Growave: Loyalty & Wishlist vs. qiibee: Miles & More Loyalty: An In-Depth Comparison

Introduction

Choosing the right Shopify apps to build customer loyalty and drive repeat purchases can be a complex endeavor for any e-commerce merchant. The landscape of retention tools is diverse, offering specialized solutions alongside integrated platforms. Navigating these options requires a clear understanding of each app's core value, operational implications, and alignment with specific business goals.

Short answer: Growave: Loyalty & Wishlist provides an integrated suite encompassing loyalty, reviews, referrals, and wishlists within a single platform, suitable for merchants seeking a comprehensive retention solution. In contrast, qiibee: Miles & More Loyalty offers a highly specialized integration with the Miles & More frequent flyer program, targeting businesses that wish to leverage this established loyalty ecosystem for customer acquisition and retention. Selecting between them depends on a merchant's desired breadth of features and their strategic emphasis on external loyalty partnerships versus an internal, branded program.

This article provides an objective, feature-by-feature comparison of Growave: Loyalty & Wishlist and qiibee: Miles & More Loyalty, aiming to equip merchants with the insights needed to make an informed decision for their Shopify store. The analysis delves into their core functionalities, customization capabilities, pricing structures, integration ecosystems, and suitability for various e-commerce strategies.

Growave: Loyalty & Wishlist vs. qiibee: Miles & More Loyalty: At a Glance

Deep Dive Comparison

Core Loyalty Mechanics and Ecosystem Integration

The fundamental difference between Growave: Loyalty & Wishlist and qiibee: Miles & More Loyalty lies in their approach to customer loyalty. Growave offers a self-contained, customizable loyalty program within a merchant's own brand ecosystem, while qiibee acts as a bridge to an external, established loyalty program.

Growave's Approach to Integrated Loyalty

Growave: Loyalty & Wishlist functions as a robust, all-in-one platform designed to manage multiple facets of customer retention from a single dashboard. Its core offering revolves around a points-based loyalty points and rewards designed to lift repeat purchases. This program allows merchants to reward customers for various actions, such as making purchases, signing up for an account, celebrating a birthday, or engaging on social media. The earned points can then be redeemed for discounts, free products, or other custom rewards.

Beyond basic points, Growave extends its loyalty capabilities with advanced features crucial for fostering deeper customer relationships:

• VIP Tiers: Merchants can create tiered loyalty programs with escalating benefits, encouraging higher spending and repeat engagement. These VIP tiers and incentives for high-intent customers provide exclusive perks, early access to sales, or special gifts, motivating customers to achieve higher status within the brand's community.
• Referral Program: An integrated referral system allows existing customers to share unique referral links with friends, rewarding both the referrer and the referred party upon a successful purchase. This harnesses word-of-mouth marketing, turning loyal customers into brand advocates.
• Wishlist: The wishlist feature enables customers to save products they are interested in, providing valuable data for merchants and facilitating targeted marketing efforts (e.g., sending reminders for items left on a wishlist or notifying about price drops or back-in-stock items).
• Reviews & User-Generated Content (UGC): Growave includes powerful tools for collecting and showcasing authentic customer reviews, photo and video reviews, and Q&A sections. This social proof is vital for building trust, increasing conversion rates, and enriching product pages.
• Nudges (On-site reminders): These are dynamic prompts designed to encourage specific customer actions, such as completing a purchase or signing up for the loyalty program, directly on the merchant's website.

This integrated approach means all these retention tools work in concert, sharing data and providing a holistic view of customer engagement. For instance, loyalty points can be offered for submitting reviews, or VIP members might get boosted referral rewards. This interconnectedness aims to streamline operations and create a cohesive customer journey.

qiibee's Niche Loyalty Model

qiibee: Miles & More Loyalty operates on a fundamentally different premise. It does not provide an independent loyalty program for the merchant's store. Instead, it serves as a direct integration point with Miles & More, Europe's leading frequent flyer program. The core functionality allows Shopify merchants to:

• Reward Customers with Miles & More Miles: Shoppers can earn Miles & More Miles directly within the merchant's store for purchases. This leverages the existing allure and perceived value of a widely recognized loyalty currency.
• Allow Customers to Spend Miles in-store: Miles & More members can also redeem their accumulated Miles for purchases on the merchant's Shopify store, acting as a form of payment or discount.
• Tap into an Existing Network: The primary value proposition is access to Miles & More's extensive network of millions of high-spending members. This is presented as a customer acquisition channel, attracting individuals who are already engaged with the Miles & More program and possess an above-average income and brand affinity.
• Leverage Brand Awareness: For businesses, particularly in the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), partnering with Miles & More means leveraging its exceptional brand awareness to build trust and attract new customers.

