Switching loyalty platforms does not necessarily mean losing every customer balance or disrupting your retention program. Rivo provides a CSV-based workflow for importing supported loyalty data from Growave. The official migration guide shows merchants how to export a report from Growave, upload the CSV through Rivo’s dashboard, and import customers’ current points balances. Rivo’s general CSV tools also support fields such as VIP tiers, birthdates, activation dates, and store-credit balances when the file follows Rivo’s accepted format.
Merchants can manage the migration themselves or work with Rivo’s team through its onboarding and migration services. Implementation timing varies according to data quality, program complexity, design work, integrations, testing, and the speed of merchant approvals.
Key Takeaways
- Rivo supports CSV imports for current points balances and other documented loyalty fields.
- Growave exports should be reviewed and formatted carefully before import.
- Rivo’s current Scale plan starts at $49+ per month.
- Plus is currently listed at $499 per month, while Enterprise uses custom pricing.
- Rivo documents migration services for supported paid plan tiers.
- Shopify has retired Shopify Scripts and moved merchants toward Shopify Functions and Checkout Extensibility.
- Company-reported infrastructure and customer results should be treated as specific Rivo claims rather than guaranteed outcomes.
Understanding the Shift: Why Shopify Architecture Matters
Shopify has retired several older customization methods. Shopify Scripts ceased executing on June 30, 2026. Checkout.liquid is no longer supported for the information, shipping, and payment stages, and legacy customization methods for the thank-you and order-status pages were sunset in 2025.
For loyalty-platform buyers, this makes current Shopify compatibility an important evaluation criterion. Merchants should assess whether a platform supports Shopify’s current extension framework, discount system, customer accounts, theme architecture, and automation tools.
Baymard Institute’s research places the average documented ecommerce cart-abandonment rate at about 70%. Its research identifies unexpected costs and other checkout-friction issues among the common reasons shoppers leave. A loyalty redemption experience should therefore minimize additional steps rather than add new obstacles.
Rivo is built specifically for Shopify and advertises features that include:
- Checkout extensions for loyalty touchpoints
- Compatibility with Shopify’s discount infrastructure
- Theme app extensions
- Shopify Flow integration
- Support for Shopify customer-account experiences
Merchants should still test every extension on their own theme and checkout configuration. Performance and compatibility can vary according to the rest of the store’s technology stack.
The Evolution of Shopify and Loyalty Apps
Shopify’s supported architecture now emphasizes app extensions and Shopify Functions rather than checkout.liquid and Shopify Scripts. This does not mean that every older or all-in-one platform is incompatible. It means merchants should verify how each provider has adapted to Shopify’s current development standards.
Rivo focuses on retention products for Shopify, including loyalty, referrals, memberships, customer accounts, cashback, store credit, wallet passes, and wishlists. That narrower platform focus may suit brands that want to manage retention separately from reviews or user-generated content.
Demystifying Loyalty Programs: What Effective Ecommerce Programs Include
High-performing ecommerce loyalty programs often combine several elements:
- Flexible earning and redemption rules
- VIP tiers tied to defined qualification criteria
- Checkout and customer-account touchpoints
- Referral campaigns with qualification controls
- Email and SMS integration
- Clear reporting on participation, redemption, and revenue attribution
Examples from Rivo Customer Case Studies
Rivo publishes customer case studies showing how individual brands have structured their programs. These are examples from specific implementations and should not be treated as typical or guaranteed results.
- Kitsch: Rivo’s case study reports that Kitsch’s highest-tier customers purchased almost nine times more frequently than the comparison group. The published materials describe this as an 8.7x higher repeat-purchase rate for top-tier customers.
- HexClad: Rivo reports that HexClad generated more than $450,000 in referral revenue during the first 90 days of its program. The case study also reports a 17% lift in average order value among referred customers and a 92x return on the program investment.
- OSEA Malibu: Rivo’s published customer materials report a 77% repeat-purchase rate among customers who redeemed rewards. The result is specific to OSEA’s customer base and program design.
- Nuuds: Rivo’s case-study materials report a 3.2x lift in repeat purchase rate associated with the apparel brand’s paid membership program.
These examples illustrate possible program designs and outcomes, but they do not establish that the software alone caused each result.
Making the Switch: Your Migration Path
Rivo’s official Growave migration guide describes a CSV-based process. Merchants should review the exported data before importing it because available Growave fields and Rivo’s accepted import columns may not correspond perfectly in every account.
