Yotpo and Joy are both Shopify loyalty apps designed to help brands turn more customers into repeat buyers through points, rewards, referrals, and other retention features.
The difference is in how they approach loyalty. Yotpo is part of a broader ecommerce retention suite that also includes products like reviews and SMS, while Joy is focused specifically on loyalty. The two apps also vary in pricing, customization, Shopify integration, ease of setup and management, integrations, and support.
In this article, I'll compare Yotpo and Joy across each of these areas, including what they actually cost at 500, 2,000, and 5,000+ orders per month and which features you get at each pricing level. I'll also show why Love Loyalty is a stronger alternative for Shopify stores that want a more flexible and feature-rich loyalty program.
Yotpo: Worth it if you want built-in fraud prevention and social earning campaigns from day one. However, its $199/month Pro plan only covers 500 orders, and VIP tiers require a separate custom quote on the Premium tier.
Joy: A strong option once you're on its $129/month Advanced plan, which includes VIP tiers, B2B loyalty, and paid memberships together for 2,000 orders. Below that, its Essential plan skips all three.
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, the same functionality Joy charges $129/month for.
I've compared both Yotpo and Joy 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:
Love Loyalty is the cheapest entry point by a wide margin, and the only one of the three that includes POS support at this tier.
This is where Joy competes.
At 2,000 orders a month, you're paying:
Joy isn't feature-gated the way some competitors are. At $129/month it matches Love Loyalty on VIP tiers, referrals, and paid memberships, and adds B2B loyalty and Wallet passes on top. The gap here is price: Love Loyalty covers the same 2,000 orders and the same core feature set for 39% less. Yotpo, by contrast, costs more than both and still doesn't include VIP tiers as standard functionality on any published plan.
At this tier, you're paying:
Love Loyalty's premium tier stays flat at $399/month with unlimited orders and no overage. Joy comes close on price at this volume, but checkout redemption specifically requires moving up to its $499/month Ultimate plan, and that plan is Shopify Plus-only for that feature. Yotpo costs more than both and still hasn't added VIP tiers by this tier.
Love Loyalty stays flat at $399/month regardless of volume. Joy's Ultimate plan adds checkout extensions and on-demand development at this tier, but its overage still climbs with order volume, and Joy moves to a fully custom plan above 17,000 orders a month. Yotpo's usage-based pricing keeps climbing too, and VIP tiers still require a separate custom quote on top of whatever this comes to.
Let's say you're running a growing Shopify store processing 2,000 orders a month, and you want VIP tiers, referrals, and paid memberships for your loyalty program.
With Love Loyalty: $79/month for 2,000 orders, with VIP tiers, referrals, POS support, and paid memberships all included.
With Joy: $129/month for the same 2,000 orders, with the same VIP tiers, referrals, POS support, and paid memberships, plus B2B loyalty and Wallet passes.
With Yotpo: roughly $399/month for the same 2,000 orders, with referrals and POS support included, but VIP tiers still require a separate custom quote on the Premium tier, on top of what you're already paying.
Joy and Yotpo take different approaches to gating VIP tiers: Joy includes them once you're on its $129/month Advanced plan, while Yotpo doesn't include them on any published plan at all.
Yotpo's Pro plan includes points, referrals with built-in fraud prevention, and social earning campaigns like following on Instagram or leaving a review. Birthday and anniversary rewards are also included at this tier.
VIP tiers aren't available on Pro at any price. To get VIP tiers, a merchant needs Yotpo's Premium tier, which is custom-quoted rather than published.
Joy's Essential plan at $29/month covers points, engagement programs, free product and shipping redemption, and fraud prevention, but no VIP tiers.
VIP tiers, B2B loyalty, paid memberships, milestone rewards, and social rewards all arrive together at the $129/month Advanced plan, a complete feature set for that price.
Love Loyalty includes VIP tiers, referrals, and paid memberships together starting at $79/month, the exact feature set Joy charges $129/month for and Yotpo doesn't offer at any published price.
