Loyalty & Rewards
Growave vs Yotpo Loyalty: Honest Comparison [2027 Edition]
If you’re choosing between Growave and Yotpo Loyalty, you’re really deciding how much of your retention stack you want under one roof. Growave puts loyalty, referrals, reviews, a wishlist, and UGC in one Shopify admin. Yotpo Loyalty is the points-and-rewards piece of a wider Yotpo account, built to sit next to Yotpo Reviews.
That difference shows up in the day-to-day work. With Growave, one support queue and one set of widgets cover most of your post-purchase stack. With Yotpo, loyalty shares a customer record with your reviews, so a photo review can earn points without extra setup, and the same program can run on BigCommerce or Salesforce Commerce Cloud as well as Shopify.
Both Shopify loyalty apps have changed considerably over the past year. Yotpo closed its Subscriptions, Email, and SMS products in 2025, so it’s no longer the all-in-one suite older reviews describe. Growave shipped more than 40 updates in 2026, adding video reviews, AI review summaries, and B2B points.
So the comparison usually turns on what you already run. If you pay for Yotpo Reviews or sell beyond Shopify, Yotpo has a real head start. If you’re a Shopify store juggling several retention apps, Growave was built for exactly that.
Growave vs Yotpo Loyalty: Our top pick
For a Shopify-only store doing fewer than 3,700 orders a month, Growave is the easier choice on price and what you get for it. Yotpo becomes more interesting once you already use its Reviews product or need another commerce platform.
Choose Growave if: You want loyalty, referrals, reviews, and a wishlist on one bill, or VIP tiers without a sales call. Its $199 Growth plan includes tiers, store credit, and gift cards, and POS starts at $15. It also supports 16 storefront languages.
Choose Yotpo Loyalty if: You already pay for Yotpo Reviews, because one shared customer record is worth more than the price gap. It’s also the only option here if you sell on BigCommerce, Adobe Commerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, or WooCommerce, and it gets cheaper than Growave above about 3,700 orders.
Look beyond both if: You need built-in email or SMS, since Yotpo shut both down and Growave never had them, or you want to sell paid memberships. If you’re comparing Yotpo with a simpler alternative, our Smile.io vs Yotpo Loyalty comparison is the closest match.
What does each app offer?
One app tries to replace your retention stack. The other is one part of a stack Yotpo would like you to buy.
Growave
Growave puts five products in one admin with one support queue. Its wishlist has no match in Yotpo Loyalty, and the back-in-stock and price-drop emails it sends do real work for gifting and apparel brands. The bundle goes further with a gift registry, Apple and Google Wallet passes for showing points and VIP status in store, and B2B points for Shopify company accounts.
One newer feature is easy to miss. Growave Triggers awards points when a Shopify customer metafield changes, so a quiz or membership milestone built in another app can reward customers without any development work. The limit is simple. Growave only runs on Shopify, so it suits a Shopify store pulling three to five retention apps into one.
Yotpo Loyalty
Yotpo Loyalty is a module, and its biggest strength is the module next to it. Customers can earn points for reviews and photo reviews, and both products share one customer record. If you already pay Yotpo for reviews, that link outweighs any single feature here.
The loyalty depth is real too. It has 20+ prebuilt earning campaigns, including goal-spend and punch cards, and Premium adds native lists, segments, and custom action rules that go further than anything Growave offers. That flexibility comes at a price. Its Shopify listing supports English only, while much of its deeper functionality sits on a quote-only plan.
How we compared Growave and Yotpo Loyalty
A bundle against a module is hard to compare on price alone, because the cheaper one depends on what else you’d buy. So we priced both at real order volumes, checked which plan unlocks each redemption type, and read what merchants report after launch. We looked at five areas:
- Features: What each app supports, and on which plan.
- Pricing: What you’ll pay as order volume grows, including overage and annual billing.
- Integrations: How each app works with Klaviyo, Shopify POS, and developer tools.
- Merchant feedback: What reviewers say on the Shopify App Store, G2, Capterra, and Reddit.
