In brief
Free means four different things in loyalty software: a time-limited trial, a demo with sending disabled, a free tier that caps something, and genuinely free forever. Only the third and fourth are usable long term, and the thing a free tier caps tells you more about the vendor than the price does.
Four different things called free
The word is doing very different work depending on who is using it, and the difference matters more than the number beside it.
A free trial. Full product, fixed window, then a card. Useful for evaluating, useless for deciding whether a loyalty program works — a stamp card’s whole mechanic runs over months, and a 14-day trial ends before your first customer has finished a card.
A free demo tier. The product is open but the part that reaches customers is disabled. You can configure everything and send nothing. This is a sales tool, not a plan.
A free tier with a cap. Genuinely usable, bounded by a number. The interesting question is which number.
Free forever, unbounded. Rare, and usually paid for somewhere you cannot see — advertising, data, or a marketplace that competes with you for your own customer.
What the cap tells you
Every free tier is capped on something. Look at what, because it reveals what the vendor thinks it is selling.
| Capped on | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| A time window | You are being evaluated, not the product |
| Number of customers | You pay when the program works. Fair, and it scales with your success |
| Number of stamps or scans | You pay for the thing your staff do all day. This one bites at the worst moment |
| Number of locations | Free for a single shop, priced at your second |
| Sends or emails | The vendor’s own delivery cost, passed on honestly |
| Features, arbitrarily | The tier exists to be inadequate |
A cap on customers or on sending is a cost the vendor genuinely bears. A cap on stamps is a toll on the operation you were trying to make faster.
The five questions before you commit anything
Free removes the financial risk and none of the switching cost. By the time a free tier stops fitting, your customer list, your card balances and your staff’s habits all live inside it.
- What exactly is capped, and what happens at the cap? Does the program stop, or does only new signup stop? A tool that freezes existing cardholders punishes them for your billing.
- Can you export your customer list? Ask before you have one worth exporting.
- Who is the data controller? If the vendor is, your customers are also theirs.
- Does the free tier reach customers at all? A program you cannot message is a counting app.
- What does the first paid tier cost, at your real volume? Headline tiers are quoted at a customer count you intend to pass.
What the free tier does not change
Whatever you pay, the cost of a loyalty program is the reward. Ten visits earning a £3 coffee is roughly a 10% discount on those visits, and that number is unaffected by the software’s price.
This is worth stating plainly because “free” often ends the analysis when it should barely start it. A program with the target set too high costs you nothing and earns you nothing. A program with the target set too low is expensive on the most generous tier and expensive on the free one.
Get the target and reward right first. The tool is the cheaper decision.
NeoLoyal’s free tier, exactly
Stated in full so you can compare it against anything else without reading a table sideways.
Included, unlimited, on free:
- Stamps issued, and scans.
- Staff accounts and redemptions.
- The in-app message inbox — customers see campaign messages on their card at no cost to anyone.
Capped on free:
- 50 customers. This is the only wall, and it applies to new joins only.
- One live stamp card. Paused and not-yet-started cards do not count.
- One location.
- Four campaigns a month, delivered to the in-app inbox.
- No marketing emails. Every email is a real charge and every business shares one sending domain, so free sends none — which is what protects the deliverability of the businesses that do send.
- No Autopilot.
What does not happen: nothing expires on a date, and nobody already holding a card is ever affected by the shop’s billing. If a subscription is cancelled, the account returns to free rather than closing.
The customer count is deliberately the meter, because it is the one number that rises with your success rather than with your sophistication. A shop with 400 regulars is winning, and being asked to pay on the day they cross 50 lands differently from being asked on an arbitrary date.
When free stops being the right answer
Three moments, and none of them are about time:
- You cross about 50 regulars on the card. The program is working. That is the point at which paying for it is a straightforward decision.
- You want to email customers. Free reaches people in the app inbox only.
- You open a second counter, or want a second card running at once.
Paid tiers start at £9 a month. Current tiers and what each includes are on the pricing page — check there rather than here, since this page is about the shape of the decision rather than the invoice.