LoyaltyLion vs Smile
Smile is built for smaller brands, not scaling ones. Switch from Smile to LoyaltyLion when you’re ready for loyalty innovations that support your business growth, influencing loyalty behaviors across every market, channel and location.
THE BEST ALTERNATIVE TO SMILE
From Loyalty Pass and Receipt Upload to translation into 130+ languages, we build the native loyalty innovations that align with the growth challenges scaling brands face.
Latest product releasesOur AI-led recommendations and Loyalty Agent act as always-on retention advisors, helping you drive more revenue from your loyalty program with every suggestion.
Explore LoyaltyLion AIEvery market, location, and channel is different. That’s why we’ve made it super easy to tailor your rewards everywhere.
Learn more about rewardsOur Loyalty Challenges and AI Campaigns provide more ways to influence shopper behaviors, helping you drive more conversions and more revenue.
Explore Loyalty ChallengesWhere Smile is missing key ESP events and properties, LoyaltyLion helps you build a complete customer picture with comprehensive tier information and advanced Loyalty Pass and Receipt Upload URL events.
Explore Klaviyo eventsFrom customer redemption limits and advanced expiry options to audit logs, you’ll find the features you need to protect your profit margins as you scale, already built within LoyaltyLion.
Explore the platform
THE LOYALTYLION DIFFERENCE
We recently transitioned to LoyaltyLion from Smile and the move was seamless. We’ve unlocked way more features to grow and customise our loyalty program. Highly recommend!
JP T.
Verified G2 Reviewer
An honest side-by-side comparison to help scaling brands choose the best long-term loyalty partner.
LoyaltyLion vs Smile comparison
LoyaltyLion
Smile
G2 Mid-Market ranking
#1 for mid-market based on over 600 reviews
#1 for Small Business
Contracts
Annual contracts to ensure we get your setup right and optimize loyalty revenue over time
Short-term outlook: Month-to-month payments
Reward configuration
Apply different reward strategies across individual locations, markets, channels, and distribution methods
Apply the same reward strategy everywhere
Gamification and challenges
Highly-customizable challenges to influence customer behavior and motivate any combination of orders, subscription orders, reviews, referrals or custom activities
No Challenge functionality
Loyalty campaigns
Access AI-led recommendations based on 12+ years of loyalty data. Use them to deploy a wide range of loyalty campaigns including point and reward drops, birthday bundles and reward discounts.
No recommendations to drive campaigns and conversion. Limited campaign types available.
Loyalty AI
Work with the Loyalty Agent within LoyaltyLion, or plug your loyalty program into any AI assistant.
No way to ask natural language questions of your loyalty program
Native translation
Localize your program with native language and TOV translation
Follows Shopify’s language settings
Receipt upload
Quick and easy native receipt upload, with high levels of customization and deep insights
Custom support required
Loyalty Pass
Fully-customizable, native Loyalty Pass with advanced wallet insights and reporting
No ability to add your loyalty program to Apple or Google wallets
Advanced Klaviyo integration
More points, rewards and tier properties and events. Plus more customer insights. All passed into Klaviyo.
Missing key properties and events required to drive personalization
Liability and fraud protection
Advanced expiry options, audit logs and customer redemption limits are just some of the ways we protect your profits
Limited expiry controls, missing customer redemption limits, and no audit log, all leaving you at high risk of points liability and fraud
Advanced loyalty benchmarks
Publicly available benchmarks based on your vertical and industry, available on our website and within our Loyalty Agent
Mentioned on Smile’s website but not publicly available
BFCM stability
BFCM preparation happens all year. During peak we scale to handle 20x normal load, while processing over 1,800 orders per minute.
No publicly available information
They also get a smooth migration, a dedicated Onboarding Manager, a Loyalty Agent and a loyalty community they can feel part of.
Book a demoIs it easy to migrate to LoyaltyLion from Smile?
It’s very easy! Our dedicated Onboarding Team will ensure minimal disruption to your customers and help you replicate all aspects of your current program. We’ll take care of migrating loyalty data like points, tiers, and birthdays, and we’ll work with your developers to migrate custom features. You’ll need to look after your email triggers.
Why doesn’t LoyaltyLion offer month-to-month contracts?
Because we’re invested in your long-term success. We want to work with you for years, not months. We’re confident that, with our dedicated Onboarding Managers, ongoing Customer Support, and advanced analytics and reporting, we’ll deliver the ROI that you – and your CFO – are looking for long-term.
It takes time to build, launch, promote, and enroll customers into a successful loyalty program. Many brands have been working with LoyaltyLion for over eight years, and we want you to become one of them.
How does LoyaltyLion Onboarding work?
Every LoyaltyLion customer on a paid plan receives a dedicated Onboarding Manager that works with you to launch the optimal loyalty program in the shortest possible timeframe. We build your loyalty page and your Klaviyo Flows for you too.
One of our most recent reviews described our onboarding experience like this:
“Thank you so much to Reya for her guidance and support in launching our loyalty program! She is incredibly easy to work with - excellent communication, and was genuinely invested in our success.”
How does LoyaltyLion provide support over peak periods like Black Friday?
We prepare for the peak period all year round.
During BFCM 2025, we processed over $900M in orders while maintaining 99.99% uptime and a peak order processing rate of 1,800 orders/minute. We’ve enrolled over 600k members in just 72 hours.
We have a dedicated security and stability team to make sure your biggest sales moments never become your biggest loyalty headaches. But if you need us, we’re always there.
Does LoyaltyLion provide international support?
Yes. Members of our Onboarding, Customer Success, and Support functions are based around the world. Plus, our Loyalty Agent is on hand 24/7 to answer your loyalty questions and help you make changes and optimizations to your program.
What else do I get if I choose LoyaltyLion?
To be part of a growing loyalty community that we regularly bring together for webinars, physical events, and much more. From our Loyalty Connect virtual conference where we tell real loyalty success stories, to events like our recent in-store POS demonstration with Pure Seoul, you’ll have regular opportunities to connect and learn from other like-minded loyalty marketers.
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