BON Loyalty Program & Rewards vs. Novel: Wallet Pass for Brands: An In-Depth Comparison

Introduction

Choosing the right retention tools often feels like a balancing act between immediate feature needs and long-term technical sustainability. For Shopify merchants, the decision between a traditional points-based loyalty program and a modern mobile engagement tool involves understanding two very different methods of reaching a customer. While one focuses on the classic mechanics of points and tiers, the other leverages the hardware already in a customer's pocket to bypass crowded communication channels.

Short answer: BON Loyalty Program & Rewards is a feature-rich, traditional loyalty suite focusing on points, VIP tiers, and referrals across various Shopify plans. Novel: Wallet Pass for Brands offers a specialized mobile strategy using Apple and Google Wallet passes to drive retention through push notifications and location-based triggers. Selecting between them depends on whether a store requires a structured point economy or a high-visibility mobile touchpoint, though integrated platforms often offer a more streamlined way to manage these goals without increasing operational overhead.

The purpose of this analysis is to provide a fair and objective feature-by-feature comparison of BON Loyalty Program & Rewards and Novel: Wallet Pass for Brands. By examining their strengths, limitations, and specific use cases, merchants can determine which application aligns with their current growth stage and technical requirements.

BON Loyalty Program & Rewards vs. Novel: Wallet Pass for Brands: At a Glance

Analytical Comparison of Features and Strategic Outcomes

Core Loyalty Mechanics and Reward Structures

The foundational difference between these two applications lies in how they define and deliver value to the customer. BON Loyalty Program & Rewards operates on a traditional loyalty logic. It allows merchants to build a comprehensive ecosystem where customers earn points for specific actions, such as making a purchase, leaving a review, or celebrating a birthday. These points are then redeemed for discounts, free shipping, or specific products. The inclusion of VIP tiers in the higher-tier plans provides a clear path for customer ascension, encouraging higher lifetime value through status-based rewards.

Novel: Wallet Pass for Brands approaches retention from a different angle. Instead of focusing solely on the math of a points system, it focuses on the delivery mechanism. By placing a branded pass in the customer's mobile wallet, the brand gains a permanent "real estate" on the user's phone. While it integrates with loyalty apps to display point balances, its core strength is the ability to send push notifications directly to the lock screen. This method sidesteps the noise of email and SMS, providing a direct line to the customer that does not require the merchant to build and maintain a dedicated mobile application.

Mobile Engagement and Push Notifications

In the context of mobile strategy, Novel: Wallet Pass for Brands has a distinct advantage for merchants who want to leverage smartphone hardware. The platform provides location-based push notifications, which can trigger an alert when a customer is physically near a retail location. This makes it a powerful tool for omnichannel brands that want to bridge the gap between their online store and their physical POS locations. The pass itself acts as a digital membership card that can be scanned in-store, streamlining the redemption process.

BON Loyalty Program & Rewards, while offering POS integration for in-store rewards, primarily relies on web-based interfaces and automated emails for communication. While these are effective for reaching customers at their computers, they lack the immediate, high-visibility nature of a lock-screen notification. For a brand where the customer base is predominantly mobile-active, the wallet pass approach offers a level of convenience and visibility that traditional web widgets struggle to match. However, for a merchant who prefers a robust, multi-language web presence that scales across global markets, the customization options in BON Loyalty may be more relevant.

Customization and Brand Consistency

Maintaining a consistent brand identity is vital for building trust. BON Loyalty Program & Rewards provides a brand-tailored loyalty page and the ability to unlock custom CSS on its Growth plan. This level of control allows the loyalty program to feel like a native part of the storefront rather than a third-party add-on. The platform also emphasizes multi-language display, which is a critical feature for international stores that need to present their loyalty program in the local language of their customers.

Novel focuses its customization efforts on the wallet pass itself. Merchants can brand the pass to match their visual identity, ensuring that every time a customer opens their Apple or Google Wallet, they see a professional and recognizable card. While the storefront side of Novel involves automated logins for Shopify Plus users, the primary "interface" is the wallet pass. This creates a highly streamlined experience for the customer, but it offers less in terms of on-site page building or complex CSS modifications compared to the more traditional loyalty apps.

