Govalo Pricing: 2.9% of Gift Card Value on Every Plan

Govalo charges a percentage of gift-card value on every plan it publishes, including the $399 one. On 8 October 2026 the Shopify App Store listing read Essential free to install plus 2.9% of total gift card value, Premium at $79 a month plus 2.25%, and Enterprise at $399 a month plus 1.5%. There is no tier at which the percentage reaches zero.

At $20,000 a month in gift-card value that works out at $580 on Essential, $529 on Premium and $699 on Enterprise, so the $399 plan is the expensive option until volume is far higher. Enterprise only becomes the cheapest Govalo tier above about $42,700 a month in gift-card value, which is roughly $512,000 a year. Meanwhile Gift Card Hero charges a flat $19.99 on its PRO plan and Vify charges $29.99 for a Shopify Plus store, both with no percentage at all.

Below is Govalo's fee arithmetic at three volumes, the discrepancy between the live listing and the aggregator pages that quote it, and six alternatives priced on the same $20,000 month.

How Govalo's fee actually behaves

Govalo launched on 23 September 2021, carries the Built for Shopify badge and describes itself on the listing as a Shopify Plus Certified App built for gift cards, giftable subscriptions, giftable products and corporate gifting. It runs on 1,404 live Shopify stores. The Govalo listing read 4.1 stars from 25 reviews on 8 October 2026.

Monthly gift-card value	Essential, free + 2.9%	Premium, $79 + 2.25%	Enterprise, $399 + 1.5%
$5,000	$145	$191.50	$474
$12,150	$352	$352	$581
$20,000	$580	$529	$699
$42,700	$1,238	$1,040	$1,040
$50,000	$1,450	$1,204	$1,149
$100,000	$2,900	$2,329	$1,899

Two crossovers govern the ladder and neither is published. Premium's $79 is recovered by its 0.65-point fee saving at $12,154 a month in gift-card value. Enterprise's extra $320 over Premium is recovered by its 0.75-point saving at $42,667. Below those points, the cheaper-looking plan genuinely is cheaper, which is unusual in a percentage ladder and worth knowing before anyone upgrades on instinct.

The more important feature of this table is its right-hand edge. At $100,000 a month in gift-card value the best Govalo price is $1,899 a month, or $22,788 a year, and it keeps rising with volume because the rate floor is 1.5% rather than zero. Govalo publishes a "negotiable volume rate" on Enterprise, which is the only lever in the structure, and it exists on exactly one tier.

Why a percentage on gift-card value costs more than it looks

Three things stack, and none of them appears in the fee line.

The same dollars are charged twice. A gift-card sale is a card transaction, so the merchant pays its payment processor on the full amount, then pays Govalo a second percentage on the same amount. Nothing has shipped at that point.

Gift-card value is not margin. A $200 gift card is $200 of liability until it is redeemed, and the percentage is levied on the gross prepaid figure rather than on the profit in the eventual order. On a 60% gross margin, 2.25% of face value is roughly 3.75% of the margin the sale will eventually produce.

Unredeemed value still pays the fee. Breakage works in a merchant's favour on revenue and against it on this fee, because the percentage was taken when the card was sold.

None of that makes percentage pricing indefensible. It makes it a revenue share, and a revenue share should be judged against what the vendor does that a flat-fee competitor does not.

What Govalo does that the flat-fee apps do not

Best for: Shopify Plus brands running gift cards as a merchandising channel rather than a payment type. Govalo publishes giftable subscriptions, giftable products and corporate gifting, plus an out-of-stock integration that offers a gift card when a product is unavailable. That mechanic converts a lost sale into prepaid revenue, and none of the six alternatives below lists it. For a brand with a real out-of-stock problem, that single feature can carry the percentage on its own.

Not ideal for: any brand with meaningful gift-card volume and a fixed software budget. The percentage applies on all three tiers and never reaches zero, so the software line scales with prepaid liability rather than with margin, and four of the alternatives here publish a tier with no percentage at all. The review record is also thin and polarised: 25 reviews after five years, with 6 at one star.

