Joy Loyalty vs BON: 2026 Comparison

Here's a question most Shopify merchants get wrong: They assume the best loyalty program is the one with the most features. In reality, the best one is the one your customers will actually use—and that fits your operational reality without creating headaches.

When it comes to Joy Loyalty and BON Loyalty, both command impressive 4.9-star ratings with over 1,500 reviews each. But they're built for different problems. One prioritizes simplicity and cost-effectiveness for emerging brands. The other trades complexity for scalability and global reach. Your choice depends on where your business actually is, not where you hope it'll be in five years.

Joy Loyalty vs BON: A 2026 Comparison for Shopify Merchants

The loyalty program market has matured significantly. Merchants no longer need to choose between a barebones free tool and an enterprise system costing thousands monthly. But with good options come harder decisions. This guide walks through everything you need to know to pick between these two solid platforms.

Understanding Joy Loyalty: Features and Offerings

Joy Loyalty markets itself as a sophisticated rewards program for stores that care about aesthetics and customer experience. The platform emphasizes elegant design, deep customization, and seamless integration with your brand identity.

Key Features:

Joy Loyalty's points system lets customers earn rewards for purchases, account creation, birthday interactions, and social shares. Redemption options range from percentage discounts to free shipping, free products, or custom rewards. The VIP tier system creates tiered loyalty experiences—Bronze, Silver, Gold structures that let you reward your highest-value customers with exclusive benefits. Referral programs are built-in, allowing customers to earn points for bringing friends into your ecosystem. Customization extends across loyalty widgets, landing pages, and email templates, all designed to match your brand perfectly.

Joy Loyalty: Pros

• Offers one of the lowest starting prices for a paid loyalty plan at only $25 per month
• Features a very clean and minimalist frontend design that doesn't distract from the store's products
• Their support team is known for being extremely fast and responsive to small store owners
• Allows an unlimited number of loyalty members even on the completely free plan level
• Extensive customization options let you create a branded loyalty experience without hiring developers

Joy Loyalty: Cons

• The free plan is limited to only 200 orders per month, which is quickly reached by growing stores
• Does not offer advanced VIP tier logic or the ability to create complex status-based rewards
• The library of third-party integrations is very small compared to more established loyalty apps
• The analytics suite is basic and only tracks the total points issued and redeemed each month
• There is currently no support for Shopify POS or physical in-store reward redemptions

One merchant I worked with ran a fashion brand doing roughly $15,000 in monthly revenue. They switched to Joy Loyalty specifically because the $25 entry point let them test the loyalty concept without committing $100+ monthly. Their clean product pages—previously cluttered with loyalty widgets—became breathing room for product photography. That matters more than most platforms acknowledge.

Understanding BON Loyalty: Features and Offerings

BON Loyalty positions itself as the solution for established brands and rapid-growth scenarios. The platform emphasizes scalability, integration breadth, and operational reliability at higher transaction volumes.

Key Features:

BON offers flexible points programs with multiple earning mechanics and redemption pathways. VIP tiers create exclusive status levels with escalating benefits. Referral systems track new customer acquisition through existing members. The platform integrates deeply with Shopify's ecosystem—Shopify POS, Shopify Flow, email platforms like Klaviyo and Omnisend, review apps including Judge.me and Fera, page builders such as PageFly, and headless commerce solutions like Hydrogen.

BON Loyalty: Pros

• Allows for much higher order limits on the lower plans, making it more scalable for mid-market brands
• Is built to handle established brands with high traffic and thousands of loyalty transactions per day
• Includes a native Shopify POS integration that is reliable and easy for retail staff to use
• Features a detailed 'Anti-Cheat' suite that automatically flags and blocks fraudulent referrals
• Provides mass-email capabilities that allow you to send point updates to your entire customer list
• Supports 250+ languages for widgets and emails, crucial for international expansion

BON Loyalty: Cons

• The entry-level paid plans are more expensive than Joy Loyalty for stores just starting out
• The user interface is slightly more complex and may take more time for a beginner to learn
• Initial loading speed of the on-site widgets is slightly slower due to the high volume of features
• Does not include native affiliate tracking features found in some higher-end competitors
• Requires upgrading to the 'Growth' plan to unlock the most powerful VIP tier and branding features

I've watched retailers with 5+ physical locations try to implement point-of-sale loyalty using platforms without proper Shopify POS integration. It's painful. BON's native POS support eliminates that friction entirely—your in-store team can apply points instantly, same as online.

Joy Loyalty vs BON Loyalty: A Detailed Comparison

Pricing Options & Value

Joy Loyalty's free plan covers unlimited loyalty members but caps at 200 orders monthly. Their paid tier starts at $25/month and scales with order volume. This creates genuine accessibility for testing.

BON's free plan is more limited—it restricts functionality like VIP tier setup entirely. Paid plans start higher but accommodate significantly more orders. For a store processing 500+ orders monthly, BON becomes cheaper relative to Joy's pricing structure.

Here's where merchants often stumble: Choosing based on monthly price alone. A $25 plan that becomes unusable at 250 orders costs more (in operational pain) than a $79 plan that handles 10,000 orders reliably. Check out the best free Shopify loyalty programs to understand what free actually means across platforms.

Core Loyalty Features Comparison

Both platforms offer points programs, VIP tiers, and referrals. The meaningful differences emerge in sophistication.

Joy excels at simplicity. Its points system is straightforward—1 point per dollar, 100 points equals $10 off. No confusion. VIP tiers exist but lack advanced conditional logic. This is intentional: simpler to manage, faster to implement.

