Sale max vs HS Slide Cart Drawer: which slide cart app fits your Shopify store?

Slide cart apps are one of the most crowded corners of the Shopify App Store. The big names get reviewed everywhere, but plenty of merchants end up shortlisting smaller apps that cost less or answer faster on chat. Sale max Slide Cart Drawer and HS Slide Cart Drawer Upsell are two of those: both replace your theme's cart popup with a drawer that carries upsells, a progress bar and a discount field, both sit in the same App Store categories (Cart customization and Upsell and cross-sell), and both have between 100 and 150 reviews. Yet they are built on very different business models, and that difference shapes almost every decision below.

All facts on this page were checked on October 22, 2026, on each app's App Store listing and on the developer's own product or pricing page (see sources). Where a feature only appears as a filter tag on the listing, with no written description, we say so rather than assume it works.

Who makes these two apps

Sale max Slide Cart Drawer

Sale max is published by Gm infotech inc, a developer registered in Beaverton, Oregon. The app launched on the Shopify App Store on July 21, 2023, so it is relatively young. It holds a 4.8 rating from about 130 reviews, with roughly 92% of them at five stars. Most 2026 reviews (from Malaysia, Panama, Poland, Israel, India and the US) praise one thing above all: support that answers within minutes and handles theme tweaks for the merchant.

The positioning is simple and unusual: the app is free. Not freemium, not free up to a number of orders. The developer's page lists a single Free forever plan with all features, unlimited orders and revenue, and states there is no premium tier to unlock. The same developer sells other apps (a Terms and Conditions checkbox app, for instance), which is presumably how the business is funded.

HS Slide Cart Drawer Upsell

HS Slide Cart Drawer is made by Heysenior, a developer based in Lima, Peru. It has been on the App Store since June 1, 2018, which makes it one of the older independent slide carts still active. It is rated 4.5 from about 146 reviews. The split is more polarized than Sale max: around 84% five-star reviews but also around 8% one-star reviews, and several of the negative ones concern slow support or bugs. The developer does reply publicly, including to a July 2026 review.

HS is a classic paid app. Live stores choose between $19.99, $29.99 and $59.99 per month on the App Store, after a 5-day trial. The free plan exists, but only for development and partner stores. In exchange, HS packs more promotional modules: gift wrap, add-ons, a shipping protection toggle, trust badges, payment icons, tiered free gifts and custom JavaScript.

Criterion by criterion

Building and styling the drawer

Sale max leans on a drag-and-drop builder that covers both the slide cart and the full cart page, and the developer says you can arrange widgets, colors and text so the drawer looks like part of your theme. Setup is one step: enable the app embed in the theme editor, and it replaces the default cart popup.

HS promises a cart you can customize without editing theme code, with design settings and a single dashboard for upsells, gifts and discounts. It does not describe a drag-and-drop editor, but it gives developers something Sale max does not document: custom HTML, CSS and JS in every plan. If you have a freelancer who likes to fine-tune things in code, that matters. HS also has a sticky cart feature to keep the cart reachable as shoppers browse. If you want a visual for how to approach drawer layout in general, our guide on customizing a Shopify cart drawer without code walks through the main blocks.

Offers inside the cart

On the core offers, the two are close. Both run a progress bar toward free shipping or a reward, both show product recommendations in the drawer, and both let you set rules that decide which offer appears. Sale max gives a concrete example on its site: shoes in the cart, show socks. You can rely on Shopify's own recommendations or pick products per product or collection.

HS widens the menu. It explicitly supports BOGO promotions, frequently bought together bundles, automatic free gifts based on cart conditions and a tiered free items module. Add the gift wrap and add-ons modules and you get a cart that can run a full holiday campaign on its own. Sale max covers free gifts through its progress bar goals and bundle discounts in the side cart, but with fewer dedicated modules. If gift-with-purchase is central to your promotions, our gift with purchase setup guide helps decide which mechanism you actually need.

Checkout tools: where Sale max pulls ahead

This is the clearest gap. Sale max places order notes, a discount code field and a shipping rate estimate inside the drawer, and its FAQ confirms that PayPal, Shop Pay and Google Pay buttons appear next to the checkout button. For a shopper on mobile, being able to jump straight to Shop Pay from the drawer removes a step.

HS has the discount field, and a Custom notes tag on its listing, but no written mention of order notes, a shipping estimator or express checkout buttons. What it has instead is reassurance content: trust badges and payment icons in the drawer, and a shipping protection toggle. Whether shipping protection is worth offering at all is a separate question, which we cover in shipping protection on Shopify: is it worth it.

