Every part of building an ecommerce store involves pricing tiers. From basics like Shopify vs Advanced or Plus, to each individual app within a store. Going off a listing in the app store is one thing, but with limited space to sell you on its features, how do you really know if you’re making the right call? Especially if there’s a free option, why look at paid options?
We want to make it as easy as possible for merchants to not only choose the right plan for their store, but understand the benefits and impact of Govalo in general. We’re going to look at what comes as standard with all our plans, as well as what more merchants have access to when they upgrade to Premium or Enterprise.
What is Govalo?
Let’s start with the basics. Govalo is a Shopify Plus certified gifting and store credit solution. We provide merchants with an easy way to offer enhanced gift products, designed to tackle the common challenges many customers face when buying a gift.
This includes a more advanced gift card, as well as a way to offer gift subscriptions through integrations with Recharge and Bold Commerce. Other unique features include the ability to display the option to purchase a gift card when an item is out of stock, creation of multiple gift card products, giftable products, and store credit.
These features combined provide customers with multiple gift options that are simple, straightforward, and allow for a more personal touch in digital gifting. This in turn improves acquisition as well as retention, and opens up additional opportunities for unique promotions using gift cards.
What are Govalo’s pricing plans?
We offer three different pricing options. Each upgrade unlocks additional features that can take Govalo from a gift card app to its full potential as a gifting solution.
- Essential - Free to install, charging 2.9% of total gift card value.
- Premium - $79 per month, plus 2.25% of total gift card value.
- Enterprise - $399 per month, plus 1.5% of total gift card value.
Choosing the “right” plan all comes down to a merchant's strategy and goals for gifting. Merchants in higher “giftable” verticals like apparel, food and beverage, baby products, etc. may find additional features of greater value. Whereas merchants who may see a more seasonal uptake in gifting may see more value in our Essential plan.
Here are the features which come with every plan:
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Personalizable gift cards - Send a gift card directly to the recipient or to the customer’s email address, add the recipient’s name, add a gift note, and select the delivery date.
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Multiple image upload - Add multiple images for each gift card product to suit different occasions or messages.
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Multiple product creation - Add more than one gift card product to your store.
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Customizable user interface (UI) - Change the language, look, and feel of the customer-facing user interface to align with your brand.
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Out-of-stock integration - Display the option to purchase a gift card when a variant or product is out of stock.
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Shopify POS compatible QR codes - Customers can redeem gift cards online, or in-store if the merchant is using Shopify POS.
- Event timeline and open tracking - Understand how customers use your gift cards, and offer better, faster customer support.
With these, any merchant of any size can add an enhanced gift card to their store.
What features are included with Govalo’s Premium plan?
In upgrading to Premium, merchants are able to access additional features, as well as integrations with our growing list of partners from around the Shopify ecosystem.
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Gift subscriptions - Take advantage of subscription commerce through our integrations with Recharge and Bold Commerce. Gifts are purchased then sent directly to the recipient, where they can then redeem the gift whenever they choose. They also set up their own account, complete with any personalization details and payment methods.
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Customizable gift card redemption and lookup pages - Add more detail to the gift card experience and allow recipients to look up the balance of gift cards. Both this and the redemption page are customizable to ensure brand consistency.
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Email platform integrations - Get more out of the communication touch points you have with customers and gift recipients, by connecting Govalo to Klaviyo, Drip, or Omnisend. Each of these integrations enables you to make the most of the tools each platform offers with segmentation, data, and automation.
- Store Credit - Elevate your customer experience and use Govalo’s store credit dashboard to easily issue and manage a first class store credit program. Use this feature to offer more options for returns and exchanges, reward loyal customers, and boost customer support resolution tactics.
These additional features take gifting to a new level. Merchants can create a full gifting strategy, catering to the products and features their customers will benefit from.
What features are included with Govalo’s Enterprise plan?
Another step up is our Enterprise plan. On top of the features included with Premium, merchants gain access to even more tools as well as a more direct link with our team to ensure their gift strategy is running smoothly and efficiently.
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Giftable products - Allow customers to send a product as a gift. Similarly to gift cards, recipients are sent an email on the chosen delivery date with a redemption link. They then choose their preferred product or product variant, and enter their shipping details. The original customer is then provided with a link to a pre-filled checkout to complete the purchase. Customers don’t need to worry about picking the wrong size,color, or detail, adding incorrect shipping details, meaning less customer support stress and fewer returns.
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API access and webhooks - Customize how Govalo works within your tech stack by accessing our API and webhooks. This also opens up the possibility of using Govalo as part of a headless commerce approach.
- Priority support - When you’re operating at an Enterprise level, you need everything to run like clockwork. That’s why we offer all Enterprise level merchants priority access to support from our expert team, to ensure any issues and bugs are resolved lightning fast.
