Loyalty & Rewards
Love Loyalty vs Kangaroo Loyalty: Honest Comparison [2027 Edition]
Most merchants searching Love Loyalty vs Kangaroo Loyalty want to know whether the younger app is a real alternative to the older one. The honest answer depends on whether your store has a counter as well as a checkout.
Love Loyalty is a Shopify-only loyalty app built around the cart, and it’s about two years old. Kangaroo is a retail loyalty platform that happens to have a Shopify app, with email and SMS, contests, reviews, and a branded mobile app in the same subscription, and support for POS systems beyond Shopify. Both sit among the Shopify loyalty and rewards apps with near-perfect ratings, but on very different review counts.
That difference runs through the whole comparison. Love Loyalty keeps its focus on Shopify and the loyalty experience around checkout. Kangaroo brings more of the retail operation into one platform, but takes a little more work to understand before you buy.
Love Loyalty vs Kangaroo Loyalty: Our top pick
For a Shopify-only store, Love Loyalty is the easier choice. Kangaroo earns its place when loyalty needs to work across physical stores, multiple POS systems, and a marketing stack you’d rather manage through one vendor.
Choose Love Loyalty: You sell only on Shopify and want VIP tiers, referrals, wallet passes, or paid memberships for under $100 a month. You’d also like a free plan to launch on, and the option to take 17% to 25% off by paying annually.
Choose Kangaroo Loyalty: You run loyalty at a counter as well as online, possibly on Lightspeed, Heartland, or another POS. You want email and SMS campaigns, segmentation, spin-to-win, and a branded iOS and Android app inside the same subscription, from a vendor whose merchants have stayed five to seven years.
Look beyond both: Both listings declare English only, so neither suits a multilingual storefront. And a store that wants no overage at all, for far less than $399, will find BON Loyalty charges $129 for unlimited orders.
What does each app offer?
Love Loyalty
Love Loyalty is built so redemption happens where the customer already is. Points come off in the cart in two steps, free-product rewards drop the item straight into the cart, and there’s no launcher to open first. That’s the thing its reviews praise most often.
The bigger surprise is what comes with Growth at $79. You get VIP tiers, paid memberships, B2B segment rules, and Apple or Google Wallet passes, with a 1.8% fee on membership sales. API access and checkout extensions wait for Plus at $399.
The trade-off is scope. There are no product reviews, no email or SMS campaigns, and no contests, so you connect Klaviyo or go without. Love Loyalty suits Shopify-only brands from 150 to about 10,000 orders a month that already have reviews and email handled elsewhere.
Kangaroo Loyalty
Kangaroo starts to make more sense when you think of it as a retail toolkit. Alongside points, tier rewards, and referrals, it bundles contests, reviews, email and SMS campaigns, segmentation, workflows, geofencing, and surveys. The same loyalty program can run across Shopify, Lightspeed, Heartland, Alice POS, and MindBody.
It also offers a branded mobile app through Appmaker.xyz and connects with Gorgias, Judge.me, Klaviyo, and Mailchimp. That’s a considerable amount of the marketing stack under one roof.
The buying decision is less straightforward. Kangaroo has no Built for Shopify badge and publishes no data-access disclosure on its listing, and its pricing lives on two pages that describe two different models. It suits retailers with a counter and a checkout, stores running more than one POS system, and merchants who want campaigns and an app from their loyalty vendor.
How we compared Love Loyalty and Kangaroo Loyalty
We wanted to know what a Shopify merchant actually pays for each app, and what Kangaroo’s wider platform is worth to a store that uses it.
- Features: Points, tiers, referrals, memberships, wallet passes, POS, marketing, gamification, reviews, and API access.
- Pricing: Every published plan on both of Kangaroo’s price lists and Love Loyalty’s, priced at seven order volumes using the plans a Shopify merchant can install.
- Integrations: POS systems beyond Shopify, Klaviyo, and the number of integration slots per plan.
- Merchant feedback: Shopify App Store reviews and merchant tenure, plus our study of 3,410 loyalty app reviews.
- Migration: What moves between the two, and what stays behind when you leave an all-in-one platform.
We read both App Store listings, loveloyalty.app/pricing, and loyalty.kangaroorewards.com/pricing on 11 November 2026. Volume costs are our own calculations.
