Northbeam is a media measurement platform, and it is excellent at the question it was built for: which channels, campaigns, and ads deserve credit for revenue. Product questions are a different job. Which products are your ads actually selling? Which entry product turns a first-time buyer into a repeat customer? Which SKUs look strong on revenue and weak after returns and discounts? Northbeam’s starting price, listed from $1,500 a month on Starter, is a lot to pay if those are the questions your team asks most.
These alternatives are stronger on the product side, and some cover media attribution too. I sorted them by which product question they answer best. The attribution angle is covered in product-level attribution tools for e-commerce.
Lifetimely
Lifetimely answers the repeat-purchase question better than anything else here. Its product journey reports show which first products and acquisition sources lead to second orders, along with repurchase rate, time between orders, and LTV by cohort, plus P&L reporting. Pricing is on monthly orders: free up to 50, $79 for up to 500, $149 for up to 3,000, and $299 for up to 7,000, with a 14-day trial. It does not do multi-touch ad attribution, so Northbeam customers often keep both, with Lifetimely handling what happens after the first order.
Triple Whale
Triple Whale combines attribution with a BI layer on its paid plans, including custom metrics, cohorts, and a SQL editor, which lets a team build product views that Northbeam does not offer out of the box. Foundation starts at $219 a month on its Shopify listing, scaling with GMV on a 12-month subscription. The trade is attribution depth, since Triple Whale does not model ad views the way Northbeam does.
Polar Analytics
Polar Analytics is the broadest option, with product reporting inside a BI layer that pulls in store, ad, and marketplace data under governed metric definitions. For brands selling the same catalog on Shopify and Amazon, its cross-channel product view is the main reason to choose it. Pricing is not listed on the website, so you will need a demo to get a number.
ThoughtMetric
ThoughtMetric covers the question that sits between media and product, which is what each ad actually sold. (Disclosure: ThoughtMetric sponsors this site.) It can break attributed orders, revenue, and new versus returning customers out by product name, SKU, product category, and variant, alongside channel, campaign, and ad. That is how you find out that a campaign built around one product is mostly selling another. Pricing starts at $99 a month for 50,000 pageviews with every feature included and a 14-day trial. It does not model view-through conversions the way Northbeam does, so brands with heavy upper-funnel video should weigh that before replacing Northbeam outright.
Shopify’s own reports
Free and often underused. Shopify’s analytics include sales by product and variant, and its reports cover returns and discounts, which answers most merchandising questions for a small catalog. It cannot connect products to ad spend or follow a product into repeat purchases, which is where the tools above earn their price.
Replace or add?
For most Northbeam customers the answer is add. If Northbeam’s media modeling is earning its price, a product tool like Lifetimely alongside it costs far less than switching and losing your pixel history. The case for replacing Northbeam is when your spend is mostly search and retargeting, where its view modeling adds little, and product questions are what you actually need answered. I looked at that trade-off in is Northbeam worth it for a brand under $20M.
Picking one
- Want to know which products create repeat customers? Lifetimely, alongside Northbeam.
- Want attribution plus a BI layer for custom product views? Triple Whale.
- Selling one catalog across Shopify and marketplaces? Polar Analytics.
- Want to see which ads sell which SKUs at a lower price than Northbeam? ThoughtMetric (our sponsor).
- Small catalog and simple questions? Shopify’s own reports.
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