Smile.io vs Yotpo: one offers loyalty programs, the other adds UGC and basic marketing tools. Here's a scalable option for growing companies…
November 25, 2024
Smile.io vs Yotpo vs Maestra: Choosing Your Ideal E-commerce Loyalty & Promotion Platform
After two weeks of researching, testing, and comparing Smile.io and Yotpo, we found that each platform excels in different areas, catering to specific business needs and use cases:
Smile.io
Yotpo
Best for: Micro-businesses or early-stage e-commerce brands seeking a simple loyalty and rewards solution
Best for: E-commerce SMBs looking to leverage UGC, reviews, loyalty programs, and basic marketing campaigns
Smile.io’s core strength is helping you build customer loyalty through point-based incentives and rewards to drive repeat purchases. However, that’s all it offers. It doesn’t have any marketing automation, customer data management, or omnichannel capabilities, so you’ll have to invest in building a whole martech stack when you start scaling. That’s why Smile is ideal if you’re only looking for a simple, cost-effective, and straightforward loyalty management solution at the beginning of your e-commerce marketing journey.
On the other hand, Yotpo is the best choice if you want a more holistic approach. It includes robust review management, email, and SMS features, and helps you to implement user generated content (UGC) in marketing campaigns. However, its personalization capabilities are somewhat limited, lacking built-in features like CDP functionality. You’d have to rely on third-party integrations to bring the most out of your customer base.
Neither Smile.io nor Yotpo include customer data management, so they aren’t ideal for personalized omnichannel marketing and engagement flows. They also only offer hands-on help if you’re on their expensive premium plans, which isn’t ideal for scaling businesses that don’t have the know-how or resources to run complex omnichannel marketing campaigns.
That’s why we included Maestra in this comparison.
Maestra
Best for: Midmarket e-commerce brands with an established marketing team and steady store traffic looking for a unified marketing platform to drive growth through hyper-personalized promotions across all channels
Maestra is the most unified platform for e-commerce marketing that personalizes experiences across email, SMS, websites, apps, offline stores, and paid media. Instead of running separate campaigns, it enables hyper-personalized flows across all channels through a unified platform.
Key features include:
- Real-time CDP with AI-Powered segmentation
- Email and SMS marketing
- Real-time site personalization with in-session segmentation
- Product recommendations and merchandising
- Loyalty program and promotions
- Paid media optimization
- Mobile push notifications and personalization
- And more, much more.
With white-glove support and a dedicated Customer Success Manager, Maestra truly handles it all. It’s perfect for midmarket companies with an established marketing team and steady traffic seeking to drive growth and enhance customer engagement.
If that sounds like something you’re looking for, book a call with our team today and see how Maestra will take your marketing efforts to the next level!
In this in-depth article, we’ll compare Smile.io vs Yotpo vs Maestra and their key features in six areas:
- Omnichannel Marketing Automation
- Loyalty Features
- User Generated Content
- Data Management & Utilization
- Customer Support
- Pricing
We’ll break down these areas and also cover Help Resources and Integrations in the main table below to give you a complete picture of each platform’s capabilities and how they compare.
Let’s begin.
Comparison Summary: Smile.io vs Yotpo vs Maestra
Smile.io
Yotpo
Maestra
⭐⭐
Supports loyalty program automation features with limited omnichannel capabilities. It lacks built-in integration across multiple channels and a CDP, making it harder to create cohesive, unified campaigns
Supports loyalty program automation features with limited omnichannel capabilities. It lacks built-in integration across multiple channels and a CDP, making it harder to create cohesive, unified campaigns
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Offers multi-channel marketing automation, since it includes email and SMS. Less sophisticated unification between the channels. No built-in CDP — harder to connect channels effectively and maintain a unified customer experience
Offers multi-channel marketing automation, since it includes email and SMS. Less sophisticated unification between the channels. No built-in CDP — harder to connect channels effectively and maintain a unified customer experience
🏆
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Maestra enables seamless, omnichannel hyper-personalized flows that connect email, SMS, websites, apps, offline stores, and paid media. With its built-in CDP, all channels work together based on real-time customer behavior, ensuring consistent messaging across every touchpoint. It handles an unmatched number of omnichannel flows—some companies have 90 flows built that run without any performance degradation
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Maestra enables seamless, omnichannel hyper-personalized flows that connect email, SMS, websites, apps, offline stores, and paid media. With its built-in CDP, all channels work together based on real-time customer behavior, ensuring consistent messaging across every touchpoint. It handles an unmatched number of omnichannel flows—some companies have 90 flows built that run without any performance degradation
⭐⭐⭐
Basic, loyalty-based email campaigns. Can integrate with more advanced third-party email tools but personalization will always be a challenge
Basic, loyalty-based email campaigns. Can integrate with more advanced third-party email tools but personalization will always be a challenge
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Shopify-based email marketing platform with drag-and-drop builder, AI recommendations, and automation flows. Offers domain authentication, detailed performance analytics, and an email warm-up tool. Personalization is a challenge
Shopify-based email marketing platform with drag-and-drop builder, AI recommendations, and automation flows. Offers domain authentication, detailed performance analytics, and an email warm-up tool. Personalization is a challenge
🏆
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Proprietary drag-and-drop email composer with clean and lean code to avoid Gmail clipping and SPAM folder. Granular control over bulk and trigger emails, with UTM tracking, A/B testing, and AMP updates. Offers advanced personalization with data from built-in CDP and advanced insights to optimize deliverability and engagement. With dynamic blocks, it auto-populates email content tailored to each audience segment. Customizable fonts, sizes, and language based on different segments. Email sending capacity: 500,000/hour
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Proprietary drag-and-drop email composer with clean and lean code to avoid Gmail clipping and SPAM folder. Granular control over bulk and trigger emails, with UTM tracking, A/B testing, and AMP updates. Offers advanced personalization with data from built-in CDP and advanced insights to optimize deliverability and engagement. With dynamic blocks, it auto-populates email content tailored to each audience segment. Customizable fonts, sizes, and language based on different segments. Email sending capacity: 500,000/hour
⭐⭐
Relies on third-party tools for automating SMS reminders. Personalization on third-party tools is limited
Relies on third-party tools for automating SMS reminders. Personalization on third-party tools is limited
⭐⭐⭐⭐
SMS marketing for recommendations, abandoned carts, and limited-time promotions
SMS marketing for recommendations, abandoned carts, and limited-time promotions
🏆
