LoyaltyLion and Growave are both Shopify loyalty apps, giving merchants the tools to reward customers, encourage repeat purchases, and build longer-term relationships with their shoppers.
At first glance, they can look fairly similar. Both offer points, referrals, and VIP programs, but they differ quite a bit in how those features are packaged, how much flexibility you get, and what happens as your store grows. LoyaltyLion leans toward more complex, multi-store loyalty programs, while Growave takes a broader approach by combining loyalty with other retention tools like reviews and wishlists.
In this article, I'll compare LoyaltyLion vs. Growave across the pricing at three different order volumes, features, customization, integrations, support, and overall value. I'll also introduce a third option that gives Shopify brands more features, greater flexibility, and better value to consider as their loyalty program grows.
LoyaltyLion: Worth it if you're running a multi-store loyalty program across international Shopify storefronts. Otherwise, you're paying $199/month for just 500 orders to get started, with VIP tiers available only as a paid add-on on the Classic plan.
Growave: A reasonable mid-market option if you want VIP tiers without a custom quote or an add-on fee. Its Growth plan starts at $199/month for 1,500 orders, and overage adds up fast once you're past that.
Love Loyalty is the best Shopify loyalty app for stores that want VIP tiers, referrals, and paid memberships together at a fixed, published price starting at $79/month for 2,000 orders, without the add-on costs, overage surprises, or custom quotes.
I've compared both LoyaltyLion and Growave across the areas that matter most when choosing a Shopify loyalty app for your store.
Now let's get into the details.
Most loyalty app pricing looks straightforward until you factor in order limits, overage fees as your order volume grows, and which features are actually included at each tier.
Here's the real cost breakdown.
At 500 orders a month, you're paying:
Growave and Love Loyalty are close at the entry tier. LoyaltyLion charges over 13 times Love Loyalty's price for the same 500 orders, and VIP tiers still cost extra on top.
This is where the value gap gets obvious.
At 2,000 orders a month, you're paying:
Love Loyalty at $79/month gives you 2,000 orders, VIP tiers, paid memberships, B2B loyalty, and POS support, all at a fixed price. Growave includes VIP tiers at this volume too, but at over three times the cost once overage is factored in. LoyaltyLion doesn't publish a price for the tier where VIP tiers stop being an add-on at all.
At this tier, you're paying:
Love Loyalty's premium tier is the only one with fixed, published pricing at this level: $399/month, unlimited orders, no overage. Growave climbs well past that once overage is factored in, and LoyaltyLion moves fully to custom pricing here, so there's no published number to compare directly.
Growave's flat Unlimited plan becomes the more predictable option at this volume over staying on Plus with overage, but it still costs over twice what Love Loyalty charges for the same unlimited coverage. LoyaltyLion's Plus tier is built for this volume, but remains fully custom-quoted, so there's no published number to compare.
Let's say you're running a growing Shopify store processing 2,000 orders a month, and you want VIP tiers, referrals, and POS support for a physical retail location.
With Love Loyalty: $79/month for 2,000 orders, with VIP tiers, referrals, POS support, and paid memberships all included.
With Growave: roughly $274/month once overage is added at this volume, with VIP tiers, referrals, and POS support included, but no paid membership option at any tier.
With LoyaltyLion: an unpublished custom rate once you move past the $199/month Classic plan, since VIP tiers as a standard feature (not an add-on) require the Advanced tier.
Both platforms treat VIP tiers as something you pay extra for at the entry level: Growave gates them behind its $199/month Growth plan, while LoyaltyLion charges an add-on fee on Classic before requiring a custom-quoted Advanced tier for full VIP functionality.
LoyaltyLion covers the basics well: points on purchases, a branded rewards page, and referral tracking with unique links for both sides of the referral.
VIP tiers are technically available on the $199/month Classic plan, but only as a paid add-on, not included in the base price. To get VIP tiers as a standard, included feature, a merchant needs the Advanced tier, which is custom-quoted rather than published.
Growave's Entry plan covers points, referrals with fraud protection, nudges, and email campaigns. VIP tiers, points expiration, gift cards, and store credit all arrive at the $199/month Growth plan.
Love Loyalty includes VIP tiers, referrals, and paid memberships together starting at $79/month, the price where Growave only unlocks VIP tiers and LoyaltyLion still charges extra or requires a custom quote to get there.
At $79/month, you get:
Neither LoyaltyLion nor Growave bundles all of that together at a single, published price point.
LoyaltyLion and Growave both extend beyond a single Shopify storefront, LoyaltyLion through multi-store support, Growave through its bundled wishlist and reviews tools.
LoyaltyLion supports Shopify, Adobe Commerce, and BigCommerce, among other platforms. Its standout feature is multi-store loyalty: one program running across multiple Shopify storefronts, useful for a brand running separate country-specific stores.
