{
 "schema_version": "1.0",
 "id": "essential-trust-badges",
 "name": "Essential Trust Badges",
 "research_status": "researched",
 "vendor_domain": "essential-apps.com",
 "category": "E-commerce",
 "task": "E-commerce growth",
 "summary": "Shopify app (by Essential Apps) that adds payment icons, feature icons, guarantee badges and promo banners to product pages, the cart or any theme position, with your own icons, country targeting and translations; plans are metered on widget views.",
 "best_for": "Shopify merchants who want payment icons, feature icons and guarantee or shipping badges under the add-to-cart button without code, starting free, and who will pay $9.99 once they need badges in the cart, per-country badges or translations",
 "skip_if": "your cart drawer comes from a third-party app, because the help centre says only theme cart drawers are supported; or you want several distinct badge blocks per product page and refuse to pay, because the free plan allows one banner or one three-icon block",
 "honest_knock": "The free plan is generous on views and tight on badges. It allows 5,000 views a month, more than the vendor's countdown and announcement-bar apps give away, but only one product-page banner or one block of three icons, plus payment icons. A store that wants a shipping promise under the add-to-cart button and a separate guarantee block further down is already on Starter, and uploading your own icon instead of choosing from the library also starts there.\n\nThe badge people most often want, the one next to the checkout button, is on the $9.99 Essential plan. The help centre says cart-page and cart-drawer badges are not available on Free or Starter, and adds two limits that are easy to miss: the app supports your theme's own cart drawer only, not third-party cart-drawer apps, and a badge placed with the custom-position method appears on the cart page but no longer inside the drawer. If your store uses a slide-cart app, check this before you pay for the plan that includes it.\n\nViews are counted per widget load, so every badge on a page adds a view each time the page opens, including your own visits; preview mode and the theme customiser are not counted. Past the limit nothing is charged, but three days after the warning email the badges are unpublished until the 1st of the month. The critical reviews are few, three one-star and two three-star out of 1,163, and they are about setup rather than billing: one store gave up after a week trying to show two product-page banners, which the vendor replied needed two product-page badges rather than one product and one cart badge, and one wanted more design options without writing CSS. A badge is also a claim: show only guarantees, returns and security marks you actually offer. We have not installed the app.",
 "pricing": {
  "status": "public",
  "entry_price": "$6.99",
  "entry_price_terms": "Starter · per month for up to 20,000 widget views, or $67.08 a year",
  "from_price_usd_month": null,
  "plans": [
   {
    "name": "Free",
    "price": "no published price",
    "includes": "Up to 5,000 views/month, full icon library, unlimited payment icons, one banner or block"
   },
   {
    "name": "Starter",
    "price": "$6.99 a month, or $67.08 a year",
    "includes": "Up to 20,000 views, unlimited product-page blocks and icons, upload own icons"
   },
   {
    "name": "Essential",
    "price": "$9.99 a month or $95.88 a year",
    "includes": "Up to 50,000 views, cart badges, tag/geolocation targeting, translations"
   },
   {
    "name": "Professional",
    "price": "$29.99 a month or $287.88 a year",
    "includes": "Unlimited views, every premium feature"
   }
  ],
  "plans_source": "summarised from pricing.notes; every plan name and amount appears verbatim in those notes",
  "notes": "(read 2026-09-30 on apps.shopify.com/essential-icon-badge-banners, on essential-apps.com/trust-badges and in the vendor's help articles on views, cart placement and badges not showing) Four plans priced on monthly widget views. Free covers up to 5,000 views a month, the full icon library, unlimited payment icons on product pages and one product-page banner or one block of three icons. Starter is $6.99 a month, or $67.08 a year at a stated 20% saving, for up to 20,000 views, and adds unlimited product-page blocks, unlimited icons per block and uploading your own icons. Essential is $9.99 a month or $95.88 a year for up to 50,000 views, and adds cart-page and cart-drawer badges, placing badges by product tag, geolocation targeting and translations. Professional is $29.99 a month or $287.88 a year for unlimited views and every premium feature. Paid plans carry a 7-day free trial. A view is counted every time a badge widget loads, not once per visitor, and your own browsing counts too. There is no overage charge: past the limit you get an email, and if you do not upgrade within 3 days the badges are unpublished until views reset on the 1st of the month. All charges are in USD, billed through Shopify every 30 days. Developer Essential Apps, with an address in Vilnius, Lithuania; the listing gives a launch date of 2 June 2023 and shows 1,163 reviews.",
  "verified_at": "2026-09-30",
  "source_url": "https://apps.shopify.com/essential-icon-badge-banners",
  "schema_offer": {
   "price": 6.99,
   "currency": "USD",
   "description": "Starter, per month for up to 20,000 widget views, or $67.08 a year; free plan up to 5,000 views; Essential is $9.99 for 50,000 and Professional $29.99 for unlimited views; billed through Shopify every 30 days. Read on the vendor's own pricing page on 2026-09-30.",
   "page": "https://marketingandsalessoftware.com/essential-trust-badges-review.html"
  },
  "source_quotes": null,
  "recent_change": null,
  "price_history": null
 },
 "free_plan": true,
 "free_plan_evidence": "Free covers up to 5,000 views a month, the full icon library, unlimited payment icons on product pages and one product-page banner or one block of three icons.",
 "cost_traps": [],
 "compare_with": {
  "name": "Essential Announcement Bar",
  "why": "Essential Announcement Bar is the vendor's sister app and the closest comparison in our own dossiers, because both put store promises in front of shoppers and both are priced on views with the same $6.99, $9.99 and $29.99 ladder. They sit in different places. The announcement bar runs across the top of every page for shipping terms, offers and notices, and on our reading of 29 September 2026 its free plan covered 2,000 views with the scrolling bar starting on Starter. Trust Badges sits on the product page and, from Essential, in the cart, next to the decision to buy, with a free plan of 5,000 views but only one badge block. A store that wants one site-wide message fits the bar; a store that wants reassurance next to the buy button fits the badges, and many stores run both, which means two view counters to watch."
