Rivo: Loyalty Program, Rewards vs. Gather: Refer a Friend: An In-Depth Comparison

Introduction

Selecting the right retention tools for a Shopify storefront involves a careful balance between specific functionality and technical simplicity. Many merchants face the challenge of deciding whether to prioritize a robust points-based loyalty program or a dedicated referral engine designed primarily for customer acquisition. This choice directly impacts how a brand interacts with its existing customer base and how it incentivizes them to introduce new buyers to the store.

Short answer: Rivo: Loyalty Program, Rewards is a broad-spectrum loyalty platform that handles points, rewards, and referrals with a focus on ease of use and weekly product updates. Gather: Refer a Friend is a specialized referral tool that focuses heavily on customer-to-customer acquisition and lead generation through tiered rewards. While both apps solve specific retention problems, brands often find that managing these separate functions across multiple apps leads to increased technical debt and fragmented customer data.

The goal of this analysis is to provide a neutral evaluation of Rivo: Loyalty Program, Rewards and Gather: Refer a Friend. By examining their features, pricing, and integration capabilities, merchants can determine which solution aligns with their current growth stage and long-term retention strategy.

Rivo: Loyalty Program, Rewards vs. Gather: Refer a Friend: At a Glance

Core Functional Differences and Retention Strategies

The fundamental difference between these two applications lies in their architectural focus. Rivo: Loyalty Program, Rewards is designed to be a central hub for loyalty. It utilizes a traditional points-based system where customers earn rewards for various actions, such as making a purchase, following social media accounts, or celebrating a birthday. This creates a continuous engagement loop that encourages repeat visits. The platform also includes referral functionality, but it is treated as one component of a broader loyalty ecosystem.

Gather: Refer a Friend focuses almost exclusively on the mechanics of the referral. It is built to turn existing customers into an acquisition channel. Rather than just offering a simple "give ten, get ten" discount, Gather allows merchants to build more complex, tiered reward systems. For instance, a customer might receive a small reward for their first referral and a larger, more exclusive reward after their fifth. This milestone approach is particularly effective for brands that rely heavily on word-of-mouth and want to gamify the acquisition process.

Another distinction is how these tools handle lead generation. Gather includes specific features for newsletter growth and SMS lead-gen through its referral invitations. Merchants can use the tool to grow their marketing lists even if the referral does not immediately result in a sale. Rivo focuses more on the post-purchase experience and long-term customer lifetime value through VIP tiers and points expiration logic, which are standard features in its higher-tier plans.

Examining Pricing Structure and Long-Term Value

Evaluating the cost of these tools requires looking past the monthly subscription fee and considering how the costs scale with store volume. scanning reviews to understand real-world adoption helps in understanding how merchants view the value of these apps at different price points.

Rivo offers a free plan that is limited by order volume, specifically up to 200 monthly orders. This makes it an accessible option for very small stores or those just starting to test loyalty mechanics. As a brand grows, the Scale plan at $49 per month introduces essential features like VIP tiers, points expiry, and advanced branding with custom CSS and fonts. For enterprise-level stores, the Plus plan at $499 per month provides checkout extensions and developer toolkits, which are necessary for deep customization and advanced analytics.

Gather: Refer a Friend takes a different approach to its free tier. Instead of counting total store orders, it limits usage based on referred sales and the number of advocates. The free plan supports up to $1,000 worth of referred sales and up to 250 advocates. This is a performance-based pricing model that allows merchants to see an actual return on investment before paying for the service. The Business plan at $350 per month removes commission fees and supports up to 5,000 advocates and 500,000 site views. evaluating feature coverage across plans is essential for merchants to ensure they do not outgrow their chosen solution too quickly.

Customization and Technical Control

For merchants who prioritize brand consistency, the level of customization offered by an app is a critical factor. Rivo provides basic branding on its free plan, but the real control is found in the Scale and Plus tiers. With custom CSS and font support, brands can ensure the loyalty widget and dedicated pages match their storefront exactly. The Rivo Developer Toolkit, available on the Plus plan, allows for even deeper integration, making it a viable choice for brands with in-house developers or specific technical requirements.

