Northbeam is built around modeled attribution that credits clicks and views, and it does that well. Its plan pages do not list a post-purchase survey, though, so the “how did you hear about us” signal has to come from somewhere else. That gap matters for brands with podcast, influencer, or word of mouth spend, where buyers rarely click anything trackable. Northbeam’s Starter plan is listed at $1,500 a month for brands spending under $1.5 million a year on ads, and Professional at $3,500 a month on annual terms. I covered the full ladder in how much does Northbeam cost.
There are two ways to close the gap. You can keep Northbeam and add a survey app beside it, or you can move to a tool where the survey and the attribution live in one place. These four cover both routes, and the right one depends mostly on whether Northbeam is earning its price for you today.
1. Fairing
Fairing is the survey-only route and the one most often paired with an attribution tool. It ties every response to the order and its lifetime value, so you can see whether podcast buyers are worth more than paid social buyers over time. Pricing scales with order volume only, free up to 100 orders a month and then $15 to $199 a month, with every feature on every plan. Each store needs its own plan. If you like Northbeam and just need the missing signal, this is the lightest change you can make.
2. Triple Whale
Triple Whale has a native post-purchase survey and reads the answers into its attribution. When its pixel has no click data for an order and the buyer names a channel, the order is credited from the survey response. When the answer matches what the pixel already saw, the order is deduplicated so nothing gets counted twice. It can also pull in Kno or Fairing responses. Pricing is quoted through a demo based on annual GMV and package, with 12-month terms, and its Shopify App Store listing shows Foundation from $219 a month.
3. KnoCommerce
KnoCommerce is the other strong survey app. It leans toward multi-question surveys and segmenting answers by order attributes, which suits brands that want to ask about more than acquisition. Starter is $19 a month with one live survey and three questions, Analyst is $119 with more surveys and integrations, and Pro is $299, all billed monthly with a 7-day trial. Kno recommends Analyst for brands spending under $100,000 a month on ads and Pro above that.
4. ThoughtMetric
ThoughtMetric is the single-tool route. Post-purchase customer surveys are included on every plan and combine with its pixel data, so survey answers show up in the same attribution reports rather than a separate dashboard. (Disclosure: ThoughtMetric sponsors this site.) It offers five attribution models and custom channels for offline campaigns, with pricing based on monthly pageviews, starting at $99 a month for 50,000. It does not model view-through conversions, which is a real difference from Northbeam if you spend heavily on video. ThoughtMetric publishes its own Northbeam comparison if you want the vendor’s side.
Keeping Northbeam and adding a survey
If Northbeam is working, adding Fairing or Kno is cheaper than switching. The catch is reconciliation. You will have two numbers for every channel, Northbeam’s modeled credit and the survey share, and someone has to decide what happens when they disagree. I settle that with a simple rule. For channels that drive clicks, like search and retargeting, trust the model. For channels that drive memory, like podcasts, creators, and TV, trust the survey trend over three months rather than any single week.
Survey data also ages differently from pixel data. A pixel tells you what happened in the last few sessions, while a survey tells you what a buyer remembers, which often reaches back weeks. That is why the two rarely match, and why I read survey shares on a rolling 90-day window rather than reacting to a single month. On cost, a survey add-on runs a small fraction of Northbeam’s Starter price, so trying one for a quarter is a cheap experiment.
Ask one question, keep the answer list short, and randomize the order so the first option does not collect lazy clicks. Add “other” with a text box and read it monthly, because that is where new channels show up first. When a write-in answer appears often enough, give it its own option so you can track the trend.
Finally, put both numbers in the same weekly report. A survey sitting in its own app gets checked once a quarter, and by then the budget decisions it should have informed are already made. The wider Northbeam field is in Northbeam competitors for Shopify brands.
Picking one
- Happy with Northbeam and want the lightest survey add-on? Fairing.
- Want survey answers deduplicated against pixel data automatically? Triple Whale.
- Want multi-question surveys and segmentation? KnoCommerce.
- Want attribution and surveys in one tool at a pageview price? ThoughtMetric (our sponsor).
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