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Connected to the omnichannel flow — works as a part of a bigger conversation throughout the channels. Allows bulk SMS campaigns with high-speed distribution, cross-device customer recognition, AB-testing, and URL shortening
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Connected to the omnichannel flow — works as a part of a bigger conversation throughout the channels. Allows bulk SMS campaigns with high-speed distribution, cross-device customer recognition, AB-testing, and URL shortening
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Points, VIP tiers, and referrals. Custom point names and expiry. VIP rewards for top spenders. Points redeemed for discounts/products
Points, VIP tiers, and referrals. Custom point names and expiry. VIP rewards for top spenders. Points redeemed for discounts/products
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Points, VIP tiers, and referrals. Customizable rewards and plug-and-play campaigns. Points redeemed for discounts/free shipping
Points, VIP tiers, and referrals. Customizable rewards and plug-and-play campaigns. Points redeemed for discounts/free shipping
🏆
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Points, VIP tiers, referrals, and promotion offers based on time, location, orders, customer segments, website actions, or other unique criteria. Combine or sequence promotions and sync them across all communication channels. Reactive offers based on real-time customer behavior: more points to boost order value. Gradually increasing offers for nonconverting customers. Limited-time offers for a sense of urgency. Real-time mobile apps and POS support
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Points, VIP tiers, referrals, and promotion offers based on time, location, orders, customer segments, website actions, or other unique criteria. Combine or sequence promotions and sync them across all communication channels. Reactive offers based on real-time customer behavior: more points to boost order value. Gradually increasing offers for nonconverting customers. Limited-time offers for a sense of urgency. Real-time mobile apps and POS support
⭐⭐
Relies on integrations for advanced lead gen tools. Referral-based lead generation allows businesses to reward customers for referring friends
Relies on integrations for advanced lead gen tools. Referral-based lead generation allows businesses to reward customers for referring friends
⭐⭐⭐
Offers pop-ups, otherwise relies on integrations for advanced lead gen tools. Captures leads through review, loyalty, referral, SMS, and Email features. Review platform also displays customer reviews and ratings
Offers pop-ups, otherwise relies on integrations for advanced lead gen tools. Captures leads through review, loyalty, referral, SMS, and Email features. Review platform also displays customer reviews and ratings
🏆
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Easily customizable pop-ups, embedded blocks, surveys, quizzes, and gamification to capture customer information. Prioritization and frequency control to avoid customer frustration with too many pop-ups
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Easily customizable pop-ups, embedded blocks, surveys, quizzes, and gamification to capture customer information. Prioritization and frequency control to avoid customer frustration with too many pop-ups
⭐
You could find a workaround by integrating with other services
You could find a workaround by integrating with other services
⭐
You could find a workaround by integrating with other services
You could find a workaround by integrating with other services
🏆
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Mobile and web push notifications that engage customers through apps and browsers. Push campaigns can be customized for Android and iOS. Customizable images, buttons, and clickable URLs. Performance tracking and A/B testing
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Mobile and web push notifications that engage customers through apps and browsers. Push campaigns can be customized for Android and iOS. Customizable images, buttons, and clickable URLs. Performance tracking and A/B testing
⭐⭐
Doesn’t manage UGC directly but rewards customers for leaving reviews or sharing content via integrations like Judge.me and Okendo
Doesn’t manage UGC directly but rewards customers for leaving reviews or sharing content via integrations like Judge.me and Okendo
🏆
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Integrates UGC collection and reviews across customer touchpoints to boost trust. Offers Instagram and AI-powered curation tools to manage UGC
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Integrates UGC collection and reviews across customer touchpoints to boost trust. Offers Instagram and AI-powered curation tools to manage UGC
⭐⭐⭐
Doesn’t handle UGC collection but incentivizes it through all channels. Offers bonus points for customer reviews. Integrates with UGC management tools
Doesn’t handle UGC collection but incentivizes it through all channels. Offers bonus points for customer reviews. Integrates with UGC management tools
⭐
Offers a basic list of customers
Offers a basic list of customers
⭐⭐
Allows you to view and manage basic customer data
Allows you to view and manage basic customer data
🏆
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Real-time CDP that pools data from all online and offline sources into a central platform that acts as a single source of truth to power all marketing channels and keep your communication personalized and consistent. Commerce-specific data model combining enterprise capabilities & scalability with unrivaled time-to-market. Tracks product-based events to notify interested customer segments about stock and sales of relevant products
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Real-time CDP that pools data from all online and offline sources into a central platform that acts as a single source of truth to power all marketing channels and keep your communication personalized and consistent. Commerce-specific data model combining enterprise capabilities & scalability with unrivaled time-to-market. Tracks product-based events to notify interested customer segments about stock and sales of relevant products
⭐⭐⭐
Loyalty-based segmentation, grouping customers by points, VIP status, or redemption activity
Loyalty-based segmentation, grouping customers by points, VIP status, or redemption activity
⭐⭐⭐
Segments Plus groups customers based on customer behavior and reviews, such as those with high point balances or VIPs with negative reviews
Segments Plus groups customers based on customer behavior and reviews, such as those with high point balances or VIPs with negative reviews
🏆
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Offers real-time, scheduled, and static segments. Product-based segmentation categorizes customers by interactions with specific products. RFM segmentation groups customers based on recency, frequency, and monetary value. Nested and excluded segments for extreme precision in targeting. Computed fields for setting up rules to identify very specific customer segments like frequent buyers in certain categories
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Offers real-time, scheduled, and static segments. Product-based segmentation categorizes customers by interactions with specific products. RFM segmentation groups customers based on recency, frequency, and monetary value. Nested and excluded segments for extreme precision in targeting. Computed fields for setting up rules to identify very specific customer segments like frequent buyers in certain categories
⭐
Relies on third-party tools
Relies on third-party tools
⭐
Relies on third-party tools
Relies on third-party tools
🏆
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
AI-powered website and email product recommendations, predicting purchases based on customer behavior, and updating suggestions in real-time. Offers cross-sell, downsell and upsell strategies and personalized suggestions based on product attributes (size, color, and more). 14 prebuilt AI algorithms for automation + full ability to set up rules manually to fine-tune the experience
