Every merchant has been there - you’re trying to choose the right pricing plan for a new app or platform. With so many apps to choose from, and with all different pricing structures, it quickly becomes a difficult task.
We know the same is true for Govalo. We offer three different pricing tiers for merchants, starting with a free to install option all the way to a $399 per month plan. With such a wide difference, how do you choose the right one?
Today we’re going to look at all three pricing tiers - how much it costs, what’s included, and who it’s for. We’ll also give you some key questions to help you better assess your options, and some examples of successful Govalo merchants in action.
Govalo: Enhancing your Shopify store’s gifting experience
Gifting is a major part of ecommerce, and Govalo’s features give merchants the power to offer a better experience for their gift buying customers.
Govalo is a tool that enables Shopify merchants to reinvent their gifting experience. This is achieved through customizable gift cards, gift subscriptions, giftable products, and bulk/corporate gift card functionality. To really maximize the value of the app, there is also a store credit dashboard to easily manage and issue credit, as well as a gift card rewards feature.
What’s included with each Govalo plan?
The first step in choosing the right plan for your store is understanding what each plan includes. Govalo is free to install and has three pricing tiers - Essential, Premium, and Enterprise. Govalo’s Essential plan comes with everything you need to improve your gift cards, with Premium and Enterprise unlocking more features and tools you can use. Basically, the higher the tier, the more features you have access to.
Let’s take a look at each plan.
Govalo Essential
Monthly Fee: Free to install, with 2.89% of the total gift card value billed per month.
Essential is Govalo’s free-to-install plan that will get you up and running with customizable gift cards in a matter of minutes. If you’re looking to offer an enhanced gift card experience, this is where you should start.
Here are the features included with Govalo Essential:
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Customizable gift card user interface: Set your timezone, customize the look, feel, and language of the customer facing UI.
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Scheduled sending: Allow customers to select the date they want the gift card sent.
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Personalization options for gift cards: Add gift notes, and send gift cards directly to the recipient.
- Add multiple images to gift cards
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Create multiple gift card products for your store
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Out of stock integration: When an item is out of stock, give the customer the option to buy a gift card instead right on the product page.
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Understand your gift cards better: Get an inside look with basic analytics, event timeline, and open tracking.
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Shopify POS compatible QR codes: Give customers greater flexibility with how they spend their gift cards.
With Essential, every merchant can improve their gift card experience almost immediately. This is especially helpful if you’re working with a tight deadline, i.e. the holiday season is fast approaching and you want to have better gift cards sooner rather than later.
Govalo Premium
Monthly Fee: $79 per month, plus 2.25% of the total gift card value.
Looking to get even more from your gifting experience? Govalo’s Premium plan is the next step up from Essential, unlocking more advanced features and new ways to improve your store’s gift options.
Premium comes with all the features included with Essential, plus…
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Customizable gift card redemption and look up pages
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Gift subscriptions: Enhance the experience of buying subscriptions as gifts using Govalo’s Recharge and Bold Subscriptions integrations.
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Use email to enhance gift communication: Do more by connecting Govalo with Klaviyo, Omnisend, or Drip.
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Store credit dashboard: Manage and issue store credit through Govalo.
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Gift card rewards: Create unique promotions using gift cards, added automatically to the customer’s cart.
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Giftable products: Add flexibility into the gifting experience. Customers send a product as a gift, and the recipient selects their preferred variant and delivery details.
- Use webhooks to tailor your Govalo experience: Create custom events and integrations to connect Govalo to your favorite apps.
Premium turns Govalo from a gift card app, to a full gift experience platform and then some. If gifting is a major part of your sales, then the Premium tier will enable you to take it to the next level. The additional features add flexibility and deeper customization to your gift products, while also giving you the tools to use those products in more unique ways across your store strategy.
Govalo Enterprise
Monthly Fee: $399 per month, plus 1.5% of the total gift card value.
Operating a large, high growth Shopify store? Then you might be interested in Govalo’s Enterprise plan. This tier is designed around the tools a Shopify Plus merchant will need to design a customer-led, feature-rich gifting and store credit experience. And for extra assurance, Govalo is also Shopify Plus certified.
Enterprise comes with all the features of Essential and Premium, with some exclusive additions:
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Negotiable volume rate: Govalo wants to work with your store to scale in a way that makes sense for your business. That’s why our team will with you personally to negotiate a volume rate that allows you to grow your gifting strategy.
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Priority support access: When you’ve working with large volumes, the last thing you want is to wait on a support ticket. Enterprise merchants get priority access to our expert team to solve your issues fast.
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Monthly insight reporting: Gain deeper insights into how your gift products are performing so you can make the most of your strategy.
- Annual billing options: Keep your spending simple and tailor your billing cycle to a pattern that suits your business.
Govalo’s Enterprise plan takes everything the app does best, and makes it worthwhile for high-growth, high volume Shopify merchants. You’ll have all the powerful tools the app offers, plus the support of our team to ensure you get the most out of Govalo.
How do I choose the right plan for my store?
Every Shopify store is unique, from the products it sells to the apps it uses to its long-term business goals. This means the decision of which Govalo plan will be the “right” one doesn’t have a one-size-fits-all answer. The best way to determine which plan is best for your store, is to ask some key questions about how Govalo will ultimately fit into your store sales and marketing strategy.