BON builds for complexity. You can create nuanced earning rules—double points on weekends, bonus multipliers for specific products, tier progression based on rolling 90-day spend. The anti-cheat suite prevents exploitation. Understand the strategic choice between loyalty structure like points vs. tiers to determine what serves your brand's actual needs.

Customization & Branding

Joy Loyalty provides extensive CSS customization for loyalty widgets and pages. You can match colors, fonts, and design language perfectly. This appeals to brands treating loyalty as a branded touchpoint, not just a backend system.

BON offers solid customization but requires upgrading to the Growth plan for the most powerful branding controls. The trade-off: broader integrations over customization depth.

Integrations & Ecosystem

This is where BON pulls ahead meaningfully.

Joy integrates with basic Shopify infrastructure but lacks Shopify POS support and has limited third-party connections. If you're email-only, this barely matters. If you have physical retail or use specialized tools, it stings.

BON connects with Shopify POS (critical for omnichannel), Shopify Flow (automation), Klaviyo, Omnisend, Judge.me, Fera, PageFly, and Hydrogen. Learn about omnichannel loyalty solutions connecting your Shopify POS to understand why this matters for retail operations.

User Experience, Setup, and Customer Support

Both apps score high on ease of use. Joy's interface is more minimal—fewer options, less to learn. BON's is richer—more capabilities, steeper initial learning curve.

Joy provides 24/7 live chat support. Response times are genuinely fast. BON offers live chat on higher-tier plans, which shifts support access based on subscription level. For emerging merchants, Joy's support accessibility is a real advantage.

Language Support

This distinction matters if you sell internationally. BON supports 250+ languages for widgets and emails. Joy offers 6 preset language options with automated translation. For a multilingual store, BON is purpose-built. For single-market brands, this difference is irrelevant.

Ideal Customer Profile: Who is Each App Best For?

Joy Loyalty shines for:

• Early-stage brands ($5K-$50K monthly revenue) testing loyalty concepts without major upfront investment
• Fashion and beauty merchants prioritizing aesthetic presentation (Joy is popular with these verticals)
• Merchants seeking exceptional support and willing to handle technical limitations in exchange
• Stores with email-only customer engagement (no POS, limited integrations needed)

BON Loyalty excels for:

• Mid-market and established brands ($100K+ monthly revenue) handling high transaction volumes
• Retailers with physical locations requiring Shopify POS integration
• International merchants needing multi-language support across 250+ languages
• Businesses operating complex loyalty mechanics—conditional rules, anti-fraud detection, mass communications
• Learn how loyalty programs work for fashion brands to see category-specific strategies that apply to both platforms

Considerations for Switching / Migration

Migrating between loyalty platforms involves exporting customer data, points balances, and tier status from your current system, then importing into the new one. Both Joy and BON support data migration, though complexity varies based on your current setup.

Direct your technical team to reach out to each platform's support early. Some data transforms smoothly. Others require manual cleanup. Starting this conversation before committing prevents nasty surprises mid-migration. Follow a guide to building a retail loyalty program that includes modern migration considerations.

Conclusion: Making Your Decision

Joy Loyalty and BON Loyalty both deliver on their core promise: increasing customer retention and lifetime value. They're just solving for different business stages.

Choose Joy if you're emerging, value support responsiveness, and prioritize clean design over feature breadth. Choose BON if you're scaling, need POS integration, operate globally, or require sophisticated loyalty mechanics.

The honest truth: Either platform beats running no loyalty program at all.

An increase of 5% in customer retention can lead to over 25% increase in profit. The friction you're experiencing right now—customers forgetting you between purchases, ad costs rising, repeat purchase rates flatling—these improve with any solid loyalty system.

Test both. Most offer free plans. See which interface feels natural, which support team responds first, which feature set matches your actual operational needs. The best loyalty program is the one you'll use consistently.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Do both Joy Loyalty and BON Loyalty offer a free plan?

Yes. Joy's free plan includes unlimited members up to 200 orders monthly. BON's free plan has tighter restrictions, particularly around VIP tier setup. Both serve as legitimate testing grounds, though Joy's is more generous.

Q: Which app is better for international stores?

BON Loyalty generally works better for international expansion. Supporting 250+ languages across widgets and emails versus Joy's 6 preset languages makes BON the clear choice if you operate across multiple countries or language markets.

Q: Can I create VIP tiers with the free versions?

Joy Loyalty's free plan includes basic tier functionality. BON's free plan explicitly restricts VIP tier creation entirely. If tiered loyalty is essential to your strategy, Joy's free plan offers more here.

Q: Which app integrates better with other Shopify tools?

BON has the broader integration ecosystem—Shopify POS, Flow, email platforms, review apps, page builders. Joy has fewer integrations but covers the essentials for many merchants. If you're omnichannel or use specialized tools, BON wins.

TLDR

Joy Loyalty and BON Loyalty both deliver 4.9-star experiences but serve different business stages. Joy excels at affordability ($25/month entry), beautiful design, and responsive support—ideal for emerging brands testing loyalty concepts. BON handles higher order volumes, includes native Shopify POS integration, supports 250+ languages, and offers advanced fraud detection—better for scaling brands with physical retail or international ambitions. Choose Joy if you prioritize cost and support responsiveness. Choose BON if you need scalability, omnichannel capabilities, or global reach. Either beats running no loyalty program at all.