The Best Loyalty App for Small Businesses

As a small business owner, you know that keeping customers coming back is crucial. In fact, 61% of small businesses report that half of their revenue comes from repeat customers. A good loyalty program helps turn one-time shoppers into regulars, boosting your revenue at a fraction of the cost of finding new customers.

But choosing the right loyalty app can be challenging — not all platforms are created equal. This post compares three prominent loyalty solutions for local businesses: Highflyer, Ackroo, and LoyalZoo across key dimensions like setup speed, pricing, ease of use, scalability, customization, and app quality.

Comparison at a Glance

★ Verdict: Highflyer offers the fastest setup, the best transparent pricing, and the freshest mobile experience — without enterprise bloat. *Pricing note: Figures reflect Ackroo's publicly advertised loyalty bundle plus common add‑ons. Actual monthly outlay can vary by POS integration, card printing, and location count.

Highflyer: Mobile-First, Fast, and Customizable

Highflyer is a mobile-first loyalty app built specifically for small businesses, making it incredibly easy to launch and use. You can set up your loyalty program in less than 2 minutes — simply download the app and you're ready to go. Highflyer enables fast setup by letting you use QR codes or an NFC device for customer check-ins, with no training required for you or your staff. This plug-and-play approach means Highflyer plug‑and‑plays directly into your business — it works with minimal fuss, without the need for complex integrations or expensive hardware.

Ease of use is a major strength of Highflyer. Both business owners and customers find the app intuitive. Customers can redeem their rewards in seconds with one-tap redemptions, and you as the owner just approve with a tap on your phone. Everything is designed to be seamless. The interface is modern and straightforward, so there's virtually no learning curve.

Unlike the other choices mentioned, Highflyer was built from the ground up for smartphones, meaning you can manage your loyalty program right from your device on the go, without having to log into a clunky desktop dashboard. This mobile-first design results in a sleek, reliable app experience that feels familiar (much like using any popular consumer app) — a stark contrast to older loyalty systems.

When it comes to scalability, Highflyer shines as well. As your business grows, you can invite team members quickly just by using their phone numbers. In practice, this means if you hire a new cashier or manager, you can add them to your Highflyer loyalty system instantly via SMS invite — no need to create elaborate accounts or pay for additional licenses. Whether you have one store or plan to expand to a chain, Highflyer can scale with you. Unlike some competitors that charge per location or per staff account, Highflyer's approach is to keeps things simple and team-friendly.

Another key advantage is customizable rewards. Highflyer lets each business set its own rewards and point thresholds that make sense for their customers. You're not locked into a one-size-fits-all template. Want to offer a free coffee after 10 visits, or $5 off after 100 points? You decide. This flexibility means your loyalty program can be tailored to fit your unique business model and customer behavior, rather than following a generic scheme.

Highflyer provides live insights too — you can track customer visits and redemptions in real time right from the app. These live analytics help you understand engagement and adjust your rewards if needed.

Ackroo: A White-Label Platform with Overpriced Fees

Ackroo is a well-known loyalty and gift card platform that offers a broad suite of features — however, it is primarily geared toward larger businesses and comes with an enterprise-level price tag. For a small business, the cost of Ackroo can be prohibitive: their full loyalty solution is priced around $150 per month, plus a $1,500 setup fee per location. This means a single small shop is paying over a thousand upfront, which is a huge investment. Most local shops would find it difficult to justify spending that much on a loyalty program, no matter how feature-rich.

What do you get for that high cost? Ackroo's platform is comprehensive — it can handle gift cards, promotions, and integrates with point-of-sale systems. But the breadth of features also makes it complex to implement and use. Setting up Ackroo often involves ordering physical cards or key tags, configuring POS integrations, and deploying signage.

The onboarding process is consequently much longer and more complicated than Highflyer's quick mobile setup. Employees might need training to use the system, especially if it's tied into payment terminals or if they have to manage both digital and physical loyalty mechanisms. In contrast to Highflyer's no-training approach, Ackroo can feel cumbersome for a small team that just wants something simple.

Scalability is a double-edged sword for Ackroo. It is technically scalable across multiple locations and can support a growing business — but every additional location costs another $1,500 and $150 in monthly fees, since their pricing is per location. So while a franchise or large chain might use Ackroo, a growing independent business could be penalized by rapidly increasing costs as they expand. This kind of pricing model and heavy infrastructure is more suited to enterprise needs. Small businesses might end up overpaying for features they won't fully use, essentially subsidizing enterprise capabilities when all they needed was a straightforward loyalty app.

LoyalZoo: Once Innovative, Now Showing Its Age

LoyalZoo made a name for itself years ago as one of the first digital loyalty apps aimed at local shops and restaurants. It was one of the first to introduce the idea of a card-less loyalty program where customers check in with an app or phone number.

