Smartly or Confect? Comparison for ecommerce
If your eCommerce team relies on Catalog Ads on Meta, this guide helps you choose the right tool, based on real feedback from real users.
The biggest differences are who makes your designs, where you work, and what you pay.
Confect is used by the leading ecommerce companies
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Reviews from ecommerce companies
The best way to compare Smartly and Confect? Test both hands-on. The next-best? Listen to marketers who use them.
Here are the ratings from verified users who’ve reviewed Smartly and Confect on G2.
Comparison of Smartly and Confect
We’ve talked to hundreds of marketers weighing the pros and cons of Smartly versus Confect. Some choose Smartly. Many go with Confect.
Here’s what we’ve consistently heard from marketers in eCommerce companies and agencies.
Where are Smartly and Confect similar?
For Catalog Ads, both tools can make the same designs. They take very different routes to get there.
🧑🎨 You can design Catalog Ads from your product feed
Both Smartly and Confect turn your product feed into designed Catalog Ads, and both can reach the same look.
Smartly does it as one feature in a large platform, while Confect is built only for Catalog Ads, so the same design takes less work.
🤖 You can use AI on your product images
Both tools remove backgrounds, crop images for each placement and add AI-generated product fields to your catalog.
In Confect, a person checks every background removal before it reaches your ads.
📱 You can design for Stories and Reels
Both tools let you make dedicated 9:16 designs for Stories and Reels.
The results look very similar in both.
📽️ You can turn Catalog Ads into video
Both tools turn your catalog into Product Level Videos and Video Catalog Ads.
In Confect, the AI Design Agent can also animate your design for you.
👻 You can use your catalog beyond Meta
Both tools design Catalog Ads for TikTok, Snapchat and Pinterest.
Confect also sends your designs to email and CRM tools like Klaviyo and Salesforce.
💬 Both have great support
Users rate the support teams of both tools highly on G2.
Confect scores 9.8/10 and Smartly scores 9.3/10.
Coming from Smartly?
Every month, companies move from Smartly to Confect.
Pick the Catalog Ads you run today, and the AI Design Agent rebuilds them in Confect in seconds.
Then try them on your own products, free for 30 days.
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Where are Smartly and Confect different?
The main difference is breadth. Smartly is an enterprise platform that automates your whole paid social setup, and Catalog Ads are a small part of it.
Confect is built only for Catalog Ads.
That leads to these differences:
🤖 What the AI does for you
Smartly’s AI agents build campaigns, move budgets and generate images, but they do not build Catalog Ad designs.
Confect’s AI Design Agent builds the design for you, from a short brief, from your manual ads or from any ad you have seen.
📊 What your data tells you
Smartly uses your data to decide where your budget goes.
Confect compares your ROAS, CTR and CVR with similar advertisers, recommends design changes while you design, and shows the impact of every change you make.
🧑💻 Where you work
With Smartly, you build, edit and launch campaigns inside Smartly’s own platform, so your team learns a new way to edit campaigns and buy media.
With Confect, you start from Meta’s Ads Manager and keep working there.
💰 Pricing
Smartly’s pricing is based on your ad spend and starts from €5,000/mo., paid yearly.
The median Smartly contract is $90,000 per year.
Confect’s pricing starts from $299/mo., with the AI Design Agent and Performance insights on every plan.
📑 Commitment
Smartly customers sign yearly contracts, with no free trial.
Confect has a 30-day free trial, and after that you pay month to month.
🗺️ Product focus
Smartly covers everything from media buying to bid automation, and Catalog Ads are one slice of it.
Confect puts all its development into Catalog Ads.
🛍️ Industry focus
Smartly serves businesses in every industry.
Confect is built for eCommerce, with tools for common eCommerce challenges.
We asked our users about Confect
Which marketers choose Confect over Smartly?
If you want better Catalog Ads but prefer to run your campaigns in Meta’s Ads Manager, Confect is likely your best choice.
Ad spend between $10k and $500k a month
For teams spending $10,000 to $500,000 a month on Meta ads, especially with a strong focus on Catalog Ads, Confect offers great value.
If you spend less than $10,000 a month, a lower-cost tool may suit you better.
You want your Catalog Ads designed for you
If nobody on your team has time to design Catalog Ads, the AI Design Agent makes them from the ads you already run.
You approve and adjust, and every design stays on brand.
You want to keep working in Meta’s Ads Manager
Your team keeps running campaigns where it already works.
Confect adds the designs, with no new platform to learn.
Most of your paid social spend is on Meta or TikTok
If most of your budget goes to Meta and TikTok, you do not need a platform that automates every channel.
A focused tool like Confect is likely the better fit.
Which marketers choose Smartly over Confect?
If your team needs an enterprise platform to manage and automate all of paid social, not just Catalog Ads, Smartly may be the better fit.
Teams managing more than 30 markets
If you run ads in more than 30 markets and launch many campaigns across channels at once, Smartly is very good at scaling that.
Meta ad spend above $400,000 a month
For large advertisers spending more than $400,000 a month on Meta, and investing heavily in TikTok, Pinterest and Snapchat too, Smartly automates the work across all channels.
You want AI to run your media buying
Smartly is far ahead on AI for media buying, from budget allocation to building campaigns across channels.
It also automates city-level localization and ads for each store location.
Thousands of marketers use Confect every day
"We saw very good results in terms of CTR and also conversion rate"
"In the first week saw the ROAS increase by about 40%"
"Design changes are super, super simple to make with Confect"
"I really love the opportunity which Confect gives us"
"We have seen a significantly better Return On Ad Spend since we started using Confect"
"We increased our traffic with 46% and our sales with 60%"
"I'm really happy with how Confect has performed"
"It's simple to design the catalog ads, but it's still very highly performing"
"We saw more than 60% increase in the ROAS"
"It's great that we are using Confect to enhance our ads"
"Improving the creative increased the conversion rate by 42%"
Ready to try Confect?
It's easy to try out Confect and see how it could look and perform with your products and brand identity.
Confect is the leading Smartly alternative for Catalog Ads
For ecommerce brands and agencies aiming to enhance their Catalog Ads, Confect stands out as the best solution.
Let AI design your Catalog Ads
Describe what you want, or pick an ad you already run, and the AI Design Agent makes the Catalog Ad design in seconds.
You get real layers you can still edit, with your own product photos.
See what works for brands like yours
Confect benchmarks your ROAS, CTR and CVR against similar advertisers and recommends design changes while you design.
It also shows the impact of every design change you make.
Tailor your Customer Experience
Boost results by serving tailored, product-specific designs to your shoppers.
Confect allows unlimited conditional rules, enabling full personalization in your Catalog Ads.
Deliver relevant ads with product data
Highlight all the key details that customers need to make a purchase decision.
Include features, tags, ratings, brand logos, or extra product visuals - whatever drives conversions.
Design for Story and Reels too
Confect enables you to build dedicated 9:16 designs for placements like Instagram Stories and Reels, ensuring your Catalog Ads shine across formats.
Optimizing for specific placements is a quick win for better results.
Turn Catalog Ads into videos
Confect lets you create Product-Level Videos and dynamic Video Catalog Ads for Meta and TikTok.
Each product in your catalog can have its own automatically generated, high-impact video - scaled with personalization.
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Optimize your Catalogs across all channels
Why limit your Catalogs to Meta? Confect allows you to roll out your designs on TikTok, Pinterest, Snap, Klaviyo, and more.
Replicating your designs across platforms takes just a few clicks - and is automatically synced from there.
Make Catalog Ads that make people buy
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Ready to try Confect?
It's easy to try out Confect and see how it could look and perform with your products and brand identity.