Introduction of Best Membership Apps for Shopify
Having an eCommerce store often means enticing your customers and holding their interest with a slew of offers and discounts. However, this is not a healthy way for an online business to function.
Many emerging brands suffer heavy losses when they use such strategies to rope in and convert visitors into shoppers. And the old-timers of eCommerce are not entirely prone to damages either.
Is there a better way to keep your old customers interested while luring store visitors to shop with you? Membership Apps for Shopify is the perfect place to start if you’d like reliable recurring income. These apps are a great way to retain your customer's loyalty and also convert first-time shoppers into clients.
This service helps you provide a VIP experience for your customer while continuing to build your relationship with them. By creating first-priority access to information, products and services for member shoppers, you increase their LTV (long term value).
Today we’ll go over ten of the best membership apps for Shopify and discuss each app’s pros and cons.
Detailed Review of the Best Membership Apps for Shopify
1) Appstle℠ Subscriptions by Appstle Inc.
Features:
A popular GDPR and data privacy compliant Membership app on Shopify, Appstle Subscriptions helps you offer tiered discounts to your customers. They also provide useful tools such as mixed cart, product swap, inventory forecast, and build-a-box.
Appstle is also plugged in with features such as cancellation management and custom shipping. Furthermore, it enables you to automate billing for prepaid purchases while also supporting regular billing. This is also a great Subscriptions App for Shopify.
Pros:
- Appstle℠ Subscriptions generates magic links for subscription.
- This membership App for Shopify has no hidden or transaction fees on orders.
- This Shopify app boosts failed transaction conversions.
Cons:
- Appstle users complain of glitches during migration.
- This app's technical and customer support team can be slow to respond.
2) Growave ‑ Loyalty, Wishlist +3 by Growave
Features:
Growave ‑ Loyalty, Wishlist +3 by Growave comes with an assortment of tools. It enables you to plan point programs, harness customer reviews and referrals, and offer discount rewards. In addition, Growave allows you to display user-generated content on your Shopify store.
Furthermore, it also support features such as offering customers free products and creating wish lists. It also allows you to send your shoppers personalized emails with buying triggers such as back in stock, sales and price drops. It is a Shopify loyalty app that makes customers feel valued and respected for sticking with your brand.
Pros:
- This value for money Shopify app for Membership is easy to set up.
- Growave needs no coding and is fully customizable.
- This membership app integrates seamlessly with Shopify POS.
Cons:
- Growave ‑ Loyalty, Wishlist +3 is known to suffer technical glitches in its loyalty program tool and coding.
- This app's technical support is unable to resolve most issues.
3) Paywhirl Subscription Payments by Paywhirl Inc.
Features:
A customer-centric app, Paywhirl Subscription Payments integrates with Shopify Checkout. It allows customers control of customizing and managing their subscriptions. It also supports the automation of notifications, order creation and customer payment.
It also offers a useful feature which is the automated payment failure management. It also makes payment convenient for shoppers by saving their payment methods for future use. In addition, it offers white labeled widgets which means you remain in control of the branding.
Pros:
- This app by Paywhirl Inc. boasts of excellent customer and technical support overall.
- It provides multi-lingual, multi-currency and migration support.
- It also offers some Shopify currency converter app features.
Cons:
- This Membership App for Shopify does not offer much in the way of analytics or reports.
- Paywhirl does not offer more basic features such as product swap tools, upselling or cross-selling and subscription discounts.
4) Gift Cards & Loyalty Program by Rise.ai
Gift Cards & Loyalty Program allows your customers to take advantage of branded and digital gift card and voucher experiences. By integrating this app with your Shopify store, you will be able to create loyalty programs with rewards. This app will also enable you to reward your customers for affiliate and referral marketing.
Returns and refunds have never been easier. With Rise's app, you can offer store credit or branded gift cards that can be redeemed later. Customers can schedule and send your Shopify store's cards and vouchers to recipients via IM or email. If you want to add a Shopify referral app to your store, then just go with this one!
Pros:
- This membership app for Shopify allows free migration of cards, credit and points.
- Rise's app helps you create gift cards that are usable across multi-channels.
- Gift Cards & Loyalty Program's gift card scheduling feature is great for customers who like to plan ahead of time.
Cons:
- If you uninstall this app, gift cards purchased by your customers cannot be redeemed.
- Monitoring automated rewards without analytics or reports can be a hassle.
