BON Loyalty Program & Rewards vs. Memberply Memberships: An In-Depth Comparison

Introduction

Choosing the right retention tools for a Shopify store involves more than just picking features from a list. It requires an understanding of how specific mechanics—whether they are point-based rewards or recurring membership fees—align with customer behavior and long-term business goals. As storefronts scale, the complexity of managing multiple independent tools often becomes a bottleneck for growth and operational efficiency.

Short answer: BON Loyalty Program & Rewards is designed for stores looking to gamify the shopping experience through points, VIP tiers, and referrals, while Memberply Memberships is built for merchants wanting to generate recurring revenue through paid subscription programs and exclusive content access. Selecting the right fit depends on whether the strategy prioritizes behavioral incentives or a club-like membership model, though many merchants eventually find that consolidating these functions into a single platform offers better value for money.

The following analysis provides an objective comparison of BON Loyalty Program & Rewards and Memberply Memberships. This breakdown looks at core workflows, pricing structures, and technical requirements to help Shopify merchants determine which path suits their current stage of maturity and future scaling needs.

BON Loyalty Program & Rewards vs. Memberply Memberships: At a Glance

Core Features and Workflows: Comparing Retention Mechanics

The fundamental difference between these two applications lies in how they define customer loyalty. One focuses on rewarding specific actions after they occur, while the other focuses on creating a gated environment that customers pay to enter.

Transactional Incentives in BON Loyalty Program & Rewards

BON Loyalty Program & Rewards operates on a classic loyalty model. The primary workflow involves customers earning points for actions such as making a purchase, leaving reviews (through integrations), or following social media accounts. This approach is highly effective for stores with high-frequency purchase cycles where small, incremental rewards keep the brand top-of-mind.

A significant aspect of this app is its focus on tiered progression. By implementing VIP tiers, merchants can offer accelerated point earning or exclusive rewards to high-value customers. This creates a psychological "hook" that encourages shoppers to consolidate their spending with one brand to reach the next status level. For larger operations, the inclusion of a B2B tier program is a specific advantage, allowing wholesale customers to receive different incentives than retail shoppers, which is often a requirement for complex Shopify Plus setups.

Subscription-Based Loyalty in Memberply Memberships

Memberply Memberships shifts the focus toward a paid model. Instead of earning status through spend, customers pay a recurring fee (or a one-time fee) to access a suite of benefits. This model is particularly useful for brands that have a cult-like following or provide high-value digital content, special discounts, or free shipping as a baseline for members.

One of the standout features here is the use of native Shopify store credit. When members pay their fees, merchants can convert those fees back into store credit, which members can then use with a single click at checkout. This creates a closed-loop economy within the store, ensuring that the revenue generated from membership fees eventually translates into product sales. Additionally, the ability to restrict digital content or specific products to members only provides a clear value proposition for the subscription.

Customization and Control

Brand consistency is vital when implementing loyalty or membership programs, as these elements often serve as the most interactive parts of the customer journey.

Design and Multi-language Capabilities in BON Loyalty

BON Loyalty provides significant depth in terms of how the loyalty program looks and feels. It offers a dedicated loyalty page and a hyperlink system that allows merchants to direct customers precisely where they need to go. For global stores, the multi-language display feature is a critical tool, ensuring that international customers can interact with the rewards program in their native tongue.

At higher pricing tiers, the app allows for custom CSS, which is essential for brands that want the loyalty widget to be indistinguishable from their custom theme. For stores running on Headless Hydrogen or utilizing the Shopify Software Development Toolkit, the app provides API access, allowing developers to build entirely custom front-end experiences while using BON as the backend engine.

Native Integration Focus in Memberply

Memberply takes a different approach to customization by leaning heavily into Shopify’s native infrastructure. Rather than creating a separate portal, members access their benefits through Shopify’s native new customer accounts area. This reduces the friction of learning a new interface and ensures that the membership experience feels like an organic part of the store.