What it actually does

• Customised gift-card sales, scheduled delivery, direct-to-recipient sending, basic analytics and the out-of-stock integration, all on the free-to-install Essential tier.
• A personalised buying experience, a customised redemption page, a balance lookup tool and Klaviyo integration from Premium $79.
• API access, white-glove service, monthly insight reporting, CSV bulk gift-card orders, annual billing and a negotiable volume rate from Enterprise $399.

What to check before you commit

Run your own gift-card value against all three tiers before installing, because the cheapest tier moves twice inside the normal range. Then ask about the Enterprise volume rate specifically, since it is the only published route to a number below 1.5%.

Also note the integration list. Govalo names Checkout, Shopify POS, Shopify Admin, Bold Commerce, Drip, Klaviyo, Omnisend and Recharge. Customer accounts is absent, which matters for any brand planning to surface balances in a logged-in account area.

The listing and the aggregators disagree

The gap between Govalo's live listing and the aggregator pages is worth stating precisely, because it changes a buying decision by hundreds of dollars a month.

The bogos.io ranking of the best Shopify gift card apps publishes Govalo as "3.3★ (22 reviews)" and its pricing as "Free to install (Essential: 2.9% of gift card sales; Premium: $79/month + 2.6%; Enterprise: $399/month + 2.4%)". The live listing on 8 October 2026 read 4.1 stars from 25 reviews, with Premium at 2.25% and Enterprise at 1.5%. Essential's 2.9% matches on both.

The difference on Enterprise is 0.9 percentage points. On a $20,000 month that is $480 against $300, so a brand budgeting from the aggregator figure would overstate the Enterprise tier by $180 a month and reach the wrong crossover. The rating gap matters less in dollars and more in shortlisting: 3.3 stars reads as a warning and 4.1 reads as acceptable.

The general lesson applies beyond Govalo. Percentage fees move, aggregator round-ups are written once, and a fee quoted without a date is not a fee. Read the panel on the day you decide.

Six alternatives, priced on a $20,000 gift-card month

Every figure read from the live Shopify App Store listings on 8 October 2026. The $20,000 column assumes that much gift-card value sold in the month, and for Rise.ai it also assumes 500 total store orders, because Rise.ai meters orders rather than value.

App	Fee on gift-card value	Cheapest plan at $20,000	Monthly cost
Gift Card Hero	2% capped at $49.99, or none on paid tiers	PRO, flat	$19.99
Vify	none on any tier	Ultimate, for Shopify Plus	$29.99
Rise.ai	none; meters total store orders	Small-Business	$74.99
Givy	2% / 1.5% / 1%, none at $249	Enterprise	$249
Gift Card Pro, by Gist	2.5% / 1.5% / 1% / 0.5%	Business	$289.99
Govalo	2.9% / 2.25% / 1.5%	Premium	$529
GV	not published	no plan panel published	not published

1. Rise.ai — the largest alternative, metered on orders instead of value

Best for: brands running store credit and gift cards together where gift-card value is high relative to order count. Rise.ai takes no percentage of gift-card value on any plan, so a brand selling $50,000 of gift cards on 500 orders pays $74.99 while Govalo Premium would charge $1,204. The integration list, naming Klaviyo, Attentive, Gorgias, Loop Returns, AfterShip and Tapcart, is also the widest returns-and-support set in this group.

Not ideal for: high-order brands with modest gift-card activity, because the meter counts total store orders rather than gift-card orders. At 5,000 monthly orders Rise.ai costs $499.99 whether it issued 50 credits or 5,000. The storefront control named "Apply Store Credit Button" also sits on the $199.99 Pro plan.

The Rise.ai listing read 4.7 stars from 759 reviews on 8 October 2026, 23 of them one-star.

What to check: price all three plans against your total order count. Starter at $19.99 stops being the cheapest Rise.ai plan at 300 monthly orders, and Pro at $199.99 overtakes Small-Business at about 1,333.

2. Gift Card Hero — the only percentage with a published ceiling

Best for: brands that want percentage pricing with a known worst case, or no percentage at all. The free-to-install tier reads "2% total gift card value (min. $9.99/month, max. $49.99)", which is the only capped fee in this comparison, so a $100,000 gift-card month costs $49.99 rather than $2,000. PRO is listed at $19.99 a month flat with "Fair flat fee" and "No hidden charges" stated on the card, and it adds POS tools, unused-balance reminders, balance reload and a developer API.