This model is not about building a proprietary loyalty program from the ground up but rather about plugging into a massive, pre-existing loyalty infrastructure. It shifts the focus from managing an internal points system to becoming part of a larger, external reward ecosystem. The integration is designed to be straightforward, with the app description noting "no coding required."

Customer Experience and Personalization

The way each app allows for branding and personalization significantly impacts the customer's journey and perception of the loyalty program.

Customization and Branding for Growave

Growave offers extensive customization options, allowing merchants to tailor the look and feel of their loyalty program, reviews widgets, and other features to match their brand identity seamlessly. This includes:

• App Branding Customization: Merchants can modify colors, fonts, layouts, and wording for loyalty pages, pop-ups, review forms, and widgets. This ensures a consistent brand experience across all customer touchpoints.
• Dedicated Loyalty Page: Growth and Plus plans include a dedicated loyalty page where customers can view their points, VIP tier status, available rewards, and program rules. This page can be fully customized, providing a central hub for the loyalty experience within the merchant's storefront.
• Customizable Emails: Referral and review request emails can be fully branded and customized, maintaining a consistent tone and visual identity.
• Headless Commerce Support (Plus Plan): For advanced Shopify Plus merchants utilizing headless architectures, Growave offers API and SDK access, allowing for deep, custom integrations and frontend experiences. This enables brands to craft truly unique and highly personalized loyalty journeys.
• Custom Reward Actions: Higher-tier plans support custom reward actions, providing even greater flexibility in how customers earn and redeem points, which can be crucial for unique business models.

The emphasis here is on the merchant owning and controlling the loyalty experience, making it an integral part of their brand narrative.

The Miles & More Brand Experience

With qiibee: Miles & More Loyalty, the customer experience is intrinsically tied to the Miles & More brand. While customers interact with the merchant's Shopify store, the rewards mechanism is through Miles & More. This means:

• Leveraging External Brand Trust: Customers who are already Miles & More members immediately understand the value of the Miles they earn or spend, as they are part of a program they already trust and use.
• Standardized Loyalty Currency: The "Miles" are a universal currency within the Miles & More ecosystem, simplifying the reward proposition for customers already familiar with it.
• Limited Merchant Branding of Loyalty Program: The loyalty experience itself is less about the merchant's branded program and more about participating in the Miles & More network. The customization options for the loyalty mechanism would likely be focused on the integration points within the Shopify store (e.g., how the earning/spending options are displayed) rather than on designing a unique loyalty program look and feel for the merchant's brand. The app's integration ensures it "becomes part of the Miles & More loyalty program - no coding required!" implying a streamlined, standardized integration.

This approach is beneficial for merchants who want to tap into an established loyalty program without the overhead of building and managing their own, but it offers less flexibility in terms of creating a unique, branded loyalty experience specific to their store.

Pricing Structure and Value Proposition

Understanding the pricing models is crucial for merchants to evaluate the total cost of ownership and the return on investment for each app.

Growave's Tiered Pricing Model

Growave offers a tiered pricing structure that scales with the merchant's business needs, from a free plan suitable for small stores to an enterprise-level Plus plan. This allows for a pricing structure that scales as order volume grows.

• FREE Plan: This plan is ideal for new or smaller stores, offering basic loyalty points, a wishlist, and product reviews for up to 100 orders per month (with a total of 500 orders). It includes data imports/exports and 48-hour email support, though with Growave branding present. This provides a no-cost entry point to start building retention.
• ENTRY Plan ($49/month): For growing businesses, this plan unlocks advanced rewards, a referral program with fraud protection, on-site nudges, and automated review request email series. It adds Shopify POS and Shopify Flow integration, one key integration (e.g., Klaviyo), customizable emails, and 24/7 email support. This represents a significant step up in functionality for a modest monthly fee, supporting efforts in comparing plan fit against retention goals.
• GROWTH Plan ($199/month): This plan caters to established and rapidly expanding stores. It introduces VIP tiers, a dedicated loyalty page, Shopify POS Loyalty QR, points expiration, gift cards, account extensions, review attributes, Google Shopping Reviews, Instagram UGC, and back-in-stock wishlist emails. It also includes 5-star onboarding and 24/7 email/chat support. This tier offers sophisticated tools for enhancing customer loyalty and engagement.
• PLUS Plan ($499/month): Designed for high-volume and enterprise-level merchants, particularly Shopify Plus users, this plan includes checkout extensions, headless commerce support (API & SDK), custom loyalty page design, custom reward actions, B2B functionality, and unlimited integrations. It provides a dedicated customer success manager, a launch plan, and 24/7 email, live chat, and phone support. This tier represents a complete, high-performance retention suite with white-glove service, offering a clearer view of total retention-stack costs by consolidating multiple tools.