The control here is focused more on the "gating" aspect. Merchants can choose which products, collections, or content pieces are hidden behind the membership wall. While it may not offer the same level of visual "flair" as a dedicated loyalty page in a point-based system, the simplicity and reliance on native Shopify accounts provide a stable and predictable user experience.

Pricing Structure and Value for Money

Analyzing the cost of these tools requires looking at the total cost of ownership as the store grows in order volume.

BON Loyalty Pricing Tiers

The pricing for BON Loyalty is segmented by feature depth and support levels:

• Free Forever: Offers basic points, rewards, and an anti-cheat referral program. This is a low-risk entry point for new stores.
• Basic ($25/month): Introduces the loyalty page, POS rewards, and unlimited integrations with apps like Klaviyo.
• Growth ($99/month): This is where VIP tiers and B2B programs are introduced. It also supports unlimited orders, making it a predictable expense for growing brands.
• Professional ($349/month): Aimed at enterprise-level stores, this tier provides full API access, Hydrogen support, and dedicated development hours for custom packages.

Memberply Memberships Pricing Tiers

Memberply keeps its pricing significantly simpler, which can be advantageous for merchants who dislike complex billing structures:

• Growth Plan ($49/month): This appears to be the primary offering, providing 0% transaction fees on all orders, unlimited members, and the ability to set up the subscription program.

The value in Memberply comes from the lack of transaction fees on the membership revenue, which is a common "hidden" cost in many subscription apps. However, for merchants who also want points and referrals, they would likely need to install a second app, which increases the total monthly software spend and adds another layer of integration management.

Integrations and Compatibility

The effectiveness of a retention app is often determined by how well it "talks" to the rest of the tech stack.

The BON Loyalty Ecosystem

BON Loyalty boasts a wide range of integrations. It works with Shopify POS, allowing for a seamless experience where customers can earn and redeem points both online and in person. It also integrates with popular review apps like Judge.me and Fera, and marketing automation tools like Klaviyo. This connectivity ensures that loyalty data can be used to trigger emails, such as reminding a customer that their points are about to expire.

The support for Shopify Flow is another significant advantage for technical teams. It allows for the creation of complex automated workflows, such as tagging a customer in the CRM when they reach a specific VIP tier, or triggering a specific discount when a referral is successful.

Memberply and the Native Experience

Memberply’s integration list is more focused. Its primary integration is with Shopify’s native customer accounts. Because it relies on native store credit and native discounts, it avoids many of the compatibility issues that can arise with third-party checkout extensions. However, it does not specify the same level of broad integration with external email or review platforms in the provided data, suggesting that merchants might need to rely on Shopify’s built-in tools or manual workflows for some marketing tasks.

Customer Support and Reliability Signals

When a loyalty program or membership system goes down, it directly affects the customer's wallet and the brand's reputation.

BON Loyalty Program & Rewards shows a strong commitment to support, particularly at the $99/month tier where 24/7 live chat is available. The professional tier adds "Support Priority," which is a common requirement for high-volume merchants who cannot afford downtime. With a 5.0 rating from its review data, it suggests a high level of satisfaction among its user base, albeit from a small sample size.

Memberply Memberships also carries a 5.0 rating from 3 reviews. Its simplicity is its primary reliability signal; by using native Shopify features like store credit and customer accounts, there are fewer "moving parts" that can break during a Shopify theme update or platform change. This makes it an attractive option for small teams who do not have dedicated developer resources to maintain complex integrations.

Performance and Operational Overhead

Running multiple apps can lead to "app sprawl," where the store's performance suffers due to excessive scripts and the management team becomes overwhelmed by disparate data silos.

BON Loyalty provides a very deep feature set, but it is a specialized tool. While it handles loyalty, referrals, and VIP tiers, a merchant would still need separate apps for reviews or wishlists. This creates a "stacked" cost and operational overhead where data must be synced between multiple dashboards.

Memberply is even more specialized. It does one thing—memberships—very well. However, because it lacks the broader retention features like referral programs or automated review collection, it almost guarantees that the merchant will need to install several other apps to build a complete retention strategy. This fragmentation often leads to an inconsistent user experience where the membership dashboard looks different from the loyalty rewards widget, which looks different from the referral popup.