Love Loyalty vs Kangaroo Loyalty: At a glance
| Love Loyalty | Kangaroo Loyalty | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Shopify-only stores that want tiers, memberships, or wallet passes cheaply | Retailers with physical stores, several POS systems, and in-app marketing |
| Entry price | Free, then $12/mo | $199/mo on the Shopify listing |
| Free plan | Yes, 150 orders/mo | None, free trial only |
| Free trial | 14 days on paid plans | Advertised, length not stated |
| Annual discount | 17% to 25% | None published |
| Built for Shopify | Yes | No |
| App Store rating | 5.0 from 427 reviews | 4.9 from 59 reviews |
| One-star reviews | None | 1 (2%) |
| VIP tiers | From $79/mo | From $199/mo |
| Referrals | Free plan | From $199/mo |
| Order limits | 150 free, then 500, 2,000, and unlimited | 1,000 included at $199, then $0.20 an order |
| Shopify POS | From $12/mo on monthly billing | Every plan |
| Other POS systems | None | Lightspeed, Heartland, Alice POS, and MindBody |
| Wallet passes | From $79/mo | Feature tag only, no plan names it |
| Paid memberships | From $79/mo, plus 1.8% of sales | Not described on any plan |
| Email and SMS campaigns | Through Klaviyo | Built in |
| Reviews module | None | Included |
| Branded mobile app | None | Elite, $349/mo |
| API access | Plus, $399/mo | Enterprise, custom quote |
| Languages | English only | English only |
Love Loyalty gives Shopify merchants more loyalty features for less. Kangaroo’s advantage starts when the program needs to reach beyond the Shopify storefront.
How do Love Loyalty and Kangaroo Loyalty compare on features?
Where you sell settles most of this. If loyalty runs at a counter on a POS that isn’t Shopify, only Kangaroo can do it. If it runs on a Shopify storefront, Love Loyalty gives you the core loyalty features for much less.
Which app is better for in-store loyalty?
Kangaroo, clearly. It supports Shopify POS and Lightspeed on its listing, and Heartland, Alice POS, and MindBody sit among its 20+ platform integrations. It adds a loyalty tablet for self check-in at the counter, QR code scanning, and multi-location support from Plus.
Love Loyalty runs on Shopify POS only, with a staff-facing widget for sign-ups, earning, and redemption. That’s on Professional at $12 a month on monthly billing, or Growth at $59 if you pay annually. If your till is Shopify, that covers loyalty across POS and online well enough.
Best for: Kangaroo.
Which app makes VIP tiers cheaper?
Love Loyalty, by $120 a month. It puts VIP tiers on Growth at $79, with automatic upgrades based on spend or points, plus points expiry and reminders. Kangaroo’s tier rewards arrive with its $199 plan, and its $79 Core plan on the general pricing page can’t run tiers at all.
Best for: Love Loyalty.
Which app handles referrals better?
Love Loyalty, mainly because referrals are included on its free plan. It includes referrals on the free plan, with the friend reward documented as new-customers-only and self-referral checks in place. Kangaroo’s referral program starts at $199, bundled with spin-to-win and contests.
Best for: Love Loyalty.
Which app has built-in email and SMS marketing?
Kangaroo, by a distance. Every plan includes a drag-and-drop email editor, and higher plans add segmentation, workflows, targeted pop-ups, geofencing, email and SMS campaigns with revenue tracking, and AI campaigns on Elite.
Love Loyalty has no marketing tools of its own. It relies on Klaviyo, Shopify Flow, and 30+ integrations, so check what syncs to Klaviyo before you count on it. If you’re paying for an email tool separately today, price the difference before you compare loyalty features.
Best for: Kangaroo.
Which app offers gamification and reviews?
Only Kangaroo. It includes spin-to-win, contests and giveaways, surveys, badges, and a tablet survey kiosk on Elite, the kind of features most stores buy from separate gamified loyalty apps. It also has a reviews module, with Judge.me in its integrations. Love Loyalty has bonus campaigns and custom earning rules and nothing else here.
So a merchant replacing a reviews app and a contest app with Kangaroo should count both bills before deciding.
Best for: Kangaroo.
How do the rewards compare?
Kangaroo has the wider menu. Point rewards, free shipping, and paying with points are on every plan, and higher plans add product-specific redemptions, store credit or cashback, gift cards, and third-party rewards. Love Loyalty covers points, cart redemption, free-product rewards, and referrals on the free plan, with bonus campaigns on Growth.