Growave's loyalty program shares customer data with its wishlist, reviews, and referral tools inside the same platform, so a review earning points or a wishlist save feeding a VIP tier happens without a separate integration between apps.
Love Loyalty is built exclusively for Shopify. That's a structural choice, and it shows up in how the app performs.
What that means in practice:
LoyaltyLion's multi-store feature remains a genuine advantage for a specific kind of multi-country brand, one that neither Growave nor Love Loyalty currently matches.
Neither LoyaltyLion nor Growave offers paid membership functionality at any tier. That's the option for a customer to pay upfront for ongoing benefits like free shipping or a standing discount. A merchant who wants that model has to run it through a separate app on either platform.
LoyaltyLion doesn't offer paid membership functionality at any tier. A merchant who wants an annual membership program with always-on perks would need a separate subscription app and would have to manage the integration between the two manually.
Growave doesn't offer paid memberships at any tier either, including its flat-rate $999/month Unlimited plan.
Love Loyalty includes paid memberships starting at $79/month, with a 1.8% transaction fee that drops to 0.8% at $399/month.
A merchant sets the benefits, whether that's a percentage discount, free shipping, early access, or bonus points, and customers pay upfront to unlock them. That's a retention model built around predictable revenue rather than hoping a one-time buyer comes back.
Loyalty programs need ongoing support. Configurations break, integrations fail, and when a customer can't redeem a reward, every minute of downtime costs trust.
LoyaltyLion offers email, phone, chat, and knowledge base support across its plans, with dedicated CSMs and account managers reserved for its higher, custom-quoted tiers.
Growave includes chat support on every plan.
Love Loyalty includes live chat and email support on every plan, including Free. On the Growth and Plus tiers, that expands to founder-led onboarding, performance audits, and on-demand development, support that scales with the plan rather than gating basic responsiveness behind a higher tier.
A loyalty program needs to be easy to configure and easy to maintain. If setup takes weeks, or every campaign change needs a developer, the platform becomes a burden instead of a retention tool.
LoyaltyLion's initial setup is guided, with an onboarding manager included even on the Free plan. Ongoing changes take longer once the program is live, a byproduct of building for multiple e-commerce systems rather than Shopify alone.
Growave's core loyalty setup is available from the Entry plan, but VIP tiers and deeper customization require moving up to Growth or Plus, and configuring the wishlist and reviews tools alongside loyalty adds setup steps a single-purpose app doesn't have.
Love Loyalty is designed to be configured once and managed easily from there. Because it's built exclusively for Shopify, its settings map directly to Shopify's native functionality rather than translating from a multi-platform system. Adjusting VIP tier thresholds, adding a reward, or changing where a widget appears takes a few clicks, with live chat support available starting on the $12/month Professional plan.
LoyaltyLion and Growave both connect to standard Shopify marketing tools, but LoyaltyLion's list is built for broader, multi-platform compatibility, while Growave's extends specifically into its own wishlist and reviews tools.
LoyaltyLion integrates with 30+ tools, including Klaviyo (as an Elite Master Partner), Attentive, Gorgias, and Recharge. Because LoyaltyLion supports platforms beyond Shopify, its integrations are built for broad compatibility rather than Shopify-specific depth.
Growave's integration list expands with plan tier, with custom integrations specifically reserved for the $999/month Unlimited plan.
Love Loyalty stores all loyalty data in Shopify metafields, which makes it accessible to other Shopify apps without a custom API integration. Because there's no external database being queried, integrations like Klaviyo, email marketing, and POS all read from the same native Shopify data rather than syncing between two separate systems.
Neither LoyaltyLion nor Growave makes VIP tiers as accessible as Love Loyalty does. Growave requires its $199/month Growth plan, with overage costs that climb fast past 1,500 orders. LoyaltyLion charges extra for VIP tiers on Classic, then requires a custom quote for the Advanced tier where they're standard.
That's where Love Loyalty beats both. It includes VIP tiers, referrals, paid memberships, POS support, and B2B loyalty together at just $79/month, and unlimited orders for only $399/mo. No add-on fees, no overage surprises, no custom quotes.
Yes. Love Loyalty supports migrating existing customer data, including points balances, at scale, and has handled migrations from other platforms tested at over a million customers.
LoyaltyLion starts at $199/month with VIP tiers as a paid add-on. Growave starts at $15/month but needs its $199/month Growth plan for VIP tiers, with overage adding up quickly past 1,500 orders. Love Loyalty includes VIP tiers, referrals, and paid memberships together at $79/month.
Love Loyalty includes paid memberships starting at $79/month. Neither LoyaltyLion nor Growave offers paid membership functionality at any tier.
Love Loyalty stores all loyalty data in Shopify metafields and doesn't rely on external API calls to load that data, a structural difference from platforms built to support multiple ecommerce platforms or broader feature sets.
Yes. Love Loyalty integrates with Shopify POS for both online and in-store transactions, starting on the $12/month Professional plan.
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