- Migration: What moves between the two apps and what you’ll need to rebuild.
Pricing and plan restrictions were checked against both vendors’ published pricing pages on 5 November 2026.
Growave vs Yotpo Loyalty: At a glance
| Category | Growave | Yotpo Loyalty |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest paid plan | $15/month, 500 orders | $199/month, 500 orders |
| What it includes | Loyalty, referrals, reviews, wishlist, POS, and Shopify Flow | Loyalty and referrals |
| Wishlist and gift registry | Yes | No |
| VIP tiers | Growth, $199 | Premium, custom quote |
| Points expiry | Growth, $199 | Pro, $199 |
| Free-product and free-shipping rewards | Entry, $15 | Premium, custom quote |
| Gift-card rewards | Growth, $199 | Premium, custom quote |
| Checkout redemption | Plus, $499 | Pro, $199 |
| Custom action rules | Plus, $499 | Premium, custom quote |
| Headless API and SDK | Plus, $499 | Premium, custom quote |
| Platforms | Shopify only | Six platforms plus headless |
| Listing languages | 16 | English only |
| Shopify rating | 4.8 (1,290 reviews) | 4.7 (968 reviews) |
| Built for Shopify badge | Yes | No |
The difference becomes hard to ignore when you look at the plan gates. Growave makes most of its core features available on the $15 and $199 plans. With Yotpo, several comparable features require Premium, and you’ll need a quote to find out what that costs.
How much do Growave and Yotpo Loyalty cost?
Both charge according to order volume, but their pricing works differently. Growave bills in whole 100-order blocks, so its cost climbs in steps. Yotpo bills per order, so its cost climbs as a slope. Yotpo’s rate per extra order is lower at every tier, and Growave’s starting price is $184 lower. That’s the whole trade.
Growave pricing
| Plan | Price | Orders included | Overage | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 200 | None | Testing, with Growave branding |
| Entry | $15/month | 500 | $20 per 100 | Referrals, POS, Shopify Flow, and one integration |
| Growth | $199/month | 1,500 | $15 per 100 | VIP tiers, store credit, gift cards, and video reviews |
| Plus | $499/month | 3,000 | $10 per 100 | Checkout extensions, headless API, and B2B points |
| Unlimited | $999/month | Uncapped | Flat | High-volume stores that want a fixed bill |
The trial is 14 days, and refunds only apply if you uninstall within the first 7 days of a billing period. There’s another detail worth checking before you pay annually. Entry costs $470 a year, or roughly $39 a month, which makes the $15 monthly option cheaper.
Yotpo Loyalty pricing
Pro costs $199 including the first 500 orders, then $0.20 per order up to 1,000, $0.10 up to 3,000, and $0.05 up to 10,000. Yotpo also publishes a band table, and the bands are where people get caught out.
| Monthly orders | Pro (band price) |
|---|---|
| 0–599 | $199 |
| 1,000–1,999 | $299 |
| 2,000–2,999 | $399 |
| 3,000–3,999 | $499 |
| 4,000–4,999 | $549 |
| 5,000–5,999 | $599 |
| 6,000+ | Custom |
The published band price is based on the bottom of each range, but your actual bill follows the per-order formula. A store at 1,900 orders sees $299 in the table and budgets for it, but the formula gives $389. Premium and Enterprise are quote-only, and third-party estimates for Premium range from about $749 to $1,198 a month, none of them confirmed by Yotpo.
Yotpo’s own pricing page also disagrees with itself in two places. POS is listed as a Premium feature in the plan bullets but included on Free in the feature table. And the lowest overage rate is $0.05 on yotpo.com but $0.08 on the Shopify listing. Get both confirmed in writing before you sign.
Which free plan gives you more?
Growave’s, by a distance. It covers 200 orders a month with points, a wishlist, reviews, and data export, though widgets carry Growave branding and support is email within 48 hours. Yotpo’s free plan stops below 100 orders, and birthday rewards, points expiry, the rewards page, and checkout redemption all need Pro. See our list of free Shopify loyalty apps for more options at this stage.