Best for: Kangaroo on variety, and it’s the only one of the two selling third-party rewards. Love Loyalty if what matters is how easily customers redeem.
Which app offers paid memberships and wallet passes?
Love Loyalty. Its Growth plan runs monthly and yearly paid memberships with a one-click upsell at checkout and a 1.8% fee on membership sales, plus Apple and Google Wallet passes. Kangaroo lists membership perks and digital wallets among its feature tags, but no plan or pricing page describes a recurring membership product.
Best for: Love Loyalty. If recurring membership revenue is why you’re shopping, only one of these sells it.
Which app is better for reporting and API access?
It depends on which you need. Love Loyalty gives you analytics from $12 and API access at $399, a published price. Kangaroo includes reporting on every plan and advanced reporting on Elite at $349, but its API sits at Enterprise and is quoted on request.
Best for: Love Loyalty for a priced API. Kangaroo for reporting depth at the top of its ladder.
Which app has better support?
It’s a tie. Love Loyalty offers live chat on every plan, including free, and its co-founder replies to reviews publicly. Kangaroo lists chat, email, and phone support, and its reviews name agents and describe onboarding years after the fact.
Best for: Kangaroo if you want phone support. Love Loyalty if you want live chat before you’ve paid anything.
How much do Love Loyalty and Kangaroo Loyalty cost?
The pricing is harder to compare than the feature lists. Love Loyalty charges by monthly order volume on every plan. Kangaroo’s Shopify plan also uses order volume, but its general pricing page uses features and integration slots instead, and says the price doesn’t rise with your orders. For a Shopify merchant, the sensible place to start is the plan actually listed in the App Store.
Love Loyalty pricing
| Plan | Cost | Order limit | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 150/mo | A live points program with cart redemption |
| Professional | $12/mo, or $10/mo billed annually with fewer features | 500/mo | Loyalty page, analytics, POS, and 30+ integrations (monthly billing) |
| Growth | $79/mo, or $708/yr | 2,000/mo, then $15 per extra 100 | Tiers, memberships, wallet passes, and B2B segments |
| Plus | $399/mo, or $3,588/yr | Unlimited | API, checkout extensions, and founder-led onboarding |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Company-level B2B accounts |
Kangaroo Loyalty pricing
| Plan | Cost | Limit | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ultimate (Shopify listing) | $199/mo | 1,000 orders, then $0.20 each | Everything the listing names, on one plan |
| Core (general page) | $79/mo | Unlimited customers, 1 integration | Points and rewards on one store, with no tiers or referrals |
| Plus (general page) | $199/mo | Unlimited customers, 2 integrations | Tiers, referrals, cashback, segmentation, and multi-location |
| Elite (general page) | $349/mo | Unlimited customers, unlimited integrations | A branded app, AI campaigns, and advanced reporting |
| Enterprise | Custom | Unlimited | API access and multi-region roll-out |
A few things to know before you budget:
- Plan around $199, not $79: The App Store listing and the Shopify pricing page it links to agree on one plan at $199. The $79 Core plan appears only on Kangaroo’s general page, and it can’t run tiers or referrals. Ask Kangaroo whether Core is sold to Shopify stores before you count on it.
- Expect Kangaroo’s overage to start early: At $0.20 an order, it’s $20 per 100 from order 1,001. Love Loyalty charges $15 per 100, and only from order 2,001 on Growth.
- Ask for Kangaroo’s full quote: Its listing says some charges may be billed by Kangaroo Rewards separately from your Shopify invoice. Email and SMS volume, the branded app, and third-party rewards are the likely places, so don’t read $199 as the ceiling.
- Don’t expect an annual discount from Kangaroo: It publishes none, while Love Loyalty takes about 25% off Growth and Plus.
- Pay monthly for Love Loyalty Professional: On annual billing it drops to $10 and loses POS, integrations, and analytics, which reappear on Growth at $59.
Which free plan gives you more?
Only Love Loyalty has one. It covers 150 orders a month with points, two-step cart redemption, referrals, full customisation, and live chat. It holds back tiers, the loyalty page, free-product rewards, points expiry, analytics, POS, and integrations, so it’s enough to launch on but not to grow on.