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
AI-powered website and email product recommendations, predicting purchases based on customer behavior, and updating suggestions in real-time. Offers cross-sell, downsell and upsell strategies and personalized suggestions based on product attributes (size, color, and more). 14 prebuilt AI algorithms for automation + full ability to set up rules manually to fine-tune the experience
⭐
Lacks direct ad optimization features. Uses loyalty and referral programs to enhance customer engagement
Lacks direct ad optimization features. Uses loyalty and referral programs to enhance customer engagement
⭐⭐⭐
Integrates with Google Ads, Facebook, and Instagram. Leverages customer reviews for dynamic ads
Integrates with Google Ads, Facebook, and Instagram. Leverages customer reviews for dynamic ads
🏆
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Automates audience segmentation, integrates with ad platforms, and supports real-time customer data collection through social media lead forms. Reduce ad costs by utilizing precise customer segments to increase conversion rates
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Automates audience segmentation, integrates with ad platforms, and supports real-time customer data collection through social media lead forms. Reduce ad costs by utilizing precise customer segments to increase conversion rates
⭐⭐⭐
Over 25 pre-built reports to track loyalty metrics like top earners, sales attribution, ROI, and conversion rates. Data export available in .csv format
Over 25 pre-built reports to track loyalty metrics like top earners, sales attribution, ROI, and conversion rates. Data export available in .csv format
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Analytics dashboards for reviews, loyalty programs, emails, and photos show conversion rates, geographical distribution, sentiment analysis, and competitor benchmarking. Data export available in .csv format
Analytics dashboards for reviews, loyalty programs, emails, and photos show conversion rates, geographical distribution, sentiment analysis, and competitor benchmarking. Data export available in .csv format
🏆
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Tracks business goals, loyalty programs, and campaign ROI through multiple dashboards. Advanced analytics to fine-tune marketing efforts, monitor performance, and optimize discount strategies. A/B testing and control groups to optimize marketing tactics. Email Health Monitoring report, comparing performance to industry standards. Data export available in any format, anytime
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Tracks business goals, loyalty programs, and campaign ROI through multiple dashboards. Advanced analytics to fine-tune marketing efforts, monitor performance, and optimize discount strategies. A/B testing and control groups to optimize marketing tactics. Email Health Monitoring report, comparing performance to industry standards. Data export available in any format, anytime
⭐⭐
Reach out to support via live chat. Priority support, white-glove migration, and quarterly monitoring on the Plus plan
Reach out to support via live chat. Priority support, white-glove migration, and quarterly monitoring on the Plus plan
⭐⭐⭐
Contact support via email or live chat. Optimization strategist and enterprise account manager for enterprise user
Contact support via email or live chat. Optimization strategist and enterprise account manager for enterprise user
🏆
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
End-to-end white glove support that helps with roadmap creation, migration, implementation, and testing through strategy suggestions, weekly meetings, and in-app help. Under 5-minute support chat response
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
End-to-end white glove support that helps with roadmap creation, migration, implementation, and testing through strategy suggestions, weekly meetings, and in-app help. Under 5-minute support chat response
Integrations
⭐⭐⭐
+25 integrations, including Email marketing, customer services, billing, forms, business intelligence, and packaging platforms
+25 integrations, including Email marketing, customer services, billing, forms, business intelligence, and packaging platforms
🏆
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
+170 integrations, including ad, analytics, BI, chat, social, automation, e-commerce, email marketing, CRM, omnichannel, page builder, and payment platforms
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
+170 integrations, including ad, analytics, BI, chat, social, automation, e-commerce, email marketing, CRM, omnichannel, page builder, and payment platforms
🏆
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Ready-to-use integrations with e-commerce and marketing solutions. Your dedicated success manager can create custom integrations on request with the API and webhooks. Integration monitoring and troubleshooting
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Ready-to-use integrations with e-commerce and marketing solutions. Your dedicated success manager can create custom integrations on request with the API and webhooks. Integration monitoring and troubleshooting
🏆
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Starter costs $49/month for 500 monthly store orders. Includes only Points & Referral programs, 2 integrations, and basic reports. Priority support and white glove migration available only on the Plus plan for $999/mo for 7,500 orders
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Starter costs $49/month for 500 monthly store orders. Includes only Points & Referral programs, 2 integrations, and basic reports. Priority support and white glove migration available only on the Plus plan for $999/mo for 7,500 orders
🏆
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Offers four products with separate plans. The full suite price depends on store order volume and starts at $368/mo for up to 500 orders. Dedicated optimization strategist included only in the Premium and Enterprise plans, starting at $941/mo for up to 1,000 orders. Email usage charged separately: 10K-0.1M emails/mo costs $135. Charge per SMS: $0.0072
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Offers four products with separate plans. The full suite price depends on store order volume and starts at $368/mo for up to 500 orders. Dedicated optimization strategist included only in the Premium and Enterprise plans, starting at $941/mo for up to 1,000 orders. Email usage charged separately: 10K-0.1M emails/mo costs $135. Charge per SMS: $0.0072
🏆
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Price depends on the number of customer profiles, starting at $1,990/month for up to 80k customers. Every pricing tier includes all essential features, unlimited emails, and white-glove service with a Customer Success Manager. Charge per SMS only $0.0045 Overall costs less per customer profile as you grow. No upfront fees. Cancel anytime
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Price depends on the number of customer profiles, starting at $1,990/month for up to 80k customers. Every pricing tier includes all essential features, unlimited emails, and white-glove service with a Customer Success Manager. Charge per SMS only $0.0045 Overall costs less per customer profile as you grow. No upfront fees. Cancel anytime
Micro-businesses or early-stage e-commerce brands seeking a simple loyalty and rewards solution
E-commerce SMBs looking to leverage UGC, reviews, loyalty programs, and basic marketing campaigns
Midmarket e-commerce brands with an established marketing team and steady store traffic looking for a unified marketing platform to drive growth through hyper-personalized promotions across all channels
What is Smile.io?