Gather: Refer a Friend emphasizes the "Refer a Friend" experience on the site, allowing for the embedding of referral dashboards with a single click. It includes a drag-and-drop editor for emails and a customizable sidebar for post-purchase calls to action. While it may not offer the same level of "developer toolkit" depth as Rivo, its focus on the user interface for advocates and friends is highly specialized. The ability to design the embedded dashboard ensures that the referral process feels like a native part of the customer journey rather than a third-party add-on.

Integration Ecosystem and Operational Fit

The ability of an app to communicate with the rest of the tech stack determines how much manual work a merchant has to do. Rivo: Loyalty Program, Rewards lists integrations with several major Shopify tools, including Klaviyo, Gorgias, Postscript, and Attentive. It also works with Shopify POS and Flow, which is important for omnichannel merchants. This connectivity ensures that loyalty points and VIP status can be used in email marketing campaigns or customer support interactions.

Gather: Refer a Friend also places a heavy emphasis on email marketing integrations, specifically working with Klaviyo, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, and Dotdigital. The focus here is on the flow of data between the referral engine and the email service provider. For example, merchants can enroll members into the referral program directly from a Klaviyo flow. However, Gather does not list as many direct integrations with customer service tools like Gorgias or SMS platforms like Attentive in the provided data, which might be a consideration for stores that rely heavily on those channels.

When checking merchant feedback and app-store performance signals, it is clear that integration reliability is a top priority for growing brands. A tool that fails to sync points or referral codes correctly can lead to significant customer frustration and increased support tickets.

Analyzing Support and Developer Reliability

Rivo highlights its customer success team as a primary benefit, noting 24/7 live chat support. The developer, Rivo, also mentions shipping weekly product updates to stay current with Shopify's evolving technology. This suggests a high level of agility and a commitment to keeping the app modern. With a rating of 4.8, though based on a single review in the provided data, the initial sentiment is positive, though the low volume of reviews makes it harder to assess long-term reliability at scale compared to more established apps.

Gather: Refer a Friend holds a 5-star rating based on 16 reviews, indicating a high level of satisfaction among its user base. The platform offers set-up consultations on its Business plan, which can be invaluable for merchants who want to ensure their tiered reward system is configured correctly from day one. This high-touch support model is beneficial for complex referral strategies that require more than just a "plug-and-play" installation.

Managing App Stack Complexity and Overhead

Every app added to a Shopify store increases the total cost of ownership and the potential for technical conflict. Using Rivo for loyalty and Gather for specialized referrals might seem like a way to get the best of both worlds, but this approach introduces significant overhead. Merchants must manage two different billing cycles, two separate sets of customer data, and two distinct user interfaces for their shoppers.

This "app sprawl" often leads to a disjointed customer experience. A shopper might see one set of rewards in their loyalty portal and an entirely different set of incentives in the referral sidebar. Keeping these messages consistent across multiple platforms requires constant manual synchronization. Furthermore, a clearer view of total retention-stack costs often reveals that paying for two mid-to-high tier apps is significantly more expensive than using a single, integrated platform that covers both needs.

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

As brands grow, the limitations of a fragmented app stack become more apparent. Managing separate tools for loyalty, referrals, and reviews creates data silos that prevent a holistic view of the customer journey. When a brand uses one app for loyalty points and another for referrals, it becomes difficult to understand how these two retention strategies interact. For instance, does a high referral rate lead to higher loyalty tier placement? In a fragmented stack, answering this question requires manual data exports and complex spreadsheets.

Growave offers a different path through its "More Growth, Less Stack" philosophy. By combining loyalty, rewards, referrals, reviews, and wishlists into a single platform, it eliminates the need for multiple subscriptions and reduces the technical weight on the storefront. This integrated approach ensures that the customer experience is consistent across every touchpoint. When a customer earns points for a review, those points are immediately visible in their loyalty dashboard, and their progress toward the next VIP tier is updated in real time.

If consolidating tools is a priority, start by choosing a plan built for long-term value.

The benefits of an all-in-one system extend beyond just cost savings. Because the modules are built to work together, there is zero risk of integration conflicts between the retention tools. Merchants can deploy loyalty points and rewards designed to lift repeat purchases while simultaneously collecting and showcasing authentic customer reviews. This synergy allows for more creative marketing strategies, such as offering bonus loyalty points to customers who refer a friend or leave a photo review.