Integration Ecosystem and Technology Stack Fit

The utility of any Shopify app is often determined by how well it "plays" with the rest of the tech stack. BON Loyalty Program & Rewards lists a variety of integrations, including popular review apps like Fera, LAI, and Judge.me. It also connects with Klaviyo for email marketing and PageFly for landing page construction. This makes it a strong fit for merchants who are already using a variety of point-solutions and need a loyalty app that can exchange data with those tools.

Novel: Wallet Pass for Brands boasts an extensive list of integrations, particularly in the retention and marketing automation space. It works with Klaviyo, Attentive, Postscript, and various loyalty platforms like Yotpo and Okendo. The goal of Novel is to act as a complementary layer to an existing retention strategy. For example, a merchant might use a separate app for reviews and another for loyalty points, then use Novel to display those points on a wallet pass and send push notifications. While this creates a powerful mobile experience, it does require the merchant to manage and pay for multiple subscriptions to achieve a full-featured retention stack.

Pricing Structure and Value for Money

When evaluating feature coverage across plans, merchants must consider both the monthly cost and the potential for "stacked" expenses. BON Loyalty Program & Rewards offers a "Free Forever" plan that includes basic points and referral features, making it accessible for startups. As a business grows, the plans scale to $25, $99, and finally $349 per month for the Professional plan. This tiered approach allows a merchant to start small and only pay for advanced features like B2B tiers or Hydrogen support when they are truly needed.

Novel: Wallet Pass for Brands has a different pricing philosophy. It offers a free plan for developer stores, but the primary commercial plan, "Gotta Have It," is priced at $299 per month. This higher entry price suggests that Novel is targeting established brands that already have a significant customer base and a clear strategy for mobile engagement. While the $299 price point includes unlimited push notifications and location-based triggers, it represents a significant investment compared to the lower tiers of more traditional loyalty apps. For brands with high order volume and a need for mobile-first communication, the return on investment may be high, but smaller stores might find the cost-of-entry challenging.

Support and Operational Reliability

Customer support is a critical factor, especially when launching a loyalty program that affects checkout and customer accounts. BON Loyalty Program & Rewards provides 24/7 support across its plans, with live chat available on the Growth plan and priority support on the Professional tier. With only one review provided in the data, it is difficult to gauge long-term community feedback, though the 5.0 rating indicates a positive start.

Novel: Wallet Pass for Brands also holds a 5.0 rating, backed by 14 reviews. This higher review count suggests a more established presence in its niche. The complexity of setting up wallet passes and ensuring they work correctly across different mobile operating systems means that support is often a hands-on process. Merchants choosing Novel should expect a setup phase that involves configuring branded passes and testing push notification triggers, whereas BON Loyalty is designed for a "launch in minutes" experience that prioritizes speed of implementation.

Strategic Use Cases: Which App Fits Your Store?

Identifying the right tool involves looking at the specific goals of the business.

• BON Loyalty Program & Rewards is likely the better fit for:
  • Newer stores that need a free or low-cost entry point into loyalty programs.
  • B2B merchants who require specialized tiered rewards for wholesale customers.
  • International brands that need multi-language support to serve a global audience.
  • Stores that prioritize a traditional points-for-discount economy.
• Novel: Wallet Pass for Brands is likely the better fit for:
  • Established brands with a high percentage of mobile traffic.
  • Omnichannel retailers who want to use location-based notifications to drive foot traffic to physical stores.
  • Shopify Plus merchants who want to provide a premium, app-like experience without the cost of developing a custom mobile app.
  • Brands that feel their email and SMS channels are becoming saturated and need a new way to reach customers.

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

While specialized apps like BON Loyalty and Novel offer powerful features, they also contribute to a growing problem for Shopify merchants: app fatigue. Each time a brand adds a new single-function app to its store, it increases the risk of tool sprawl. This leads to fragmented data, where customer loyalty information sits in one place, product reviews in another, and mobile engagement data in a third. Managing these separate silos often results in an inconsistent customer experience and a tech stack that becomes increasingly difficult to scale. If consolidating tools is a priority, start by comparing plan fit against retention goals.