“Turning customers into advocates” 🌟💬
Smile.io’s core feature is the Points program that rewards customers for purchases, birthdays, or social media shares. It also has a VIP program that adds tier-based rewards for loyal customers and a Referrals program that encourages the acquisition of new customers. While the programs have several default reward options and settings, you can expand their functionality using the Smile API.
These features make Smile.io ideal for micro-businesses or early-stage e-commerce brands looking to build strong customer relationships and drive repeat business by adding simple loyalty programs to their store experience.
What is Yotpo?
“Powering the entire customer journey” 💬🛍️
Yotpo offers five marketing products—Loyalty & Referrals, Email, SMS, Reviews & UGC, and Subscriptions—that can work together to create a complete customer experience. Although it can work as an all-in-one suite, its most unique feature is the ability to collect, moderate, and publish customer generated content across social media platforms and reuse it to run and inform marketing campaigns. The curated content can be posted manually or automatically, thanks to AI-powered tagging and integration with social media platforms like Instagram.
Yotpo is ideal for e-commerce SMBs looking to leverage UGC, reviews, loyalty programs, and basic marketing campaigns.
What is Maestra?
“The most unified platform for e-commerce marketing” 📊💡
Maestra is a comprehensive marketing platform for e-commerce, but at its core is a real-time customer data platform that tracks user interactions across all channels, storing customer behavior data alongside purchase information from both e-commerce and offline stores.
The collected data can be used to create advanced customer segments and hyper-personalized omnichannel marketing strategies. Because all the features are housed within a single platform, customer data can be used to create targeted loyalty, promotion, email, SMS, in-app, on-site, and paid marketing campaigns. With Maestra you can do it all and not by yourself — unlike competitors, Maestra provides full white-glove support through a dedicated customer success manager. The specialist effectively becomes a part of your team, helping you plan and execute marketing efforts with Maestra.
This and more, makes Maestra an ideal all-in-one solution for midmarket e-commerce brands with a marketing team and existing store traffic that want to personalize marketing across all channels, tailor promotions to customers, and scale their channels from a single platform.
Smile.io vs Yotpo vs Maestra: Omnichannel Marketing Automation
Yotpo’s suite integrates UGC, email, and SMS, while Smile.io offers basic loyalty-specific features. Maestra’s unified platform offers true omnichannel marketing automation with advanced segmentation and personalization options.
With Maestra, you don’t manage your loyalty program, emails, texts, push notifications, and pop-ups as separate campaigns. Instead, you create seamless, omnichannel hyper-personalized flows that span all your channels. These flows are interconnected and responsive to real-time customer behavior, ensuring consistent messaging across every touchpoint. All channels work together to tell the same story. And the scale of automations you can build is unmatched — many companies run 30 to 90 automation flows seamlessly, with no performance degradation.
Maestra’s omnichannel flow builder
In contrast, Smile.io has limited omnichannel capabilities, supporting automation features connected only to loyalty programs. You’d have to rely on integrations to expand your reach. Yotpo offers more in terms of communication channels as it includes email, SMS, UGC, and such, but it lacks the sophistication to connect these channels as seamlessly as Maestra, making it harder to maintain a unified customer experience.
Smile.io enables email marketing connected to its loyalty programs, Yotpo targets Shopify store owners, and Maestra has a proprietary email composer that supports AMP technology.
Smile.io
Yotpo
Maestra
⭐⭐⭐
⭐⭐⭐⭐
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Smile.io offers some basic email marketing features, integrated with its loyalty and rewards programs.
It allows you to set up automatic lifecycle emails like redemption reminders and referral requests to boost engagement and sales. It targets specific user segments with exclusive offers and VIP perks to enhance loyalty program participation. It also integrates with other email tools to manage campaigns.
Whether targeting new community members or nurturing top-tier customers, you can create personalized flows to maintain and grow relationships.
Yotpo combines email marketing and SMS into a separate platform for Shopify and Shopify Plus.
Yotpo’s email and SMS settings
Yotpo’s campaign creation and management tools include a drag-and-drop builder with AI recommendations to create branded emails and domain authentication to reduce spam. Automation flows include welcome emails, abandoned cart notifications, and customer win-back campaigns.
Advanced users benefit from detailed reports, third-party integrations, and an email warm-up tool to improve deliverability. Meanwhile, performance analytics provide insights into open rates, click-throughs, and conversions.
Maestra offers a proprietary drag-and-drop email composer with clean and lean code to avoid Gmail clipping and a SPAM folder. Every email is completely individual as it allows personalization based on customer data pulled from built-in CDP. With dynamic blocks, it auto-populates email content tailored to each audience segment. Everything is customizable to cater to different segments — fonts, sizes, and even language.
Meastra’s email builder allows the most granular control over bulk and trigger email campaigns. It offers UTM tracking that allows targeting based on topic subscriptions to ensure recipients receive relevant content. Plus, you get detailed performance insights. Maestra’s email health monitoring ensures your campaigns stay on track by benchmarking your performance against industry standards. From open rates to spam and unsubscribe rates, every metric highlights your strengths and areas for improvement.
The email profile settings also offer customization options, including flexible contact validity checks, while frequency controls prevent subscribers from being overwhelmed. It enables dynamic and personalized email campaigns with A/B testing, real-time AMP updates, and advanced sending configurations.
Meastra’s email composer
SMS
Smile.io needs third-party integration. Yotpo integrates SMS with email marketing. Maestra has SMS connected to the omnichannel flow and also offers features like cross-device customer recognition and URL shortening.
Smile.io
Yotpo
Maestra
⭐⭐
⭐⭐⭐⭐
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Smile.io integrates with third-party tools to automate SMS reminders for customers with reward points.
You can run targeted SMS campaigns to specific customer segments, ensuring relevant offers reach the right audience. Meanwhile, personalized SMS reminders encourage repeat purchases and point redemption.