However, over time LoyalZoo's product has not kept pace with modern standards, leaving it outdated and prone to bugs today. Many users comment that the LoyalZoo app's interface feels old and clunky, and indeed even long-time customers noted that the design was a bit outdated.

The result is an app experience that can frustrate both merchants and customers — screens can be slow to load, and glitches occasionally happen.

From a features standpoint, LoyalZoo covers the basics but lacks the polish or flexibility of newer solutions. It allows simple stamp-style rewards, which worked well enough a few years ago, but the platform offers limited customization.

When evaluating ease of use, LoyalZoo is a mixed bag. On one hand, it was designed to be straightforward: staff simply have a customer check in by name or QR code, and then add points. It's not complicated in concept. The Loyalzoo website does recommend sharing staff tutorials with your team.

Conclusion: Highflyer Business the clear winner

After examining all three options, it's clear that Highflyer stands above the rest for small business loyalty. It strikes the perfect balance of speed, ease, and power — all without gouging your budget. Let's recap how Highflyer excels in each category:

• Setup Speed: Highflyer can be deployed almost instantly. You download the app and within minutes you have a working loyalty program using QR codes. Add NFC support at any point. Neither Ackroo nor LoyalZoo can match this agility and speed — Ackroo's setup involves contracts and hardware (taking days or weeks), while LoyalZoo's initial setup is digital but its clunky interface can slow down the process. Highflyer's plug-and-play design means your loyalty program is ready to roll with minimal effort.

• Pricing & Value: Highflyer is a cost-effective solution with no exorbitant fees. You won't be writing a $1,500+ check just to keep a loyalty program running, as you might with Ackroo. Every dollar invested in Highflyer goes toward a modern, evolving platform that actively helps grow your revenue with new features being released constantly. In short, Highflyer delivers better ROI: you get a top-tier loyalty system without bleeding your profits on software fees.

• Ease of Use: Highflyer's interface is clean, modern, and incredibly user-friendly. Both staff and customers find it simple — which means higher adoption and less time spent troubleshooting. Ackroo's complexity can overwhelm small teams, and LoyalZoo's usability issues can frustrate everyone involved. Highflyer requires no training because it was designed for people who don't have IT departments. You can hand the app to your employees and they'll understand how to check-in customers or approve a reward almost immediately. This ease of use keeps your operations running smoothly.

• Scalability: As your business grows, Highflyer grows with you seamlessly. Need to add more employees to help manage loyalty? Just send them an invite via phone number and they're on board. Opening a second location? Highflyer's mobile app will work there too, without punishing you with extra fees. In contrast, adding more locations under Ackroo would multiply costs significantly, and LoyalZoo's older platform might not handle expansion or higher customer volumes as gracefully. Highflyer is built on modern cloud infrastructure, so it can scale up without a hitch whether you have 100 customers or 10,000.

• Customization & Features: Highflyer puts you in full control of your loyalty program. You define how customers earn points and what rewards they get, tailoring everything to fit your business. The ability to set custom point thresholds and rewards means a bakery can reward customers differently than a salon would, for example. This flexibility outshines the competition — Ackroo tends to offer pre-set program structures (since it's used by larger companies with standardized programs), and LoyalZoo limits you to a basic menu of options. Additionally, Highflyer provides real-time insights into customer visits and reward redemptions, which is incredibly useful for making on-the-fly marketing decisions. Neither competitor offers the same level of immediacy and interactivity in their reporting. With Highflyer, you know exactly how your loyalty program is performing at any moment, right from your phone.

• App Quality and Support: Highflyer is a young, agile platform that is continually improving. Users can expect frequent updates, new features, and prompt support — the app is actively developed with feedback from small business owners in mind. Meanwhile, LoyalZoo's app feels frozen in time, and even Ackroo (despite its resources) doesn't prioritize a slick app experience. Highflyer is not an enterprise afterthought; it's a solution created specifically for independents and local businesses, which means the quality and support are aligned with your needs. Highflyer's focus on a seamless experience ensures your customers enjoy using your loyalty program (which reflects well on your brand), rather than grappling with an antiquated interface.

Both Ackroo and LoyalZoo may have their niches however. Ackroo might suit a larger enterprise with a big budget where a white label solution is absolutely needed, and LoyalZoo may appeal to those who absolutely need complete Point-Of-Sale support at a cheaper price — but neither provide quite the same seamless loyalty program experience that Highflyer does.

Choosing the right loyalty app can make all the difference for your business. If speed and simplicity is important to you, Highflyer clearly offers the most compelling solution for small businesses that want a loyalty program which is easy to launch, delightful to use, and effective at driving repeat business.

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Learn more about Highflyer: Download on the App Store or Get it on Google Play