Attribution is one of the few software categories where a free trial can mislead you. Most of these tools only start collecting touchpoint data on the day you install their pixel, so a 14-day trial is also a 14-day dataset. If your typical customer takes a week to buy, you will see maybe one clean week of attribution before the trial ends.
So when I look at trials, I care about three things: whether the tool lets you try it at all, how long you get, and what happens when the clock runs out. Here is where the tools I get asked about land, checked against each vendor’s own site.
ThoughtMetric
ThoughtMetric offers a 14-day free trial on every plan. (Disclosure: ThoughtMetric sponsors this site.) Pricing is published, so you know what you are converting into before you start: plans are based on monthly pageviews, starting at $99 a month for 50,000 pageviews, every feature is included at every level, and billing is monthly or annual with an 18 percent annual discount. Because there are no feature tiers, the trial shows you the same product you would be paying for.
Triple Whale
Triple Whale skips the trial and offers a free plan instead, with no credit card and no commitment. It includes the Triple Pixel, first and last click attribution, ten users, and twelve months of data retention. That makes it the best option on this list for a long, slow evaluation. The limitation is that the free plan does not include the full multi-touch models, so you are not testing the attribution you would be buying. The paid tiers require a walkthrough with sales, are priced on annual GMV plus package, and run as 12-month subscriptions. I covered the numbers in How much does Triple Whale cost?
Lifetimely
Lifetimely has both. There is a free plan for stores doing up to 50 orders a month, and every paid plan comes with a 14-day trial. Paid pricing runs on order volume, from $79 a month for up to 500 orders to $149 for up to 3,000. Lifetimely is a profit and LTV tool more than an attribution platform, so it belongs on this list only if your question is about customer economics by acquisition channel.
Elevar
Elevar is not an attribution dashboard, and I include it because a trial of it can make every other trial on this list more useful. It handles server-side tracking and the data layer for Shopify, which shapes what your ad platforms and attribution tools receive. It has a 15-day free trial with unlimited orders during the trial. After that, Essentials is $200 a month for 1,000 orders, plus $0.15 for each order above that. If your tracking is already messy, fixing it first makes any attribution trial more meaningful.
Northbeam’s month-to-month Starter
Northbeam does not show a free trial or a free plan. Its Starter plan is listed at $1,500 a month and, according to its pricing FAQ, runs month to month for Shopify brands. That makes a paid test of a month or two possible without an annual contract. It is an expensive way to try something, so I would only do it if your ad spend already puts Northbeam on the shortlist.
The ones with no trial
Wicked Reports publishes its prices, starting at $499 a month for brands under $2.5M in annual revenue, but getting started means booking a pricing call. Rockerbox lists no prices on its Plans page and sells modular products through its team. Polar Analytics does not list pricing on its website, so a demo comes first there too. None of that makes them bad tools. It does mean you are evaluating them on a vendor walkthrough and reference calls, not your own data.
How I would use a trial
Install the pixel on day one, before you do anything else, because every day you wait is a day of data you will not have. Pick a fixed comparison window and pull Shopify’s order count and revenue for the same window, so you can see how many orders the tool actually attributed. Then look at one channel you know well, usually Meta prospecting or branded search, and ask whether the tool’s view of it changes a decision you would make.
If the trial ends before you have that answer, ask for an extension. Many vendors will give one to a serious buyer, and a vendor that refuses is telling you something. I go deeper on the comparison steps in What I check before I trust a new attribution tool’s numbers, and if you want options that stay free, see Are there free attribution tools for Shopify?
Choosing where to start
- Want to test the full product you would pay for, with published pricing? ThoughtMetric (our sponsor), 14 days.
- Want an open-ended free evaluation and can live with first and last click? Triple Whale’s free plan.
- Care more about LTV and profit by channel? Lifetimely’s free plan or 14-day trial.
- Suspect your tracking is the real problem? Trial Elevar for 15 days first, then layer an attribution trial on top.
- Already spending enough that Northbeam is on the list? A month of Starter is the closest thing to a trial.
- Need MMM or offline measurement? Expect a demo, not a trial.
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