BON Loyalty Program & Rewards vs. Glow: Loyalty Points & Rewards: A Comparison

Introduction

Selecting the right retention tools often feels like a balancing act between feature complexity and operational simplicity. For Shopify merchants, the choice of a loyalty app dictates how effectively a brand can transition from one-time transactions to long-term customer relationships. While the Shopify ecosystem offers a variety of specialized tools, the differences in technical depth, pricing structures, and scalability can significantly impact a store's bottom line. Understanding these nuances is essential for avoiding technical debt and ensuring that the selected program aligns with the specific growth stage of the business.

Short answer: BON Loyalty Program & Rewards excels for high-growth or B2B stores requiring deep technical customization and headless commerce support, whereas Glow: Loyalty Points & Rewards offers a streamlined, budget-friendly entry point for smaller teams focused on simplicity and referral-driven growth. Both tools provide solid foundations, but merchants must weigh technical flexibility against ease of use to determine the best fit for their retention strategy.

The purpose of this analysis is to provide a neutral, feature-by-feature comparison of BON Loyalty Program & Rewards and Glow: Loyalty Points & Rewards. By examining their core mechanics, integration capabilities, and pricing models, merchants can make an informed decision that supports sustainable growth and maximizes customer lifetime value.

BON Loyalty Program & Rewards vs. Glow: Loyalty Points & Rewards: At a Glance

Deep Dive Comparison

Core Loyalty and Referral Mechanics

The foundation of any retention strategy lies in how customers earn and redeem rewards. Both applications focus on the essential pillars of points, referrals, and incentives, yet they approach the execution differently to cater to distinct merchant needs.

BON Loyalty Program & Rewards prioritizes a broad range of earning and redemption options from the outset. The platform includes standard points-for-purchase mechanics but extends this with features like anti-cheat referral systems and automated emails. For merchants operating on Shopify Plus, BON offers the ability to display points directly at checkout, which significantly reduces friction during the redemption process. The focus here is on creating a comprehensive ecosystem where customers feel incentivized at every touchpoint, including homepage and product page integrations.

Glow: Loyalty Points & Rewards emphasizes a "points-for-actions" philosophy. This approach encourages customers to engage with the brand beyond just making purchases, such as referring friends or interacting with the store in specific ways. Glow includes an intuitive setup wizard, which is particularly beneficial for merchants who may not have a dedicated technical team. By guiding the user through the configuration of points and referrals, Glow ensures that the loyalty program is functional and aligned with the store’s goals within minutes. The inclusion of a detailed loyalty analytics dashboard in the free tier also allows smaller merchants to track their program's performance from day one.

Tiered Rewards and VIP Structures

VIP tiers are a critical component for driving customer lifetime value, as they provide a clear path for customers to earn higher status and better rewards through continued loyalty.

In the BON ecosystem, VIP tiers are introduced at the $99 per month Growth plan. This plan includes "Order Booster" features and specific loyalty incentives designed for B2B environments. The B2B tier program is a standout feature for BON, allowing wholesale businesses to offer exclusive rewards to their high-volume buyers. This level of segmentation ensures that different customer segments receive incentives that are relevant to their purchasing behavior, which is essential for brands with diverse customer bases.

Glow provides a different approach to scaling. While it offers a robust points system, the description provided does not explicitly detail a complex VIP tier structure in the same way BON does. Glow focuses more on "Active Member" thresholds. This means a merchant’s costs are tied directly to how many customers are interacting with the program. This can be an advantage for stores with high order values but a smaller, more concentrated group of loyal customers. However, for stores looking for a multi-layered VIP program with specific tier-based logic, the data suggests BON may offer more explicit functionality in this area.

Customization and Brand Alignment

A loyalty program should feel like a natural extension of a brand rather than a third-party add-on. Customization capabilities determine how well the loyalty widget and pages blend with the store’s aesthetics.

BON Loyalty Program & Rewards provides extensive customization options, especially at the higher tiers. Starting with the Basic plan, merchants gain access to a dedicated loyalty page and multi-language display options, which are vital for international brands. For those on the Growth plan, BON allows for custom CSS with the help of their development support team. At the Professional level, the app offers a Software Development Toolkit (SDK) and full API access, making it a strong candidate for brands running headless commerce setups using Hydrogen. This level of technical freedom is rare in the entry-level loyalty app space and positions BON as a tool that can grow alongside a brand’s technical complexity.

Glow: Loyalty Points & Rewards maintains a focus on ease of use. While it integrates seamlessly with the Shopify ecosystem, its customization is built around being "ready to provide expert help" through its US-based support team. Glow provides email notifications and reminders, which can be tailored to the brand's voice. The setup wizard ensures that the initial look and feel are consistent with the store, but it may not offer the same depth of CSS and API control found in BON’s professional-grade plans. For many SMBs, the trade-off of less technical control for a simpler, guided setup is often a worthwhile exchange.

