Description
A discount of “40 % off” means nothing if the crossed-out price was never real. This plugin answers a different question: is this price good compared with what the product usually costs?
Paste an ASIN, an amazon.de link or an amzly.de product link, and you get a compact badge with a coloured dot and a plain rating — “Günstiger als sonst”, “Normaler Preis”, “Derzeit teurer”. The rating comes from the price history collected by amzly.de, not from Amazon’s own crossed-out prices.
How it looks
The badge is a neutral pill that sits inside your text without breaking the line height. The signal colour lives in the dot alone, so it never fights your theme:
- Green — very cheap right now, or an all-time low
- Blue — cheaper than usual
- Orange — normal price
- Red — currently pricier, better to wait
- Grey — not enough price history yet
Built to stay out of the way
- Server-side rendering. Your visitors’ browsers never contact amzly.de. No consent banner needed for the badges.
- Light and dark, automatically. Follows each visitor’s system setting through pure CSS, so it works even on a fully cached page. You can force one mode if your theme needs it.
- Nothing loads on pages without a badge. No CSS, no JavaScript.
- Respects reduced motion. Visitors who ask for less animation never see the pulsing dot.
- Never a broken post. If the API is unreachable, badges keep showing the last known price instead of disappearing.
Where the badge links to
Always to the product page on amzly.de, never straight to Amazon. That is deliberate: a plugin must not place someone else’s affiliate tag into your posts.
Click statistics
Optional and switched on by default: the plugin counts clicks on your badges so you can see which ones actually get used. Stored per click are the date, the post and the ASIN — no IP address, no cookie, no user agent, nothing that identifies a visitor. Entries older than a year are deleted automatically. Switch it off and the front end loads no JavaScript at all.
Ways to insert a badge
- One block named Amzly: pick badge, price history, list, two-product comparison or a comparison table in the block settings, with a live preview that checks the product really exists
- The shortcode
[amzly asin="B09X7CRKRZ"] - Shortcode options:
link,theme,size,variant,logo,label,price,delta,pulse,target
Only amazon.de
Links to amazon.com, amazon.co.uk and other marketplaces are rejected on purpose. The price data is amazon.de in euros — a badge on a link to another country would claim a price that does not apply there.
External services
This plugin uses two external services. One is required, the other is only reached for one specific kind of link.
1. amzly.de (required)
The plugin relies on the public API of amzly.de for price data and price ratings. Without it the plugin cannot work: it is the sole source of the price history the badge is based on. The service is operated by the author of this plugin.
What is sent, and when
- When you insert a badge in the editor, and when a page containing a badge is rendered with an expired cache, your web server requests
https://amzly.de/api/v1/asinsorhttps://amzly.de/api/v1/asin/{asin}. - Sent are: the ASIN of the product, the IP address of your web server (unavoidable in any HTTP request) and your site address in the user agent, in the form
AmzlyPriceBadge/1.0.1; https://example.com. - No visitor data is sent. Badges are rendered on your server; your visitors’ browsers never contact amzly.de. Only when a visitor actually clicks a badge does their browser follow the link, exactly like any other outgoing link.
- Responses are cached, by default for six hours, so a page with badges normally causes no request at all.
Optional, and off unless you switch it on
If you enable “Report clicks to amzly.de” in the settings, the plugin sends once a day to https://amzly.de/api/v1/badge/report: your domain, the date, and a click count per ASIN. Never anything about individual visitors.
Terms and privacy
- Terms of use: https://amzly.de/wordpress-plugin#nutzungsbedingungen
- Privacy information: https://amzly.de/wordpress-plugin#datenschutz
2. Amazon (only for short links)
Amazon short links such as https://amzn.to/3XYZabc do not contain the product number. To find out which product one points at, the plugin has to ask Amazon where the link leads.