Yotpo’s SMS marketing feature offers personalized messages to engage customers at key touchpoints.
You can automate SMS reminders for abandoned carts, share personalized recommendations, and promote limited-time offers during events like Black Friday. Yotpo also converts email subscribers to SMS and allows rewarding subscribers with loyalty points or collecting product reviews via SMS.
Yotpo’s SMS flow screen
Maestra’s SMS feature is connected to the omnichannel flow — it works as a part of a bigger conversation throughout all your marketing channels. Overall, it focuses on bulk SMS campaigns, offering features like high-speed distribution (up to 250,000 messages per hour), URL shortening for tracking, and A/B testing for message optimization.
It also supports cross-device customer recognition and ticket authentication for personalized access to gated content.
Welcome SMS campaign editor on Maestra
Lead Generation Elements
All three platforms generate leads through loyalty programs and referrals, but Maestra also offers social media forms and advanced website elements like gamified pop-ups, surveys, and quizzes.
Smile.io
Yotpo
Maestra
⭐⭐
⭐⭐⭐
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Smile.io’s lead generation is tied to its referral program.
Your business can set up custom campaigns that reward customers for referring friends who make purchases.
Smile.io’s referral program settings
Yotpo offers embedded website forms, allowing you to collect either SMS or email subscribers quickly and seamlessly.
Yotpo’s lead form settings
Like Smile.io and Yotpo, Maestra also generates leads through loyalty and referrals, but it adds some more tools to the stack to help you capture customer information: easily customizable pop-ups, embedded blocks, surveys, quizzes, and gamification. The lead gen forms capture customer details, such as name, email, and preferences, which you can later utilize within your omnichannel marketing flows.
Maestra’s pop-up creation page
Pop-ups can be triggered by user behavior, like time spent on the site or a specific action, ensuring they appear at the most opportune moments. However, to prevent customer frustration from excessive pop-ups, Maestra offers options to set prioritization and frequency rules.
Maestra’s pop-up creation settings
Once a visitor fills out a form, Maestra automatically updates their customer profile with the captured data, making it easy to segment and target these new leads with personalized flows and campaigns.
Additionally, Maestra captures leads from social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, using this data to trigger real-time communications such as special offers or new subscriber discounts. Event tracking and Google Analytics integration further enhance Maestra’s ability to monitor and optimize lead generation.
Mobile & Web Push
Neither Smile.io nor Yotpo offers mobile and web push notifications, though you could find a workaround by integrating with other services. Maestra does offer customizable mobile and web push notifications.
Smile.io
Yotpo
Maestra
⭐⭐
⭐⭐
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Maestra supports mobile and web push notifications, helping businesses engage customers through apps or browsers. Push campaigns can be tailored for Android and iOS with scheduling options for timely delivery.
Maestra’s notifications offer rich customization with images, buttons, and clickable URLs for an interactive experience. Web push notifications effectively engage desktop users with brief, non-intrusive messages.
With performance tracking and A/B testing, Maestra allows businesses to refine push strategies for optimal engagement and minimal disruption.
Maestra’s mobile push builder
Omnichannel Marketing Automation Winner: Maestra
It creates seamless, omnichannel hyper-personalized flows that integrate email, SMS, websites, apps, offline stores, and paid media. Combining customer data with advanced automation allows businesses to run highly targeted, personalized communications with consistent messaging at every touchpoint.
Smile.io vs Yotpo vs Maestra: Loyalty Features
Smile.io and Yotpo offer essential loyalty features. Maestra offers every loyalty feature you need and they work perfectly in sync with your omnichannel marketing approach.
Smile.io
Yotpo
Maestra
⭐⭐⭐⭐
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Smile.io offers several loyalty features: points, VIP tiers, and referrals.
Its core feature is the Points Program, where loyal customers can earn points for purchases, birthdays, and social media shares. You can customize point programs by renaming them and setting earning limits or expiration periods. Customers can see their point balance in the Smile Wallet and redeem it for discounts, free shipping, gift cards, or products.
If all of that isn’t enough, you can further customize the Point Program via the Smile API.
Smile.io’s point program settings
Then there’s the VIP program which offers tier-based rewards, exclusive offers, and accelerated points for top spenders, and the referral program that rewards customers who refer friends.
Yotpo’s Loyalty & Referrals product is similar to Smile.io.
It allows you to create tiered systems that reward customers for purchases, reviews, referrals, and email sign-ups. The points can be redeemed for discounts, coupons, or free shipping — just like in Smile.
Yotpo’s preset loyalty program reward options
You can reward customers based on point balance, VIP tiers, or the amount of referrals they made. Alternatively, you could create time-sensitive promotion campaigns that end after time runs out.
Yotpo’s referral program settings
The only real advantage Yotpo has over Smile in this area is that it offers pre-made campaigns, so you don’t have to start from scratch.
Maestra has a different approach with its Loyalty Programs; its promotions are way more flexible and integrate seamlessly into all communications because of its built-in real-time CDP (more on this in the following section).
It offers points and discounts like Smile.io and Yotpo but allows you to create targeted promotions based on location, time, product, or order criteria like minimum spend.
Sample loyalty program showing Maestra’s flexible customization
You can set start and end dates, descriptions, and customer segment eligibility. Maestra also offers a unique feature: combining promotions or using them in a sequence.
Maestra’s loyalty program and promotions builder
Like Smile.io, Maestra also provides detailed controls over point accrual and redemption but uses a more flexible approach that allows you to experiment with different loyalty structures. For example, with Maestra, you can offer promotions like:
- x4 bonus cashback on cart items
- 500 bonus points for every $10 spent
- +1000 bonus points with an expiration date
- limited-time double bonus points to cash conversion
Loyalty Features Winner: Maestra
With all of these options, Maestra is much better at rewarding customers for their actions than Yotpo or Smile.
Smile.io vs Yotpo vs Maestra: User Generated Content
Yotpo focuses on UGC management, while Smile.io and Maestra only incentivize it.
