Whether you’re new to the market, looking to make a switch, or simply curious about what else is out there, it’s helpful to have at least a high-level understanding of the major solutions available to you.

Here, we break down the key selling points and differences between Lifetimely and Glew.

To see how other alternatives compare to Lifetimely, click here.

Pricing

Like most competitors in the space, Glew has a complicated pricing structure that becomes more expensive as your business grows. But more than any other competitor, Glew tries to sell customized bundles of features at custom prices.

Glew offers just two plans without custom pricing. One is a free plan that only tracks 20 metrics and has very few features. The other adds a preset bundle of KPIs, reports, and integrations, with pricing ranging from $79/month to $649/month depending on your annual revenue. This plan also requires a minimum 12-month commitment!

And if you want any features or integrations not included in this bundle? Your only option is to contact Glew, specify the features and integrations you need, and pay a customized price.

On the other hand, Lifetimely has much simpler and more affordable pricing for equivalent basic features and more useful advanced features.

Lifetimely’s pricing is based on the number of orders a business processes each month, with five distinct tiers ranging from $49 to $999 per month. This model allows businesses to choose a plan that closely matches their current volume, providing a cost-effective solution that scales with their growth.

All Lifetimely plans includes a long list of features (month-to-month LTV projections, industry benchmarks, LTV drivers and more), not a custom made pricing plan depending on features.

Integrations

Metrics and Reporting

Lifetimely and Glew both give you a comprehensive list of P&L metrics with several customization options to help keep you monitor the metrics you value.

Both apps also offer comprehensive campaign-level marketing metrics, although Glew doesn’t include Pinterest or TikTok Ads data, and Lifetimely doesn’t include data from many of the external sources that Glew can plug into.

And both apps include several reports related to sales, inventory, marketing, and repurchase analytics.

But Lifetimely and Glew differ greatly in our approaches to calculating more advanced metrics. With certain metrics, Glew completely misses the mark.

How Glew calculates LTV

Glew’s most glaring shortcoming is their LTV formula. Their explanation of how they calculate LTV:

“When you are calculating lifetime customer value, you can use real numbers or an estimation if you are in the planning stages or just starting out. The calculation is simple: multiply the average sale amount by the number of transactions by the time period.”

Presumably, by “number of transactions” they mean average purchase frequency, and by “the time period” they mean average customer lifespan.

You can choose from a long list of reasons why this equation is completely unreliable - the massive margin of error in predicting customer lifespan, the assumptions you’re making based on just a small subset of past customers, etc.

But the take home point is that it would be a mistake to try to draw any meaningful conclusions based on these calculations.

How Lifetimely calculates LTV

At Lifetimely, our LTV report is our bread and butter. We calculate LTV via cohort analysis. Most competitors use the same method, and rightfully so - it’s by far the most reliable and actionable way of calculating, and it matches the same rigorous standard used in the VC industry.

And we’ve gone even further to provide the most comprehensive LTV-related metrics and reports in the market.

Our LTV reports include:

• Ten different LTV metrics (more than any other competitor)

• The ability to filter by dozens of factors such as marketing channel, discount code, first order product, and many more

• A CAC breakeven analysis to identify where profit generated from each cohort surpasses the cost of acquiring customers in that cohort

• Month-to-month projections of how each cohort’s LTVs (and revenues) will grow over time

Lifetime Value Report with predictive data

Other major features and selling points

More so than any other app, Glew invests more in providing customer data on the level of the individual. Glew allows you to sort through and filter your entire customer list according to multiple factors. They also provide individual customer profiles that catalog each customer’s order history, relationship length, total spend, and average order value.

Lifetimely includes several major features that no other competitor can offer. Among these, the highest value-adds are:

• Month-to-month LTV projections: Many apps measure historical LTV, but only Lifetimely gives you AI-generated projections of how much each of your cohorts will continue to spend over time. These LTV projections are the most actionable metrics available for revenue forecasting, financial planning, and customer-centric marketing.

• Industry benchmarks: Our Benchmarks tool shows you how your KPIs stack up versus your competitors by charting your major metrics on a bell curve of other Shopify stores. This helps you set achievable business goals and identify which metrics have the greatest room for improvement. No other app on the market has a comparable tool.

Benchmarks against other stores in your category

Conclusion - which is best for you?

Despite its hefty and complicated pricing structure, Glew has two intriguing selling points that distinguish it from competitors: its laundry list of potential integrations, and its detailed CRM with individual customer profiles.  This makes it a compelling option for sellers who value a niche integration or who prioritize individual-level metrics.

But sellers should be aware that choosing Glew means:

• A custom price to accommodate the features you want and/or a big annual prepayment

• Oversimplified and unreliable LTV calculations and reports

On the other hand, Lifetimely offers similar or stronger versions of nearly all of Glew’s dashboards and reports, the most accurate LTV calculations and projections of any Shopify app, all major integrations, and several unique features.

If you’d like to give us a try, you can sign up for our FREE plan or give one of our premium plans a free 14-day trial here.

And if you have any questions, just shoot us an email at help@lifetimely.io. We’d love to hear from you!