# Fomo

> Fomo is a social proof notification platform that displays live activity on a website, showing recent purchases, signups, reviews, and aggregated roundups as small popups or inline elements, with geo and page-level targeting rules, A/B testing, an ROI dashboard, and more than 106 integrations; it is metered by monthly notification volume from $25 a month and is owned by Relay Commerce following a 2022 acquisition.

- Category: Testimonials & Social Proof (https://saastracker.org/categories/reviews-social-proof)
- Website: https://fomo.com
- Starting price: $25 per month (Starter)
- Free plan: No
- Free trial: 14 days on all tiers, no credit card required
- Founded: 2016, HQ: United States, Ownership: Owned by Relay Commerce following a June 2022 acquisition
- Profile last reviewed: 2026-08-22
- Canonical profile: https://saastracker.org/products/fomo

## Overview

Fomo has the strangest origin story in this category. It began as Notify, a Shopify app built in 2014 and 2015 that showed recent sales popups. In March 2016 Ryan Kulp and Justin Mares bought it on seller financing, effectively for nothing down, and rebuilt it from a Shopify plugin into a standalone platform, relaunching it as Fomo in August 2016. It was bootstrapped from there to over $1M in annual recurring revenue with margins around 70 percent, and in June 2022 it was acquired by Relay Commerce, an ecommerce software roll-up that later raised $27M to buy more tools of the same kind.

The product does one thing and has done it longer than anyone. Small notifications appear on a page telling visitors that someone recently bought, signed up, or left a review, on the theory that visible activity reduces the hesitation of being first. Fomo holds a US patent on its event generation approach, number 10,991,014, which is unusual in a market full of near-identical clones and is at least evidence that the implementation was thought about rather than copied.

What separates it from the cheaper imitations is the layer above the popup. Roundups aggregate activity into a single statement instead of a stream of individual events. Geo targeting scopes notifications by visitor location. Page rules tailor what appears per URL. A/B testing measures whether the notifications actually help, and a built-in ROI dashboard attributes revenue rather than only counting impressions. The vendor also claims AI-driven timing recommendations drawn from around six billion rows of buying behaviour data, which is the sort of claim only a platform with a decade of event history can make.

Pricing is metered by notifications rather than by traffic, which is the more honest meter of the two used in this segment. Starter is $25 a month for 8,000 notifications and one website, Business is $75 for 40,000 and unlimited websites, and Pro is $149 for 300,000. Annual billing gives two months free. Inline notifications, the format that embeds proof into the page rather than floating it in a corner, require the Business tier. A 14-day trial runs without a credit card, and there is no free plan.

## How it works

1. You install the Fomo script on your site or connect one of more than 106 integrations. Shopify, WooCommerce, and similar platforms feed purchase events automatically; Zapier and webhooks cover anything without a native connector; and custom events can be sent directly for signups, bookings, or internal milestones.

2. You choose what to display. Stream-style notifications show individual events, roundups aggregate activity over a window into a single message, review notifications pull in ratings, and an active visitor counter shows how many people are on the site right now.

3. You constrain when and where they appear. Geo targeting scopes by visitor location, page rules set different behaviour per URL, and more than 30 display settings govern timing, frequency, position, and whether a visitor can dismiss them. This is the part cheap alternatives handle badly, and getting it wrong is how notification tools become annoying rather than persuasive.

4. You measure. A/B testing compares a variant against no notifications at all, the ROI dashboard attributes revenue to the notifications rather than reporting impressions, and the vendor's AI timing insights suggest when to fire based on aggregate buying behaviour data. Inline notifications, available from the Business tier, place proof directly in the page layout rather than as a floating popup.

## Best for

Ecommerce stores and high-traffic landing pages where conversion rate is measured seriously, and buyers who want notification targeting, A/B testing, and revenue attribution rather than the cheapest possible popup script.

## Not the right fit for

- Anyone who needs to collect testimonials; Fomo displays activity, it does not gather, store, or publish customer praise, so it is a complement to a testimonial tool rather than a replacement.
- Low-traffic sites and pre-launch products; with little real activity to show there is nothing honest to display, and manufactured notifications damage trust rather than building it.
- Budget-focused buyers who only need basic popups on one site; ProveSource does the core job from $24 with a free tier for very small sites.
- B2B companies with long, considered sales cycles; a popup saying someone in Ohio just signed up carries far less weight when the purchase involves a procurement committee.
- Sites already carrying heavy third-party JavaScript and fighting Core Web Vitals; another always-on script on every page is a real cost to weigh.