Smile.io
Yotpo
Maestra
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Yotpo integrates user-generated content (UGC), like reviews, photos, and videos, into its customer retention strategies. You can collect UGC via emails, SMS, and personalized prompts and display it on key pages like product listings and checkout to boost trust and reduce cart abandonment.
It also integrates with Instagram to turn customer photos into shoppable galleries. Its AI-powered tagging assistant and curation filters help brands manage and display UGC effectively to drive conversions.
Yotpo also offers extensive review management features.
It provides a central platform for collecting, moderating, and publishing user reviews, either automatically or manually, individually or in bulk. You can approve, reject, or flag reviews for sensitive content and respond with public or private comments. Yotpo also lets you tag reviews to identify customer categories, such as top spenders.
Smile.io, on the other hand, does not handle UGC directly but allows you to reward customers for creating it. You can use its API to create custom offer points for reviews, photos, or social media posts. Integrations like Judge.me and Okendo also allow customers to earn UGC rewards.
Like Smile.io, Maestra does not directly handle UGC collection and management but allows you to incentivize them with loyalty rewards.
It also offers post-purchase email, website, and SMS surveys to assess satisfaction levels immediately after delivery. You can then segment satisfied customers for targeted feedback requests and encourage them to share their experiences on platforms like Trustpilot.
Retention Strategies Winner: Yotpo
It offers dedicated review management and UGC tools. Smile.io and Maestra allow you to incentivize UGC but don’t offer the advanced tools that you’ll find in Yotpo.
Smile.io vs Yotpo vs Maestra: Data Management & Utilization
Smile.io and Yotpo allow you to view and manage basic customer data. Maestra boasts built-in all-in-one data management capabilities.
Customer Data Platform
Maestra’s robust built-in real-time CDP powers its loyalty, segmentation, and omnichannel flows, Smile.io has basic features, and Yotpo relies on third-party integrations.
Smile.io
Yotpo
Maestra
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Why a Customer Data Platform is important
A CDP is a central location to store all your customer data from various touchpoints that serves as a single source of truth about your customers and their behavior. It allows marketing channels to pull data for use in customer journeys and targeted campaigns. Without a CDP, you end up with disjointed marketing campaigns and bad user experience, lowering conversion rates. While this isn’t a problem if you want to run simple promotions, it becomes a big deal once you start to scale
Smile.io is limited compared to Yotpo and Maestra.
It allows businesses to manage customers and view basic loyalty program engagement data. However, it does not provide advanced features like unified customer profiles and marketing automation.
Smile.io’s customer list page with options to adjust points and VIP tiers
Like Smile.io, Yotpo allows you to view and manage basic customer data.
Yotpo’s customer page highlighting customizable data
However, you’ll have to integrate third-party solutions like Fueled for complete CDP functionality, such as customer journey tracking, attribution, marketing automation, and audience segmentation. That means you’ll need a separate Fueled subscription.
Maestra was initially only a real-time CDP platform, so this is its specialty. It has an integrated, robust, feature-complete CDP capable of advanced segmentation using RFM analysis, customer interests, and preferred communication channels.
Maestra’s CDP segmentation
Maestra’s CDP collects, deduplicates, and unifies customer profiles from various systems.
It pulls data from multiple touchpoints — including your website, mobile app, email, SMS, e-commerce and offline stores, push notifications, in-app interactions, call center, and paid campaigns. This data helps create detailed customer segments based on purchase history, preferences, and lifecycle stage. These segments can then power targeted campaigns across email, SMS, push, and paid media, or fuel automated marketing flows. By tracking user interactions across all these channels, Maestra ensures you can engage customers with relevant, personalized messaging at every stage.
Having an integrated CDP like this allows you to create complex customer journeys across multiple channels without worrying about sending conflicting promotions. That’s why Maestra is the best option for creating and managing promotion flows.
Robust abandoned cart flow powered by Maestra’s CDP
If we put Maestra’s CDP work in a real-life scenario: you could increase your AOV by offering 2x bonus cashback on purchases over $200 when a customer adds $150 to the cart and display this offer in a pop-up using real-time segmentation based on customer actions. You can then show the same personalized promotion on the website, in emails, and SMS and ensure no conflicting promotion gets sent to the customer.
User Segmentation
Maestra leads with product and RFM segmentation, Yotpo creates behavior and review-based segments, and Smile.io focuses on loyalty segments.
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Maestra
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Yotpo’s Segments Plus platform allows customer segmentation based on their behavior and reviews.
It identifies high-potential customers, like those with high point balances but low redemption or VIP customers with negative reviews. By combining review sentiment and purchase behavior, your business can tailor outreach to address customer concerns or encourage actions like referrals or repeat purchases.
Yotpo’s segment page showing filter options
Yotpo also tracks customer engagement for rewards. For instance, VIP customers with negative reviews can receive special attention, while those with positive reviews but no referrals can be prompted for recommendations.
Smile.io focuses on loyalty-centric segmentation, enabling businesses to group customers by point accumulation, VIP status, or redemption activity. These segments can trigger automated email flows, such as reminders to redeem points or requests for referrals from satisfied customers.
Within its admin panel, Smile.io categorizes customers into groups like Members (loyalty program participants) and Guests (potential participants). Enterprise users can access more advanced segmentation, like dynamic content delivery via email platforms.
Smile.io’s customer list highlighting the simple segmentation options
However, Yotpo and Smile.io’s segmentation features are not powerful enough to create highly specific customer groups for targeted campaigns.
Maestra’s segmentation is the most flexible, offering real-time, scheduled, and static segments:
- Real-time segments update continuously based on customer behavior
- Scheduled segments track historical data, which is ideal for dynamic reports and automated campaigns while
- Static segments require manual updates that are suited for detailed analysis or one-time promotions
Maestra’s segmentation page showing Customer, Product, and RFM segmentation
Maestra’s product-based segmentation allows you to categorize customers based on product interactions and behaviors, and it includes Purchase History Segmentation that groups customers who have browsed certain categories, purchased specific items or abandoned their cart.
Maestra’s RFM Segmentation is a standout feature that categorizes customers by recency, frequency, and monetary value of purchases. It assigns them a score of 1–5 in each category, creates groups such as champions/top spenders, loyal, potentially loyal, and dormant customers, and allows you to send targeted campaigns for each group like exclusive product highlights for champions and reactivation offers for dormant customers.