5) Yotpo Loyalty & Rewards by Swell Rewards
Features :
Yotpo is a membership app for Shopify that is suitable for building your referral and loyalty program. It does so by allowing you to custom-create VIP tiers to suit your store. It supports incentivizing of customer actions from social engagements, to birthdays or even sign-ups.
In addition, it facilitates rewarding repeat purchases with offers such as free shipping, coupons and free products. Yotpo Loyalty & Rewards allows you to create easy point campaigns for your customers and also convenient redemption. This app claims to lower acquisition costs by converting customers into brand advocates.
Pros:
- This Shopify membership app requires no coding and is easy to use.
- Yotpo Loyalty & Rewards is chock full of customization tools.
- Yotpo's customer support is always ready to listen to your issues and offer strategic recommendations and solutions.
Cons:
- This app has a poor onboarding process, expensive integrations, low scoring on design appeal and a lack of control in handling your customer database.
- The biggest drawback is the necessity to upgrade to a fully loaded plan so your customer can check their rewards balance on your store.
6) Recharge Subscriptions by Recharge
Features:
Recharge Subscriptions comes armed with analytics on your subscriptions, customers and revenue. It allows you to use this insight to reduce customer churn. At the same time, it enables you to improve customer engagement and lifetime value.
Recharge helps you create and integrate subscriptions suitable for your Shopify store. You will be able to offer your customers the ability to manage their subscriptions via SMS or a dedicated portal. Notably, this Membership App integrates with high-ranked and popular eCommerce tools.
Pros:
- Recharge offers actionable insights and real time product performance tracking.
- This membership App for Shopify provides improved payment conversions with automated retries.
- It allows customers to manage subscriptions, skip deliveries or swap products.
Cons:
- This membership app can only be tweaked and corrected manually which can be time-consuming and cause glitches in recurring customer’s subscriptions.
- Recharge is better suited for US Shopify store accounts.
- This Shopify app suffers poor customer and technical support.
7) Recurring Membership Payments by AAAeCommerce Inc
Features:
With Recurring Membership Payments, you can create multiple plans in the form of courses, memberships, coaching programs, newsletter and podcasts. It enables you to send automated reminders on invoices and renewals to members. It also allows you to curate and build members-only collections which helps improve engagement.
You will also be able to host podcasts, content and offers for your subscribers. You can also nurture unique interest groups by creating smaller communities for your members to interact in. You can also integrate Recurring Membership Payments with Shopify Quickbooks app to easily manage financial data.
Pros:
- Recurring Membership Payments has a simple interface.
- This membership app offers sign-up to wholesalers with discounted pricing.
- It presents advanced data reports in CSV format, and captures customer leads on incomplete transactions.
Cons:
- Setting up this membership app can be complicated and customization can be extremely pricey.
- Recurring Membership Payments suffers technical glitches.
8) Bold Memberships by BOLD
Features:
This Shopify membership app by BOLD helps you sell sophisticated and basic memberships across custom tiers. It facilitates the display of store content based on the type of membership the viewer has. It enables you to sell recurring memberships for offline services.
Furthermore, it allows you to offer discounted prices to wholesale and VIP customers. By providing exclusive access to VIP customers in terms of product, event or blog content, you can spike up customer loyalty. By tagging customers, you choose what they view on your Shopify store.
Pros:
- Bold Memberships gives you freedom in displaying or hiding pages.
- Depending on the viewer's membership, you can restrict views by posts, categories, products, collections, prices, and even the add to cart button.
- With this membership app, you can see online and offline services.
Cons:
- Customization of color or font on your BOLD app takes a day to reflect on display and does not integrate with modern themes.
- This membership app suffers coding glitches, and has poor technical support.
9) POS Membership by Webkul Software Pvt Ltd
Features:
POS Membership app is the way to go if you're looking to incentivize customers through a membership card. This Shopify app gives loyalty points to customers, encouraging them to visit again. It also allows them to accumulate more points by buying products from your store.
You can also update the membership ‘level’ of a shopper depending on the amount of points they have. You can create and apply your own Loyalty rules for your Shopify store's membership program. In addition, you will also have the power to decide the rules for redeeming loyalty points.
Pros:
- POS Membership gives only the admin the authority to add loyalty points to a customer, eliminating the possibility of fraudulent activities.
- This Shopify app only allows the admin to create or change the email design, leaving one person in control of the visual aesthetics.
- This membership app facilitates easy integrations.