## Features

### Notification types

Several distinct formats rather than one popup with different text.

- **Live activity notifications**: Individual event popups showing a recent purchase, signup, or booking, which is the format the category is named after.
- **Roundup notifications**: Aggregated statements covering best-selling products or popular activity over a window, which works far better than a stream on sites with irregular event volume.
- **Active visitor counter**: A live count of people currently on the site or viewing a product, which is the highest-credibility notification because it is trivially verifiable by the visitor.
- **Review notifications**: Surface customer ratings as notifications, connecting review content to the conversion moment rather than leaving it on a separate page.
- **Fomo Inline**: Notifications rendered inside the page layout instead of floating in a corner, which sidesteps the popup fatigue problem entirely. Requires the $75 Business tier.

### Targeting and rules

The part that decides whether notifications persuade or irritate.

- **Geo targeting**: Scope notifications by visitor location so a shopper in Berlin is not shown activity from a market they cannot buy in.
- **Custom page rules**: Different notification behaviour per URL, so the checkout page, the pricing page, and a blog post can each get an appropriate treatment or none at all.
- **More than 30 display settings**: Timing, delay, duration, frequency, position, ordering, and dismissal behaviour, which is the difference between a tool you can tune and one you can only switch on.
- **Event generation technology**: The approach covered by US Patent 10,991,014, governing how activity events are produced and surfaced, which is unusual intellectual property in a category of lookalikes.

### Measurement

Fomo is one of the few notification tools that tries to prove it works.

- **A/B testing**: Split test notifications against a control so the conversion claim is measured on your own traffic rather than taken from a vendor case study.
- **ROI dashboard**: Built-in revenue attribution rather than impression counting, which is the number that decides whether the subscription renews.
- **AI timing insights**: Recommendations on optimal display timing, described by the vendor as drawn from around six billion rows of buying behaviour data accumulated across the platform.
- **Case study library**: More than 100 published case studies and 350-plus customer reviews, which is a deeper public evidence base than any competitor here offers.

### Integrations and data

More than 106 connectors plus the escape hatches.

- **106-plus native integrations**: Direct connections to ecommerce, marketing, and booking platforms so events flow without custom development.
- **Ecommerce platform support**: Shopify, WooCommerce, and similar platforms feed purchase events automatically, which is the original and still the strongest use case.
- **Zapier**: Covers any source outside the native connector list, turning arbitrary application events into notifications.
- **Webhooks**: Push custom events directly, which is how signups, bookings, and internal milestones become displayable activity.
- **API access**: Available on every paid tier including the $25 Starter plan, which is unusually early for developer access in this segment.

### Plans and scale

Metered by notifications, with website count as the first upgrade trigger.

- **Notification metering**: 8,000 per month on Starter, 40,000 on Business, 300,000 on Pro, and unlimited on the custom tier. Metering by notification rather than by visitor is the fairer of the two models in this segment.
- **Website limits**: Starter covers one website; Business and Pro cover unlimited websites, which is often the real reason to upgrade rather than volume.
- **Unlimited integrations on all tiers**: Connector access is not tiered, so a small Starter account gets the same integration catalogue as a Pro one.
- **14-day trial without a card**: Every tier is trialable without payment details, and there is no permanent free plan.

## Use cases

- **Shopify store with steady order flow**: Traffic converts poorly on product pages and there is no signal to a first-time visitor that anyone else has ever bought from this store. Outcome: The Shopify integration streams real purchase events, roundups cover quiet hours, geo targeting keeps notifications relevant per market, and the ROI dashboard shows whether the $25 subscription is paying for itself.
- **Course or membership site during a launch window**: Enrollments cluster in a short launch period and the landing page gives no sense of momentum to someone deciding on the last day. Outcome: Signup notifications and an active visitor counter make the launch surge visible, page rules restrict them to the sales page, and volume stays well inside the 8,000-notification Starter allowance.
- **Conversion-focused marketer who distrusts social proof claims**: Every vendor claims a double-digit conversion lift and none of it has been measured on this particular audience. Outcome: A/B testing runs the notifications against a genuine control and the ROI dashboard attributes revenue, which either justifies the tool or kills it with data rather than opinion.
- **Agency or operator running several storefronts**: Six sites each need notification configuration and paying per site would multiply a small line item into a real one. Outcome: The $75 Business tier covers unlimited websites within a 40,000-notification pool, with inline notifications available for sites where floating popups clash with the design.

