Rewarding repeat customers is one of the few growth levers that doesn't require more ad spend. It's also one of the few things Shopify doesn't do natively.

The App Store has no shortage of loyalty apps, and their listings look broadly interchangeable: points, VIP tiers, referrals, a free plan. The differences that actually decide the outcome sit further down — in what counts toward your order allowance, in what happens at checkout, and in what happens to your customers' balances the day you uninstall.

Two facts are worth knowing before you open a single pricing page. Redeeming points directly at checkout requires Shopify Plus on every app in this category — not because the vendors chose that, but because Checkout Extensibility itself requires Plus. And at least one major app states in its own help documentation that uninstalling does not cancel your billing.

Here's the comparison. Researched August 31, 2026.

The short version

• Shopify has no native loyalty or points program. The closest native feature is store credit, which is genuinely useful but has no automatic earning rules and — critically — can only be redeemed in full, never partially.
• Checkout redemption requires Shopify Plus on all four apps. If you're not on Plus, compare them on the cart experience instead, because that's where your customers will actually spend points.
• All four bill on monthly orders, but the free tiers and the first paid step diverge sharply: LoyaltyLion's free tier is the largest at 400 orders, and its next tier is $199.
• BON's Growth plan at $129 is the only tier in this set with unlimited orders, VIP tiers included.
• Uninstall behavior differs a lot and is poorly documented. Smile holds data 48 hours and can restore; LoyaltyLion's help center states billing is not cancelled by uninstalling; Rivo's behavior isn't documented at all.

What Shopify does natively

There is no points program

The Shopify Help Center has no page for a native loyalty or points feature — the App Store carries a "Loyalty and rewards" category instead. Automatic earning on purchase, customer-facing balances, and VIP tiers are all app territory.

Store credit is real, and more limited than it looks

Store credit is native and enabled by default. You can issue it manually from the admin with an amount, currency, and expiration date; it appears as a payment method at checkout; it works in Shopify POS and Shop; and it supports customer segments (balance, expiring soon, last issued) and reporting. The Help Center itself cites "rewards such as loyalty or referral programs" as a reason to issue it.

The constraints matter:

• Redemption is all-or-nothing — partial redemption is not supported
• Maximum under 15,000 USD per customer account
• Requires new customer accounts; legacy customer accounts can't use it
• Not applicable to draft orders or edited orders
• Works for a subscription's first purchase but not for recurring charges
• Stores created on or after May 12, 2025 incur third-party transaction fees on store-credit payments (waived on Shopify Plus with Shopify Payments)

There's no rule engine. Issuing credit automatically on every purchase means building it yourself with Flow or the API — and even then, customers can't spend a partial balance.

Checkout is Plus-only, and that decides the category

The Shopify Help Center is explicit: "To use Checkout Extensibility, your store needs to be on the Shopify Plus plan."

Which means every "redeem at checkout" feature in every loyalty app is Plus-gated. It's not a differentiator between vendors. If you're not on Plus, the real question is how good the cart-page redemption experience is — how many steps stand between a customer having 500 points and having a discount applied.

The comparison

App Store listing values as of August 31, 2026. All prices USD per month.