Step 1: Export Customer Data from Growave
In Growave, open the Rewards Analytics area, create a report, select the fields needed for the migration, and send the CSV export to the appropriate email address.
Before proceeding, inspect the file and confirm that it contains the records you intend to transfer. At minimum, verify customer email addresses and points balances. Any additional fields should be compared with Rivo’s current CSV template.
Step 2: Prepare and Import the File in Rivo
After installing Rivo, go to Settings, CSV Imports, and Import Loyalty Data. Download Rivo’s current template and make sure the column headings and values follow the required structure.
Rivo’s documented standard loyalty-import fields include:
- Points Balance
- Birthdate
- VIP Tier
- Activation Date
- Credits Balance
The import works only for customers who already exist in the Shopify customer list. It does not create new Shopify customer profiles.
Rivo accepts CSV uploads of up to 50MB. Larger files should be divided into multiple uploads. Processing time depends on file size. Small files may finish in under a minute, while the Growave migration guide notes that an upload may take up to one hour.
The import dashboard shows statuses such as Pending, Processing, and Completed.
Step 3: Rebuild Program Rules
A customer-data import does not recreate every part of the existing Growave program. Merchants should rebuild and verify:
- Earning rules
- Redemption options
- VIP qualification rules
- Loyalty-page content
- Email and SMS messaging
- Referral campaign settings
- Onsite widgets
- Integrations and automation flows
This is also an opportunity to remove underused rewards, simplify thresholds, and confirm the financial liability associated with outstanding points or store credit.
Step 4: Validate Before Launch
Before announcing the new program, test the imported data and customer experience in a controlled environment. Review representative customer profiles with different balances and tiers. Confirm that earning, redemption, customer-account displays, referral links, email events, and checkout extensions behave as expected.
Avoid running two active loyalty systems in a way that allows customers to earn or redeem the same value twice. Any overlap should be planned carefully with both providers.
What Can Be Imported
Rivo’s standard loyalty CSV supports:
- Current points balances
- Store-credit balances
- VIP tiers
- Birthdates
- Activation dates
A separate Rivo Points Logs importer can be used to backfill historical points or credit transactions. This is a different workflow from the standard customer-balance import and may require additional data preparation.
What Usually Needs Rebuilding
The following elements generally require manual configuration or validation:
- Earning rules
- Reward definitions
- VIP thresholds and qualification periods
- Loyalty-page design
- Referral campaign configuration
- Email templates and flows
- Checkout and theme placements
- Third-party integrations
Referral-history migration and existing Growave referral URLs should not be assumed to transfer through the standard loyalty CSV. Confirm these requirements with Rivo before setting a cutover date.
Rivo Pricing
Rivo’s current public pricing page presents three plan categories.
Scale starts at $49+ per month. The pricing page lists Scale for stores processing 200 to 2,500 monthly orders. The exact monthly price within that range depends on usage.
Plus is listed at $499 per month for up to 2,500 monthly orders. The plan includes unlimited loyalty and referral participants, unlimited integrations, and white-glove onboarding according to the current plan comparison.
Enterprise uses custom pricing and is listed for unlimited monthly order volume.
The public pricing page advertises month-to-month billing. It also currently lists a seven-day trial for Scale. Plan names, limits, and features can change, so merchants should review the live Rivo pricing page before making a purchase decision.
The current public page does not list the Free and Startup plans that appeared in earlier Rivo pricing materials. Those older plan descriptions should not be used in current comparisons.
Cost Comparison with Growave
A useful comparison should consider more than the headline monthly fee. Growave bundles several product categories, while Rivo focuses on retention products. A merchant that relies heavily on Growave reviews or other bundled functionality may need another app after moving loyalty to Rivo.
Before switching, compare:
- Current software subscription costs
- Replacement cost for reviews or other bundled tools
- Monthly order limits
- Participant limits
- Required integrations
- Checkout and account features
- Migration and implementation work
- Developer or agency costs
- Support and onboarding services
Rivo’s Scale plan may be attractive for merchants that want loyalty and referral functionality without paying for unrelated bundled tools. The actual cost advantage depends on the merchant’s complete application stack.
Retention Capabilities for Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus brands often require greater control over checkout, customer segmentation, integrations, data access, and program governance.