For teams that are unsure how to transition from a scattered stack to an integrated one, a tailored walkthrough based on store goals and constraints can provide clarity. This guided evaluation helps stakeholders understand how a unified platform can simplify daily operations while improving the core metrics that matter, such as repeat purchase rate and customer lifetime value. By confirming the install path used by Shopify merchants, brands can begin the process of simplifying their technical environment.

Furthermore, an integrated platform provides a more cohesive data layer. Marketing teams can segment their audience based on a combination of behaviors—such as high wishlist activity, multiple successful referrals, or top-tier VIP status—without having to stitch data together from three different apps. This level of insight allows for much more personalized and effective marketing automation.

Retention Strategies for Different Business Models

The choice between a specialized tool and an integrated platform often depends on the specific goals of the brand. A company that sells a unique, high-ticket item might prioritize a referral engine like Gather to drive new acquisitions through word-of-mouth. In this scenario, the tiered reward system is the primary driver of growth.

Conversely, a brand selling consumable goods with a high purchase frequency might find Rivo's points-based loyalty more effective for keeping customers coming back every month. However, both of these brands would eventually benefit from the cross-functional capabilities of a unified system. For example, using social proof that supports conversion and AOV alongside VIP tiers and incentives for high-intent customers creates a multi-layered retention strategy that a single-function app cannot match.

For high-growth stores, the ability to scale without adding more apps is a major operational advantage. selecting plans that reduce stacked tooling costs allows merchants to reinvest those savings into their marketing budget or product development. A product walkthrough aligned to Shopify store maturity can help determine exactly when a brand should make the switch to an all-in-one solution to avoid the pitfalls of app fatigue.

Conclusion

For merchants choosing between Rivo: Loyalty Program, Rewards and Gather: Refer a Friend, the decision comes down to whether the immediate priority is a broad loyalty ecosystem or a highly specialized referral and lead-generation tool. Rivo excels at providing a modern, Shopify-native loyalty experience with weekly updates and a points-based structure that is easy to implement. Gather: Refer a Friend is a strong choice for brands that want to build complex, milestone-driven referral campaigns and grow their email lists through customer-to-customer invitations.

However, as the store matures, the limitations of using separate specialized apps often become a bottleneck for growth. The administrative burden of managing different platforms, combined with the higher total cost of ownership, can slow down a marketing team's ability to execute complex retention playbooks. Moving toward an integrated platform allows a brand to manage loyalty points and rewards designed to lift repeat purchases alongside reviews and wishlists from a single dashboard. This consolidated approach provides the consistency and data clarity needed to scale effectively in a modern e-commerce environment.

To reduce app fatigue and run retention from one place, start by reviewing the Shopify App Store listing merchants install from.

FAQ

Is Rivo or Gather better for a new Shopify store?

Rivo is often better for new stores that want to establish a standard loyalty program quickly, as its free plan is based on order volume rather than referred sales. Gather is a strong option if the store’s primary goal is rapid acquisition through a "refer-a-friend" campaign. Both apps offer free tiers that allow for experimentation before a financial commitment is required.

Can Gather: Refer a Friend help with email marketing?

Yes, Gather includes specific features designed for newsletter growth and lead generation. It integrates with major email service providers like Klaviyo and Mailchimp, allowing merchants to capture new emails during the referral process. This makes it a useful tool for brands that prioritize list building as a core part of their acquisition strategy.

Does Rivo support custom branding?

Rivo provides branding capabilities on all plans, but advanced customization, including custom CSS and fonts, is reserved for the Scale plan ($49/month). For brands that need complete control over the loyalty experience, the Plus plan offers a developer toolkit to build custom integrations and interfaces.

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

An all-in-one platform reduces tool sprawl by combining multiple retention features into a single application. This leads to a lower total cost of ownership, as merchants pay one subscription fee instead of several. It also ensures that customer data is unified, allowing for more consistent messaging and better insights into how different retention activities—like reviews, referrals, and loyalty points—work together to drive growth. Using an integrated system helps avoid the technical conflicts and inconsistent user experiences that often arise when multiple specialized apps are used simultaneously.