Joy vs. Love Loyalty: A feature-by-feature look [2026]

Joy gives growing stores more room to build and manage a loyalty program without outgrowing the platform. Its plans add practical tools such as fraud prevention, detailed analytics, VIP tiers, paid membership, POS, 30+ integrations, and more as your needs grow.

Love Loyalty covers many of the same areas, including VIP tiers, paid memberships, referrals, POS, and B2B loyalty. It can be a good fit for stores that want these features at lower entry points.

This guide compares what each platform offers at each stage, so you can see which option provides more practical value for your store.

Joy vs. Love Loyalty in one minute

Joy is the stronger choice if you want a loyalty program you can understand, measure, and build on as your store grows. Its features give merchants more control over how the program works and how loyalty performance is tracked.

Love Loyalty is a better fit if keeping costs low is the priority, especially if you need POS, VIP tiers, or paid membership without moving to a higher-priced plan.

Best for a store that wants more control, visibility, and room to grow: Joy.

Best for a store that wants to unlock key loyalty features at a lower upfront cost: Love Loyalty.

Joy vs. Love Loyalty at a glance

Here's how the two compare and what each one means for your store:

What each platform does well

Both apps cover the basics, but Joy focuses more on depth and control, while Love Loyalty stands out for lower prices on advanced features.

What we like about Joy

Joy gives you more flexibility in how you build and manage your loyalty program. You get 30+ earning options, 6 redemption types, 48 integrations, and seven documented referral fraud checks.

Its five-tab analytics dashboard also gives you a clearer view of loyalty performance, while the MCP server lets AI tools such as Claude and ChatGPT work with your loyalty data and actions.

What we like about Love Loyalty

Love Loyalty stands out when you want specific advanced features without moving to a higher-priced plan. POS starts at $12 a month, while VIP tiers and paid membership are available from $79.

Its API is also clearly priced at $399 a month, and its use of Shopify metafields keeps loyalty data closely tied to your store.

Feature-by-feature: how they actually work

The table above provides an overview. Here's a closer look at what each feature actually does and what that means for your store.

VIP tiers

Love Loyalty lets you set tiers based on points earned or money spent. You can also set tier expiry, which encourages customers to keep buying to maintain their status. This can work well for brands with frequent purchase cycles, but may frustrate customers if their status expires during a slower period.

Joy adds order count as a qualification method, so you can reward customers for buying often, even when they place smaller orders. You can also assign different rewards to each tier, from discounts and free shipping to free products and bonus points. The highest-value discount is applied automatically, helping keep checkout simple.

Verdict: Love Loyalty wins on lower-cost access to VIP tiers. Joy offers more ways to reward different types of loyal customers.

Paid membership

Love Loyalty offers a lower-cost way to start a paid membership program, with monthly and annual billing. The trade-off is its percentage fee on membership revenue. As more customers join and your membership revenue grows, that fee grows too.

That can work well when you are testing membership or expect only modest revenue from it. But once the program becomes a meaningful revenue stream, the percentage fee starts taking a larger share of what you earn. Your most successful membership months can therefore also be your most expensive.

Joy takes a different approach. Its paid membership feature is included in the plan price, and no separate membership revenue fee. This gives you a more predictable cost structure and lets you keep more of the revenue as the program grows.

For you, the difference matters most at scale. If membership becomes a strong retention and revenue channel, Joy's flat-cost model makes it easier to forecast margins and benefit from that growth without an additional fee tied to every membership sale.

Verdict: Love Loyalty is cheaper for getting started. Joy offers better long-term economics when you expect paid membership to grow.

B2B programs

Love Loyalty gives you the flexibility to organize B2B customers by segment, location, or company. You can set different earning rules, rewards, and tiers for different groups, which is useful when different business customers have different loyalty policies.

Joy takes a more company-focused approach. B2B Partner Tiers can be based on a company's total spending, so higher-value accounts can automatically move into better tiers. The benefits can also go beyond standard loyalty rewards, including catalog access, payment terms, order or product discounts, shipping discounts, and free products or samples. Once a company reaches a tier, its members can receive the benefits tied to that tier.

Verdict: Joy wins with a more complete B2B setup that connects company spending to meaningful benefits for the whole account.

