Lifetimely vs Polar Analytics

A quick look at how Polar Analytics’ features and pricing compare to Lifetimely.

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 Polar Analytics.

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

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Polar Analytics

Affordable plans for all stages of growth

All basic integrations (Google, FB, etc.)

Integrations with all other major ad platforms (Snapchat, Pinterest, and TikTok)

Other integrations

(see below)

(see below)

Comprehensive P&L metrics

Campaign-level marketing metrics

Advanced customization options

Lifetime Value cohort analysis

Month-to-month LTV projections

Industry benchmarks

Pricing

Key points

Polar Analytics plans start at $300/mo and scale up based on your monthly orders

All Lifetimely's plans offer same or better versions of nearly every Polar Analytics feature and aren't based on revenue

Polar Analytics pricing plan is based on gross merchandise volume, which in practice, is the same as revenue. Pricing starts at $300/month, growing up to $1600/month depending on order volume on the cheapest plan and $2200 on the most expensive one. There's also custom pricing for stores doing above $20M. 

(Beyond 10,000 monthly orders, your only option is a custom-priced plan.)

On the other hand, Lifetimely’s offers five plans (including a free plan) that are several times more affordable.

At $49/mo, Lifetimely PRO is at least 4x less expensive than Polar's plan despite offering same or better versions of nearly every feature.

Even our top-level plan, which includes several premium features that Polar doesn't offer even in custom plans, for almost half as much as Polar's most expensive self serve plan.

And since our top plan includes unlimited revenue and orders, your savings become much more pronounced as your business grows.

Integrations

Key points

Lifetimely and Polar Analytic have an almost identical list of integrations. Differences are in bold below

Lifetimely

Addition, Amazon, Facebook Ads, Google Ads, Google Analytics, Google Sheets, Microsoft Ads, Klaviyo, Pinterest Ads, ReCharge, ShipBob, ShipStation, Snapchat Ads, TikTok Ads

Polar Analytics*

Amazon, Criteo, Facebook Ads, Google Ads, Google Analytics, Klaviyo, Microsoft Ads, Pinterest Ads, ReCharge, Snapchat Ads, TikTok Ads
(*as of September 2022)



Metrics and Reporting

Key points

Lifetimely’s and Polar Analytics’s P&L metrics and marketing metrics are comprehensive and roughly equivalent

Both Lifetimely and Polar Analytics calculate LTV via cohort analysis with additional metrics and filters, but Lifetimely’s LTV analytics are much more robust

Lifetimely has much more advanced dashboard customization options

P&L metrics, marketing metrics, and dashboards

The standard P&L metrics and reports included in all Lifetimely and Polar Analytics plans are very similar. Both apps offer a comprehensive P&L dashboard, a product-centered report, and a tab that lists the details of individual orders.

But Lifetimely offers a much wider range of features to help you build unlimited customized dashboards with your choice of P&L metrics, campaign-level marketing metrics, and advanced reports. You can set goals, establish target safe zones for your metrics, create dashboard for different team roles, and easily share reports with outside stakeholders.

Polar Analytics has some options to create alerts and custom reports, but overall their customization options are much more limited.


LTV and other advanced metrics

Like Lifetimely, Polar Analytics uses cohort analysis to calculate customer lifetime value (LTV). Their LTV report includes alternative LTV metrics and useful filtering capabilities for additional segmentation.

But overall, Lifetimely’s customer behavior reports - especially our LTV report - are much more robust and include far more tools for deriving actionable insights from your data.

Some advanced features in Lifetimely that don’t exist in Polar Analytics:

  • Repurchase rate reports for learning the buying habits of repurchasing customers

  • Customer product journey maps for planning effective winback campaigns

  • Compare cohorts feature for apples-to-apples comparisons of how different customer traits influence LTV

  • LTV drivers report for automated insights on the factors underlying your highest and lowest LTV customers

Lifetimely is also the only app to offer month-to-month LTV projections, which we’ll cover below.

Lifetime Value Report with predictive data



Other major features and selling points

Key points

Polar Analytics’s only major feature without an equivalent in Lifetimely is a UTM attribution tool

Lifetimely is the only app on the market with monthly LTV projections, industry benchmarks, and other automated reports

Polar Analytics offers one major feature not available in Lifetimely - a UTM attribution tool for tying sales to the marketing efforts that led to them.

Lifetimely has several core 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?

Polar Analytics might be a good fit if you value their Criteo integration.

If you have a strong need for a UTM attribution tool (which Lifetimely doesn’t offer), you’re probably better off with BeProfit or another competitor with a similar feature set due to the hefty monthly price.

Otherwise, Lifetimely’s plans offer a much stronger set of features at a fraction of the price.

Lifetimely offers more comprehensive metrics, far more customization options, the most accurate LTV data in the industry, and several unique industry-defining features.

These are all available for a much lower cost than even Polar Analytics cheapest plan.

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!

Detailed comparison

See how Lifetimely stacks up versus other Shopify analytics apps to decide what’s best for your business.
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What the leading D2C brands say about us

Milly
August 1, 2022
This app is phenomenal! Great insights, easy to set up and amazing customer service. This program helped me turn a lot of manual calculations into an insightful cohort that you can toggle between several data points. Would highly recommend.
Feastables
July 7, 2022
Incredible breakdown by cohorts and easy to digest data, I've used Lifetimely as part of my core stack for over 20+ Shopify brands I look after and nothing comes close to ease of use, price and support / input from the team.
Liquid Death Mountain Water
June 20, 2022
Really loving Lifetimely. Bringing a ton of new insight to our business and just scratching the surface with what we can use it for. Highly recommend using it asap if you're trying to smartly scale your business.
Wolven
June 20, 2022
Lifetimely is definitely one of the top few apps that you need in your store. I can't believe I went years without a profit dashboard before installing it. The customer cohort analysis is essential to determine your most valuable customer types so that you can target more of them. The founder also provided a ton of great advice on our call.
Waken Mouthcare
May 30, 2022
We absolutely love Lifetimely. It is an absolutely essential app for anyone running their own store. Not only does it make it easy to look at the key stats that will drive the success of your business, the customer support is fantastic. We have even had direct advice from the app's founder and it was extremely valuable. If we could give this app 6 stars we would!
True Classic
May 4, 2022
This is THE BEST LTV app I've seen on Shopify! Super simple to set up & get incredibly powerful insights instantly (and for a much more reasonable price than other analytics software out there). They're also constantly innovating and building new features to enhance the platform. Highly recommend.
Nutra Nourished
November 25, 2021
Unbelievable good tool to get transparency and clarity on the real value of customers and product contribution. Great customer support, I can recommend this app to every Shopify store owner. Buying the LTV app was one of the best decisions I have made.
Truth Superfoods
September 20, 2021
This is an absolutely essential app for success and understanding of customer trends. The insights are accurate, extremely valuable and the team behind the app are first class in their knowledge and support. Ive been using this in 3 businesses for 12months and love it!
Mason Bottle
June 28, 2021
We learned a TON about our customers from using this app. It really helped us clarify the most important next steps for growing the business. The app is very easy to use and the folks we interacted with at the company were so helpful. I would highly recommend that every business owner use Lifetimely and keep a close eye on the data points it provides!

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