Rivo’s documented capabilities include:
- Checkout extensions
- Shopify Flow integration
- Shopify POS support
- REST API access
- JavaScript API access
- Webhooks
- Shopify metafields
- Custom integrations
- Dedicated customer success support on Plus
- Unlimited loyalty and referral participants on Plus and Enterprise
API access and individual developer capabilities may differ by plan. Confirm current limits and entitlements before designing a custom implementation.
Beyond Points
A retention strategy can combine several program models.
VIP tiers: Customers qualify for increasing benefits based on spending, points, or other configured criteria.
Paid memberships: Rivo Memberships supports paid membership experiences for qualifying Shopify merchants. Membership requirements and implementation scope should be confirmed directly with Rivo.
Cashback and store credit: Rivo supports ledger-backed store-credit experiences that can reward customers with value for a later order.
Referrals: Referral campaigns can reward an advocate, a referred customer, or both after qualification requirements are met.
The right mix depends on purchase frequency, margin, customer behavior, and the financial cost of each reward.
Integrated Ecosystem
Loyalty data becomes more useful when it can support email, SMS, customer service, subscriptions, reviews, and onsite personalization.
Rivo’s official directory advertises more than 50 integrations. Current listings include tools across several categories.
Email and SMS
- Klaviyo
- Postscript
- Attentive
- Omnisend
- Sendlane
Customer Service
- Gorgias
- Zendesk
- Gladly
Subscriptions
- Recharge
- Skio
- Stay
- Smartrr
Reviews
- Okendo
- Judge.me
- Stamped
- Junip
Developer and Shopify Tools
- Shopify Flow
- REST API
- JavaScript API
- Webhooks
- Metafields
Merchants moving away from Growave’s bundled reviews can evaluate a dedicated review application and then check whether it integrates with Rivo. Availability and supported events should be confirmed on each current integration page.
Klaviyo and Retention Workflows
The Klaviyo integration allows Rivo loyalty and referral data to be passed into Klaviyo for segmentation and personalized campaigns.
Depending on the configuration, merchants can use loyalty data to support communications such as:
- Points-balance reminders
- Reward-availability messages
- VIP-tier communications
- Referral invitations
- Program activation campaigns
- Win-back flows
The exact events and profile properties available may vary by plan and product configuration. Review the current integration documentation before building flows.
Rivo Activate
Rivo Activate is designed to reduce customer-account login friction when customers arrive from marketing messages. Rivo says eligible customers can be logged in silently in the background after passing its identity checks.
Rivo reports that one unnamed flagship brand experienced a 500% increase in newly activated daily accounts within 30 days of enabling the product. This is a company-reported result from one implementation and should not be presented as a typical result.
Performance, Reliability, and Security
Loyalty applications can affect checkout, account, and storefront experiences, so merchants should evaluate uptime, loading behavior, incident response, data security, and peak-volume performance.
Rivo states in its marketing materials that its infrastructure processes 2.9 billion API calls annually and maintains 99.98% API uptime. These are Rivo-reported figures. Merchants with strict availability requirements should review the current status history, service agreement, and applicable contractual commitments.
Rivo’s security page confirms that the company is SOC 2 Type II certified. It says its controls are independently audited annually and cover security, availability, and confidentiality.
For CSV migrations, Rivo documents:
- A maximum file size of 50MB
- Import progress tracking
- Pending, Processing, and Completed statuses
- Imports for existing Shopify customers
- No automatic customer emails after bulk balance updates
Merchants should retain a secure copy of the original Growave export and validate totals before and after migration.
Customer Accounts, Wallet Passes, and Referrals
Rivo’s broader retention platform includes customer accounts, wallet passes, wishlists, loyalty, referrals, memberships, cashback, and store credit.
Customer Accounts and Wallet Experiences
Rivo Accounts is intended to provide a branded account experience that can bring together retention information and shopping tools. Available capabilities may include loyalty balances, referrals, wishlists, order information, and connected subscription experiences, depending on the merchant’s configuration and integrations.
Rivo also markets wallet-pass capabilities. Merchants should confirm current Apple Wallet and Google Wallet availability, plan requirements, regional limitations, and implementation requirements with Rivo.
Referral Programs
Rivo Referrals supports branded referral experiences, advocate and friend rewards, campaign qualification rules, and referral-performance tracking.
Possible reward structures include discounts, shipping incentives, points, and other configured rewards. Fraud controls and qualification rules should be tested against the merchant’s risk profile before launch.