How big a portion of your sales is directly related to gifting?
Start with the most important question - are gifts of high value to your store. There are product categories that typically see higher gift sales year round, such as food and beverage, pet products, baby products, and beauty/wellness products. However, many businesses see high gift sales seasonally at key periods throughout the year. This may include more obvious holidays like Christmas and Mother’s Day, as well as periods not associated with holidays like back-to-school and summer vacations.
It’s also worth questioning if a better gift experience would improve gift sales. You might see a modest increase in sales of gift cards at key times of the year, but would you see more if you offered a better gift card experience?
Which features will your customers benefit most from?
Not every feature Govalo offers will be useful to every merchant. If you don’t offer subscriptions for example, then the gift subscription features won’t be valuable. Look at every feature from Essential to Enterprise, and consider how each may improve your customer experience. The more features you can see will add value, the more able you’ll be to decide which plan is right for your store.
Are subscriptions a major part of your store?
Subscription commerce is a big part of ecommerce nowadays, and many merchants offer some kind of subscription whether it’s a curated box or a replenishment service. If your primary product is a subscription, then it makes sense to also offer a gift subscription option. This will make it easier for customers to purchase, and recipients to manage a subscription given as a gift. If subscriptions aren’t your primary focus, but still make up a sizable portion of sales then again, having a true gift subscription experience may be worthwhile.
How do you currently manage store credit?
There’s an app for everything on Shopify, and with over 8000+ and counting it can get tricky to know which to install and which to pass on. Managing store credit can be done with its own app, but if you want to consolidate your tech stack then it may be worth exploring apps which have this bundled in with other features. Govalo’s Premium and Enterprise tiers come with a store credit dashboard, keeping this neatly within a single app to manage store credit and gifting.
What gift options do you currently offer, and what flexibility is there?
Whether gift sales are seasonal or year-round, your customers are looking for options. Many storefronts are focused on selling to the individual, not selling to an individual shopping for someone else. You may have gifting options like a gift note and gift wrap, but what else is there for customers? What if they want the ease of a gift card, but want to gift something that feels more substantial? What if they want to buy a gift card online for the recipient to use in a physical store? Consider how your customers buy and use your gift products, and see if there are any gaps you could fill with the features Govalo offers.
What are your long term goals for gifting?
Time to look at the bigger picture - will gifting be a focus for your business in the future? You may already have a solid percentage of sales you can attribute to gifts, and want to explore expanding this further. If your product niche has a high potential for gift sales, then it may be something you want to focus on. If gifting is something which will be a major focus for your store, then having flexible, enhanced gift products is essential.
The answers to these questions will make the decision that much clearer, as you start to understand how each tier may fit into your store experience and goals.
Show and tell: How Govalo merchants have enhanced their approach to gifting
Sometimes, it’s easier to imagine using an app if you can see what other merchants are doing. Govalo has a diverse range of merchants using a variety of features to make the most of the app as part of their strategy. Let’s take a look at three merchants and the ways they’re using Govalo to enhance their gifting experience on Shopify.
Felix Gray - Offering a better gift card buying experience
Buying a pair of glasses can be a pretty personal experience. After all, they’re something you’ll wear every day so you want to find the right pair. They also make for a great gift, but when you’re buying something that can be such a personal choice, it can be pretty difficult. That is unless you have a great gift card option.
Felix Gray offers their customers an enhanced gift card experience powered by Govalo. They set custom gift card values to make it easy for customers to gift some of the cost, or even the entire cost at $95. Customers can personalize their gift card, choose to send it directly to the recipient or to themselves, and even select the date they want to send it on.
Curie - Using rewards to enhance Black Friday promotions
It can be challenging to stand out from the crowd over Black Friday Cyber Monday. When everyone is dropping their prices and deepening their discounts, it all becomes a bit of a blur. That’s why Govalo merchant Curie decided to try something totally different.
They decided to ditch discounts altogether, and offer a free gift card with every purchase over a certain amount. The more the customer spent, the higher the gift card value.
Curie didn’t have to devalue their products, while also securing a second sale from every customer who ordered over BFCM weekend. This gave them a double hit - acquisition and guaranteed retention. Curie founder, Sarah Moret, even noted on Twitter that they saw higher new customer acquisition than with previous promotions, and higher AOV over the weekend.
Merchants using Govalo on Premium or Enterprise tiers can now use the same strategy through the Rewards feature. Just set your thresholds and values, and Govalo automatically adds and adjusts rewards in the customer’s cart.
Fellow - Crafting a unique subscription gifting product
Want to see what a great gift subscription looks like in action? Look no further than Fellow who took their subscriptions to the next level with a custom experience powered by Govalo and Recharge.
Customers can quickly and easily build the perfect coffee subscription for their lucky recipient, selecting different varieties and adding their details to make it truly theirs. Much like gift cards, the customer can also select a date to send the gift on. When the recipient gets the email, they can activate the subscription whenever it suits them best. They then add all their own details, and manage it themselves - no account handover, no pausing and unpausing to get the timing right.
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Choosing the right plan for any app you plan to install can be tricky. If it’s free to install, you want to know that paying for more features will actually be worthwhile. By breaking down Govalo’s different pricing tiers and offering some more insight into choosing a plan, we hope you’ll have a clearer picture of how Govalo fits into your store’s long-term success.