You can also use this segmentation for targeted outreach, such as SMS campaigns for non-responsive customers or adjusting email frequency based on engagement.
Maestra also provides computed fields for deeper segmentation, allowing you to set conditions like automatically populating the most popular item in a customer’s profile. This makes it easy to filter behaviors such as the most-browsed or most-purchased products efficiently. For instance, if you want to target customers who prefer accessories—like hats or sunglasses—you can do so in just a few clicks.
Website and Email Product Recommendations
Yotpo and Smile.io rely on third-party tools. Maestra incorporates AI. Smile.io relies on third-party tools.
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Yotpo
Maestra
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Maestra excels at website and email product recommendations through AI and customer segmentation. It predicts what customers will buy based on previous behavior and updates these recommendations daily to stay relevant. There are 14 prebuilt AI algorithms for automation you can use, however, you still have the full ability to set up rules manually to fine-tune the experience. And you can rely on your Client Success Manager to help you out.
Personal discounts preview on Maestra
With Maestra’s AI-driven recommendation engine, products adjust in real time based on what each visitor is doing — or has done before — showing items they’ve browsed in this session or tailoring options for first-time visitors.
Maestra offers real-time cross-sell suggestions, which are helpful in abandoned cart recovery, and excludes purchased items to focus on upselling or complementary product suggestions. For example, Maestra might recommend matching shoes or accessories after buying a dress, improving the shopping experience and increasing the likelihood of additional purchases.
Maestra’s product recommendation creation page
Maestra leverages social proof by featuring bestsellers and popular products to build trust and encourage purchases. It also personalizes recommendations by matching products based on attributes like size, price, or brand, ensuring effective suggestions that drive higher conversion rates.
Ad Optimization
Yotpo optimizes ad performance with user generated content, while Maestra incorporates audience segmentation.
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Maestra
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Smile.io does not offer direct ad optimization features. It uses loyalty and referrals to boost customer engagement.
Yotpo integrates with platforms like Google Ads and allows businesses to sync user segments and email and SMS lists.
The platform leverages customer reviews and ratings for social proof on Facebook and Instagram ads and keeps them fresh by constantly personalizing content. It also offers dynamic product ads with the Reviews product that incorporates five-star reviews into Facebook ads.
Yotpo integrates with AI-powered platforms like AdRoll and AdScale to automatically feature top reviews and adjust ad settings for better engagement.
Maestra, on the other hand, simplifies ad optimization by automating audience segmentation and syncing with platforms like Google Ads, Instagram and Facebook.
Unlike Yotpo, Maestra supports automatic audience data transfer, ensuring you can reach relevant customers across multiple platforms. Its main advantage over Yotpo for scaling businesses is that you can create targeted groups of up to 1,000 customers per segment. That’s a powerful feature if you’re running hyper-targeted retargeting campaigns.
Maestra also uses social media lead forms to gather customer data in real-time from platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Additionally, it offers interactive, story-driven ads tailored to specific audience segments.
Analytics
Yotpo offers robust review and email dashboards, Smile.io focuses on loyalty metrics, while Maestra emphasizes cost optimization.
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Smile.io provides analytics that focus primarily on loyalty and referral programs.
With the Smile Plus plan, you get access to +25 pre-built reports for tracking loyalty program performance. It shows metrics for top point earners, redeemers, and referrers, giving you insights into sales attribution and ROI and helping you track the impact of loyalty features on repeat purchases and sales. You also get conversion rates, points accounting, and financial reporting to help manage the economic health of loyalty programs.
You can export data for custom analysis, advanced reporting, and targeted marketing.
Smile.io’s Points analytics page
Yotpo provides extensive analytics across its products, with real-time data reporting for each app. It offers separate dashboards for the loyalty program, reviews, and email performance.
Yotpo’s loyalty program performance dashboard
The Reviews Dashboard filters product reviews by type and date range, providing insights such as:
- Average Ratings
- Star Distribution, tracking rating percentages
- Geographical Distribution, showing where reviews originate
- Review Conversion Rates, gauging how well purchases translate into customer feedback
- and Device Segmentation, displaying whether reviews are submitted via mobile or desktop
The Email Dashboard tracks campaign metrics like open and click-through rates to refine outreach strategies. It also includes A/B testing to optimize email elements.
Meanwhile, the Photos Dashboard shows metrics related to user-uploaded review photos.
Yotpo’s Photos dashboard
Finally, Yotpo’s Insights Dashboard features sentiment and keyword analysis tools to break down customer feedback and identify important themes. It also includes Competitive Benchmarking for comparing reviews against competitors and Customizable Reports for sharing specific insights with teams.
Yotpo’s exports page showing reports that can be generated
Since Yotpo’s tools are divided across different platforms, analytic dashboards are only accessible within their respective platforms. For instance, you can’t view the email dashboard from the loyalty platform—you need to sign in to the email platform instead.
If you want dashboards to measure specific achievements and goals, you need to consider Maestra.
Maestra offers several analytics dashboards: goals, loyalty programs, campaigns, subscribers, email health, discounts and bonus points, website campaigns, and A/B tests.
The Goals dashboard, for example, tracks customer actions that drive business success, like ‘Orders, ’ which is automatically created for each project. You can set up to five goals, and performance is monitored through reports.
The Loyalty program dashboard covers data like reach, redemption rate, average order value, engagement rate, and so on for revenue and orders.
Meanwhile, the Campaign dashboard reports performance, allowing businesses to see how marketing efforts directly contribute to revenue.
Maestra’s advanced analytics help businesses run targeted campaigns that maintain high conversion rates while reducing expenses.
Maestra’s email health monitoring
Like Yotpo, Maestra allows A/B testing to fine-tune discount strategies and improve engagement.
Maestra’s A/B testing reporting
And when it comes to data ownership, with Maestra, you own your data. There’s no fee to export it—you can download it anytime, in any format, with no hassle.