At $79/month, you get:
Joy matches most of this feature-for-feature, just at a higher price. Yotpo doesn't match it at all without a custom quote.
Joy and Yotpo both offer no-code setup, but Joy's deeper design and translation tools stay Shopify-specific, while Yotpo's customization spans platforms beyond Shopify.
Yotpo lets a merchant launch a program using ready-made templates without a developer, with brand colors and fonts configurable through the admin. Yotpo also serves brands on other e-commerce platforms, so its deepest integration work isn't built exclusively around Shopify's data model.
Joy includes advanced on-site design, a point calculator, and basic translation from its Essential plan onward, with Shopify Flow and Shopify Metafield integration included at every paid tier.
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:
Joy and Yotpo differ here more than any other feature: Joy includes paid memberships at its $129/month Advanced plan, while Yotpo doesn't offer them at any tier.
Yotpo doesn't offer paid membership functionality on Pro, Premium, or Enterprise. A merchant wanting an annual membership program would need a separate subscription app run alongside Yotpo.
Joy includes paid memberships starting at its $129/month Advanced plan, alongside VIP tiers and B2B loyalty. This is a real strength for Joy, and one of the few competitors in this space that offers it at all.
Love Loyalty includes paid memberships starting at $79/month, with a 1.8% transaction fee that drops to 0.8% at $399/month, the same feature Joy charges $129/month for.
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. Joy offers a comparable model at a higher price point; Yotpo doesn't offer one at any price.
Support access on both platforms broadens as you move up in plan tier, which matters most the moment a customer can't redeem a reward and every minute of downtime costs trust.
Yotpo's Pro plan includes 24/7 live chat support. Lower-tier access isn't published, since Yotpo's entry-level offering doesn't carry the same support commitment as Pro.
Joy includes live chat support and a knowledge base on every plan, including its free Starter tier. A dedicated account manager and personalized demo arrive at the $129/month Advanced plan, with priority support and white-glove onboarding reserved for Ultimate.
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.
Both platforms are built for no-code setup, but Joy's VIP tier configuration is priced into a single plan, while Yotpo requires a separate sales conversation first.
Yotpo's setup uses ready-made templates and requires no developer work. Getting VIP tiers live specifically requires going through Yotpo's Premium custom-quote process before configuration can even begin.
Joy's setup scales with plan: Essential covers the core program without a developer, and Advanced adds VIP tiers, B2B rules, and milestone rewards through the same no-code interface, with a dedicated account manager available to help configure them.
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.
Joy and Yotpo both connect to standard Shopify marketing tools, but Joy publishes its integration count directly and includes Shopify Flow and Metafield integration on every paid plan.
Yotpo connects loyalty data to Klaviyo, Attentive, and Gorgias, letting a merchant trigger emails and texts based on point events and manage loyalty accounts directly from a support admin.
Joy lists 30+ curated integrations on every plan, including its free Starter tier, with Shopify Flow and Shopify Metafield integration added from Essential onward.
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.
Yotpo doesn't include VIP tiers at any published price, and a merchant has to go through a custom-quote process just to find out what that would cost. Joy matches Love Loyalty's core feature set (VIP tiers, referrals, and paid memberships) at its $129/month Advanced plan.
That's where Love Loyalty wins. It includes the same VIP tiers, referrals, and paid memberships Joy charges $129/month for starting at $79/month, with fixed, published pricing at every tier and unlimited orders for only $399/mo.
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.
Yotpo starts at $199/month with VIP tiers requiring a separate custom quote. Joy includes VIP tiers, referrals, and paid memberships at $129/month for 2,000 orders. Love Loyalty includes the same core feature set at $79/month for the same order volume.
Yes. Joy includes paid memberships starting at its $129/month Advanced plan. Love Loyalty includes the same feature starting at $79/month. Yotpo doesn't offer 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 that query an external database.
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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