Moving a loyalty program from Joy Loyalty to Rivo requires exporting the data available from Joy, mapping supported fields to Rivo’s import templates, configuring the replacement program, testing customer balances and rewards, and planning the final storefront cutover. Rivo provides documented CSV tools for importing customer points balances and historical points or credits transactions, but merchants should confirm the exact migration scope, schedule, responsibilities, and data-validation process before beginning.
For Shopify and Shopify Plus brands evaluating a broader retention platform, Rivo’s Shopify loyalty program supports points, rewards, referrals, VIP tiers, Shopify integrations, and developer tools. Pricing and feature availability vary by plan and order volume, so comparisons with Joy should use current written proposals from both vendors.
Key Takeaways
- Rivo provides documented CSV tools for importing loyalty balances and historical points or credits activity.
- Migration timing depends on data quality, program complexity, integrations, design requirements, testing, and launch coordination.
- Rivo VIP tiers are available on Scale and above and can be based on customer spend, number of orders, or points earned.
- Rivo publishes integrations with platforms such as Klaviyo, Gorgias, Recharge, Shopify Flow, Shopify POS, and Shop Pay.
- Rivo documents CSS customization options on Scale and Plus, although the exact customization controls available should be confirmed for the selected plan.
- Scale starts at $49 per month and scales with monthly order volume. Plus is listed at $499 per month for up to 2,500 monthly orders.
Understanding the Shift: Why Retailers Evaluate Rivo for Loyalty Programs
Joy and Rivo both support Shopify loyalty programs with points, rewards, referrals, VIP tiers, and storefront touchpoints. Both currently appear as Built for Shopify apps, and both publish developer and integration capabilities.
The decision to switch should therefore be based on the merchant’s specific requirements rather than a general claim that one platform is modern and the other is legacy. Important comparison points include current pricing, order limits, data portability, checkout experiences, integration availability, API access, customization, reporting, support, and implementation requirements.
Comparing Joy Loyalty and Rivo’s Shopify Capabilities
Rivo publishes support for several Shopify-focused capabilities:
- Checkout and Shop Pay experiences: Rivo offers checkout-related loyalty touchpoints and a Shop Pay integration that can support points redemption.
- Developer Toolkit: Rivo publishes REST API, JavaScript, Shopify metafield, and webhook capabilities. Some access is plan-dependent.
- Integration catalog: Rivo provides integrations across email and SMS, subscriptions, reviews, customer support, mobile apps, Shopify services, and developer tools.
- Shopify POS: Rivo supports earning and spending points in-store through Shopify POS.
- Shopify Flow: Merchants can use loyalty data and events in Shopify Flow automations.
Joy also publishes checkout, customer-account, Shopify POS, Shopify Flow, membership, wallet-pass, REST API, and JavaScript SDK functionality. Merchants should compare the exact implementation and plan availability of each capability rather than relying only on total feature counts.
Understanding Built for Shopify Status
Built for Shopify is Shopify’s quality program for apps that meet its current standards and requirements. Both Rivo and Joy currently display Built for Shopify status in the Shopify App Store.
That status is useful, but it does not replace technical evaluation. Merchants should still test storefront performance, checkout behavior, account compatibility, integration reliability, accessibility, reporting, and operational workflows in their own Shopify environment.
Baymard currently estimates that roughly 70% of ecommerce shopping carts are abandoned. It also reports that checkout length or complexity is one reason some customers abandon a purchase. A convenient loyalty redemption flow may reduce one source of friction, but it should be evaluated as part of the entire checkout experience rather than treated as a complete solution to cart abandonment.
Planning Your Migration to Rivo
Migration complexity depends on customer volume, data quality, program structure, VIP logic, referral history, earning rules, integrations, and the amount of customization required.
Rivo provides a general migration workflow and dedicated guides for several loyalty platforms. A Joy-specific automated migration guide was not identified in Rivo’s current public migration collection, so merchants should confirm whether the migration will use a supported automated process, a CSV import, or a custom service.