Existing Growave referral URLs should not be assumed to remain active after migration. Merchants should plan communications that provide advocates with their new links after the Rivo program is live.
Why Merchants Consider Rivo
Rivo is a Shopify-focused retention platform rather than a general all-in-one reviews and loyalty suite. Its product range includes:
- Loyalty and VIP tiers
- Referrals
- Paid memberships
- Customer accounts
- Cashback and store credit
- Wallet passes
- Wishlists
- Developer APIs and webhooks
- Shopify checkout, theme, Flow, and POS integrations
Rivo also publishes case studies involving brands such as HexClad, Kitsch, OSEA Malibu, and Nuuds. These stories demonstrate what individual merchants have achieved, but results depend on audience, economics, program structure, communications, and execution.
Merchants interested in migrating can review Rivo’s onboarding services, recorded demo, and interactive demo.
Final Verdict: Making the Switch to Rivo
For brands considering a switch from Growave, Rivo offers several potentially relevant capabilities.
- Shopify integration: Rivo supports Shopify theme app extensions, checkout extensions, Shopify Flow, Shopify POS, customer accounts, and other Shopify-focused retention touchpoints.
- Platform scale: Rivo says its infrastructure processes 2.9 billion API calls annually and maintains 99.98% API uptime. These are company-reported figures rather than independently audited performance guarantees.
- Migration support: Rivo provides a documented CSV migration workflow for Growave and offers migration and replatforming assistance. Merchants should confirm the exact data fields, schedule, responsibilities, testing process, and any applicable fees before starting the migration.
- Retention products: Rivo offers loyalty, referrals, memberships, customer accounts, cashback, store credit, wallet passes, and wishlists that can be combined into a broader retention stack.
- Developer flexibility: The Developer Toolkit includes REST API access, a JavaScript API, Shopify metafields, webhooks, theme extensions, and Shopify Flow support. Availability and usage limits may vary by plan.
- Published pricing: Scale starts at $49+ per month, Plus is listed at $499 per month, and Enterprise uses custom pricing. Merchants should review the current pricing page because plan limits and included features may change.
For Shopify and Shopify Plus brands evaluating a migration, request a demo and ask Rivo to provide a written migration scope, feature matrix, pricing proposal, data-validation plan, and launch schedule.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the main differences between Growave and Rivo for Shopify Plus stores?
Growave combines loyalty with products such as reviews and wishlists, while Rivo focuses on a broader retention platform that includes loyalty, referrals, memberships, customer accounts, cashback, store credit, wallet passes, and wishlists. Rivo supports Shopify checkout extensions, Shopify Flow, APIs, webhooks, metafields, and integrations. The better option depends on which Growave products the merchant currently uses, which replacement applications would be required, and how much customization the retention program needs.
How long does it take to migrate a loyalty program from Growave to Rivo?
CSV processing may take less than a minute for a small file or up to one hour for a larger Growave import. The complete project can take longer because merchants must prepare data, configure rules, style program surfaces, connect integrations, test the customer experience, and approve the launch. Rivo provides onboarding and migration services, but the completion date should be established from the actual project scope rather than treated as a guaranteed two-to-three-week timeframe.
Does Rivo offer a free trial or plan for smaller businesses?
Rivo’s current public pricing page lists a seven-day free trial for Scale, which starts at $49+ per month. The current page does not publicly list the older Free or Startup plans described in some previous materials. Merchants should check the live pricing page because plan names, order ranges, and trial terms may change.
What support is available during and after migration?
Rivo’s support documentation lists migration services on supported paid plan tiers and describes onboarding, program design, brand styling, data migration, testing, and launch coordination. The same documentation lists live chat on paid tiers, faster response targets at higher tiers, office hours on Scale and Plus, and a dedicated customer success manager on Plus. Confirm the current support package and any service-level commitment in writing before purchase.
Can existing customer loyalty data be transferred from Growave?
Yes, supported loyalty data can be imported by CSV. Rivo’s Growave guide demonstrates transferring existing customers’ points balances, while its standard loyalty template supports points balances, credit balances, birthdates, activation dates, and VIP tiers for customers who already exist in Shopify. A separate Points Logs importer can be used for historical loyalty transactions. Referral history, existing referral URLs, program rules, reward configurations, and design settings should not be assumed to transfer through the standard loyalty import.