Kangaroo advertises a free trial without saying how long it lasts, and its website steers you to a demo rather than an install. That matters most for small Shopify stores. Under 150 orders a month, Love Loyalty costs nothing, while Kangaroo’s Shopify plan costs $199 from day one, or $2,388 a year to find out whether anyone redeems.
How do costs change as order volume grows?
This uses the plans a Shopify merchant installs from the App Store, since that’s how each app’s pricing reaches you in practice. Love Loyalty’s annual equivalents are in brackets where the plan keeps the same features. Kangaroo lists no annual rate.
| Orders/month | Love Loyalty | Kangaroo Loyalty | Cheaper option |
|---|---|---|---|
| 150 | Free, $0 | $199 | Love Loyalty by $199 |
| 500 | Professional, $12 | $199 | Love Loyalty by $187 |
| 1,000 | Growth, $79 ($59) | $199 | Love Loyalty by $120 |
| 2,000 | Growth, $79 ($59) | $399 with overage | Love Loyalty by $320 |
| 2,500 | Growth, $154 with overage | $499 with overage | Love Loyalty by $345 |
| 5,000 | Plus, $399 ($299) | $999 with overage | Love Loyalty by $600 |
| 10,000 | Plus, $399 ($299) | $1,999 with overage | Love Loyalty by $1,600 |
The gap widens as order volume grows. Kangaroo can still make financial sense for a retailer that would otherwise pay separately for email, SMS, reviews, and contests. Add those subscriptions before treating the table as your final bill.
On Love Loyalty, Growth stops making sense at roughly 4,200 orders. By then, overage pushes its monthly bill past the Plus plan.
What do merchants say about Love Loyalty and Kangaroo Loyalty?
The two records answer different questions. Love Loyalty’s shows the current product works for stores that installed it recently. Kangaroo’s shows the product has kept merchants for five to seven years, with far less public detail. Ratings were checked on 11 November 2026.
| Source | Love Loyalty | Kangaroo Loyalty |
|---|---|---|
| Shopify App Store | 5.0 from 427 reviews | 4.9 from 59 reviews |
Love Loyalty’s reviews are dense and recent. Fargro’s newest review describes a problem with earning methods that support fixed within a week. What the record can’t show yet is year three, because the app hasn’t existed that long.
Kangaroo’s strongest evidence is merchant tenure. PROCAM Photo & Video Gear has been around for more than five years, NutriChem for more than three, and Nature Sante for more than seven. Nature Sante’s history even predates the Shopify listing, showing that Kangaroo was selling this platform elsewhere first.
Its one one-star review, from Retrofix Games in November 2025, is worth reading. Points stopped being awarded, and support fixed it but couldn’t say when it started, how many customers were affected, or why. That’s one merchant’s experience, but it’s a fair picture of the risk with a small vendor, so ask how incidents are reported before you sign.
What our Shopify loyalty app review research found
Both apps were in our analysis of 25 Shopify loyalty apps. Kangaroo’s sample was small, at 45 written reviews. Support came up in 37 of them, all as praise, and rewards in 14, with 12 compliments and one complaint. It had a single one- or two-star review in the study period, about a bug.
Love Loyalty’s sample was larger, at 186 written reviews. Rewards mechanics came up in 52.2% of them, close to twice the 27.2% category average, and 110 of its 112 support mentions were compliments. It had no one- or two-star reviews, and it was joint top, with BON Loyalty, among apps merchants said they’d moved to from another app.
One finding applies to both. Reviewers with more than a year on an app were about twice as likely to leave one or two stars, so Love Loyalty’s clean record will be tested as its merchants age.
For Love Loyalty, merchants praise the rewards and the support, and the record is recent. Whereas, for Kangaroo Loyalty, support praise is unanimous in a small sample, backed by long merchant tenure.
How do you migrate between Love Loyalty and Kangaroo Loyalty?
Moving points is the small part of this. Leaving an all-in-one platform means deciding where your reviews, campaigns, and app go too. Neither vendor names the other as a supported source, so a move in either direction is a CSV export and import.