## Pricing

Subscription metered by monthly notification volume, with website count as a tier gate; four tiers including a custom unlimited plan.

- **Starter**: $25 per month, or $250 per year. 8,000 notifications per month; 1 website; Unlimited integrations; Active visitor counter and roundups; API access and custom page rules. No inline notifications at this tier, which is the main functional gap.
- **Business**: $75 per month, or $750 per year. 40,000 notifications per month; Unlimited websites; Fomo Inline notifications; All 30-plus display settings; Unlimited integrations. Unlimited websites is usually the reason to be here rather than the notification volume.
- **Pro**: $149 per month, or $1,490 per year. 300,000 notifications per month; Unlimited websites; Inline notifications; Full rules and targeting set; API access.
- **Unlimited**: Custom quoted. Unlimited notifications; Unlimited websites; All features included; Annual billing with two months free.

Billing notes:

- Annual billing is advertised as roughly 17 percent off, described as two free months: $250, $750, and $1,490 respectively.
- The meter is notification volume, not site traffic, which is fairer than visitor-based metering because you are billed for what the tool actually does rather than for your own marketing success.
- Inline notifications require the $75 Business tier; if you want proof embedded in the page rather than floating popups, Starter is not the plan.
- Starter is limited to one website, so a second store forces a jump from $25 to $75 regardless of volume.
- There is no free plan, unlike ProveSource which offers one for sites under 1,000 monthly unique visitors.
- The 14-day trial requires no credit card on any tier.

Value assessment: Fomo is priced at a premium to the notification field and mostly justifies it through measurement rather than display. A/B testing against a real control and an ROI dashboard that attributes revenue are the features that turn this from a decorative widget into a decision you can defend, and no cheaper competitor offers either properly. The 106-plus integrations and API access on the $25 tier are generous. Where it looks expensive is the entry: $25 for one website with no inline notifications and no free plan, against ProveSource at $24 for 20,000 monthly unique visitors with a free tier below that. If you are going to measure the impact and act on the result, Fomo is worth the difference. If you want a purchase popup on a small store and will never look at the dashboard, you are paying for analytics you will not open.

## Strengths

- The most mature product in the notification segment, with a decade of operating history and a patented event generation approach.
- A/B testing against a genuine control plus an ROI dashboard, so the conversion claim can be verified on your own traffic instead of taken on faith.
- Roundup notifications solve the hardest problem for lower-volume sites, aggregating activity instead of showing an embarrassingly sparse stream.
- Fomo Inline places proof inside the page layout, which avoids the popup fatigue that undermines the entire format.
- Metering by notification volume rather than by visitors means your own traffic growth does not automatically increase the bill.
- More than 106 integrations plus Zapier, webhooks, and API access on every paid tier including the $25 Starter plan.
- Unlimited websites from the $75 tier, which is materially better than per-site pricing for operators running several stores.

## Limitations

- It collects nothing. Fomo displays activity and does not gather, store, or publish testimonials, so it cannot be your only social proof tool.
- No free plan, and the 14-day trial is the only way to evaluate it without paying, whereas ProveSource runs free under 1,000 monthly unique visitors.
- Inline notifications, arguably the best format on offer, require the $75 tier and are absent from the $25 plan.
- Starter covers one website only, so a second site triples the cost regardless of usage.
- Notification popups are a tactic with declining returns as visitors become more familiar with them, and the format carries a credibility risk if activity is thin or manufactured.
- It is always-on third-party JavaScript on every page, which competes for main-thread time and matters on sites already fighting Core Web Vitals.
- Ownership by an acquisitive roll-up changes the incentive structure: pricing and roadmap now answer to a portfolio strategy rather than to two founders who use the product themselves.