Wallet passes

Love Loyalty provides Apple Wallet and Google Wallet support, allowing you to put a loyalty pass directly on your customers' phones. That makes it easier for customers to access their loyalty account without opening your store or loyalty app.

Joy goes further by using the wallet pass as a practical POS tool. The pass carries the customer's loyalty QR code, so staff can scan it to see points and tier status, apply rewards, and sync the updated balance immediately.

That difference matters at checkout. A simple wallet pass helps customers access their loyalty, while Joy's pass can speed up the redemption process and reduce the need for staff to manually search for customer accounts.

Verdict: Joy wins because its wallet pass connects customer convenience with a faster, more useful POS experience.

POS support

Love Loyalty supports online and in-store redemption, so customers can use the same loyalty balance across both channels. Its Shopify-based setup also keeps loyalty data consistent across online orders and in-store purchases.

Joy offers a more guided POS experience. Staff can find a customer by email or phone, check their points and tier, and redeem rewards, such as free products or coupons, at checkout. Updates sync back to the online store in real time.

Both solve the main problem of keeping online and offline loyalty connected. The difference is what you pay for that experience. Love Loyalty provides core functionality at a much lower cost, while Joy adds greater visibility and guidance for staff.

Verdict: Love Loyalty wins on value. You get unified online and in-store loyalty at a much lower cost, while Joy offers a more guided checkout experience.

Referral fraud protection

Joy gives you seven separate checks to control referral abuse, including email, browser, IP, paid order, previous purchase, referral limit, and login requirements. You can switch each check on or off based on the risks you see in your store.

Love Loyalty includes fraud protection but offers less visibility into the checks behind it. If a referral issue appears, that makes it harder to understand what is being blocked or how to adjust the protection.

Verdict: Joy wins. You get more control over referral risk, making it easier to protect rewards without unnecessarily blocking legitimate referrals.

Earning and redemption

Joy gives you 30+ ways to turn different customer actions into loyalty activity. Customers can earn points through purchases, referrals, reviews, social engagement, and other actions, while rewards can be used for discounts, free shipping, free products, store credit, gift cards, or sent to someone else.

That broader choice gives you more room to align your loyalty program with how your customers actually behave. You can reward social engagement to build reach, encourage referrals to bring in new customers, or use gift cards and send-to-friend rewards when customers do not need another discount for themselves.

Love Loyalty offers 20+ earning options, including purchases, referrals, reviews, and social actions across Instagram, TikTok, X, and Facebook. Its 5 redemption types cover the main rewards but do not include gift cards or send-to-friend options.

Verdict: Joy wins on flexibility. You have more ways to encourage valuable customer actions and more options for turning points into useful rewards.

Integrations

Joy connects with 48 named integrations across email and SMS, reviews, subscriptions, helpdesk, and Shopify tools. You can also run multiple integrations at the same time, so your loyalty program can work alongside tools such as Klaviyo, Gorgias, and Recharge without forcing you to choose between them.

Love Loyalty offers 20+ integrations, including Klaviyo, Shopify Flow, Judge.me, Recharge, and Omnisend. It covers many common tools but gives you less visibility into the full range of integrations.

For you, the bigger benefit is flexibility. As your tech stack grows, you are less likely to need a new loyalty app simply because you added another marketing, support, or subscription tool.

Verdict: Joy wins with more integrations and a broader setup for growing stores.

API access

Both apps offer API access for stores that need custom workflows or deeper data connections. Love Loyalty has the lower entry price, while Joy provides more detail about what you can build with its API.

That distinction matters if you have a development team. A clear API scope makes it easier to know whether you can connect loyalty data to a dashboard, data warehouse, or custom workflow before committing to the plan.

Verdict: Love Loyalty wins on price. Joy wins on clarity and development flexibility.

AI and MCP access

Joy adds an MCP server, along with its API, SDK, and Web Components. This lets AI assistants such as Claude and ChatGPT work directly with loyalty data and actions, including customers, points, tiers, rewards, and activities.

For you, that means loyalty management does not have to stop at the dashboard. You can use an AI assistant to find loyalty data, analyze activity, or take supported actions without manually navigating through different sections of the app.