Assessing Your Current Joy Loyalty Data
Before exporting data, document the information that is important to the existing program:
- Customer identifiers: Shopify customer ID and email address
- Points or credit balances: Current available balances
- Historical transactions: Points earned, redeemed, expired, or adjusted
- VIP status: Current tier assignments and qualification dates
- Birthday or enrollment data: Where available and lawfully collected
- Referral data: Referral relationships, statuses, and outstanding rewards
- Rewards: Issued, redeemed, expired, or unused rewards
- Program rules: Earning rates, redemption rules, exclusions, expiry settings, and tier logic
Do not assume Joy’s exported fields will match Rivo’s required schema. Download the appropriate Rivo CSV template and map the available Joy data to the fields Rivo accepts.
Building a Migration Roadmap
A practical migration plan should include the following stages:
- Discovery and scope: Identify the data, rewards, tiers, referrals, integrations, storefront placements, and reports that must be recreated.
- Data export: Export the available customer and loyalty data from Joy.
- Field mapping: Map Joy’s exported fields to Rivo’s required templates.
- Program configuration: Rebuild earning rules, rewards, VIP tiers, referral offers, expiry policies, and exclusions in Rivo.
- Integration setup: Connect required services such as Klaviyo, Gorgias, Recharge, Shopify Flow, or Shopify POS.
- Test import: Import a small sample and verify balances, customer matching, transaction history, and tier assignments.
- Full import: Complete the approved customer-data transfer and monitor import status.
- Quality assurance: Test earning, redemption, referrals, emails, accounts, POS behavior, refunds, cancellations, and mobile experiences.
- Cutover: Disable the old customer-facing experience and enable Rivo using a documented launch checklist.
- Post-launch validation: Spot-check customer accounts and monitor support tickets, balances, redemptions, and integration events.
The Rivo getting started guide provides configuration guidance. Merchants with complex programs should request a written migration plan from Rivo.
Setting Up Your Rivo Loyalty Program
After the customer data has been mapped and tested, configure the program rules that customers will use going forward.
Designing Your Rivo Loyalty Program
Rivo supports multiple earning actions, including:
- Purchases
- Customer birthdays
- Product reviews
- Social actions
- Loyalty anniversaries
- Visiting a URL
- Custom actions
- Collection multipliers
- Promotional campaigns
Reward economics should be based on the merchant’s gross margin, average order value, purchase frequency, expected redemption rate, points liability, and existing discount strategy. There is no universal points-per-dollar rate or reward threshold that is appropriate for every brand.
Bain has reported that a 5% increase in customer retention can increase profits by 25% to 95%. That range is not a guaranteed loyalty-program outcome. It varies substantially by company, industry, customer economics, and implementation.
Configuring VIP Tiers
Rivo supports configurable VIP tiers based on:
- Customer spend
- Number of completed orders
- Points earned
Tier benefits can include differentiated earning rates, rewards, free shipping, gifts with purchase, exclusive offers, or other program benefits supported by the merchant’s configuration.
VIP tiers are available on Scale and above. Merchants should confirm the number of tiers, expiry settings, qualification windows, automatic rewards, and plan requirements before recreating their Joy structure.
Rivo also provides loyalty landing-page tools for presenting program rules and tier benefits. The level of page-builder and CSS access can depend on the selected plan and product configuration.
Integrating Rivo with Your Shopify Ecosystem
Rivo publishes integrations across Shopify, email and SMS, subscriptions, reviews, customer support, mobile apps, returns, analytics, and developer tools.
Rather than relying on the total number of integrations, verify each required connection individually. Check whether it is native, which Rivo products it works with, which plan includes it, what data is synchronized, how frequently it updates, and whether implementation assistance is required.
Using Rivo Accounts
Rivo Accounts provides a branded customer-account experience that can bring together account access, order information, saved products, loyalty rewards, referrals, and personalized content.