 },
 "links": {
  "record": "https://aibuildermarketplace.com/api/v1/products/essential-trust-badges.json",
  "review": "https://marketingandsalessoftware.com/essential-trust-badges-review.html",
  "marketplace": "https://aibuildermarketplace.com/marketplace/essential-trust-badges/",
  "vendor_site": "https://essential-apps.com"
 },
 "purchase": {
  "seller": "the vendor",
  "how": "AIBuilder Marketplace does not sell this software. Sign up, start a trial or buy on the vendor's site.",
  "handoff_url": "https://platform.shoffi.app/r/rl_H5naZJcS",
  "affiliate": true,
  "disclosure": "Where purchase.affiliate is true, purchase.handoff_url is an affiliate link: AIBuilder Marketplace may earn a commission at no extra cost to the buyer. Commission never changes what a record says, and products are not ranked by commission. Where it is false the link is the vendor's plain site."
 },
 "provenance": {
  "research": "hand-researched dossier, read on the vendor's own pages",
  "researched_since": "2026-07",
  "method": "https://aibuildermarketplace.com/how-we-review/",
  "license": "CC BY 4.0. Credit 'AIBuilder Marketplace' with a link to https://aibuildermarketplace.com/atlas/.",
  "note": "A rebuild is not a new measurement: pricing.verified_at is the date that matters."
 },
 "cost": {
  "status": "not_yet",
  "engine": "https://aibuildermarketplace.com/agents/#cost",
  "rules": null,
  "growth": null
 },
 "unknowns": [
  "Contract terms (cancellation, data export, data location, minimum seats) are not researched as separate fields; pricing.notes mentions them only where the vendor's pricing page does.",
  "Being verified: free trial and refund terms are not yet matched to a verbatim line on the vendor's own pages. Not matched does not mean there is none.",
  "No computable price rules yet: cost at a given team size cannot be calculated for this product.",
  "Not tested hands-on by us: what the product does comes from the vendor's pages and our reading of them."
 ],
 "verification": {
  "price": "read",
  "free_trial": "being_verified",
  "refund": "being_verified"
 },
 "status_page": null,
 "third_party_video": {
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d86ijqnK-tc",
  "channel": "Just Kristers",
  "published": "2026-02-05",
  "shows": "Installing Essential Trust Badges from the Shopify App Store, picking a badge type and placing it on a store page with an app block",
  "independent": true,
  "checked_at": "2026-10-26"
 },
 "task_evidence": null,
 "open_questions": [
  {
   "question_id": "essential-trust-badges:cancellation_terms",
   "key": "cancellation_terms",
   "question": "Can a customer cancel at any time, and what happens to an annual plan that is cancelled mid-term?",
   "status": "open"
  },
  {
   "question_id": "essential-trust-badges:data_export",
   "key": "data_export",
   "question": "Which data can a customer export, in which formats, on which plans?",
   "status": "open"
  },
  {
   "question_id": "essential-trust-badges:data_location",
   "key": "data_location",
   "question": "Where is customer data stored, and can a customer choose the region?",
   "status": "open"
  },
  {
   "question_id": "essential-trust-badges:minimum_seats",
   "key": "minimum_seats",
   "question": "Is there a minimum number of seats or users on any plan?",
   "status": "open"
  }
 ],
 "vendor_answers": [],
 "agent_channels": {
  "vendor_mcp": null,
  "agent_checkout": {
   "status": "not_found",
   "detail": "No explicit support for purchases by AI agents on the vendor's own pages.",
   "checked_at": "2026-10-07",
   "method": "homepage, /pricing and the pricing page we cite, read as plain HTML (no JavaScript) and searched for explicit support of purchases by AI agents: Agentic Commerce Protocol, Instant Checkout, Agent Payments Protocol, buy in ChatGPT, agentic checkout"
  }
 }
}