How do costs change as order volume grows?
The gap is widest at the start and shrinks as you grow, until it flips just above 3,700 orders.
| Orders/month | Growave | Yotpo Loyalty | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 500 | $15 (Entry) | $199 | Growave |
| 1,000 | $115 (Entry + overage) | $299 | Growave |
| 2,500 | $349 (Growth + overage) | $449 | Growave |
| 3,000 | $424 (Growth + overage) | $499 | Growave |
| 3,700 | $529 (Growth + overage) | $534 | Growave |
| 4,000 | $574 (Growth + overage) | $549 | Yotpo |
| 5,000 | $699 (Plus + overage) | $599 | Yotpo |
| 10,000 | $999 (Unlimited) | Custom | Growave, published |
At 3,701 orders, Growave moves into a new $15 block while Yotpo adds five cents. Growave’s own switch from Growth to Plus only pays off near 4,500 orders, so don’t upgrade at 3,000 just because the number looks close.
There’s one more thing to account for. The table compares loyalty against loyalty, even though Growave’s price also includes reviews, a wishlist, and UGC. The fair Yotpo comparison is its Reviews and Loyalty bundle, which starts at $368 for up to 599 orders and rises to $973, and Growave stays cheaper than that at every published volume. Our Shopify loyalty app pricing comparison shows how both compare with the wider market.
How do Growave and Yotpo Loyalty compare on features?
A loyalty program can offer plenty of ways to earn points, but customers still need something worthwhile to spend them on. Redemption is where the differences become obvious.
Which app gives customers more ways to redeem?
Growave, decisively. Points can become discounts, free products, free shipping, gift cards, or store credit, with a safeguard that stops free-product giveaways from going through at a zero price. Free products and free shipping start on the $15 Entry plan.
Yotpo Pro turns points into fixed-amount or any-amount discounts, and that’s the full list. Free products, free shipping, gift cards, and custom rewards all need Premium. If you’re paying $199 for Pro, that’s worth knowing before you design your rewards.
Best for: Growave.
Which app makes VIP tiers easier to access?
Growave makes the cost of VIP tiers clear upfront. With Yotpo, you’ll need to speak to sales before knowing what that functionality will cost, which also puts it behind LoyaltyLion’s Classic add-on for tiers.
Best for: Growave.
Which app offers better earning rules?
It’s close. Growave covers purchases, birthdays, social follows, and reviews, plus points per item and channel multipliers. Yotpo matches that and adds goal-spend campaigns, and on Premium its custom action rules and audience-triggered campaigns go further than anything Growave has.
Best for: Tie.
Which app is better for referrals?
Both include fraud protection. Growave starts Shopify referrals at $15, while Yotpo includes them on its free plan and blocks abuse by IP address, browser, and billing address. The catch is that Yotpo’s free plan stops below 100 orders.
Best for: Tie.
Which app works better with your other tools?
Yotpo has the edge on lower plans, while Growave becomes more competitive on Plus. It includes webhooks on Pro and lists 180+ integrations, and both apps send loyalty events to Klaviyo. Growave allows one integration on Entry and three on Growth, with its API and unlimited integrations only on Plus at $499. Growave’s pricing page and Shopify listing disagree on the Growth count, so confirm which one is in your contract.
Best for: Yotpo Loyalty, unless you’re on Growave Plus.
Which app has better analytics?
Yotpo goes deeper if you pay for it. Lower plans get basic dashboards, while AI-powered insights, cohort tracking, and deeper ROI modelling arrive on Pro and Premium, with smart segments on Premium.
Growave keeps one analytics dashboard across loyalty, reviews, and wishlist on every plan. In 2026 it added store-credit and wishlist reporting, plus order tagging in Shopify, which is handy if you analyse loyalty orders there. It’s simpler, but you don’t need a bigger plan to see it.
