min read

Lantern the Quiz App Alternative to Visual Quiz Builder

Published on

November 16, 2025

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Stefania

Co-Founder

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If you’re exploring quiz apps to boost conversions and personalize shopping experiences on Shopify, you’ve likely come across Visual Quiz Builder (VQB). It’s a popular, product-focused quiz builder with solid recommendation logic and Shopify integrations. Lantern is a modern Visual Quiz Builder alternative that prioritizes flexible design across every quiz page, deep Shopify data support (including metafields), and transparent, usage-based pricing.

What is VQB?

Visual Quiz Builder (VQB) is a Shopify quiz app aimed at product recommendation quizzes. It emphasizes a simple builder, templates, and core ecommerce integrations. Many merchants choose it to get a quiz live quickly without heavy setup.

What is Lantern?

Lantern is a Built for Shopify quiz app designed for brands that want their product recommendation quiz to feel like a natural extension of their storefront, not a bolted-on widget. It combines AI-assisted quiz creation with flexible content blocks on every page—so you can add images, videos, copy, opt-ins, or HTML wherever they’re needed, not just on the results screen.

Under the hood, Lantern supports Shopify metafields for richer product details, plus skip/show logic and advanced Logic Jumps to control how shoppers move through the quiz based on their answers. Designers and marketers can adjust styling, fonts, and layout directly in the editor (with optional custom HTML/CSS/JS when needed), while developers still have room to extend things further. Pricing starts at $39/month with a 21-day free trial, it’s brand-free by default, and it’s also free to use on Shopify development stores—making Lantern a practical alternative to Visual Quiz Builder for teams that care about both experience and design control.

Feature Comparison: Lantern vs VQB

Feature	Lantern	VQB (Visual Quiz Builder)
AI Quiz Creation	✅ Lets you select up to 30 products to recommend; AI matches them with relevant answers. You can also skip this step and provide quiz goals, brand, and target audience details for tailored quiz generation.	✅ AI quiz generation for product, variant, or regimen recommendations, with flexible manual tagging and configurable algorithms (Perfect Match, Most Likely, or AI-powered).
Quiz Templates	✅ 10+ ready-made templates, fully editable.	✅ 9 ready-made templates for common verticals (for example skin care, coffee, supplements, kids, and pet), all editable via the no-code editor.
Logic and Branching	✅ Skip/Show conditions plus advanced Logic Jumps (decision trees) for single-choice, multiple-choice, and other page types, including Exact / Open / Broad rules on paid plans.	✅ Advanced logic jumps with a visual flow builder (jump, hide, end, redirect, modify options) plus AI-assisted rule creation on paid plans. Logic features aren’t available on the Free tier.
Metafields	✅ Supports dynamic metafields on results pages.	✅ Reads Shopify metafields to display additional details (for example short descriptions, ingredients) alongside recommended products on the Result Page and to send metafield data into Shopify customers for segmentation, but doesn’t offer the same structured metafield-based content editing Lantern provides.
Built for Shopify badge	✅ Yes — Lantern is Built for Shopify.	❌ Built for Shopify badge not shown on listing.
Results Page Customization	✅ Content blocks (images, video, HTML) usable across all quiz pages.	✅ No-code results editor for product tiles, regimen “slots,” multi-profile tabs, subscriptions, and metafields, or redirecting to a custom recommendation page instead of showing products.
Custom CSS / Fonts / HTML	✅ Custom CSS and HTML editing available directly within the Lantern app on all plans; fonts manageable inside the quiz editor.	✅ Rich layout controls (global and per-page) plus a CSS editor, per-slide extra classes, inline Text/Image/HTML sections, and an optional JS console for custom behaviors.
Publishing Options	✅ Four publishing methods: Standalone quiz page, Embed on any Shopify page, Pop-up (manual or auto-trigger), and In-store (dedicated page with store header/footer).	✅ Quizzes can be published as standalone pages, embedded in Shopify pages, or shown as pop-ups on the storefront.
Integrations – Marketing	✅ Direct integration with Klaviyo, Omnisend, and Mailchimp.	✅ Integrates with Klaviyo, Omnisend, Google Analytics, Meta/Facebook Pixel, Zapier, and email/SMS tools like Mailchimp and Privy; additional custom integrations (for example Hotjar, Braze, Weglot, Langify) are available for Flywheel clients.
Integrations – Subscriptions	✅ 15+ apps (Recharge, Skio, Loop, Smartrr, etc.).	⚠️ Recharge integration documented for displaying subscription selling plans on the quiz results page; other subscription apps are not explicitly documented at this time.
Integrations – Reviews	✅ Judge.me, Loox, Stamped, Yotpo, Okendo, Reviews.io.	⚠️ No dedicated review app integrations documented at this time.
Integrations – Loyalty & Rewards	✅ Smile.io, Yotpo Loyalty, LoyaltyLion (via Zapier).	⚠️ No dedicated loyalty integrations documented; quiz data can be passed into external tools via Klaviyo, Omnisend, or Zapier.
Integrations – Automation	✅ Shopify Flow, Zapier (6,000+ apps).	✅ Zapier and VQB API access on paid tiers; Shopify Flow can use quiz data via customer tags and metafields, but VQB does not provide its own Flow trigger.
Custom Webhooks / Data Export	✅ Supports up to 3 custom webhook endpoints so quiz completion data can be sent directly to any external system alongside app integrations.	⚠️ No generic outbound webhooks, but offers a public API and CSV export for quiz data, and can pass events into tools like Klaviyo, Omnisend, or Zapier.
Cart Drawer Compatibility	✅ Direct integration with 15+ Shopify carts (e.g., AMP, Rebuy, Dawn, Refresh).	⚠️ Cart drawer implementation is available on higher tiers (for example Personalize and above) but is not a plug-and-play cart app integration.
Discount Codes	✅ Supports automatic discount application on results pages, targeted or conditional rewards (like post-opt-in), and full visual customization via content blocks or dynamic variants.	✅ Dedicated loading/promo page with single or dynamic (unique-per-customer) discount codes that can be shown or auto-applied at cart/checkout when the quiz redirects to a product, collection, cart, or checkout URL.

