and time-to-value | Configurable engine + thresholds, friendly Job #N with live mining progress, name+SKU grids, bulk Opportunities actions, in-app help and 'Request a feature' forms. Requires a short setup and order history; early/unlisted GTM means thinner public reviews today. | 4.9/5 across ~196 reviews, renowned 24/7 chat/email support that writes custom code on the spot, and dead-simple time-to-value: turn on AI mode and ship upsells in minutes. |
| B2B / wholesale depth | B2B-aware mining on OroCommerce (per-organization context, cross-store insights), reorder-prediction data through the REST API, and a recommendation API for building custom B2B flows. | Consumer-only. No RFQ/quote bundles, reorder prediction, contract pricing, or company-hierarchy concept. |
Pricing snapshot
MarketBasketAnalysis
Flat, transparent plan pricing: Free ($0) and Plus $99/mo flat (or ~$79/mo on annual). One paid plan, everything in it. These are product plans, not per-platform prices, and the same plans apply across every platform. Metered on capability and compute, never on GMV. No revenue share, no add-ons.
See plansCandy Rack
Subscription tiered by your store's 30-day order volume, with feature parity across paid tiers. Lite $29.99/mo (0-50 orders) climbs through Growth $59.99, Scale $79.99, and on up to Elite $399.99/mo (5,000+ orders), plus custom Enterprise. 8-day free trial, free tier for dev/trial stores only, ~20% off annual, 60-day money-back guarantee.
Visit Candy RackThe honest verdict
Candy Rack is the best-in-class Shopify upsell widget. If you run one Shopify store and want a gorgeous cart drawer, native checkout and post-purchase upsells, and zero-config AI offers backed by famously hands-on 24/7 support, it is genuinely excellent and more turnkey on its storefront UX than we are today.
But it stops at the storefront. Its 'Smart Auto-Upsell' AI is a black box: no support/confidence/lift, no inspectable rules, no audit trail. MBA mines your own orders with six engines and shows the math behind every recommendation, including profit-aware HUI ranking.
MBA creates real catalog bundles (SKU, pricing strategy, draft-to-live lifecycle, attribution) rather than only rendering on-page upsell impressions, and spans five platforms on one API contract instead of Shopify alone.
Pricing shape differs by design: Candy Rack scales with your order volume up to $399.99/mo for the same feature set, while MBA is flat (free $0 tier, Plus $99/mo) with no GMV or revenue share. High-volume merchants do the math here.
Decisively for agentic commerce, MBA exposes the same intelligence as a public REST API plus a 19-tool MCP server (18 off Shopify) (any MCP host) and ACP endpoints; Candy Rack ships no agent-callable surface. Pick Candy Rack for turnkey Shopify storefront polish today, MBA for auditable math, real bundles, multi-platform, B2B, data control, and agent-ready infrastructure.
Want the full buyer's deep-dive?
This page is the per-vendor short version. For the long version, read “MBA vs Bloomreach” (8 pages on the enterprise-vs-mid-market trade-off) or “MBA vs the widget cluster” (4 pages of pricing math vs Glood, Rebuy, and PickyStory).
Try MBA on your own store
14-day money-back guarantee on all paid platforms. WP.org free tier on WooCommerce. No credit card required for the free path.