WListDB VS ViewForge

WListDB's answer

Gamers with large backlogs — the "patient gamer" type with a 100+ game Steam library who wants to know what they actually finished, how long games take to beat, and what to play next. Also players who enjoy ranking and sharing their collections through public lists and year-in-review recaps.

ViewForge's answer:

Shopify merchants whose customers need to know whether a part fits before they will buy it — and who do not have an engineer on staff to build that themselves.

Concretely: auto and truck parts retailers, powersports and motorcycle dealers, tractor and agricultural parts sellers, marine and outboard suppliers, small-engine and power equipment stores, bicycle and e-bike component shops, printer supply merchants, and electronics accessory sellers.

Catalog sizes run from a few dozen products on the free tier up into the tens of thousands; it is running in production on a catalog of roughly 40,000 SKUs. The common thread is not the industry — it is that "does this fit my thing" is the question deciding the sale.

WListDB's answer

Next.js and React on the frontend, NestJS with PostgreSQL on the API, and an Electron desktop app for automatic play session tracking. All TypeScript.

ViewForge's answer:

• TypeScript
• Shopify metaobjects, as the fitment data store
• Shopify theme app extensions for the storefront components: fitment search, saved-vehicle garage, compatibility table, product-page fit notice
• Shopify Storefront API, for querying fitment from the theme
• Shopify Admin GraphQL API, for writing and exporting fitment records
• NHTSA vehicle database, for VIN decoding
• ACES and PIES XML parsing, for automotive catalog import

WListDB's answer

WListDB combines the two things gamers usually need separate tools for: HowLongToBeat-style playtime data (Main Story / Main + Extras / Completionist) and a full backlog tracker with statuses, ranked lists and reviews. Entry is automated — import your whole Steam library in one click instead of adding games one by one — and a free desktop app detects running games and tracks your play sessions automatically, split by phase and compared against community averages. At the end of the year you get a shareable recap of everything you played.

ViewForge's answer:

Three things. (1) Data ownership: ViewForge writes fitment as Shopify metaobjects native to your store — most competitors store fitment in their own database. (2) 8 verticals out of the box: auto, motorcycle, tractor, marine, power equipment, bicycle, printer, electronics — most competitors are automotive-only. (3) Smart Parse: extract fitment automatically from your existing product titles and descriptions instead of re-typing everything.

WListDB's answer

Less manual work: one-click Steam import instead of typing in hundreds of games, and automatic session tracking through the desktop app instead of manual timers. Deeper playtime tracking than catalog-style trackers (per-run hours split by Main / Extra / Completionist phases), and personal tracking that pure playtime databases don't offer. Core features are free with no ads, and the app is available in 5 languages.

ViewForge's answer:

Data ownership. Fitment lives in your Shopify metaobjects, so uninstalling does not take your compatibility data with it. Convermax, EasySearch and PartFinder all keep it in their own databases, and getting it back depends on their export tooling on the day you cancel.

Cost at the low end. The search widget, the compatibility table on the product page and the saved-vehicle garage are all on the free tier, up to 50 products, with no expiry. EasySearch puts the table and the garage behind its $75/month Premium plan. Convermax starts at $250/month.

Automotive and non-automotive coverage. Eight built-in templates, and fully custom templates from $19/month, for catalogs that do not decompose into Year/Make/Model at all.

WListDB's answer

The founder has been a patient gamer for years. His Steam library hit 300+ games and he had no idea what he'd actually completed — spreadsheets didn't stick. So he built WListDB: connect Steam once, sync your library, mark status as you play, and get a recap at the end of the year with games finished, hours played and top genres. It's the tool he wanted for himself, kept free with no ads on the core features.

ViewForge's answer:

ViewForge came out of agency work. Normal View was building for a parts retailer running roughly 12,000 SKUs who needed fitment search, and every app we evaluated stored the merchant's compatibility data in the vendor's own database.

That is a strange trade when you look at it directly. Fitment data is genuinely expensive to produce — it is weeks of work — and the merchant would not own the result. It would belong to whichever app happened to be installed that year.

Shopify metaobjects made a different answer possible: write fitment as native structured data inside the merchant's own store. The theme reads it, the Storefront API queries it, Admin GraphQL exports it, and it is still there after an uninstall. That decision is what the rest of the app is built around.

Everything else came from real catalogs rather than a roadmap. Eight verticals exist because a tractor catalog is not Year/Make/Model. Smart Parse exists because that retailer had already written fitment into 12,000 product titles, and nobody was ever going to retype them.

WListDB's answer

WListDB is a free consumer app for individual gamers, not a B2B product — it has no corporate customers.