	Smile	BON	Rivo	LoyaltyLion
Developer	Smile.io (CA)	VEGAHUB (CA)	Rivo (US)	LoyaltyLion (UK)
Launched	Dec 2014	Aug 2021	Jan 2021	Jul 2014
Rating / reviews	4.9 / 4,231	5.0 / 1,830	4.8 / 1,385	4.7 / 479
One-star share	1%	0.5%	2%	5%
Built for Shopify	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Billing unit	Monthly orders	Monthly orders	Monthly orders	Monthly orders
Free plan	200 orders	150 orders	200 orders	400 orders
First paid tier	$15 (500 orders)	$15 (300 orders)	$15 (500 orders)	$199
Mid tier	$79 (1,000)	$29 (500)	$49 (400 + $20/100, capped $499)	—
Top listed tier	$199 (2,500 + $20/100)	$129 (unlimited orders)	$499 (2,500)	Custom quote
Annual discount	No	Yes, up to 20%	No	No
Free trial	14 days	7 days	14 days	14 days
Redemption method	Discount code exchange	Preset reward selection	Discount code exchange	Voucher exchange
Checkout redemption	Plus + Growth	Plus (any BON plan)	Plus + $499 plan	Plus + Classic
Partial / free-form amount	No	No	No	Yes (free-form entry)
Shopify POS	All plans	$29+	$15+	Yes
Shopify Flow	$15+	$29+	Yes	Yes
VIP tiers	$199	$129	$49	$199
Referrals	Free plan	Free plan	$49	Yes
Uninstall behavior	48h hold, restorable	Deleted within 48h	Not documented	Billing not cancelled

What the table is telling you

The free tiers aren't comparable to the paid tiers below them. LoyaltyLion offers the most generous free allowance at 400 orders per month, then jumps straight to $199. Smile, BON, and Rivo all step up at $15. If you expect to outgrow the free tier — and a loyalty program that works will — the shape of the second step matters more than the size of the first.

Overage models differ. Smile's Growth ($199) includes 2,500 orders and then charges $20 per additional 100. Rivo's Scale ($49) includes only 400 orders with the same $20/100 overage, capped at $499 — so a busy month on Scale can quietly cost ten times the base. BON's Growth removes order counting entirely at $129, which is the cleanest structure in the set for a store with volume.

BON is the only unlimited-order option under $199. VIP tiers and B2B tiers are included at that same $129 tier, and annual billing takes it to $1,236 (about 20% off). For a store past a few thousand orders a month, this is the arithmetic that usually decides it.

Only LoyaltyLion supports free-form partial redemption at checkout. Its checkout redemption reward offers three UI types — free-form entry, fixed increments within a range, or a list of set amounts. If letting customers spend exactly the balance they choose is a requirement, and you're on Plus, this is the only one that does it. One documented side effect: with free-form entry selected, the Reward Available event doesn't fire, so Klaviyo and similar triggers won't run.

LoyaltyLion is also the only app here without a Built for Shopify badge, and it has the highest one-star share at 5%.

What to watch, app by app

Smile: Loyalty Program Rewards

The most reviewed app in the category (4,231 reviews), live since 2014, and a 2026 Shopify Build Award winner. Admin available in nine languages. Redemption is discount-code exchange in set increments (e.g. 100 points = $1).

Two things to plan for. First, recurring complaints in low-rated reviews center on order-threshold calculations being opaque and on upgrades arriving sooner than expected — several merchants describe expecting a free or $15 outcome and being billed at a higher tier. Second, and more operationally: discount codes already issued stay in Shopify after you uninstall, and customers can keep using them. You have to delete them manually. Core data is held 48 hours; reinstalling inside that window restores it, after which it's gone.

The free plan also doesn't display points on product pages, account pages, or checkout, so it's better understood as an evaluation tier than a running program.

BON Loyalty Program & Rewards

5.0 across 1,830 reviews, Built for Shopify, admin available in Japanese and German alongside English. Its checkout redemption is available on every BON plan — still Plus-gated on the Shopify side, but not additionally gated behind a higher BON tier, which is unusual here.

Two things to verify before signing. Reviews report that orders from external channels such as Amazon count toward your monthly order allowance, with the vendor's own reply acknowledging the difficulty of excluding them. If a meaningful share of your volume is off-Shopify, model that before choosing a tier. Separately, a February 2026 review from a merchant of roughly two years documents data-integrity issues: tier-based customer segments not syncing to Shopify, and records persisting for customers who had been deleted — resulting in points emails to deleted customers.

BON's privacy policy states data is deleted within 48 hours of uninstall. Whether reinstalling restores it isn't documented.

