Triple Whale’s Foundation plan includes cohort analysis and a segment builder next to its attribution, listed at $219 a month on its Shopify listing and scaling with GMV on a 12-month subscription. For plenty of brands that bundle is fine. But if lifetime value is the number you actually run the business on, there are tools built specifically for it, several priced on order volume rather than GMV, and a few that connect LTV back to the channel that acquired the customer.
The useful split is between two questions. Cohort tools tell you how customers acquired in a given month behave over time: how many come back, how fast, and how much they spend. Acquisition tools tell you which channels and campaigns bring in customers worth having. Most brands need both answers, and very few tools are good at both. I walked through how to read the output without fooling yourself in reading LTV and cohort curves.
1. Lifetimely
Lifetimely by AMP is the most established dedicated LTV app on Shopify. It covers cohort tables, predicted LTV, and a daily profit and loss view that subtracts product costs, shipping, and ad spend from revenue. Pricing is based on monthly orders: free up to 50, $79 a month up to 500, $149 up to 3,000, and $299 up to 7,000, with a 14-day trial on paid plans. For an operator who wants LTV and profit without starting a BI project, it is the default choice.
2. Peel Insights
Peel Insights is built around retention: cohort curves, repurchase rates, RFM segments, and subscription analytics for brands running Recharge and similar platforms. It sends automated daily and weekly reports, which suits teams that want insights pushed to them instead of logging in to look. Pricing is based on monthly order volume, and every plan has the same features. It is stronger on what customers do after the first order than on where they came from.
3. Wicked Reports
Wicked Reports ties LTV to the original acquisition source, crediting a campaign for the repeat orders its customers place months later. That is the right lens for subscription and consumable brands, where a campaign that looks marginal on first-order ROAS can be the best one in the account by month six. Its pricing page uses annual revenue bands. Up to $2.5M, Measure is $499 a month, Scale is $699, and Maximize is $999.
4. ThoughtMetric
ThoughtMetric approaches LTV from the acquisition side. (Disclosure: ThoughtMetric sponsors this site.) Its customer analytics show LTV by acquisition channel, new versus returning revenue for every campaign, and how long and how many touchpoints it takes customers to convert, all built on the same attribution data it uses for ROAS. It is not a cohort retention tool in the Peel or Lifetimely sense, so brands that live in month-by-month retention curves will want one of those next to it. Pricing starts at $99 a month for 50,000 pageviews, with every feature on every plan and monthly billing.
5. Polar Analytics
Polar Analytics has LTV and cohort reporting inside a BI workspace with configurable metric definitions, which helps when finance and marketing disagree about what counts as a repeat customer. It asks for more setup than an app like Lifetimely and gives more flexibility in return. Pricing is not listed on the website, so you will need a demo to get a number.
Which LTV number to trust
Most LTV arguments come from definitions, not data. Is LTV measured on revenue or on gross margin? Over twelve months or over a customer’s lifetime? Does a refunded first order count as a customer at all? Are subscription renewals included or reported separately? Settle those before comparing tools, because two good tools with different defaults can produce LTV figures a third apart and both be correct.
Once the definitions are fixed, pick the tool by the decision you need to make. Retention work, like deciding which product to lead a win-back flow with, needs cohort curves. Acquisition work, like deciding how much you can pay for a customer from TikTok versus Google, needs LTV by channel. If you have not settled the math yet, start with how to calculate LTV for a Shopify store.
Picking one
- Want LTV and profit in one Shopify app at an order-based price? Lifetimely.
- Retention or subscription focus? Peel Insights.
- Need repeat revenue credited back to the campaign that won the customer? Wicked Reports.
- Want LTV by channel alongside attribution at a pageview price? ThoughtMetric (our sponsor).
- Want LTV inside a governed BI layer? Polar Analytics.
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