Growave's model aims to offer increasing value with each tier, consolidating multiple marketing functions into a single app, which can lead to a lower total cost of ownership compared to subscribing to several specialized apps.

qiibee's Pricing (or lack thereof in data)

The provided data for qiibee: Miles & More Loyalty does not include specific pricing plan information. This means merchants would need to contact qiibee ag directly for pricing details, which might involve custom quotes or performance-based agreements. Without transparent pricing, it is difficult to directly compare its value proposition against Growave's defined tiers.

Typically, partnerships with large, external loyalty programs like Miles & More can involve:

• Transaction Fees: A percentage or fixed fee per Mile earned or redeemed through the merchant's store.
• Setup Fees: An initial cost for integration and onboarding.
• Monthly Subscription Fees: A base fee for access to the platform and partnership.
• Minimum Commitments: Requirements for a certain volume of Miles transacted.

The value proposition for qiibee would likely be measured by the incremental customer acquisition and increased average order value (AOV) from the Miles & More network, offsetting any potential fees. Merchants interested in this app would need to conduct a thorough cost-benefit analysis based on the specific pricing provided by qiibee ag, considering the potential reach and conversion rates within the Miles & More audience.

Technical Integrations and Compatibility

An app's ability to integrate smoothly with a merchant's existing tech stack is critical for efficient operations and a unified customer experience.

Growave's Broad Integration Ecosystem

Growave is designed to be highly interoperable, seamlessly integrating with a wide array of popular Shopify apps and marketing tools. Its "Works With" list is extensive, reflecting its ambition as a central retention hub:

• Checkout & Shopify POS: Essential for integrating loyalty points and rewards directly into the purchase process, both online and in physical stores.
• Customer Accounts: Enhances the customer's portal experience, allowing them to manage their loyalty points, wishlists, and review submissions.
• Shopify Flow: Enables automation of loyalty-related tasks, such as triggering specific rewards or actions based on customer behavior.
• Page builders: Compatibility with Pagefly, LayoutHub, GemPages, and Shopney ensures that loyalty widgets and review displays can be easily incorporated into custom store designs.
• Email & SMS Marketing: Integrations with Klaviyo, Omnisend, Postscript, and PushOwl facilitate targeted marketing campaigns based on loyalty status, wishlist activity, or review requests. For example, merchants can use review automation that builds trust at purchase time to feed into email flows.
• Customer Service & Support: Integration with Gorgias and Attentive helps customer service teams manage loyalty inquiries and provide personalized support.
• Other Platforms: Compatibility with TikTok Shop and Recharge (for subscriptions) further broadens its utility for diverse business models.

The strength of Growave's integrations lies in its ability to connect the dots across different customer touchpoints, ensuring that loyalty, reviews, and referrals are considered holistically within the broader marketing and operational strategy. Its focus on being built for Shopify Plus also means it supports advanced storefront and checkout requirements, making it a powerful tool for capabilities designed for Shopify Plus scaling needs.

qiibee's Specialized Integrations

qiibee: Miles & More Loyalty has a more focused integration profile, which is expected given its niche purpose:

• Miles & More: This is the core integration, connecting the Shopify store directly to the Miles & More frequent flyer program's infrastructure.
• qiibee: The integration also works with qiibee, which is the underlying technology provider for the Miles & More blockchain-based loyalty solution.
• Online Store 2.0 theme: Compatibility with Shopify's modern theme architecture ensures easy setup and display within current Shopify storefronts.

The "Works With" list for qiibee is notably shorter, reflecting its singular purpose: to facilitate earning and spending Miles & More Miles. Merchants choosing this app are primarily interested in this specific partnership, rather than seeking a broad platform that integrates with numerous other marketing tools. Its simplicity of integration ("no coding required") indicates a streamlined process focused on its core function.

Support, Reliability, and Merchant Trust

The level of support and the overall reliability of an app are crucial factors influencing a merchant's operational efficiency and confidence in their chosen solution. App store reviews provide valuable insights into these aspects.