Integrations

Sale max lists Judge.me, Loox, Ali Reviews, Reviews.io, Shopify Product Reviews and Yotpo, which mainly matters for showing star ratings on recommended products. HS lists Yotpo on the review side, but more importantly GemPages, PageFly, Shogun, ReCharge and Bold Subscriptions. If your product pages are built with a page builder or you sell subscriptions, HS is the one that has explicitly declared compatibility. Sale max may work fine in those setups, but it does not say so.

International stores

Both listings are in English only and both show Multi-currency and Multi-language tags without explaining how they work. One HS review from July 2026 says the cart did not work with international currency (the developer answered that the app works correctly). If you sell in several currencies through Shopify Markets, test both carts with a foreign currency before going live. Our article on multi-currency carts lists what to check.

Analytics

Neither app documents analytics in writing. Sale max shows click-through rate, conversion rate and recommendation performance tags. HS shows similar tags plus A/B testing and funnel performance, and a screenshot captioned track cart interactions and upsell performance. Treat both as basic until you see the dashboard during setup.

Pricing and long-term cost

Over a year, Sale max costs $0. HS costs at least $239.88 on the BASIC plan billed monthly, and up to $719.88 on ADVANCED. Note that every paid HS plan lists exactly the same features, and the developer site names them For Shopify Basic, For Shopify plan, Shopify Advanced and Shopify Plus, which points to pricing that follows your Shopify plan rather than features. The developer site also shows yearly prices and a $99.99 Shopify Plus tier that does not appear on the App Store listing. Check the plan offered when you install. For the general logic of when paying for an app is justified, see free vs paid Shopify apps.

Support and reliability

Sale max's recent reviews are almost uniformly about fast, hands-on support, including one merchant who says the team spent around six hours on customizations. HS has many positive support reviews too, but also a recurring minority of complaints about unanswered emails. The developer replies to many of them. With a free app the risk is low: you can install Sale max and judge for yourself. With HS, use the 5-day trial to send a support request and see how fast it comes back.

Three store profiles

A new apparel store doing 150 orders a month

Cash matters, the theme is standard (Dawn or a close relative) and the goal is a free shipping bar plus one or two cross-sells. Sale max fits: free, drag-and-drop, express checkout buttons in the drawer, and order notes for gift messages. There is no reason to pay $19.99 a month for modules you will not use.

A gift and homeware brand preparing the holiday season

This store wants gift wrap, tiered free gifts above set cart values, a BOGO on candles and trust badges to reassure first-time buyers. HS Slide Cart Drawer covers all of that in one app, and $29.99 a month during November and December is easy to justify if it lifts average order value. Run the trial early, well before Black Friday traffic.

A supplement brand on PageFly with subscriptions

Product pages are built in PageFly and repeat buyers subscribe through ReCharge. HS is the safer bet because it lists both as compatible, and its custom JS lets a developer handle edge cases. Sale max could be tested on a duplicate theme first, but nothing in its documentation confirms those integrations.

Switching from one to the other

Both apps load through the theme (Sale max through an app embed that replaces the cart popup), so the switch is mostly about avoiding two drawers fighting each other.

1. Note your current settings: progress bar thresholds, upsell rules, gift rules and discount behavior. Neither app mentions an import tool from the other.
2. Duplicate your live theme and work on the copy.
3. Disable the old app's embed in the theme editor on that copy, then enable the new one.
4. Rebuild the progress bar and upsell rules, then test with a real cart: discount code, free gift trigger, mobile layout and, if you sell abroad, a foreign currency.
5. Publish the theme, then uninstall the old app so its scripts and any recurring charge stop.

Moving from HS to Sale max usually means giving up gift wrap, shipping protection and trust badges in the drawer, but gaining express checkout buttons and a shipping estimator. Moving from Sale max to HS is the reverse, plus a monthly bill. If you are comparing other drawers too, our Kaching Cart Drawer vs Essential Cart Drawer comparison covers two better-known options, and Essential Free Shipping Bar vs Hoppy helps if you only need the progress bar.

Bottom line on the details

The decision comes down to a short question: do you need the extra promotional modules HS offers, or the checkout shortcuts Sale max offers? Sale max wins on price, on checkout tools and on recent review sentiment. HS wins on breadth of offers, on declared integrations with page builders and subscription apps, and on developer flexibility with custom JS. Both are small, independent apps without a Built for Shopify badge, so testing on a duplicate theme before publishing is the sensible move either way.