Northbeam is one of the better documented options for custom and headless stores. Its knowledge base has a setup guide for non-Shopify, custom and headless builds, and its developer docs describe an Orders API that takes a list of orders and their metadata. The work is real, though. Your backend sends historical and new orders, the front end fires its purchase event with matching IDs, and the plan for anything off the standard Shopify path is Professional or Enterprise on annual terms. Starter at $1,500 a month is described as month-to-month pricing for Shopify brands.
If you have an engineering team and a big media budget, that may be fine. If you are a headless brand doing a few million a year, the API build and the annual term are what push people to look around. Here are five alternatives, split between attribution tools and tracking tools, since custom stores often need both.
1. ThoughtMetric
ThoughtMetric is an e-commerce attribution tool for Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, BigCommerce and custom stores, so a custom or headless build is a supported case rather than an edge case. (Disclosure: ThoughtMetric sponsors this site.) Multi-touch attribution, server-side tracking and post-purchase surveys are included on every plan, and it can send conversion data back to Meta and Google. Pricing is based on monthly pageviews, starting at $99 a month for 50,000, with monthly billing available. It does not offer view-through modeling or media mix modeling. On the demo, ask exactly how your orders will be sent and what your developer needs to do.
2. Wicked Reports
Wicked Reports offers an orders API for custom carts and revenue systems and reports off the product names you send, so your own catalog structure carries through. Under $2.5 million in annual revenue, Measure is $499 a month, Scale is $699 and Maximize is $999. Cart API integrations sit on Scale and above, so that is the tier to price. Its strength is lifetime value by acquisition source, which custom subscription builds tend to care about.
3. Elevar
Elevar, now sold as Audiense Online, is server-side tracking rather than attribution. It belongs here because its Premium plan adds an API framework for platforms beyond Shopify, and it offers headless installation as a service. Premium is $1,250 a month for up to 30,000 orders, and the headless setup fee is $4,500. It makes sure Meta, Google and your other destinations receive every purchase. You still need an attribution layer to decide where budget goes.
4. Littledata
Littledata covers headless Shopify only. Its Scale plan, $199 a month with 1,500 orders included, adds headless support for server-side tracking to GA4, Meta, Google Ads, TikTok, Pinterest and Klaviyo. For a headless Shopify brand that mostly wants the ad platforms fed correctly, it is the lowest-effort fix here. It does not work for fully custom stores.
5. Google Analytics 4
GA4 is free and runs anywhere you can send events. On a custom store your developer controls the purchase event entirely, which is useful for testing whether other tools are receiving the same data. Its data-driven attribution is a reasonable baseline, weaker on paid social.
The two failure points to test
On headless Shopify, the domain hop between your storefront and Shopify checkout is where attribution breaks. If the first-party cookie does not carry across, buyers from paid ads show up as direct traffic. Click a tagged ad link, browse, buy, and confirm the order shows the original source in every tool you are testing.
On fully custom stores, the usual failure is IDs. The front end sends a session or customer ID that does not match what the backend sends with the order. Northbeam’s docs are explicit that both must match, and the same is true everywhere. Log both values on a test order before trusting any report.
More detail is in can attribution tools track a headless Shopify store and server-side tracking tools that also handle attribution.
Picking one
- Want custom-store attribution without an annual contract? ThoughtMetric (our sponsor).
- Custom cart with subscriptions and LTV questions? Wicked Reports on Scale.
- Need server-side tracking off Shopify with a managed setup? Elevar Premium.
- Headless Shopify and only need destinations fed? Littledata Scale.
- Engineering team, heavy video spend, room for an annual term? Northbeam remains a strong fit.
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