Best for: Yotpo Loyalty if you’ll pay for Pro or Premium and use the depth, and Growave if a single dashboard on every plan is enough.
Which app is easier to set up and get help with?
Growave holds the Built for Shopify badge and supports 16 storefront languages, and Yotpo Loyalty has neither. Yotpo’s support also changed while this article was being written. On 22 September 2026 its Pro plan promised 24/7 chat and email. By 25 September it read “AI chatbot & Email support”, with human live chat moved to Premium.
The change is worth paying attention to because merchants were already reporting difficulty reaching a person. JewelryBlossom described that experience in a July 2026 one-star review, with a human response promised within four to six hours but taking two days.
Best for: Growave.
What do merchants say about Growave and Yotpo Loyalty?
Growave looks stronger on the Shopify App Store. Yotpo has a much larger footprint on other review platforms, although those ratings cover its wider product range rather than Loyalty alone.
| Review source | Growave | Yotpo Loyalty |
|---|---|---|
| Shopify App Store | 4.8 (1,290 reviews), 93% five-star, 2% one-star | 4.7 (968 reviews), 84% five-star, 5% one-star |
| G2 | 4.7 (21 reviews) | 4.3 (268 reviews) |
| Capterra | 4.8 (32 reviews) | 4.5 (377 reviews), value for money 3.9 |
Growave’s G2 and Capterra samples are small, so its Shopify listing is the only dataset worth weighing. We checked G2 on 11 November 2026, and its counts tend to move by a few reviews from day to day.
Growave’s five-star reviews are mostly about fast support and cutting several apps down to one. The repeated complaint is its 2024 repricing, when merchants lost grandfathered rates with no migration path and some started weighing Growave alternatives. Pawradise Raw described features that shipped around 180 days late and didn’t match what was promised, and billing after uninstall shows up more than once.
Yotpo’s paid-tier support gets real praise, with named agents recurring through 2026. The criticism clusters on features sitting on higher plans than buyers expected. Zen Flasteri pointed out VIP tiers missing from Pro, Noordcode found that translation promised during sales was only partial, and DreamTraveller reported imported reviews losing their Verified Buyer badge on Pro.
There’s also a reason to be cautious about some of the Reddit recommendations. An account posting as GoodVibesArchitect promoted Growave in at least four loyalty threads between October 2025 and January 2026, so read those posts as marketing.
What our Shopify loyalty app review research found
Our analysis of 3,410 reviews across 25 Shopify loyalty apps found that Yotpo was the most frequently named app among merchants discussing a switch. It appeared seven times in those reviews. That fits the pattern above, where buyers find features gated higher than they expected.
Support is where the two apps look surprisingly similar. Growave received positive feedback in 130 of 139 support mentions, while Yotpo did so in 112 of 120. In Yotpo’s case, 80.6% of reviews mentioning support also named an agent.
The bigger difference appears in pricing and reliability. Four of Yotpo’s five pricing mentions were complaints, alongside seven of its 49 reliability mentions. Growave’s pricing mentions were 15 of 16 positive, while its eight one- and two-star reviews mostly pointed to bugs, slow support, or uninstall problems.
That leaves two different things to watch. With Yotpo, make sure you understand exactly what’s included before signing. With Growave, pay attention to how reliably all those bundled products work together.
How do you migrate between Growave and Yotpo Loyalty?
Both apps offer migration help, but they take different approaches. Growave runs a contract buyout and stays free for as long as you have left on your current loyalty contract. Yotpo migrates member data and points balances and manages the switch itself.
The data moves. The surrounding work is what people forget to scope. Review history formatting rarely survives, VIP tiers have to be rebuilt by hand, and referral links already in circulation stop working. Any Klaviyo flow built on the old app’s events also needs rewiring.
A few steps keep it clean:
- Export first. Download points balances, members, and review history before cancelling anything.
- Rebuild tiers and flows. Recreate VIP tiers and point your Klaviyo flows at the new app’s events.
- Check balances after import. Merchants have reported duplicated points during Yotpo onboarding.