## Comparisons

- **Fomo vs ProveSource**: ProveSource is the direct competitor and the cheaper one, with a free plan under 1,000 monthly unique visitors, $24 a month for 20,000, unlimited impressions on every tier, and six notification types. Fomo costs more and adds A/B testing, an ROI dashboard, roundups, inline notifications, and a decade more history. Take ProveSource if you want notifications running cheaply on a small or mid-sized site; take Fomo if you intend to measure and optimise the effect rather than just switch it on.
- **Fomo vs Endorsal**: Endorsal bundles FOMO Popups into a review collection platform from $29 a month, so a small business gets both request automation and notifications on one bill. Fomo is the specialist, with targeting rules, split testing, revenue attribution, and unlimited websites at $75. Choose Endorsal if notifications are a bonus alongside collecting reviews; choose Fomo if notification performance is a conversion lever you plan to work on seriously.
- **Fomo vs Senja**: These are complements rather than alternatives. Senja collects and publishes durable testimonials from $29 with a genuinely usable free tier; Fomo displays live activity from $25 and stores no customer praise at all. A conversion-focused store often runs both. If you can only fund one, testimonials remain valuable for years while notifications only work while traffic and activity continue, so Senja is the safer first purchase.

## Implementation

- Setup time: Under an hour for a basic setup. Install the script or connect the ecommerce integration, pick notification types, and switch it on. Configuring page rules, geo targeting, and timing properly takes considerably longer and is where the value actually is.
- Learning curve: Low to install and moderate to run well. More than 30 display settings sound trivial until you realise that frequency and timing decide whether notifications feel like momentum or harassment. The A/B testing and ROI dashboard require enough discipline to actually read them.
- Onboarding: Fully self-serve with a 14-day trial and no credit card required. Live chat, email, and video call support are offered. Only the custom Unlimited tier involves a conversation.
- Migration: Nothing meaningful to migrate in either direction, which is the advantage of a display-only tool. Events come from your existing platform integrations rather than from a stored library, so switching vendors means reinstalling a script and reconfiguring rules rather than moving data. Historical notification analytics stay with Fomo when you leave, so export any reporting you need for attribution records first.

## Platform, API & security

- Platforms: JavaScript site script, Shopify and WooCommerce integrations, More than 106 native platform connectors, Webhooks and Zapier, Inline page-embedded notifications from the Business tier
- API: API access on every paid tier including Starter, plus webhooks and Zapier for pushing custom events into the notification stream.
- Compliance: GDPR-facing privacy policy, No SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification published
- Data residency: Not published.
- SSO: Not advertised on any published tier.
- Security notes: Fomo processes activity events that can include customer first names and locations, so anonymisation settings and what you choose to display are a privacy decision rather than a cosmetic one. The company holds US Patent 10,991,014 covering its event generation technology. It is owned by Relay Commerce following the 2022 acquisition, which means the entity behind your data is a portfolio company rather than an independent vendor.

## Support

- Channels: Live chat, Email support, Video call support
- Documentation: Documentation covering installation, integrations, notification types, and display rules, alongside more than 100 published case studies.
- Community: A large public evidence base of case studies and more than 350 customer reviews rather than a formal user forum.

## Company

- Founded: 2016
- Founders: Ryan Kulp, Justin Mares
- Headquarters: United States
- Ownership: Owned by Relay Commerce following a June 2022 acquisition
- Employees: Not disclosed
- Funding: Bootstrapped throughout its independent life. Ryan Kulp and Justin Mares acquired the predecessor product Notify on seller financing in 2016 and grew Fomo past $1M in annual recurring revenue before selling to Relay Commerce in 2022 for an undisclosed seven-figure sum.

Funding history:

- Acquisition of Notify (2016): Seller-financed. Ryan Kulp and Justin Mares acquired the Shopify app Notify without money down and rebuilt it as a standalone platform.
- Acquisition by Relay Commerce (2022): Undisclosed seven figures. Announced June 2022 after six years bootstrapped, with annual recurring revenue above $1M.

Timeline:

- 2014: Notify launches as a Shopify app showing recent sales notifications, the direct predecessor to Fomo.
- 2016: Ryan Kulp and Justin Mares acquire Notify on seller financing in March, rebuild it as a standalone platform, and relaunch it as Fomo in August.
- 2021: United States Patent 10,991,014 is granted covering Fomo's event generation technology.
- 2022: Acquired by Relay Commerce in June after six years bootstrapped, with annual recurring revenue above $1M and margins reported around 70 percent.
- 2026: Product line spans live notifications, roundups, visitor counters, and inline notifications, with A/B testing, an ROI dashboard, and more than 106 integrations, from $25 a month.

## Integrations

Shopify, WooCommerce, Zapier, Webhooks, REST API, More than 106 native platform connectors, Review platform connections, Custom event sources

## FAQ

### What is Fomo?

Fomo is a social proof notification platform. It displays live activity on your website, recent purchases, signups, reviews, aggregated roundups, and an active visitor counter, as small popups or as inline page elements, with rules controlling where and when they appear. It is the oldest product in this segment, having launched in 2016 from the Shopify app Notify.