Love Loyalty does not offer an equivalent MCP capability.

Verdict: Joy wins. It gives you an additional way to work with loyalty data that Love Loyalty does not currently provide.

Analytics

Joy organizes loyalty data into five areas: Overview, Revenue, Members, Rewards, and Referral. You can track specific metrics such as retention rate and the referral conversion funnel, making it easier to see which parts of your program are driving results.

Love Loyalty also tracks useful data, including earnings, spending, redemption rates, breakage, and wallet balances. The difference is how much structure you get around that data.

For you, a well-organized dashboard makes it easier to spot what is working and where customers are dropping off. You can use those insights to adjust rewards, improve referrals, or focus on the members most likely to buy again.

Verdict: Joy wins with a more structured analytics experience that makes loyalty data easier to turn into decisions.

What it costs at each stage of growth

The better choice changes as your store grows. Here is where each platform gives you the most value at different stages.

Just starting out: free plans

Joy's free Starter plan covers 250 orders a month, compared with 150 on Love Loyalty. That gives you more room to grow before you need to upgrade.

Verdict: Joy wins with more order headroom on the free plan.

Entry paid tier: 500 orders

At 500 orders, Love Loyalty costs $12 a month compared with $29 for Joy. You also get POS support at this level, making the lower price even more useful if you already sell in-store.

Verdict: Love Loyalty wins by a wide margin for stores focused on keeping monthly costs low.

Reaching VIP tiers, POS, and paid membership

At this stage, Love Loyalty can get you into several advanced features for less upfront. Joy costs more, but its flat pricing means you are not charged more as your paid membership revenue grows.

That makes the better choice depend on how quickly you expect membership revenue to grow. Love Loyalty is more attractive while you are testing the waters. Joy becomes more compelling once membership is generating meaningful revenue.

Verdict: Love Loyalty wins on upfront cost. Joy offers better cost predictability as membership grows.

Full scale: API access

Love Loyalty's Plus plan costs $399 a month and includes unlimited orders with API access. Joy's Ultimate plan costs $499 for 7,000 orders with API access.

For a high-volume store, Love Loyalty gives you more order capacity for less money. Joy's advantage is its more clearly defined API scope, which can matter if you plan to build custom workflows.

Verdict: Love Loyalty wins on price and order capacity. Joy is worth the premium if its broader API capabilities better fit your technical needs.

The full price ladder

Joy pricing:

• Starter: Free (250 orders/mo)
• Essential: $29/month (500 orders/mo)
• Advanced: $129/month (2,000 orders/mo)
• Ultimate: $499/month (7,000 orders/mo)

Love Loyalty pricing:

• Free: $0/month (150 orders/mo)
• Professional: $12/month (500 orders/mo)
• Growth: $79/month (2,000 orders/mo, then $15/100 additional, plus 1.8% of paid membership revenue)
• Plus: $399/month (unlimited orders, membership fee drops to 0.8%)

Which one fits where you're headed

Choose Joy if you're:

• Want to know exactly how referral fraud protection, analytics, and integrations actually work
• Want a larger free plan to start on
• Planning to build a paid membership program and want costs that don't rise with its success

Choose Love Loyalty if you're:

• Want VIP tiers, POS, and membership at noticeably lower prices than Joy's equivalents
• Specifically need POS support without paying for a higher-tier plan
• Don't need every mechanism behind fraud protection and analytics spelled out

Switching from Love Loyalty to Joy

Moving your loyalty program does not have to mean starting from scratch. Joy's migration team can help you migrate from Shopify loyalty apps that lack a dedicated migration guide, including Love Loyalty.

The team can review your existing loyalty setup and help plan the move, so you can preserve the parts of your program that matter most while rebuilding them in Joy.

If you are considering the switch, you can review the migration process or contact Joy to discuss your current setup. See Joy's migration process.

Which one is right for you?

Joy is the stronger choice if you want more control, flexibility, and room to grow. Its deeper features give you more ways to protect, measure, and improve your loyalty program.

Love Loyalty is a good fit if keeping costs low is your priority, especially for POS and other features available on lower-tier plans.

Overall winner: Joy, for stores that want more capability as they grow. Try Joy free on Shopify

Frequently asked questions