At this level, merchants can also negotiate on rates and volume discounts, as well as receive a white-glove approach to account management. Our team is on hand to not only fix any issues that arise, but to advise on how merchants can get the very best out of Govalo.
When are Govalo’s Premium and Enterprise plans worthwhile for my store?
It’s one thing to understand the features that come with each of our paid plans, but another to actually decide on if either are right for your store. Having spoken to several merchants across a range of sizes and verticals, we understand the different scenarios in which each of our plans is a good fit.
We’ve compiled a list of just some of the scenarios in which a paid plan would be of benefit, as well as which plan would be best suited.
#1 - You want greater control over your overall brand experience
Each page and product on your site is carefully designed and curated to provide customers with a fully optimized experience. Especially if your store is high-volume or high-growth, you’ll likely have invested a lot of time and money into this experience. To then use Shopify’s native gift card, or another app which offers only a few additional features, is then counterintuitive to that effort.
Govalo enables you to design your gift products and experience from start to finish. These become a more integrated part of your overall brand experience. You can control how the UI looks, the emails a customer receives, the retention strategy and more. This goes beyond just gift cards; if you offer subscriptions, for example, you can start to make it easier for customers to buy these as a gift. In this way, Govalo’s Premium or Enterprise become an essential part of your store strategy and experience, especially during key gift sales periods.
#2 - You want to offer store credit, and have it more easily managed in the backend
There are a variety of reasons why store credit is a great tool to have for your Shopify store experience. The most important of those being:
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More flexible returns process - Keep customers happy by offering store credit as an alternative. Especially if it’s an order for a gift, many customers won’t want to have to go through the refund and reordering process, so store credit can be an attractive option. Even in regular orders, the option to take store credit can help to mitigate revenue loss which is common in straight refund returns.
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Better customer support resolution - When customer support needs an extra lift, you can offer store credit both as a “thank you” and “sorry” to customers. It can also often speed up the process over something like a refund, as it can be issued and received quickly.
- Additional options for retention - Give loyal customers something extra quickly and easily by issuing store credit when a customer matches specific criteria.
Being able to issue and manage store credit quickly and easily is the key to its success. Govalo’s store credit dashboard makes this possible, keeping things simple and straightforward for your in-house team. Over-complicating the store credit process can often hinder rather than help, slowing down your customer support where it should be its most agile.
Store credit is a natural lead-on from gift cards - the function is similar, and customers understand them in much the same way. It makes sense to have both gift cards and store credit managed from the one source, and that’s why we’ve made it simple to do so.
#3 - Gifting makes up a sizeable portion of your sales year-round
Any store which sees a significant portion of sales from gifting will benefit from many of the paid features offered in our Premium and Enterprise plans. Certain product categories or verticals typically see year-round gift sales, such as baby/parent products, pet products, and food and beverage. Or if your product is either a subscription service, or you have a significant size of business in subscriptions. These are all prime candidates for improved gifting functionality.
By accessing the features of a paid Govalo plan, merchants are able to enhance their gift products, and make this area of their business more strategic. It isn’t just a gift card, or the ability to add a note to an order, you open up additional ways for customers to gift. The more options available, the better their experience.
#4 - You’re already using Shopify Plus, or are considering migrating to it
Merchants who either use or are considering Shopify Plus are high-growth, high-volume stores who require a powerful platform with advanced features. It then makes sense that the other tools they use match that.
When a merchant reaches the stage where Shopify Plus makes sense, then even if they aren’t considered to be within a highly giftable category, they are still likely bringing in high order volumes during peak gifting seasons like Christmas. This inherently means that their store and customers will benefit from a more personalized and flexible gifting experience. The ability to offer a better gift card, gift subscriptions, and giftable products, as well as understanding these through enhanced analytics, is something that any high-growth oriented merchant will benefit from.
#5 - You want to offer a better gift subscription experience
Subscription commerce is a huge opportunity for many merchants. Especially if you already operate a primarily subscription based store, gifting is a natural addition. However, even if you’re using a platform like Recharge or Bold, the experience isn’t quite as smooth if a customer wants to buy a subscription as a gift. This can cause a bit of friction for the customer where there shouldn’t be any.
Typically, a customer will have to buy a subscription as a normal subscriber, then transfer the account over to their recipient. This means the recipient might lose out on any onboarding or personalization, and requires the original customer to hand over the account.
Instead, Govalo integrates with Recharge or Bold Subscriptions to make the process easier, and more straightforward. The customer purchases the subscription, the recipient gets an email with a link to redeem it, and they create/manage the account. This can be a huge value add to a store with a subscription product, putting the subscription in the hands of the person receiving the gift. It also adds a level of professionalism to the customer experience that many will expect from a larger store.
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If you’d like to learn more about how Govalo can benefit your business, click here to get in touch with our team. And click here to view our listing on the Shopify App Store, or here to view our listing on the Shopify Plus Certified App Directory.