- Watch your theme. One merchant reported Growave editing a backup theme without asking, so keep a clean copy.
- Cancel in Shopify billing. Uninstalling isn’t the same as cancelling, on either app.
If you’re on an annual Yotpo contract, start the move well before renewal and ask Growave whether its buyout covers the remaining term. Our Yotpo Loyalty alternatives list covers other options worth pricing at the same time.
Which Shopify loyalty app should you choose?
Three questions settle this faster than any feature table:
- Do you already pay Yotpo for reviews? If yes, the shared customer record changes the maths and outweighs the price gap.
- Do you sell anywhere other than Shopify? If yes, Growave is out.
- Will you pass 3,700 orders a month within a year? Price the decision at next year’s volume, not this month’s.
Here’s how those trade-offs translate into a buying decision.
| Your store or requirement | Recommended app | Why choose it? |
|---|---|---|
| Shopify only, under 3,700 orders | Growave | Lower bill and four extra products |
| VIP tiers without a sales call | Growave | Included on Growth at $199 |
| Free-product or free-shipping rewards | Growave | From $15, against Premium on Yotpo |
| Multilingual storefront | Growave | 16 languages, against English only |
| Already using Yotpo Reviews | Yotpo Loyalty | One shared customer record |
| Non-Shopify or multi-platform store | Yotpo Loyalty | Runs on six platforms plus headless |
| Loyalty only, above 3,700 orders | Yotpo Loyalty | Lower per-order rate at volume |
| Checkout redemption on a budget | Yotpo Loyalty | Pro at $199, against Growave Plus at $499 |
Final verdict: Growave or Yotpo Loyalty?
For a Shopify-only store doing fewer than 3,700 orders a month, Growave offers the stronger overall package. The $184 starting-price gap buys you four additional products, VIP tiers at a published price, and more ways for customers to redeem points.
Above 3,700 orders, the price argument for Yotpo holds up, but the feature argument is weak. Even at $599 a month on Pro, VIP tiers and gift-card rewards still sit behind a custom quote.
In practice, Yotpo makes the most sense when you’re already invested in its ecosystem or need to run loyalty across multiple commerce platforms. Otherwise, Growave is the more straightforward purchase. Just make sure you’ll actually use enough of its bundled products to justify keeping them all.
FAQs
Are VIP tiers and POS included on Yotpo Pro?
VIP tiers aren’t, as they need Premium by custom quote. POS is unclear, because Yotpo’s own page lists it as Premium in the plan bullets and included on Free in the feature table. On Growave, tiers come with the $199 Growth plan and POS with the $15 Entry plan.
Does Yotpo Pro’s price change as I grow?
Yes. Pro re-tiers automatically as your order count rises, so your bill moves without a new contract. Growave has no contract, so you can start or cancel without committing to a fixed term.
What counts as an order for billing?
Both apps bill on every order processed. One G2 reviewer noted that warranty replacements, spare parts, and influencer shipments all counted on Yotpo, so raise it before signing if many of your orders aren’t sales.
When does billing stop if I uninstall?
Growave refunds only within the first 7 days of a billing period or renewal, and Yotpo publishes no refund window. On both, merchants have been billed after uninstalling, so confirm the cancellation in Shopify billing.
Which email platform works best with each app?
Klaviyo, on both. Yotpo moved its messaging customers to Attentive, Omnisend, and Klaviyo when it closed Email and SMS on 31 December 2025, and Growave sends points and reward events to Klaviyo as triggers and profile properties.
Will either app migrate my points and reviews?
Yotpo migrates member data and points balances and manages the process. Growave supports CSV import with live-chat help and offers a contract buyout. Ask both who does the work and what happens to review history.
Daniel Smith
Tracks the Shopify App Store so everyday merchants don't have to. Having personally vetted, audited, and reviewed hundreds of apss, he cuts through the marketing noise to recommend tools that actually drive revenue. He helps brands build the ultimate lean, high-performing tech stack.