Cons:
- The POS Membership app does not have many users yet- which means it is lacking in user reviews.
- It requires further usage and testing before its performance can be assessed.
10) Eber- Loyalty and Membership by Eber
Features:
Eber has a broad loyalty and reward system. It enables you to keep track of which customer has used a specific discount code, while also allowing customers to redeem vouchers from rewards malls easily. This Shopify app offers marketing and analytic tools while also helping you automate your membership programs.
By using this app, you can reward customers for actions such as visits or purchases. It can help you provide quick and easy redemption of points for your customers. It also facilitates the creation of membership programs with multiple levels which is designed to incentivize purchases.
Pros:
- The Eber app allows you to analyze your customer’s purchases.
- You will be able to send them an automated ‘welcome’ or ‘happy birthday’ message when they join.
- You can also automate the reward system via one-time-use discount codes.
Cons:
- While Eber does provide a free version, its pricing plans can be over the roof for many new businesses.
How to select the Best Membership App for Shopify
Choosing the right Membership App for your Shopify store is easy if you know what you are looking for. Here are some key factors to keep in mind that will help you find the best Shopify app solution for your store.
- Complexity - It's key to understand that members are usually divided into tiers. However, many of these categories can be difficult to manage. Look for an app that has just the right amount of tiers and categories for members.
- Price - Most free plans do not allow customization and lack several key features, so you may have to pay for an app. If you do, decide on a budget early on and get an app that covers all the features you need within the set budget.
- Control - How much control over subscriptions and subscribed product choices would you like your customers to have
- Recommendation - For businesses who are driven through referral programs, you should search for an app that has a high range of options to reward your loyal customers from.
- Support - Always, always, always choose an app that offers good customer and technical support. This is especially vital in app categories like these that form the bridge between your business and your customers.
- Integrations - Look for an app that provides easy integrations and works well with different platforms. This way, you will be able to help reward your customers in more ways than just discounts.
- Ease of Setup - Not every store owner is (or can hire) a coder. This is why you’ll need to try to hunt for an app that doesn't take a lot of time to set up and is ready to use in a matter of clicks.
- Customization - Customization of messages and notifications is key when you’re looking to give back to your customers. Look for apps that help you customise widgets, messages, etc with ease.
- Features - A membership app that provides a wide range of features is the best option for any store owner. With several features, you can handle all your members' rewards and programs from one place.
- User-Friendly - An app that confuses you about where your desired option is located, is a no-go. Go for apps that have a simple design and help you find what you need quickly.
- Serviceability - Before you decide to buy an app, look at whether it truly provides all the features it promises to by looking at the customer reviews.
Overall Recommendation
Although most Membership Apps for Shopify are developed with similar features to fulfill the requirements of this category, we’ve isolated the one key power tool every app has that sets it apart.
Use Appstle℠ Subscriptions by Appstle Inc. for subscription through magic links. Growave ‑ Loyalty, Wishlist +3 by Growave is great for Shopify stores that support User Generated Content. Paywhirl Subscription Payments by Paywhirl Inc. is perfect if you’d like to give customer control of their membership subscription.
Gift Cards & Loyalty Program by Rise.ai helps you reward customer loyalty. Yotpo Loyalty & Rewards by Swell Rewards focusses on the conversion of customers into brand advocates. Recharge Subscriptions by Recharge provides you with in-depth membership analytics.
Recurring Membership Payments by AAAeCommerce Inc is ideal for accounts that provide study courses, coaching and informative podcasts. And Bold Memberships by BOLD is suitable for stores that offers subscriptions for both online and offline services.
FAQ's on Membership Apps For Shopify
1) Which are the best Membership Apps for Shopify?
Depending on your requirement, choose from these top rated apps-
Appstle℠ Subscriptions by Appstle Inc., Growave ‑ Loyalty, Wishlist +3 by Growave, Paywhirl Subscription Payments by Paywhirl Inc., Gift Cards & Loyalty Program by Rise.ai, Yotpo Loyalty & Rewards by Swell Rewards, Recharge Subscriptions by Recharge, Recurring Membership Payments by AAAeCommerce Inc, Bold Memberships by BOLD
2) How to choose the best Membership Apps for your Shopify store?
To choose the best Membership App for your Shopify store, consider these points. Decide the complexity of your membership structure and levels. Figure out your budget and how much you can spend on these apps per month. Consider the role your customer has to play and the level of power you are willing to give them. Figure out the amount of technical support you will need from the developers.