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Key Differentiators

Lantern suits Shopify teams that want marketer-friendly control over logic and layout, while VQB leans toward brands with technical resources or custom data stacks. Both support advanced branching; Lantern keeps it simple in a page-based editor with Skip/Show plus Logic Jumps, whereas VQB’s visual flow adds granular actions (jump, hide, end, redirect, modify) and AI rule suggestions.

For results, Lantern uses answer-based match scoring with inclusions/exclusions to keep off-fit items out and can recommend specific products, variants, and collections. On top of that, Lantern layers Dynamic Content Blocks to tailor which products, bundles, and education sections appear for each segment—without changing the underlying match scores and without touching code. VQB offers similarly broad outcome types (products, variants, collections, tags, pages) and lets you choose algorithms like Most Likely, Perfect Match, or AI matching—great flexibility, but it typically needs more careful setup and occasional theme work.

On integrations and automation, Lantern ships native connections for Klaviyo, Omnisend, Mailchimp, multiple cart drawers, subscriptions, and review apps, plus Shopify Flow and Zapier for follow-ups and tagging. VQB pushes rich data into Shopify (tags/metafields), works with Klaviyo/Omnisend and analytics pixels, and exposes a public API for teams that want to wire quiz sessions into their own pipelines. However Lantern has the benefit of also offering these technical tools such as custom webhooks. Whenever a quiz is completed, we will send a POST webhook notification to the URL(s) you provide below. The payload will contain all the information about the quiz taker and their results. You can use this to integrate with your own systems or third-party services.

Finally, pricing and access differ: Lantern uses usage-based billing tied to quiz takers and keeps core capabilities available on all paid plans (with free usage on dev stores). VQB has a Free tier and engagement-based paid plans, with some advanced options (AI, translations, cart drawer support, A/B testing, custom quizzes) on higher tiers.