What is sent, and when
- Only when you enter an
amzn.tooramzn.eulink, and only at that moment — in the editor, or once when a post containing such a link is first rendered. Every other kind of input (a product number, an amazon.de link, an amzly.de link) is resolved locally and sends nothing. - Your web server makes a single HEAD request to the short link and reads the address it redirects to. Sent are: the short link itself, the IP address of your web server and your site address in the user agent. No page content and nothing about your visitors.
- The result is cached, so the same short link is resolved once and not again.
- You can avoid this service entirely by using product numbers or full amazon.de links instead of short links.
Terms and privacy
- Conditions of use: https://www.amazon.de/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=508088
- Privacy notice: https://www.amazon.de/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201909010
Screenshots
Blocks
This plugin provides 1 block.
- Amzly Price badge, price history, price list, two-product comparison or a comparison table — pick the type in the block settings. Every display option is available for every type.
Installation
- Install the plugin and activate it.
- Optionally visit Settings Amzly Price Badge to set defaults. The plugin works without any configuration.
- Add the block Amzly to a post and pick what to show, or use
[amzly asin="B09X7CRKRZ"].
No account and no API key are required.
FAQ
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Do I need an amzly.de account?
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No. The plugin works fully without registration and is free.
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Not for the badges. They are rendered on your server, and your visitors’ browsers never contact amzly.de. The optional click counting stores no personal data either — only date, post and ASIN.
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Why does the badge not link straight to Amazon?
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Because a plugin must not put someone else’s affiliate tag into your posts. The badge links to the product page on amzly.de, which shows the full price history.
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Can I use my own Amazon affiliate tag?
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No, and that is intentional. Displaying Amazon price data next to your own affiliate link is subject to Amazon’s price display rules, and the data here does not come from your own API access. That combination puts your Associates account at risk.
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Why is the badge grey?
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Because there is not enough price history yet. Products that were just added to amzly.de have no comparison basis; the badge colours itself in automatically, usually within an hour.
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My amazon.com link does not work
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That is on purpose. The price data is amazon.de in euros. A badge on a link to another marketplace would claim a price that does not apply there.
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Does it work with caching plugins?
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Yes. The badge is plain server-rendered HTML with no JavaScript, and light/dark switching happens in CSS. A fully cached page still adapts to each visitor.
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What happens if amzly.de is unreachable?
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Badges keep showing the last price they had. The plugin pauses its requests after repeated errors and retries by itself. Tools Site Health shows whether the connection works.
Reviews
There are no reviews for this plugin.
Contributors & Developers
“Amzly Price Badge” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
Translate “Amzly Price Badge” into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
1.0.1
- The plugin now registers a single block, Amzly. Four older blocks from before the first release were still registered in the background; they could no longer be inserted, but the directory listed all five. They are gone.
- Posts that still contain one of the old blocks keep working unchanged. They are shown with the Amzly block when the post is displayed, and open as the Amzly block in the editor. Saving the post converts it for good — nothing is rewritten in the database on its own.
- The settings page now names the block by its actual name, Amzly.
1.0.0
- First release.
- One block for every view: price badge, price history chart, price list, a comparison of two products, and a comparison table with up to six products as columns.
- Reads ASINs, amazon.de links, amzn.to short links and amzly.de product links.
- Five rating levels, three sizes, three colour modes. What the badge shows is yours to compose: price, ninety-day average, discount, coupon, availability, brand, product image and product name.
- The comparison table takes rows from the product data — price, average, coupon, availability, the Amazon star rating and more — and rows you write yourself, in any order. One column can be marked as your recommendation, in ten colours.
- Amazon buttons work with your own partner tag or without one. Without a tag the link simply carries none.
- Rendered on the server with a two-level cache and a background refresh. Nothing is fetched from amzly.de while a visitor is waiting.
- Optional click statistics. Off by default, and without personal data.
- Every view fits on phones and tablets.
- Shortcodes for everything the block can do.
- Fully translatable. Translations are delivered through translate.wordpress.org rather than bundled with the plugin.