How to choose a virtual try-on app: six things to check

The shopper is handing over a photo of themselves. The first question to ask any vendor is what becomes of it: whether it is kept, for how long, whether it is used to train anything, and whether the measurements derived from it end up in a database. The answers belong in the privacy notice, not in a support email.

In Cabina the photo is sent only after explicit, revocable consent, it is used to generate the try-on and it is not kept; the resulting image is reachable through a temporary link and deleted after 30 days; the estimated measurements serve the size recommendation and are not stored. Anyone who prefers not to use their own photo picks a preset model, and their photo never leaves the device. It is written in the privacy notice.

A virtual try-on that ends with a nice image and nothing else is entertainment. The moment shoppers see the garment on themselves is the moment they buy, and the app has to be there: the add-to-cart button inside the result, with the size and variant they had already chosen.

The second piece is the size recommendation. If the app estimates measurements from the photo and compares them with the catalogue’s size charts, the shopper orders the right size — and that is where returns drop, not in the image. Cabina does both: the button presses your theme’s own, and size charts are uploaded from CSV.

Price lists compare badly because every app counts differently: sessions, credits, generated images. Bring everything back to one question: how much do I pay per garment tried? Divide the plan price by the included try-ons, and ask what happens when they run out — whether the button disappears, whether a charge kicks in, whether extra try-ons expire.

In Cabina one try-on is one garment tried. The Freemium plan gives 10 try-ons a month with no card; Starter gives 200 try-ons for $40 a month, that is 20 cents per try-on; extra try-ons cost $0.36 and never expire. When the month’s try-ons run out the button hides itself and the store keeps working. The price list is on the pricing page.

The widget is seen by the shopper, not by you. An English button on a German store is a button nobody presses, and a privacy consent in a language the shopper cannot read is a consent worth nothing. Check the widget’s languages, not the vendor’s website languages.

Cabina speaks Italian, English, French, Spanish and German, and takes the colour, logo and button text from your brand.

“Works with Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix and PrestaShop” can mean four different things: an app published on the marketplace, a plugin to download, a snippet to paste into the theme, or a promise. Look for the app on your platform’s marketplace, not on the vendor’s site: if it is there, you have found it; if it is not, ask how it is installed and how long it takes.

Cabina is published on the Shopify App Store, where the API key configures itself. On WooCommerce, Wix and PrestaShop it is installed with the universal snippet — a single script tag in the theme — following the documentation. The status of each platform is written on the integrations page, and it is kept current: we would rather say “snippet” than promise a plugin that does not exist.

If you have a developer, an agency, or an AI assistant running the store, it also matters how you talk to the app without clicking: a documented API, webhooks to receive events, and increasingly an MCP server to do it in natural language from Claude Desktop or Cursor.

Cabina has a REST API with a public OpenAPI 3.1 specification, HMAC-signed webhooks for completed sessions, limit warnings and plan changes, and an MCP server with nine tools for metrics, widget configuration, size charts and authorised domains. The integration contract, in markdown for agents, is public.

None of these six things shows in the vendor’s demo, which is made with their garments and their photos. They show with your garments, and that is why the free plan matters: ten try-ons are enough to see how your product photos come out. How to prepare them is in The right product photo for AI try-on; how to install the app on Shopify in Shopify virtual try-on in 5 minutes.