### How much does Fomo cost?

Starter is $25 a month for 8,000 notifications on one website, Business is $75 for 40,000 notifications on unlimited websites and adds inline notifications, and Pro is $149 for 300,000 notifications. An Unlimited tier is custom-quoted. Annual billing gives two months free, so $250, $750, and $1,490. There is a 14-day trial with no credit card and no permanent free plan.

### Does Fomo collect testimonials?

No, and this is the most important thing to understand before buying. Fomo displays activity that happens elsewhere; it does not gather, store, or publish customer praise. It can surface reviews that already exist, but it will not send a collection request or host a wall of love. Pair it with a testimonial tool such as Senja or Famewall rather than treating it as a substitute.

### How is Fomo metered and is that better than visitor metering?

It meters monthly notification volume rather than site traffic. That is the fairer of the two models used in this segment, because you are billed for what the product actually does rather than for your own marketing success. Visitor-metered competitors charge more as your traffic grows even if the notification behaviour never changes.

### What are roundup notifications for?

They aggregate activity into a single statement, such as a best-selling product or the volume of recent purchases, instead of streaming individual events. This matters on sites with irregular or low event volume, where a stream of one purchase every few hours reads as evidence that nobody is buying. Roundups let a modest store show momentum honestly.

### Will Fomo slow down my website?

It is always-on third-party JavaScript loaded on every page where notifications run, so it competes for main-thread time and adds a request like any embed in this category. On a site already fighting Core Web Vitals, that is a real cost to weigh against the conversion benefit. The A/B testing feature is the honest way to settle the argument: measure conversion with and without it on your own traffic.

### What is the difference between Fomo and ProveSource?

They compete directly. ProveSource is cheaper, with a free plan under 1,000 monthly unique visitors and $24 a month for 20,000, metered by visitors with unlimited impressions. Fomo costs more and adds A/B testing, revenue attribution, roundups, inline notifications, unlimited websites from $75, and a patented event engine. Choose on whether you intend to measure and optimise the notifications or simply run them.

### Do notifications still work, or have visitors learned to ignore them?

Returns have thinned as the format became ubiquitous, which is precisely why the measurement features matter more than the display ones. Inline notifications and the active visitor counter tend to hold up better than floating purchase popups because they are harder to dismiss as decoration and, in the counter's case, trivially verifiable. Run the A/B test rather than assuming a lift.

### Who owns Fomo now?

Relay Commerce, an ecommerce software roll-up that acquired it in June 2022 after six years as a bootstrapped business under Ryan Kulp and Justin Mares, who had bought the predecessor app Notify on seller financing in 2016. Relay subsequently raised $27M to acquire further ecommerce tools. Practically, that means pricing and roadmap now answer to a portfolio strategy rather than to founders using the product on their own stores.

### Is there any SEO benefit to Fomo?

No. Notifications are rendered client-side for visitors and carry no Review or AggregateRating structured data, so they contribute nothing to search visibility. If star ratings in search results are a goal, that requires a testimonial or review tool that emits schema markup, such as Famewall at $12 or Senja on its Pro tier. Fomo is a conversion tactic aimed at the visitor already on the page.

## Editorial verdict

Fomo is the grown-up in the notification half of this category. Ten years of operating history, a patented event engine, roundups that let low-volume sites show momentum honestly, inline notifications that dodge popup fatigue, and, most importantly, A/B testing plus revenue attribution so you can find out whether any of it works on your traffic. Metering by notification rather than by visitor is the fairer model. The caveats are worth taking seriously: there is no free plan, the $25 tier covers one website and withholds inline notifications, the format's returns have thinned as visitors grew used to it, and ownership now sits with an acquisitive roll-up rather than founders who run stores themselves. Buy it if conversion optimisation is a discipline in your business and you will act on the dashboard. If you want a cheap purchase popup and nothing more, ProveSource costs less and does that adequately, and neither tool is a substitute for actually collecting testimonials.

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Source: SaaSTracker (https://saastracker.org), an independent editorial project. This profile is compiled from public information, carries no peer reviews or paid placement, and was last reviewed 2026-08-22. Awards are judged on published criteria: https://saastracker.org/methodology