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

Many merchants eventually reach a point where managing a different app for loyalty, another for reviews, another for wishlists, and another for referrals becomes unsustainable. This is known as app fatigue. It results in fragmented customer data, slower site speeds due to multiple script loads, and a higher total cost of ownership. Instead of paying for three or four different $50/month apps, a more strategic approach involves using an integrated platform.

If consolidating tools is a priority, start by a pricing structure that scales as order volume grows. Choosing an integrated solution allows for a "More Growth, Less Stack" philosophy, where different retention modules work in harmony rather than in isolation. When loyalty programs, reviews, and wishlists are part of the same ecosystem, the data flows seamlessly. For instance, a customer can earn loyalty points and rewards designed to lift repeat purchases automatically after collecting and showcasing authentic customer reviews. This level of automation is difficult to achieve when using separate apps like BON or Memberply without complex middle-ware or custom coding.

By checking merchant feedback and app-store performance signals, it becomes clear that high-growth brands value the simplicity of a single dashboard. Managing VIP tiers and incentives for high-intent customers alongside review automation that builds trust at purchase time reduces the time spent on administrative tasks. This efficiency allows marketing teams to focus on strategy rather than troubleshooting integration errors between disparate tools.

For those unsure of how to transition from a fragmented stack to a unified one, a tailored walkthrough based on store goals and constraints can provide clarity. This type of a guided evaluation of an integrated retention stack helps identify which features are essential and how to migrate existing data without disrupting the customer experience. Ultimately, the goal is to build a cohesive journey that increases lifetime value without the technical debt of a bloated app list.

Conclusion

For merchants choosing between BON Loyalty Program & Rewards and Memberply Memberships, the decision comes down to the specific business model and the desired customer relationship. BON Loyalty is the superior choice for stores that want a traditional, gamified rewards experience with deep B2B and POS capabilities. Its strength lies in its versatility and its ability to scale into complex environments like headless commerce. On the other hand, Memberply Memberships is the better fit for brands looking to pivot toward a subscription-based model, offering native store credit and content gating that creates a sense of exclusivity and recurring revenue.

However, both apps represent a specialized approach that contributes to a larger trend of tool sprawl. While they excel in their specific niches, they require merchants to seek out additional applications for reviews, wishlists, and other essential retention tactics. This results in a higher total cost and a fragmented experience for the end user. To maximize efficiency and ensure a consistent brand voice across all touchpoints, many growing stores find that an all-in-one platform provides a more robust foundation for long-term growth.

By comparing plan fit against retention goals, merchants can often see that a unified platform offers better total value than multiple individual subscriptions. To reduce app fatigue and run retention from one place, start by reviewing the Shopify App Store listing merchants install from.

FAQ

Is BON Loyalty Program & Rewards better for B2B stores?

Yes, BON Loyalty includes specific features for B2B tier programs starting at its Growth plan. This allows merchants to offer different reward structures and point earning rates specifically for wholesale or business-to-business customers, which is a feature not typically found in standard membership or loyalty apps.

Can I use Memberply Memberships to hide certain products?

Yes, Memberply Memberships is designed with content and product gating in mind. It allows merchants to restrict access to specific digital content or physical products so that only active, paying members can view or purchase them, making it ideal for "members-only" collections.

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

Specialized apps often provide deep functionality in one specific area but create data silos and increase the total number of scripts running on a site. An all-in-one platform integrates multiple retention modules—like loyalty, reviews, and wishlists—into a single interface. This ensures that features can trigger each other (e.g., giving points for a review) and typically results in a clearer view of total retention-stack costs while improving site performance.

Which app is better for international Shopify stores?

BON Loyalty Program & Rewards is likely the better choice for international stores because it includes a multi-language display feature. This allows the loyalty interface to be translated into different languages, ensuring a localized experience for a global customer base. Memberply relies more on Shopify's native account area, which may require additional translation steps through the theme's language settings.