I pulled the pricing sections of the five biggest loyalty apps in the Shopify App Store on the same day and put them side by side. The plans do not measure the same thing, and that is where the surprises live.
Pricing pages for loyalty apps are written to be skimmed one at a time, never side by side. So on July 16, 2026 I opened the Shopify App Store listings for the five loyalty apps every Shopify merchant ends up shortlisting, Smile, LoyaltyLion, Growave, Rivo and BON, and copied their published pricing sections into one table on the same afternoon. No demo calls, no “contact us” numbers, only what the listing shows every merchant before install.
Two things became obvious within minutes. First, everyone prices on the same axis: monthly orders processed by your store, not members enrolled or emails sent. Second, the tiers are built so that the honest comparison changes completely depending on your order volume, which is why a single “best value” verdict is usually someone’s affiliate link talking.
Here is the full picture, straight from the pricing sections. Ratings and review counts come from the same listings on the same day. Click a header to sort.
| App | Free plan covers | Entry paid, $/mo | Top listed plan, $/mo | Rating | Reviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Smile | 200 orders/mo | $15 (to 500 orders) | $199 Growth (2,500 orders incl, then $20/100) | 4.9 | 4,312 |
| LoyaltyLion | 400 orders/mo | $199 Classic (over 500 orders: custom quote) | $199 Classic (Advanced/Plus unpublished) | 4.5 | 513 |
| Growave | 200 orders/mo | $15 Entry (500 orders incl, then $20/100) | $499 Plus (3,000 orders incl, then $10/100) | 4.8 | 1,232 |
| Rivo | 200 orders/mo | $15 Essential (to 500 orders) | $499 Plus (to 2,500 orders) | 4.8 | 1,333 |
| BON | 150 orders/mo | $15 Starter (to 300 orders) | $129 Growth (unlimited orders) | 5.0 | 1,783 |
A few clarifications the table cannot hold. Rivo has a middle Scale plan at $49 per month which its listing describes as pay-as-you-go starting at 500 orders per month with pricing that “scales with order volume,” and the listing does not publish the scaling schedule, so I am marking Scale’s cost above 500 orders as unclear. Smile also has a $79 Standard plan covering up to 1,000 orders. BON’s Basic sits at $29 for up to 500 orders. LoyaltyLion is the outlier in transparency: a free plan to 400 orders, one published $199 price, and everything else behind a quote.
Stickers mislead, so I priced two concrete scenarios using only the published rules. At 500 orders a month, the entry tier club all works: Smile $15, Growave $15, Rivo $15 (or $49 on Scale), BON $29 on Basic since Starter caps at 300, and LoyaltyLion still free at 400 orders but a $199 Classic just past that. At 2,500 orders a month the picture inverts: BON Growth is $129 with unlimited orders, Smile Growth is $199 flat since 2,500 orders are included, Growave costs $349 on its published rules ($199 Growth plus ten overage blocks at $15 each), Rivo Plus is $499, and LoyaltyLion has no published number at all.
Overage clauses are the real pricing. Smile Growth includes 2,500 monthly orders and then charges $20 per additional 100. Growave publishes different overage rates per tier: $20 per 100 on Entry, $15 on Growth, $10 on Plus. If your store spikes for a launch month, these lines decide your bill, and they are the easiest part of the listing to skim past.
Order caps punish success at different speeds. BON is the only app of the five whose published mid-tier ($129 Growth) removes the order cap entirely, which is why it wins the 2,500-order scenario so comfortably on paper. The trade-off is that its listing gates several premium mechanics, like B2B tiers and product-page points, into that same plan rather than lower ones.
Free plans are marketing, but useful marketing. Every app publishes one: 150 orders on BON, 200 on Smile, Growave and Rivo, 400 on LoyaltyLion. LoyaltyLion’s is the most generous cap of the five, which makes sense once you notice it is also the app most eager to move you to a sales conversation afterward.
Ratings do not track price. The cheapest unlimited plan (BON) carries the highest rating of the five at 5.0 across 1,783 reviews, and the most enterprise-shaped app (LoyaltyLion) carries the lowest at 4.5 across 513. App Store ratings skew toward smaller merchants, who reward generous free tiers and fast support, so read them as a small-store satisfaction signal rather than a platform quality verdict.
Here is what those pricing sections look like in the wild, in case you want to verify the numbers yourself. This is Smile’s, with the four plans and the overage line under Growth:
And LoyaltyLion’s, which is the shortest pricing section of the five, one free plan and one number:
Match the app to your order curve, not to a feature checklist. Under 500 orders a month, pick whichever $15 plan includes the one mechanic you actually plan to run, because at that volume the price differences are noise. Between 500 and 2,500, model your exact volume against the caps and overages above, and notice that BON’s flat $129 crosses under Smile’s $199 the moment you pass the included orders. Above 2,500, published pricing stops being the whole story anyway, and your bargaining power comes from making vendors quote against each other with these public numbers as the floor.
Prices were captured July 16, 2026 and will drift. The structure, order-based tiers with overage clauses and one silent enterprise ladder, changes much more slowly, and it is the structure that should drive the decision.
At the entry level it is effectively a tie. Smile Essential, Growave Entry and Rivo Essential are all $15 per month for up to 500 monthly orders on their published App Store pages, and BON Starter is $15 for up to 300 orders. The free plans differ more than the $15 plans do.
Orders track the value the program is supposed to influence, and they are harder to game than member counts. It also means a traffic spike raises your app bill even if program engagement stays flat, which is exactly the scenario the overage clauses cover.
Only when a specific gated mechanic earns it, usually VIP tiers, points expiry or checkout redemption. If you just want points and referrals, the published $15 tiers and even the free plans cover that, and the leftover budget buys a lot of actual rewards.
They are the prices every merchant actually sees at install time, checked here on July 16, 2026, but they change and custom quotes exist above certain volumes. LoyaltyLion routes anything above 500 orders to sales, so treat published prices as the floor of a negotiation, not the whole market.