Growave's Support and Reputation

Growave has a substantial presence on the Shopify App Store, boasting 1,197 reviews with an impressive 4.8-star rating. This high volume of positive feedback is a strong indicator of merchant satisfaction and reliability. The extensive review count suggests a mature product with a large, active user base, and it reflects merchants' real-world experiences when assessing app-store ratings as a trust signal.

Growave's support structure is tiered, aligning with its pricing plans:

• 48-hour email support: Available on the FREE plan.
• 24/7 email support: Provided from the ENTRY plan onwards.
• 24/7 email/chat support: Included with the GROWTH plan.
• 24/7 email / live chat / phone support: Offered exclusively for PLUS plan users, alongside a dedicated customer success manager (CSM) and a launch plan.

This comprehensive support system, especially for higher-tier plans, signals a commitment to helping merchants succeed, from initial setup to ongoing optimization. The availability of a CSM for enterprise clients highlights a proactive approach to ensuring effective implementation and utilization of the platform.

qiibee's Support and Emerging Presence

qiibee: Miles & More Loyalty has 2 reviews with a perfect 5-star rating. While a perfect rating is positive, the very low review count suggests a newer or highly specialized app with a much smaller user base on Shopify. This makes it challenging to draw broad conclusions about long-term reliability or widespread support experiences. A limited review base means less collective merchant feedback to checking merchant feedback and app-store performance signals.

The provided data does not specify qiibee's support channels or tiers. Merchants considering this app would need to inquire directly about their support model, response times, and available resources. Given its specialized integration, support might be more focused on technical aspects of the Miles & More connection and less on broader loyalty strategy. The developer, qiibee ag, is a specialized company in blockchain loyalty solutions, suggesting expertise in their specific domain.

Scalability and Specific Use Cases

The ideal fit for each app also depends on the merchant's current scale, future growth ambitions, and specific strategic goals.

Growave for Diverse Growth Stages

Growave's all-in-one nature and tiered pricing make it highly scalable, catering to a wide range of e-commerce businesses:

• Startups and Small Businesses: The FREE and ENTRY plans provide essential loyalty, review, and wishlist functionalities at low or no cost, allowing businesses to establish retention strategies early on.
• Growing DTC Brands: The GROWTH plan offers sophisticated features like VIP tiers and incentives for high-intent customers and advanced review tools, empowering brands to deepen customer engagement as they scale.
• Shopify Plus and Enterprise: The PLUS plan, with its checkout extensions, headless support, dedicated CSM, and unlimited integrations, is specifically built for high-volume operations and complex enterprise environments. It provides features aligned with enterprise retention requirements, ensuring the platform can handle the demands of significant scale and custom development.
• B2B Selling: Growave's description explicitly mentions boosting B2B selling, indicating features or configurations that support wholesale or business-to-business loyalty programs, which often have different requirements than DTC.

For merchants who prioritize building an owned, comprehensive retention program that grows with their business and reduces reliance on multiple single-function apps, Growave presents a robust, long-term solution.

qiibee for Targeted Brand Reach

qiibee: Miles & More Loyalty is suitable for a specific type of merchant and strategic objective:

• Brands Seeking Customer Acquisition through External Loyalty: Its primary value is tapping into the Miles & More network for customer acquisition, particularly of high-spending individuals. This can be very attractive for brands looking to quickly expand their customer base with pre-qualified, affluent shoppers.
• Businesses with Strong Presence in DACH Region: The "exceptional Brand Awareness in the DACH region" highlights its particular effectiveness for brands targeting or operating within Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
• Niche Market for Travel-Oriented Customers: Businesses whose products or services align with the interests of frequent flyers or those who value travel rewards might find this integration particularly compelling.
• Simplicity over Complexity: For merchants who prefer a plug-and-play solution to leverage an existing loyalty program rather than managing their own intricate system, qiibee offers a straightforward path.

This app is less about building an internal loyalty program and more about participating in a broad, established ecosystem to drive acquisition and provide a unique value proposition for existing Miles & More members. It's a strategic partnership for brands whose target audience overlaps significantly with Miles & More's membership.

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

Many e-commerce merchants experience "app fatigue"—a common challenge stemming from the proliferation of specialized tools needed to run a successful online store. This often leads to tool sprawl, where a business relies on numerous single-function apps for loyalty, reviews, referrals, and wishlists. The consequences include fragmented data across different systems, increased operational overhead from managing multiple subscriptions and interfaces, integration headaches, and an inconsistent customer experience as shoppers jump between different app interfaces. Ultimately, this can divert resources and focus away from core growth initiatives.