Pricing Structure and Value for Money

The pricing models of these two apps represent two different philosophies: order/feature-based pricing versus member-based pricing.

BON Loyalty Program & Rewards follows a feature-led pricing model. The Free Forever plan is generous, offering points, an anti-cheat referral program, and automated emails. As the merchant moves to the $25 Basic plan, they unlock POS rewards and unlimited integrations. The $99 Growth plan is where unlimited orders and VIP tiers are introduced. The $349 Professional plan is clearly aimed at enterprise-level stores, offering a substantial custom package and advanced technical tools. This structure allows merchants to pay for the specific features they need as their business grows.

Glow: Loyalty Points & Rewards uses a tiered model based on "Active Members." The free plan supports up to 50 active members, while the $59 Traction plan supports up to 6,000. All Glow plans include unlimited orders and an analytics dashboard. This model is highly predictable for merchants who have a clear understanding of their customer base size. However, it can become a scaling hurdle if the "active member" count grows faster than the revenue generated from those members. For stores with a very large but lower-frequency customer base, the active member cap might require careful monitoring compared to BON’s order-based or feature-based limits.

Integration Ecosystem and POS Support

For a loyalty program to be effective, it must work in harmony with the rest of the merchant’s tech stack, including email marketing, reviews, and point-of-sale systems.

Both apps show strong support for Shopify POS, which is crucial for brands that maintain both an online and a physical presence. This ensures that a customer can earn points in-store and redeem them online, creating a unified brand experience. BON specifies deep integrations with review platforms like Judge.me, Fera, and LAI, as well as marketing tools like Klaviyo and PageFly. Its "unlimited integration" promise on the Basic plan suggests a high degree of flexibility for merchants using a variety of specialized tools.

Glow also boasts compatibility with "hundreds of apps," including Klaviyo, Mailchimp, and PayWhirl Subscriptions. The mention of subscription support is a significant note for merchants running recurring billing models, as loyalty points can be a powerful tool for reducing subscription churn. Glow’s API access starts at a lower price point ($9 per month) than BON’s, which might appeal to smaller stores that have niche integration needs or custom-built internal tools.

Technical Readiness: Headless and API Access

As the e-commerce landscape moves toward more flexible architectures, the ability of an app to support headless commerce becomes a differentiating factor.

BON Loyalty Program & Rewards is explicitly positioned for this shift. With Hydrogen support and full API access in its Professional plan, it caters to the Shopify Plus merchant who has moved away from traditional liquid themes. This allows for the loyalty experience to be built directly into a custom front-end, ensuring that performance and user experience are never compromised by the limitations of a standard widget.

Glow: Loyalty Points & Rewards offers API access starting on its $9 Sprout plan. While the data does not specify the same level of "headless" optimization as BON, the early availability of APIs suggests that Glow is open to being part of a larger, interconnected system. This is an important consideration for merchants who want to build custom workflows or sync loyalty data with an external CRM or data warehouse without committing to a $349 per month plan.

Support and Merchant Success Infrastructure

The quality of support can be the deciding factor when a loyalty program faces technical hurdles or during critical sales periods like Black Friday.

BON Loyalty Program & Rewards offers 24/7 live chat support on its Growth plan and "Support Priority" on the Professional plan. The developer also notes that they provide development support for custom CSS. This suggests a very hands-on approach for higher-paying merchants, which is appropriate given the technical complexity of the features offered. With only one review listed in the provided data, it is difficult to gauge long-term merchant satisfaction, though the 5.0 rating indicates a positive start.

Glow: Loyalty Points & Rewards emphasizes its US-based support team. For many North American merchants, having support in a similar time zone can be a major advantage. The 4.8 rating across 50 reviews provides a more substantial track record of reliability and merchant satisfaction. Glow’s focus on a "setup wizard" and "dedicated support" across all plans, including the free tier, suggests a business model built on accessibility and helping smaller merchants get up and running without a steep learning curve.

The Alternative: Solving App Fatigue with an All-in-One Platform

When merchants evaluate BON versus Glow, they are often looking at one piece of a much larger puzzle. The challenge for many growing stores isn't just choosing a loyalty app; it's managing the "app fatigue" that comes from stacking multiple single-purpose tools. Each new app added to a Shopify store introduces potential points of failure, fragmented data, and inconsistent user experiences. When loyalty, reviews, referrals, and wishlists are all handled by different developers, the merchant is forced to act as a full-time systems integrator rather than a brand builder.

This tool sprawl often leads to higher total costs and slower site performance. Fragmented data means that a customer’s review activity might not be reflected in their loyalty points balance, or a wishlist item doesn't trigger a personalized referral incentive. To solve this, many brands are moving toward an integrated approach. By comparing plan fit against retention goals, merchants often find that a unified platform can provide loyalty points and rewards designed to lift repeat purchases while simultaneously managing other critical retention functions.

