The short version
Both of us take access requests rather than only handing out keys, which makes this a closer comparison than most on this site. Where the two diverge is what the paid tiers cost as your store grows, and how much happens after a request lands.
One correction first, because this page got it wrong until August 2026. We used to say Ymq installs free and to recommend trying it before paying anyone. Its free plan is for development and trial stores, so a live shop starts at $9.99 a month. That is a normal and honest way to price an app, but it is not a free tier, and we should not have described it as one.
Neither app carries Built for Shopify, which is worth stating because it is the one line in the table above where a reader might assume the older app wins by default. We checked the listing on the date at the top of this page: the badges you can see on Ymq's page belong to the apps in its "more apps like this" block, not to Ymq.
Where Ymq is genuinely better
Price on a small store. $9.99 a month on Basic against our $14.99. If you are on a smaller Shopify plan and the feature lists both cover you, they are the cheaper answer and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Over a year that is $60, which is not nothing to a store that is still proving the idea works.
It is not only key-based. Their listing names approve-requests alongside passcodes, secret links, customer tags and URL rules, so the "they do keys, we do requests" line that would make this page easy to write is not true, and we are not going to write it. What we would say is that the listing names the feature without describing it, so it tells you the queue exists and nothing about what it does once somebody is in it. That is the thing to test rather than to assume in either direction.
Ratings, and what they say. 4.9 stars. The review count is small, 26, but it is 26 more than ours, and every one of them is a merchant who stayed. The theme running through them is worth more than the number: merchants describe the locking logic as reliable, the app as lightweight rather than bloated, and support as answering in minutes. Reliable and light are exactly the two things you want from a lock, and they are the two things a new app cannot prove about itself yet.
Simplicity, if that is what you need. All three of their paid tiers list the same features. You are not buying capability as you move up, you are being priced against your Shopify plan, and there is nothing to work out about which tier does what. That is a real advantage over apps that make you read a matrix.
Where we differ
What the pricing does as you grow. Ymq's paid tiers are tied to your Shopify plan: $9.99, $19.99 or $29.99 a month as you move up. Ours is flat, so Starter costs the same on Basic as it does on Plus.
Worked through, on their list prices: on Basic they are $5 a month cheaper than our Starter. On the middle tier it is $19.99 against $14.99, so we are $5 cheaper. On Advanced it is $29.99 against $14.99, and if you have moved to our Growth plan for the drops machinery it is $29.99 against $34.99 and they are ahead again. So the answer genuinely depends on which Shopify plan you are on and which of our two plans you need, and there is no version of this table where one app is simply cheaper. Neither model is wrong. Ours just stops moving.
After the request lands. Ours is built around that moment rather than around the gate. An interest list a visitor can build without an account and that survives a reload, a form with your own questions on it, context on every request saying which page it came from and what they had picked out, auto-approve rules that match on country or email domain so the obvious ones never wait for you, editable emails that arrive from your shop rather than from us, and the option to turn what somebody wanted into a Shopify draft order with their access code riding along in the invoice.
If your approvals are occasional and you are happy reading them yourself, that machinery is overkill and their simpler version will serve you better. This is the honest shape of it: we are more app than most stores gating a catalogue need.
Drops and campaigns. Locks that open and close on a schedule with no republish, a countdown on the locked page, a reminder signup that sends its own announcement when the drop opens, codes that expire so early access really ends, a waitlist that tells somebody their position and moves them up when a referral joins, member invites, and attribution on every redemption so a creator campaign can be counted rather than estimated. That is a different job from B2B gating and it is the half of our product their listing does not describe at all.
Named tiers rather than in or out. Levels you name, ordered, with a Shopify customer tag written on redemption so segments and discounts can key off the tier. The highest tier somebody holds answers the lock, and renaming a tier never demotes anyone. Their listing describes access by tag and URL, which covers the same ground for a single grade of buyer and not for several.
What each app is willing to do to Google. Their listing describes hiding products across all store pages and requiring a secret URL to reach them, which is a shape of gating built around making things not be there. Ours is built the opposite way round on purpose: locked products stay browsable and indexable, with the price replaced by your words and the buy button gone, so a stranger can find the product, want it, and have somewhere to ask. That is the argument the whole product rests on, and its cost is that we cannot hide anything from a search engine for you.
This is the one difference on the page that is not a matter of degree. If your catalogue must not be publicly visible, we are not a cheaper or more expensive answer, we are the wrong answer, and you should stop comparing and buy a lock that hides things.
Where the lock stops. Ours governs the storefront. The price and the buy button go, and who holds access is decided on our server, so the page cannot be edited into granting it and no code or tier can be forged. It reaches the checkout as well: a direct cart link to a locked product is refused at the cart rather than paid for. Two limits on that worth knowing before you pay us. It covers locks that name their products and locks covering the whole store, not locks pointed at a collection or at conditions like a tag or a vendor. And if our check cannot run, Shopify completes the sale rather than hold up your customer. A price may still be readable from a cache or a product feed. Their listing does not claim checkout gating at all, so where our locks do carry that far, this is now a difference between the two apps rather than a limit on both. If a product has to be genuinely unbuyable under all of the above, unpublish it in Shopify and buy no lock for it.
The honest test
Neither of us should be your first install if you have no budget at all. There are apps in this category that are free on a live store, and the roundup names them. Start there, and if a free one solves it you are done having spent nothing. That advice costs us a sale and it is still the right advice.
If a free one does not solve it, run both of these and lock one product. Ymq's fourteen days and our free plan both cost nothing, so there is no reason to choose on a feature list when you can choose on the thing itself. Load the locked page on a throttled connection with the cache cleared and see whether the price flashes. Then submit a request through each and watch what reaches you: how much context arrives with it, what the visitor sees next, and how many clicks it takes you to let them in.
Pick us if you hit one of three walls: approvals that need rules rather than your attention, a launch with a date and a queue attached, or a Shopify plan upgrade that makes per-plan pricing hurt. Two of those three are about growth, which is worth noticing. If none of them describes your next year, they are the cheaper app on a small store and the simpler one on any store.
Pick them if the gating is straightforward, you are staying on a smaller plan, and what you want is a reliable lock that gets out of the way. Their reviewers say that is what they have, and nothing we found suggests otherwise.