Not ideal for: brands needing giftable subscriptions or corporate gifting workflows, which Gift Card Hero does not list. The review base of 174 is also thin next to Rise.ai's 759, so there is less public evidence at scale.

Gift Card Hero runs on 1,072 live Shopify stores. The Gift Card Hero listing read 4.9 stars from 174 reviews on 8 October 2026.

What to check: the PRO card is named "PRO($29.99/$10OFF)" and priced at $19.99, so confirm whether the $10 reduction is permanent before budgeting at $19.99. The $39.99 tier is labelled as applicable only to Shopify Plus stores.

3. Gift Card Pro by Gist — the same shape as Govalo, with a deeper ladder

Best for: brands committed to percentage pricing that want a lower floor. Gist publishes four tiers against Govalo's three, running Basic $9.99 plus 2.5%, Standard $29.99 plus 1.5%, Business $89.99 plus 1% and Enterprise $499.99 plus 0.5%. At $20,000 a month in gift-card value the best Gist price is $289.99 against Govalo's $529, and the 0.5% floor is a third of Govalo's.

Not ideal for: brands expecting the higher tiers to add capability. Every plan above Basic reads "All Features +" followed by a storage allowance of 250 MB, 500 MB or 5 GB, so what the upgrades buy is the fee rate and video storage rather than function. There is still no zero-fee tier.

Gift Card Pro runs on 1,084 live Shopify stores. The Gift Card Pro listing read 4.4 stars from 89 reviews on 8 October 2026, with 3 one-star and 1 two-star in that total.

What to check: the crossovers. Business beats Standard above $12,000 a month in gift-card value, and Enterprise at $499.99 only beats Business above about $82,000. Video gift messages are a genuine differentiator on the entry plan and the storage allowance is what prices them.

4. Vify — no percentage anywhere, priced by your Shopify plan

Best for: brands that want gift-card functionality as a flat line item. Vify charges no percentage on any tier and sets price by the merchant's Shopify plan: free, then $9.99 for Basic Shopify, $16.99 for Shopify and Advanced, and $29.99 for Shopify Plus. At $20,000 or $200,000 of gift-card value a Plus store pays $29.99 either way, which is the flattest pricing in this comparison.

Not ideal for: brands needing checkout or POS integration. The listing names only Shopify Flow and Shopify Admin among its integrations, with no Checkout, no customer accounts and no Shopify POS, which rules it out for any brand selling gift cards across a counter or wanting balances in a logged-in account area.

Vify runs on 1,011 live Shopify stores. The Vify listing read 4.9 stars from 138 reviews on 8 October 2026.

What to check: confirm which card applies to your Shopify plan, because the three paid tiers differ by plan eligibility rather than by feature. The feature lists are near-identical across Starter, Premium and Ultimate.

5. Givy — the only percentage ladder with a zero-fee top tier

Best for: brands that want percentage pricing while small and flat pricing once volume arrives. Givy runs Intro $14 plus 2%, Basic $49 plus 1.5%, Growth $99 plus 1%, then Enterprise at $249 whose own line reads "No transaction fees - one flat monthly fee for unlimited gifts and gift cards". Above $15,000 a month in gift-card value that $249 tier beats every percentage tier Givy offers, and it beats every Govalo tier at any volume above roughly $8,600.

Not ideal for: brands that need a long public track record. Givy launched on 1 April 2024 and has the smallest review base in this comparison. The fee wording also needs reading: it applies to "gifts & gift cards processed using Givy", so a brand running some gift cards outside the app should establish what counts.

Givy runs on 684 live Shopify stores. The Givy listing read 5.0 stars from 53 reviews on 8 October 2026.

What to check: the subscription integration list is the broadest here, naming Recharge, Appstle, Skio, Loop, PayWhirl, Seal, Subify, Smartrr, Stay AI and others, which makes Givy the strongest option for giftable subscriptions outside Govalo itself.