Published Rivo materials and case studies describe capabilities such as:
- Passwordless account access
- Order history
- Wishlists or saved products
- Saved carts
- Loyalty balances and rewards
- Referral access
- Personalized account content
Some related experiences may depend on separate Rivo products, Shopify functionality, third-party integrations, or custom implementation. Confirm the required products and plan before treating all account features as part of one standard package.
Checkout and Shop Pay Redemption
Rivo publishes checkout and Shop Pay experiences that can allow eligible customers to use loyalty value during checkout. Availability may depend on the Rivo plan, Shopify plan, checkout configuration, reward type, and installed extensions.
Before launch, test:
- Customer eligibility
- Points or credit conversion
- Minimum redemption rules
- Discount combinations
- Subscription orders
- Partial payments
- Refunds and cancellations
- Shopify Markets
- Shop Pay
- Mobile checkout
- POS redemption
Do not assume that the experience is identical across every plan or Shopify configuration.
Activating and Retaining Customers with Rivo
Points, tiers, accounts, email personalization, referrals, memberships, store credit, and other retention tools can work together, but each capability should be evaluated separately.
Using Rivo Activate
Rivo Activate is designed to reduce account-access friction when customers engage with eligible marketing messages. Rivo promotes integrations with Klaviyo and account experiences that can surface customer-specific loyalty information after authentication.
Merchants should confirm how authentication works, which customer-account system is required, how links expire, which data is exposed, and how consent and security controls are handled.
A 2018 Accenture survey found that 91% of respondents were more likely to shop with brands that recognized and remembered them and provided relevant offers and recommendations. This supports the general value of relevant customer experiences, but it does not establish a specific performance result for Rivo Activate.
Implementing Rivo Referrals
Rivo Referrals supports branded referral experiences, unique referral links or codes, advocate and referred-customer rewards, attribution, and fraud-prevention controls.
Depending on the configuration, referral programs may include:
- Dedicated referral pages
- Advocate and referred-customer rewards
- Tiered referral incentives
- Referral links or codes
- Minimum purchase requirements
- Order-status validation
- Fraud-prevention checks
- Email and SMS integrations
- Referral analytics
Merchants should document how self-referrals, shared households, canceled orders, returned orders, duplicate identities, discount stacking, and reward approval are handled.
Measuring Revenue and Loyalty Performance
A loyalty platform should be evaluated through metrics that are clearly defined and tied to business outcomes.
Measuring Your Loyalty Program
Relevant indicators may include:
- Enrollment and participation
- Points or credit issued
- Redemption rate
- Reward-driven orders
- Referral conversion
- Loyalty-attributed revenue
- Repeat purchase rate
- Average order value
- Customer lifetime value
- Outstanding points or credit liability
- Performance by VIP tier
Before relying on platform reporting, ask how Rivo defines each metric. Confirm the attribution window, treatment of customers who would have purchased anyway, handling of refunds, cohort definitions, currency conversion, and export availability.
Published Rivo Case Studies
Rivo publishes customer case studies with company-reported results. These examples should not be treated as guaranteed outcomes for another merchant.
- HexClad: Rivo reports that HexClad generated more than $450,000 in referral revenue during its first 90 days, with a 92x ROI and a 17% AOV lift among referred customers.
- Kitsch: Rivo reports $5.8 million in loyalty-attributed revenue and an 8.7x higher repeat purchase rate among top-tier VIP customers.
- Portland Leather Goods: Rivo reports that loyalty was tied to 17.4% of total revenue after the brand moved from Yotpo to Rivo.
- Rylee + Cru: Rivo reports more than $2.4 million in sales from loyalty redemptions and an 8.7x repeat purchase rate among VIP customers.
- nuuds: Rivo’s current case study describes an apparel membership program using Rivo Accounts, Memberships, Gift Cards, Fuego, and Klaviyo. It reports a 98% weekly member repeat rate compared with 35% among non-members five and a half months after launch.
Results depend on the brand, offer, audience, margin, customer base, implementation, measurement period, and attribution method.
