Here's the honest answer up front: a loyalty program on Shopify costs three separate things, and the app subscription is usually the smallest of them. You pay for the software (anywhere from $0 to $499 per month), you pay for the rewards themselves (a percentage of revenue you give back to members), and you pay in time - the hours it takes to design, configure, and launch the program. Most cost comparisons only look at the first line. This post covers all three, with real numbers.
Quick disclosure: Keystone is our loyalty app, and it appears in the pricing tables below alongside everyone else. Every price in this post comes from the apps' public Shopify App Store listings as of August 2026.
Cost 1: The App Subscription
Here's what the major Shopify loyalty apps charge as of August 2026, from their App Store listings:
| App | Free plan | Entry paid | Mid tier | Top listed tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Keystone | Free (250 orders/mo) | $14.99/mo | $69/mo | $99/mo |
| Smile.io | Free (200 orders/mo) | $15/mo | $79/mo | $199/mo |
| Rivo | Free (200 orders/mo) | $15/mo | $49/mo | $499/mo |
| BON | Free (150 orders/mo) | $15/mo | $29/mo | $129/mo |
| Joy | Free (250 orders/mo) | $29/mo | $129/mo | $499/mo |
| Appstle Loyalty | Free (250 orders/mo) | $10/mo | $30/mo | $100/mo |
| LoyaltyLion | Free (400 orders/mo) | $199/mo (Classic) | ||
| Yotpo Loyalty | Free to install | $199/mo (Pro) | ||
The spread is wide, but the headline numbers hide the detail that actually matters: what each tier unlocks. Two apps at $15 per month can be very different products depending on where they gate the features you need.
The Telling Number: When Do You Get VIP Tiers?
VIP tiers are the feature most growing stores eventually want - they're the difference between a coupon dispenser and a retention program. So the price at which each app unlocks tiers is a useful one-number summary of its real cost:
| App | VIP tiers unlock at |
|---|---|
| Appstle Loyalty | $30/mo |
| Rivo | $49/mo |
| Keystone | $69/mo |
| BON | $129/mo |
| Joy | $129/mo |
| Smile.io | $199/mo |
| LoyaltyLion | $199/mo |
If you know you'll want tiers within a year, the honest comparison isn't free plan vs free plan - it's the tier-unlocking plan vs the tier-unlocking plan. On that comparison, the big legacy names cost roughly three times what the newer apps charge. (Keystone's $69 Standard plan also includes done-for-you setup by our team, which matters for cost number three below.)
Cost 2: The Rewards Themselves
This is the cost most stores forget to budget: every point you issue is a small liability, because some of those points come back as discounts. Here's a worked example - and to be clear, these are assumptions you should tune to your store, not industry statistics:
- Assumption: you give back 5% of each order in points value (a common starting ratio - 5 points per $1, 100 points = $1 off, for example).
- Assumption: 60-70% of issued points eventually get redeemed. The rest expire or are abandoned - that unredeemed share is called breakage.
On $30,000 of monthly member revenue, 5% back means you issue roughly $1,500 of points value per month. At 65% redemption, about $975 of that returns as discounts. Your real reward cost is therefore around 3.25% of member revenue - not 5%.
Two levers control this number:
- Points expiry. Expiry converts stale liability into breakage and nudges active members to come back before a deadline. Without expiry, liability compounds forever.
- Reward pricing. If your margin is 60%, a $10-off reward costs you $10 of revenue but only $4 of contribution margin when it drives an incremental order that wouldn't have happened anyway. Rewards that trigger extra purchases can be close to self-funding; rewards applied to orders that would have happened regardless are pure discount.
The practical takeaway: the reward budget usually dwarfs the app subscription. A store spending $975 per month on redemptions should not pick its app on a $30-versus-$69 subscription difference - it should pick the app whose expiry rules, exclusions, and reward controls protect that $975.
Cost 3: Setup Time (the Hidden Line)
Someone has to decide the earning ratio, design the rewards, configure the widget to match your theme, write the emails, and test the flows. Done carefully, that's realistically a working week of someone's time - spread over a few weeks of back-and-forth. Done carelessly, it's a program nobody joins.
There are two ways to pay this cost:
- In-house time. Free in cash, expensive in attention. Budget for configuration, theme-matching, email copy, and a test order cycle.
- Done-for-you setup. Some apps sell this as an add-on or gate it to enterprise plans. Keystone includes done-for-you setup on the $69 Standard plan - our team builds, launches, and tunes the program with you, which effectively deletes this cost line for the price of the subscription you were paying anyway.
Putting It Together: A Realistic Monthly Budget
For a store doing about 1,000 orders and $30,000 of member revenue per month, using the assumptions above:
| Cost line | Realistic monthly figure |
|---|---|
| App subscription (tier-unlocking plan) | $30-$199 depending on app |
| Reward redemptions (5% back, 65% redeemed) | ~$975 in revenue, less in margin |
| Setup and upkeep | One-time week of work, or included with the app |
Seen this way, the subscription is 3-15% of the program's real cost. The right question isn't "which app is cheapest" - it's "which app gives me expiry, exclusions, and reward controls that protect the other 90% of the budget, at a subscription that doesn't triple when I need VIP tiers."
If you want to run your own numbers instead of ours, the free calculators at key-stone.app/tools let you model points value, redemption rates, and program ROI with your store's real figures.
The Bottom Line
A Shopify loyalty program in 2026 costs $0-$199 per month in software, roughly 3-4% of member revenue in redeemed rewards under typical starting assumptions, and a week of setup work that you can either do yourself or have done for you. The apps differ most at the moment you need VIP tiers: $30-$69 with the newer generation, $199 with the legacy names - for feature sets that have largely converged.
Related reading
- How to price loyalty rewards without killing your margin
- Which Keystone Loyalty plan do you actually need?
- Free loyalty apps for Shopify: what you actually get at $0
Ready to see the numbers work in your favor? Keystone Loyalty gives you VIP tiers, points expiry, and done-for-you setup at a third of big-name pricing - free up to 250 orders a month, with a 14-day trial on paid plans.