Growave approaches this challenge with a "More Growth, Less Stack" philosophy, aiming to consolidate essential retention functionalities into one cohesive platform. By integrating loyalty points, loyalty points and rewards designed to lift repeat purchases, VIP tiers, referrals, product reviews, photo and video UGC, and wishlists, Growave provides a unified solution that addresses multiple growth levers from a single dashboard. This integration helps mitigate the issues of data silos and inconsistent customer journeys, allowing merchants to execute a more streamlined and effective retention strategy. If consolidating tools is a priority, start by choosing a plan built for long-term value.

This unified approach benefits merchants by offering a centralized hub for managing customer interactions across various touchpoints. From collecting collecting and showcasing authentic customer reviews to rewarding customer milestones, all data and actions are within a single system, providing a holistic view of customer lifetime value. For growing and enterprise brands, particularly those on Shopify Plus, this consolidation becomes even more critical, ensuring features aligned with enterprise retention requirements are met without adding unnecessary complexity to the tech stack. This leads to a clearer view of total retention-stack costs and simplified management. Merchants can gain confidence by checking merchant feedback and app-store performance signals that reflect positive experiences with this integrated model.

Conclusion

For merchants choosing between Growave: Loyalty & Wishlist and qiibee: Miles & More Loyalty, the decision comes down to their strategic priorities: building an internal, owned retention ecosystem versus leveraging an external, established loyalty program.

Growave: Loyalty & Wishlist is well-suited for businesses that wish to build a comprehensive, branded loyalty program integrated with reviews, referrals, and wishlists, all managed from a single platform. Its robust feature set, extensive customization, and tiered pricing plans cater to diverse growth stages, from nascent startups to large-scale Shopify Plus enterprises. Merchants looking for an all-in-one solution to reduce app sprawl and streamline their retention efforts will find Growave a powerful tool for cultivating long-term customer relationships and increasing lifetime value.

qiibee: Miles & More Loyalty is an excellent fit for merchants whose primary goal is to tap into the high-value customer base of the Miles & More frequent flyer program, particularly those targeting the DACH region. It offers a straightforward way to acquire new, affluent customers and provide a unique earning/spending opportunity for existing Miles & More members. This app is ideal for businesses seeking a specialized partnership to drive customer acquisition through an internationally recognized loyalty brand, rather than building their own internal points-based system.

Ultimately, the choice hinges on whether a merchant prioritizes building a rich, owned loyalty experience that integrates multiple retention tools, or seeks to leverage a powerful external loyalty program for targeted customer acquisition. For businesses focused on consolidating their retention efforts and achieving better operational efficiency by using fewer apps, carefully selecting plans that reduce stacked tooling costs is an important consideration. To reduce app fatigue and run retention from one place, start by reviewing the Shopify App Store listing merchants install from.

FAQ

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

An all-in-one platform like Growave integrates multiple retention functionalities—such as loyalty programs, reviews, referrals, and wishlists—into a single app. This approach can reduce app fatigue, minimize data silos, offer a more consistent customer experience, and potentially lower the total cost of ownership by avoiding multiple subscriptions. Specialized apps, like qiibee, excel at a single, focused task, often providing deep functionality for that specific purpose. They are ideal when a merchant needs a very particular tool and does not require broader integration.

Is loyalty marketing effective for all types of e-commerce businesses?

Loyalty marketing, in its various forms, can be effective for almost any e-commerce business that relies on repeat purchases and customer lifetime value. While the specific strategies might differ (e.g., points for consumables, VIP tiers for luxury goods, unique experiences for niche markets), fostering customer loyalty helps reduce churn, increases average order value, and turns customers into brand advocates. The key is to design a program that aligns with the brand's values and customer expectations.

What should merchants consider when evaluating app pricing?

When evaluating app pricing, merchants should look beyond the monthly fee. Consider the feature set included in each tier, how it aligns with current and future business needs, and whether the pricing scales fairly with order volume or active users. It is also important to consider the total cost of ownership, including potential setup fees, transaction fees, and the cost savings from consolidating multiple apps. Transparent pricing, as offered by Growave, allows for easier budgeting and forecasting.

How important are reviews and user-generated content for customer retention?

Reviews and user-generated content (UGC) are crucial for both acquisition and retention. They build trust with new customers, validate purchasing decisions, and provide social proof. For existing customers, requesting reviews can foster a sense of community and involvement, making them feel valued. Positive reviews encourage repeat purchases and demonstrate a brand's commitment to quality. UGC, such as customer photos and videos, further authenticates the brand and creates aspirational content that can drive both engagement and conversion.