Rivo Pricing and Support
Pricing is one of the most important areas to confirm directly because order limits, included products, features, support, and implementation services can change.
Understanding Rivo Pricing
- Scale: Starts at $49 per month and scales with monthly order volume. Current pricing context places Scale across order bands beginning at approximately 200 monthly orders and extending to 1,500 monthly orders. VIP tiers are documented as available on Scale and above.
- Plus: Listed at $499 per month for up to 2,500 monthly orders. Plus adds capabilities that can include expanded checkout, integration, onboarding, customization, and Developer Toolkit access.
- Enterprise: Custom pricing for higher-volume or more complex programs. Merchants should request a written quote covering order volume, products, API limits, support, onboarding, additional stores, and implementation requirements.
Rivo’s current pricing overview explains that plans may combine Loyalty, Referrals, Memberships, Accounts, or custom product configurations. Do not assume that every product or feature is included in a single loyalty subscription.
Ask Rivo to confirm:
- Monthly order limit
- Overage handling
- Included Rivo products
- Integration limits
- Loyalty participant limits
- API access and rate limits
- Checkout capabilities
- POS locations
- Customer-account functionality
- Onboarding and migration services
- Support channels and service levels
- Additional-store pricing
- Billing term and cancellation provisions
- Trial availability
- Taxes and implementation fees
Evaluating Support
Rivo publishes help-center resources, onboarding services, migration support, and plan-dependent success options. Joy also advertises 24/7 live chat and dedicated support options.
Compare support using specific contract terms rather than general labels. Ask each vendor to document:
- Support hours
- Available channels
- Target response times
- Escalation process
- Migration responsibilities
- Launch coverage
- Dedicated account management
- Developer support
- Weekend or holiday coverage
- Service-level commitments
Security or compliance certifications should be confirmed through each vendor’s current trust or security documentation.
Joy Loyalty vs. Rivo for Shopify Stores
Both platforms currently offer broad Shopify loyalty capabilities. A defensible comparison should focus on current documented requirements.
Feature and Technical Evaluation
- Compare the following areas:
- Loyalty configuration: Earning rules, reward types, exclusions, points expiry, refunds, campaigns, and tier logic
- VIP tiers: Entry methods, expiry windows, tier benefits, automatic rewards, and plan availability
- Referrals: Reward structures, fraud controls, attribution, approval rules, reporting, and customization
- Checkout: Redemption methods, Shopify eligibility, Shop Pay behavior, subscription compatibility, and discount combinations
- Customer accounts: Login methods, order information, loyalty content, wishlists, saved carts, referral content, and customization
- POS: Earning, redemption, supported locations, payment methods, and staff workflow
- Integrations: Required email, SMS, subscription, review, support, mobile, returns, and analytics platforms
- Developer access: REST API, JavaScript SDK or API, webhooks, metafields, rate limits, documentation, and plan requirements
- Reporting: Attribution methodology, exports, member comparisons, cohort analysis, points liability, and referral reporting
- Migration: Supported fields, historical data, outstanding rewards, VIP assignments, referrals, testing, and rollback procedures
- Pricing: Order limits, feature limits, implementation fees, support, overages, contract term, and additional stores
Joy changed its pricing for new customers on February 9, 2026. Any price or feature comparison should therefore be dated and based on current official quotes.
Calculating the Financial Case
Do not calculate savings from subscription price alone. Include:
- Monthly platform cost at the expected order volume
- Overage charges
- Migration or implementation work
- Agency and developer costs
- Custom design
- Integration work
- Testing and quality assurance
- Internal staff time
- Additional stores or markets
- Support packages
- Expected reward cost
- Points or credit liability
- Contract length and termination terms
A lower entry price does not automatically mean a lower total cost, and a more expensive plan may be justified if it replaces other applications or reduces operational work.
Why Merchants Consider Rivo
Rivo may be a strong candidate for merchants seeking a Shopify-focused retention platform with configurable loyalty programs, referrals, accounts, memberships, store credit, wallet experiences, and developer tools.