The philosophy of "More Growth, Less Stack" focuses on reducing this operational complexity. Instead of stitching together various applications that might not always communicate perfectly, an integrated platform provides a unified experience for both the merchant and the customer. This approach ensures that loyalty programs that keep customers coming back are natively connected to other trust-building features. When a customer leaves a review, for example, they can be immediately rewarded with points through the same system, without the need for complex third-party integrations or API calls that might fail.

Using an integrated suite also provides a clearer view of total retention-stack costs. Instead of paying $99 for loyalty and another $299 for mobile engagement, merchants can find a single subscription that covers multiple facets of the customer journey. This leads to better performance on the storefront, as fewer external scripts are loaded, and a more cohesive data set for marketing teams to analyze. When looking for real examples from brands improving retention, one common theme is the transition away from fragmented tools toward a more centralized system.

Furthermore, an all-in-one platform allows for more sophisticated marketing workflows. By collecting and showcasing authentic customer reviews within the same environment that manages VIP tiers and incentives for high-intent customers, a brand can create a seamless feedback loop. This integration ensures that every customer touchpoint—from the first review they read to the loyalty points they earn on their tenth purchase—feels like a part of the same brand story.

Operating from a single dashboard also simplifies the training process for team members and reduces the time spent on technical troubleshooting. When a merchant uses social proof that supports conversion and AOV alongside their loyalty efforts, they can see exactly how one impacts the other. This visibility is often lost when using disparate apps like BON and Novel together, where the data must be manually exported and reconciled to understand the true impact on customer lifetime value.

For those who want to see how this looks in practice, practical retention playbooks from growing storefronts often highlight the importance of a clean, efficient backend. By assessing app-store ratings as a trust signal, it becomes clear that many merchants value the reliability and performance that comes with a well-integrated solution. Reducing the number of apps on a store doesn't just lower the monthly bill; it improves site speed, simplifies the customer journey, and allows the brand to focus on growth rather than managing a complex web of software.

Conclusion

For merchants choosing between BON Loyalty Program & Rewards and Novel: Wallet Pass for Brands, the decision comes down to the primary engagement channel the brand wishes to prioritize. BON Loyalty offers a classic, tiered loyalty structure that is highly accessible for businesses of all sizes, especially those with a strong international or B2B focus. On the other hand, Novel provides a unique, mobile-first solution for brands that want to bypass the noise of traditional marketing channels and interact with customers directly through their smartphone wallets. Both apps serve their specific purposes well, but they represent two different philosophies of customer retention.

However, as a store grows, the challenge of managing multiple specialized apps often results in high overhead and a fragmented view of the customer. Choosing an integrated platform can offer a more sustainable path forward by bringing loyalty, reviews, and referrals under one roof. This strategic shift allows merchants to maintain planning retention spend without app sprawl surprises while ensuring that every part of the retention strategy works in harmony. By verifying compatibility details in the official app listing, brands can find a solution that scales without the need for a bloated tech stack.

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 new Shopify store on a budget?

BON Loyalty Program & Rewards is generally more accessible for new stores due to its "Free Forever" plan. It allows small businesses to implement a basic points and referral system without an initial financial commitment. Novel: Wallet Pass for Brands, with its primary paid tier starting at $299, is positioned more for established brands with the budget to invest in a specialized mobile strategy.

Can Novel: Wallet Pass for Brands replace my existing loyalty program?

Novel is designed to complement, rather than necessarily replace, a full loyalty program. While it can display point balances and facilitate referrals, its primary function is the delivery of wallet passes and push notifications. Most merchants use it alongside a loyalty app to enhance the mobile experience, though this does add to the total cost of the technology stack.

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

An all-in-one platform reduces the need for multiple subscriptions and ensures that different retention features—like loyalty points and customer reviews—communicate natively. This prevents data silos and minimizes the impact on site loading speeds that can occur when multiple third-party scripts are running. While specialized apps may offer niche features, an integrated platform provides a more cohesive experience for both the merchant's team and the end customer.

Does BON Loyalty Program & Rewards support international stores?

Yes, BON Loyalty includes multi-language display features, particularly on its Basic plan and above. This is a significant advantage for merchants who operate in multiple regions and want to ensure their rewards program is accessible to non-English speaking customers. Novel focuses more on the mobile wallet infrastructure, which is globally standardized by Apple and Google, but it does not emphasize multi-language storefront customization to the same extent.