Kangaroo has the stronger published offer for incoming merchants, with six months free and white-glove migration of members and points from another loyalty platform. Love Loyalty offers founder-led migration on Plus, and its support has handled CSV imports on lower plans.
| Item | Kangaroo to Love Loyalty | Love Loyalty to Kangaroo |
|---|---|---|
| Points balances | Export to CSV and import | Export to CSV and import, with Kangaroo’s migration help |
| Tier status | Recalculate from spend | Recalculate from spend, and tiers need the $199 plan |
| Referral history | Attribution chains are lost | Attribution chains are lost |
| Wallet passes | Reissue to members | Reissue to members |
| Reviews, email, and SMS history | Stay behind, so line up replacements first | Not applicable |
| Branded mobile app | Disappears | Not applicable |
| Paid memberships | Not applicable | No described equivalent, so check Kangaroo’s options first |
- Export points balances and tier assignments to CSV before you cancel anything.
- Leaving Kangaroo, set up a reviews app and an email tool first. Your review history carries SEO value and won’t move into an app without reviews.
- Tell members who use the branded app what replaces it, and when.
- Ask customers to redeem pending referral credit before the switch.
- Reissue wallet passes and email every member to add the new one.
- Run both programs in parallel for one billing cycle, with only one issuing points.
Moving to Kangaroo, take the six months free in writing, and check that your POS systems are connected before the old app goes.
Which Shopify loyalty app should you choose?
Three questions settle it.
Do you want VIP tiers, wallet passes, or paid memberships for under $100 a month? Only Love Loyalty offers them at that price.
Does loyalty run at a counter on a POS that isn’t Shopify? If so, Kangaroo is the only one of the two that can do it.
Are you paying separately for email, SMS, reviews, or contests? Add those bills to Love Loyalty’s price before comparing, because Kangaroo bundles them.
| Your store or requirement | Recommended app | Why choose it? |
|---|---|---|
| Under 150 orders a month | Love Loyalty | Free plan |
| Shopify-only, up to 5,000 orders, wanting tiers | Love Loyalty | Tiers on Growth at $79 |
| A retail chain on Lightspeed or Heartland plus Shopify | Kangaroo Loyalty | Multi-POS support from $199 |
| A paid membership club | Love Loyalty | Memberships on Growth at $79 |
| Email, SMS, reviews, and contests in one bill | Kangaroo Loyalty | All built in |
| An API with a published price | Love Loyalty | Plus at $399 |
Final verdict: Love Loyalty or Kangaroo Loyalty?
Love Loyalty makes more sense when Shopify is where your customers shop, earn points, and redeem rewards. You get the loyalty features most Shopify stores need without paying for a broader retail platform. You’ll still need separate tools for marketing and reviews, and you’ll be trusting a younger product.
Kangaroo makes more sense when loyalty has to follow customers from an online store to a physical counter, or when bringing campaigns, reviews, and a branded app under one vendor is worth the higher bill. Just make sure you understand the pricing and support arrangements before signing up.
The decision comes down to how much of your retail operation you want your loyalty software to handle. Pay for the wider system only if you’ll actually use it.
FAQs
Is Love Loyalty or Kangaroo Loyalty cheaper at 2,000 orders a month?
Love Loyalty. Its Growth plan covers 2,000 orders at $79 a month, or $59 billed annually. Kangaroo’s Shopify plan includes 1,000 orders for $199 and charges $0.20 for each one after, which comes to $399.
Does Kangaroo Loyalty have a free plan?
No. The Shopify listing shows one $199 plan and advertises a free trial without saying how long it runs. Its website points you to a demo booking rather than an install.
Why does Kangaroo cost $79 on one page and $199 on another?
Kangaroo publishes two price lists. The Shopify listing and the Shopify pricing page it links to agree on one $199 plan with 1,000 orders included. The $79 Core plan sits on its general platform page and leaves out tiers, referrals, segmentation, and workflows, so ask whether it’s sold to Shopify stores at all.
Can Kangaroo run in-store loyalty on a non-Shopify POS?
Yes. Its listing declares Shopify POS and Lightspeed, and its integrations page adds Heartland, Alice POS, and MindBody, plus a self check-in tablet for the counter. Love Loyalty runs on Shopify POS only.
Do both apps sell paid memberships?
Only Love Loyalty describes one, on Growth with a 1.8% fee on membership sales that drops to 0.8% on Plus. Kangaroo lists membership perks as a reward type but no recurring membership product.
Which is better if wallet passes are the centre of my program?
Love Loyalty puts them on Growth at $79, while Kangaroo only shows them as a feature tag. If passes and push notifications matter most, it’s worth seeing how Love Loyalty compares with Upzelo, which includes them on every plan.
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.