Its documented strengths include:
- Shopify focus: Rivo publishes integrations with Shopify Flow, Shopify POS, Shop Pay, checkout experiences, Shopify customer accounts, and Shopify metafields.
- Developer options: Rivo publishes REST API, JavaScript, webhooks, and metafield capabilities. Availability and usage limits vary by plan.
- Connected retention products: Rivo offers products across loyalty, referrals, memberships, accounts, cashback, store credit, gift cards, wallet passes, and wishlists.
- Published case studies: Rivo provides named customer stories with retention, referral, revenue, and repeat-purchase metrics.
- Migration resources: Rivo documents CSV imports and migration workflows, although the exact Joy migration process should be confirmed directly.
These strengths do not eliminate the need for technical validation. Merchants should run a staging implementation and compare Rivo with Joy against their actual program rules and customer experience.
Final Verdict: Making the Switch to Rivo
For brands considering a switch from Joy, Rivo offers several potentially relevant capabilities.
- Shopify integration: Rivo supports Shopify theme integrations, checkout touchpoints, Shopify Flow, Shopify POS, customer accounts, and other Shopify-focused retention experiences.
- 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 documented CSV migration workflows for loyalty balances and historical points or credit transactions. A Joy-specific migration scope should be confirmed directly. Merchants should verify the exact fields, schedule, responsibilities, testing process, and any applicable implementation fees before starting.
- Retention products: Rivo offers loyalty, referrals, memberships, customer accounts, cashback, store credit, gift cards, wallet passes, and wishlists that can be combined into a broader retention stack.
- Developer flexibility: The Developer Toolkit includes REST API and JavaScript capabilities, while Rivo also publishes support for Shopify metafields, webhooks, theme integrations, and Shopify Flow. Availability and usage limits may vary by plan.
- Published pricing: Scale currently starts at $49 per month and scales with order volume. Plus is listed at $499 per month for up to 2,500 monthly orders. Higher-volume merchants should request a custom quote. Merchants should review the current pricing page because 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, data-field map, feature matrix, pricing proposal, data-validation plan, performance-testing plan, support schedule, and launch timeline.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does it typically take to migrate a loyalty program from Joy Loyalty to Rivo?
There is no verified standard timeline for moving from Joy to Rivo. The schedule depends on the size and quality of the data set, the fields Joy can export, the loyalty and VIP rules being recreated, required integrations, custom design, testing, and launch coordination. Ask Rivo to provide a written timeline after reviewing your program.
Will I lose my existing customer loyalty data or points during the migration?
Rivo provides CSV tools for importing customer balances and historical points or credit transactions, but no migration should be described as risk-free. Confirm which Joy fields can be exported and imported, run a sample migration, reconcile totals, spot-check customer accounts, retain backups, and agree on a remediation process before launch.
Can Rivo integrate with Shopify apps such as Klaviyo and Gorgias?
Yes. Rivo publishes integrations with Klaviyo, Gorgias, Recharge, Shopify Flow, Shopify POS, Shop Pay, and many other platforms. Integration availability, supported events, data fields, installation requirements, and plan eligibility vary, so verify each required integration separately.
How does Rivo pricing work for growing brands?
Scale starts at $49 per month and scales with monthly order volume. Plus is listed at $499 per month for up to 2,500 monthly orders. Enterprise pricing is custom. Because Rivo can combine Loyalty, Referrals, Accounts, Memberships, and other products, request a written quote that identifies the included products, order limit, integrations, API access, support, onboarding, additional-store pricing, and contract terms.
Is Rivo compatible with an existing Shopify Plus setup?
Rivo is built for Shopify and publishes support for Shopify Plus-related experiences, including checkout touchpoints, Shopify Flow, Shopify POS, Shop Pay, customer accounts, metafields, and developer integrations. Compatibility with a particular store still depends on its theme, checkout configuration, subscriptions, markets, custom applications, discount logic, and account setup. Test the complete implementation in a staging environment before launch.