6. GV — no published pricing panel at all

Best for: brands willing to install before seeing a price, where the feature list matters more than the budget. GV's listing describes digital and physical gift cards, store credit, VIP tiers, referrals and a rewards widget, which is a wider scope than any other app here and overlaps loyalty rather than stopping at gifting.

Not ideal for: anyone who needs to budget before installing. The listing rendered no pricing plan panel on 8 October 2026 and its pricing summary read simply "Free", so there is no tier structure, no fee and no cap to compare. That is a finding rather than a gap: a merchant cannot price this app from its listing.

GV runs on 778 live Shopify stores. The GV listing read 4.3 stars from 97 reviews on 8 October 2026, with 7 of those at one star.

What to check: whether a fee appears after install. An app showing no plan panel is not the same as an app with no charges, and Shopify permits an app "up to eight public plans", so the absence of cards is a listing choice rather than a pricing guarantee.

How to decide what a gift-card app should cost you

Three questions, and the first one does most of the work.

What is your monthly gift-card value, and what fraction of orders touch gift cards? Those two numbers pick the pricing shape. High gift-card value on a low order count favours an order-metered app such as Rise.ai. High order count with modest gift-card value favours a flat-fee app such as Vify or Gift Card Hero. Only a brand with low value and a strong need for Govalo's gifting workflows should accept a percentage that never reaches zero.

Does the vendor publish a ceiling? Gift Card Hero caps its percentage at $49.99 a month, Givy removes it entirely at $249, and Vify and Rise.ai never charge one. Govalo and Gift Card Pro both keep a percentage on every tier, which means their bills are open-ended by design.

What are you buying that Shopify does not already do? Shopify's own documentation says a merchant can "activate gift cards on your store to sell gift card products, as well as create gift cards directly from your Shopify admin". Selling and issuing are native. The capabilities worth paying for are the ones layered on top: scheduled delivery, recipient-addressed sending, balance lookup, bulk issuance, giftable subscriptions and the out-of-stock conversion. Price the app against those, not against the gift card itself.

For the adjacent decision of running store credit rather than gift cards, see Shopify store credit explained. For the cost arithmetic behind a rewards or credit programme, what a loyalty programme actually costs and how loyalty points work cover the spend that usually sits next to a gift-card budget, and loyalty programme ROI covers how to judge it.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Govalo cost? Essential is free to install plus 2.9% of total gift card value, Premium is $79 a month plus 2.25%, and Enterprise is $399 a month plus 1.5%. At $20,000 a month in gift-card value that is $580, $529 and $699 respectively. Figures read from the live listing on 8 October 2026.

Does Govalo charge a transaction fee on every plan? Yes. All three published tiers carry a percentage of total gift card value, and the lowest published rate is 1.5% on the $399 Enterprise plan. Enterprise also lists a negotiable volume rate, which is the only published route below 1.5%.

When does Govalo's Enterprise plan become worth $399? Above about $42,700 a month in gift-card value, where its 1.5% fee saving finally recovers the $320 premium over Premium. Below that, Premium at $79 plus 2.25% is cheaper, and below about $12,150 a month the free-to-install Essential tier is cheaper than both.

Which Shopify gift card app has no transaction fee? Vify charges no percentage on any tier, from free to $29.99. Rise.ai charges none either, metering total store orders instead. Givy removes its fee entirely on the $249 Enterprise plan, and Gift Card Hero's paid plans from $19.99 are flat while its free-to-install tier caps the 2% fee at $49.99 a month.

Why do aggregator sites list different Govalo fees? Because the figures were captured at different times and republished without a date. bogos.io publishes Govalo's Premium at "$79/month + 2.6%" and Enterprise at "$399/month + 2.4%", while the live listing on 8 October 2026 read 2.25% and 1.5%. On a $20,000 month the Enterprise difference alone is $180.

What is Govalo's rating on the Shopify App Store? 4.1 stars from 25 reviews, read 8 October 2026, made up of 18 five-star, 1 four-star and 6 one-star reviews. That one-star share of 24% is an extreme distribution, and 25 reviews after five years is a thin record to judge from, so read the one-star reviews individually before committing.