Pricing Comparison: Lantern vs VQB

Plan / Aspect	Lantern (Grow Plan)	VQB (Visual Quiz Builder)
Free Trial	21 days	14 days on paid plans
Pricing Model Tiers	Usage-based — adjusts automatically by monthly quiz takers.	Engagement-based — fixed monthly engagement caps with per-engagement overages on paid tiers.
Pricing tiers	$39 for 500 quiz takers	Free for 50 quiz engagements
	$59 for 750 quiz takers	$30 for up to 500 quiz engagements
	$79 for 1,000 quiz takers	$50 for up to 1,500 quiz engagements
	$99 for 1,500 quiz takers	$100 for up to 3,000 quiz engagements
	$139 for 2,500 quiz takers	$200 for up to 7,500 quiz engagements
	$199 for 4,000 quiz takers	Enterprise tier for volumes above 7,500 quiz engagements (custom pricing)
	$299 for 7,000 quiz takers
	$500 for 15,000 quiz takers
	$750 for 25,000 quiz takers
Feature Access	All core features (logic, metafields, branding control, integrations) on all paid plans.	Tiered access — AI, translations, advanced analytics, cart drawer, A/B testing, and custom quizzes reserved for higher tiers.
Upgrade Scalability	Automatic tier adjustment as quiz-taker volume grows.	Manual plan selection in the Subscription tab when merchants outgrow engagement caps or need higher-tier features.
Custom Plan Option	Enterprise and higher-volume options available via consultation.	Flywheel and Enterprise tiers support custom logic/design and integrations; Enterprise pricing available via consult.

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Pricing in this comparison refers to Shopify app plans only; please check each app’s Shopify listing for the latest tiers and engagement limits.

Visual Quiz Builder’s paid plans include a fixed number of quiz engagements per month, with per-engagement overage fees once you go past that limit. Lantern’s usage-based pricing, by contrast, scales proportionally with quiz takers—if activity dips one month, you pay less that month. This keeps costs more predictable and easier to align with real performance, especially for seasonal or fast‑growing Shopify stores.

What Lantern’s Users Tell Us

Lantern’s impact comes through clearly with brands like Reboots, a German sports-recovery company known for its pneumatic compression boots used by endurance athletes and physiotherapists. By running multilingual product-finder quizzes in German, English, and Spanish, Reboots has generated more than €700k in quiz-driven revenue, including a €258k peak month and over 21,000 email subscribers collected. Their quizzes help shoppers quickly find the right setup in a high-consideration category, while giving the team rich segmentation data for ongoing campaigns. You can explore their full setup and results in the dedicated Reboots case study.

Mini FAQ

Is there a plan that includes more than the maximum number of monthly engagements?

Yes. Lantern’s Enterprise and higher‑volume options can support stores well beyond the default usage tiers, with custom limits and hands‑on support. You can book a demo to explore tailored plans if you expect very high quiz traffic.

Is Lantern a direct alternative to Visual Quiz Builder (VQB)?

Yes. Lantern supports conditional logic, skip/show rules, branching flows, flexible design control, and deep Shopify integration similar to VQB—while keeping all core capabilities available on every paid plan.

Can I build a custom quiz for my brand?

Yes. Every Lantern user can customize freely using templates, AI‑assisted setup, content blocks, and optional CSS/HTML. If you prefer a fully done‑for‑you build, Lantern’s Enterprise offering can include a bespoke quiz designed and implemented specifically for your brand.

How affordable is Lantern?

Lantern starts at $39/month for up to 500 quiz takers with all core features unlocked and usage‑based billing that flexes with actual volume. VQB offers a Free plan and paid tiers starting at $30/month, but some advanced features (like AI, translations, advanced analytics, cart drawer, and custom quizzes) are limited to higher plans and engagement caps can trigger upgrades or overages. Depending on your traffic and feature needs, Lantern often ends up more predictable and competitive on total cost of ownership.

Is Lantern free on development stores?

Yes. Agencies and developers can build fully functional Lantern quizzes for free on Shopify development stores until launch, then start a 21‑day free trial once the live store goes live.

Final Thoughts

Visual Quiz Builder is a strong choice for straightforward product recommendation flows, especially if you’re comfortable working with tags, metafields, and a bit more technical setup when you need advanced customization.

If you want the same depth but in a more visual, page-based editor where most layout and logic changes happen without touching code, Lantern is a smart Visual Quiz Builder alternative. You get enterprise-level customization, flexible product recommendation styles (answer-based matches plus Dynamic Content Blocks), and usage-based pricing that scales with actual quiz takers instead of hard engagement caps. Native Shopify integrations—including Flow, cart drawers, subscription apps, review apps, and loyalty tools—make it easy to turn quiz results into automated journeys without extra glue code.

Brands like Reboots already use Lantern to run multilingual product-finder quizzes that guide shoppers through complex catalogs and have generated more than €700k in quiz-driven revenue across three languages. If you’d like to test a similar setup, you can start a 21-day free trial or build a full quiz for free on a Shopify development store and only upgrade once you’re ready to launch.