The philosophy of "More Growth, Less Stack" focuses on consolidating these essential features into a single, high-performance environment. Instead of paying for four or five different subscriptions, a merchant can utilize a pricing structure that scales as order volume grows. This integration ensures that collecting and showcasing authentic customer reviews works in perfect sync with the loyalty program. For example, a customer can be automatically rewarded with points immediately after leaving a review, creating a seamless loop of engagement and gratification.

For brands that have reached a certain level of maturity, a tailored walkthrough based on store goals and constraints can reveal how much overhead is currently being wasted on managing disparate apps. Moving to an all-in-one platform allows for more sophisticated VIP tiers and incentives for high-intent customers that are informed by data from reviews, wishlists, and purchase history. If consolidating tools is a priority, start by choosing a plan built for long-term value.

Furthermore, the operational benefits extend to the customer experience. A single dashboard for the customer to track their rewards, reviews, and wishlist items creates a much cleaner interface. It also simplifies the merchant's workflow, as review automation that builds trust at purchase time no longer requires complex manual syncing between different apps. This holistic view is what enables a brand to truly understand and improve its customer lifetime value.

Implementing this strategy doesn't have to be overwhelming. Many merchants begin with a focused demo that maps tools to retention outcomes to see how their specific tech stack can be simplified. By checking merchant feedback and app-store performance signals, it becomes clear that the trend is moving away from fragmented stacks toward integrated solutions that offer a better total cost of ownership and a more cohesive brand experience.

Conclusion

For merchants choosing between BON Loyalty Program & Rewards and Glow: Loyalty Points & Rewards, the decision comes down to the specific technical needs and the current scale of the business. BON Loyalty Program & Rewards is the clear choice for stores that require enterprise-grade flexibility, particularly those utilizing Shopify Plus, headless commerce, or complex B2B tiered structures. Its ability to scale into custom CSS and API-driven environments makes it a future-proof option for technically ambitious brands. On the other hand, Glow: Loyalty Points & Rewards is an excellent fit for smaller to medium-sized businesses that value a guided setup, US-based support, and a pricing model that scales with the number of active members in their program.

While both apps are highly capable in their respective niches, it is important for merchants to look beyond the immediate need for a loyalty program. As a store grows, the complexity of managing multiple independent apps for reviews, wishlists, and rewards can become a significant drag on both resources and site performance. Choosing a unified platform can reduce this overhead, allowing the team to focus on strategy rather than troubleshooting integrations. By seeing how the app is positioned for Shopify stores, merchants can see the benefits of a more integrated approach to retention.

Ultimately, the goal is to build a brand that customers return to time and again. Whether through the deep technical customization of BON, the accessible simplicity of Glow, or the streamlined efficiency of an all-in-one platform, the focus must remain on creating value for the customer at every stage of their journey. To reduce app fatigue and run retention from one place, start by reviewing the Shopify App Store listing merchants install from.

FAQ

Which app is better for a brand using Shopify POS?

Both BON Loyalty Program & Rewards and Glow: Loyalty Points & Rewards offer strong integration with Shopify POS. This allows merchants to reward customers for both online and in-store purchases. BON provides POS rewards starting on its $25 Basic plan, while Glow includes POS support as a core feature of its loyalty ecosystem. The choice between them for POS users should depend on whether you need additional features like B2B tiers (BON) or a more simplified analytics dashboard (Glow).

Is BON Loyalty Program & Rewards or Glow better for a small budget?

Glow: Loyalty Points & Rewards offers a more granular entry-level pricing path, with its Sprout plan starting at just $9 per month for up to 500 active members. This is significantly lower than BON’s first paid tier of $25. However, BON’s Free Forever plan is quite robust, offering points and referral features without a member limit, though it lacks some of the more advanced customization and integration features found in its paid tiers.

How does an all-in-one platform compare to specialized apps?

Specialized apps like BON or Glow focus deeply on one specific area, such as loyalty and referrals. This can lead to very specific, niche features. An all-in-one platform, however, integrates loyalty with other tools like reviews, wishlists, and social proof. The main advantage of an integrated platform is the elimination of "app fatigue"—there is one support team, one dashboard, and no need to worry about different apps conflicting with each other. This often results in a better customer experience and a lower total cost for the merchant.

Can I use these apps with a headless Shopify store?

BON Loyalty Program & Rewards is specifically designed to support headless commerce through its Professional plan, which includes Hydrogen support and full API access. Glow: Loyalty Points & Rewards also offers API access starting on its $9 plan, which may allow for some custom development, but it does not emphasize headless-specific features like a dedicated SDK as prominently as BON does in its enterprise-level offerings.