Rivo: Loyalty Program, Rewards

Notable for putting VIP tiers and referrals in the $49 Scale plan, well below where competitors place them. English-only admin.

The risk profile here is the highest in the set relative to size. One-star reviews (21, or 2%) include specific, dated accounts: migrated data counting toward usage and generating roughly $500 in charges before the program went live; a merchant reporting that on go-live day the balances of 23,000 customers reset to zero; and a merchant unable to locate an export of point-holding customers in order to migrate away.

Rivo's own help center is also internally inconsistent about checkout redemption plan requirements — a July 2025 article and a July 2026 article state different conditions, and the plan name in the older one no longer exists. The App Store listing places Checkout Extensions on the $499 Plus tier. Uninstall data handling isn't documented anywhere we could find.

LoyaltyLion Loyalty Program

The oldest app in the group (2014) and the enterprise-leaning option, with the largest free allowance and by far the largest jump to paid.

Read the billing terms first. LoyaltyLion's own help center states that for paid plans, uninstalling the app does not cancel your billing (that article was last updated July 2023). Low-rated reviews echo this across a long span — 2020 through 2026 — with merchants describing being unable to remove the app themselves and needing to contact the vendor. A November 2025 review describes being moved off the free plan after five years upon crossing the order threshold, with the vendor's reply confirming that mechanic.

One more constraint relevant to international stores: a review reports that languages outside the main supported set require an extra $10/month even when you supply the translations yourself, with the vendor citing a third-party translation service.

Choosing

You're on Shopify Plus and want customers to spend exactly the balance they choose. → LoyaltyLion Classic. It's the only free-form checkout redemption in the set. Go in knowing the billing-cancellation documentation above.

You're past a few thousand orders a month and want tiers included. → BON Growth at $129, unlimited orders. Verify how external-channel orders are counted first.

You're small, want the deepest integration ecosystem, and can accept code-based redemption. → Smile. Largest review base, POS from the free plan, Flow from $15.

You want VIP tiers as cheaply as possible. → Rivo Scale at $49 is the cheapest path to tiers plus referrals. Weigh that against the migration and billing accounts in its recent reviews, and against the absence of documented uninstall behavior.

You want to keep the exit door open. → Smile documents a 48-hour restore window. The others document less, or nothing. Export your point balances on a schedule regardless of which you pick.

Before you install

• Pull your real monthly order count, including orders from external sales channels
• Confirm whether external-channel orders count toward the app's order allowance
• Confirm whether you're on Shopify Plus — if not, checkout redemption is off the table for every option
• Model the overage: what does a peak month cost on the tier you're choosing?
• Check where VIP tiers and referrals sit in the plan ladder — they vary from $49 to $199
• Ask specifically what happens to point balances on uninstall, and get it in writing
• Ask specifically whether uninstalling cancels billing
• Confirm you can export point-holding customers before you have 20,000 of them
• If you're migrating existing balances, confirm whether the import counts toward usage

The bottom line

Plus status sets the whole design. Without it, checkout redemption is unavailable everywhere, and the comparison collapses to how few steps the cart experience requires.

Compare on the second tier, not the first. Every app in this set has a free plan you will outgrow if the program works. The number that matters is what you pay at your actual order volume twelve months from now — and the overage structure, not the headline price, usually decides it.

Confirm the exit before you commit. Loyalty apps accumulate customer balances, which makes them the hardest category to leave. Uninstall behavior, export capability, and whether billing actually stops are worth more diligence at signup than any feature comparison.

Pricing and review figures are as of August 31, 2026 and change frequently. Verify current terms on the App Store listing before you commit.

Primary sources

• Shopify Help Center: Store credit
• Shopify Help Center: Checkout Extensibility
• Shopify Help Center: Discount types
• Shopify App Store: Smile: Loyalty Program Rewards
• Shopify App Store: BON Loyalty Program & Rewards
• Shopify App Store: Rivo: Loyalty Program, Rewards
• Shopify App Store: LoyaltyLion Loyalty Program