Data Management Winner: Maestra
Its real-time adaptability, advanced analytics and segmentation, and robust CDP capabilities are ideal for businesses seeking to fine-tune their marketing and maximize ROI across multiple touchpoints and campaigns.
Smile.io vs Yotpo vs Maestra: Customer Support
Maestra offers a dedicated success manager and white-glove service to all users, while Smile.io and Yotpo provide general support.
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Smile.io and Yotpo both offer reliable customer support, including live chat and email, with premium services for higher-tier users. They also provide migration assistance for seamless onboarding and data transfer.
Smile.io’s Plus plan includes priority support and quarterly monitoring to optimize platform usage. Yotpo’s Enterprise users benefit from a dedicated optimization strategist and account manager for continuous improvements and personalized guidance.
Maestra’s general support boasts response times of under 5 minutes via live chat. However, it stands out from Smile.io and Yotpo by providing white-glove support to all users, regardless of the subscription volume.
Each user is assigned a dedicated customer success manager for personalized assistance from the start.
Maestra’s white-glove service
This covers migration, integration, platform setup, and strategy development. The expert sets up flows, segments, A/B tests, and everything else. Beyond the initial setup and planning, they also offer ongoing monitoring and bi-weekly meetings to ensure your marketing strategies keep evolving with your customers’ needs.
They’re effectively an extension of your team. They handle the heavy lifting every time, so you can keep your focus where it matters most.
An example of a Maestra customer success manager’s launch proposal
Customer Support Winner: Maestra
It offers the most comprehensive support with a dedicated success manager for all users, ensuring personalized guidance and rapid response times. Smile.io and Yotpo provide general support, with priority service for higher-tier users.
Smile.io vs Yotpo vs Maestra: Pricing
Yotpo and Maestra offer customizable all-in-one solutions, with Yotpo also offering separate plans for its various products. Smile.io has a simple three-tiered plan.
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Smile.io and Yotpo both offer reliable customer support, including live chat and email, with premium services for higher-tier users. They also provide migration assistance for seamless onboarding and data transfer.
Maestra has customizable pricing options, which all include white-glove service
Maestra’s pricing is based on the number of customer profiles and starts at $1,990 per month for 1,000 to 80,000 customer profiles.
Here’s what’s included:
- Real-time CDP with AI-Powered segmentation
- Unlimited emails
- SMS at $0.0045 per message
- Real-time site personalization
- Product recommendations and merchandising
- Loyalty program and promotions
- Paid media optimization
- White Glove Service
Maestra sets itself apart by offering comprehensive services without hidden costs. Email sends: unlimited and included. Data actions, interaction facts, impressions: all covered at no extra charge.
Unlike other platforms that levy additional fees for these essentials, Maestra ensures you’re not burdened with unexpected charges while running your business. Integration is seamless and free, with no upfront fees, and you can cancel anytime.
Smile.io has three-tiered pricing plan with no free option
Smile.io has three pricing plans: Starter, Growth, and Plus.
Starter
Growth
Plus
$49/month
500 monthly orders + Points & Referral programs + Customizable emails + Basic reports + two integrations
500 monthly orders + Points & Referral programs + Customizable emails + Basic reports + two integrations
$199/month
Everything in Starter + 2,500 monthly orders + Points bonus events + Loyalty page + VIP program + Unlimited integrations
Everything in Starter + 2,500 monthly orders + Points bonus events + Loyalty page + VIP program + Unlimited integrations
$999/month
Everything in Growth + 7,500 monthly orders + Launch plan + +25 specialized reports + API access + Priority support + High-volume pricing
Everything in Growth + 7,500 monthly orders + Launch plan + +25 specialized reports + API access + Priority support + High-volume pricing
Yotpo has pricing plans for each platform separately and an all-in-one bundle
Yotpo offers different products—Reviews & UGC, Loyalty & Referrals, SMS, Email, and Subscriptions—which you can purchase separately and adjust pricing based on usage.
- Reviews & UGC and Loyalty & Referrals are priced based on monthly order volume
- SMS and Subscriptions depend on your budgeted spend
- Email pricing is based on the number of emails sent monthly
The total cost depends on your selected platforms and usage levels. Yotpo also provides standard plans, which we’ll cover in a dedicated section.
The full product suite has Pro, Premium, and Enterprise plans. SMS and Email usage are charged separately.
Pro
Premium
Enterprise
$368/month
Reviews Pro + Loyalty Pro + 500 monthly orders
Reviews Pro + Loyalty Pro + 500 monthly orders
$941/month
Reviews Premium + Loyalty Premium + 1,000 monthly orders + Dedicated optimization strategist
Reviews Premium + Loyalty Premium + 1,000 monthly orders + Dedicated optimization strategist
Custom pricing
Reviews Enterprise + Loyalty Enterprise + 10,000 orders + Account manager + Custom contract and terms
Reviews Enterprise + Loyalty Enterprise + 10,000 orders + Account manager + Custom contract and terms
Yotpo’s Loyalty & Referrals platform has Free, Pro, and Premium plans.
Pro
Premium
Enterprise
$0/month
500 orders + Points campaign and referrals + Program awareness tools + Fraud prevention + Email support
500 orders + Points campaign and referrals + Program awareness tools + Fraud prevention + Email support
$199/month
Everything in Free + More ways to earn and redeem + Rewards page builder + Birthday reminders + Live chat support
Everything in Free + More ways to earn and redeem + Rewards page builder + Birthday reminders + Live chat support
Custom pricing
Everything in Pro + Program management tools + Smart segments and analytics + Customer success manager
Everything in Pro + Program management tools + Smart segments and analytics + Customer success manager
Yotpo’s Reviews & UGC platform has Free, Starter, Pro, and Premium plans.
Pro
Premium
Enterprise
$15/month
50 orders + Beautiful on-site display + Tools to collect and share content + Reviews and email analytics + Email support
50 orders + Beautiful on-site display + Tools to collect and share content + Reviews and email analytics + Email support
$169/month
500 orders + Everything in Free + Seller ratings + Reporting Templates + AI Insights + Klaviyo & Gorgias integration + Live chat support
500 orders + Everything in Free + Seller ratings + Reporting Templates + AI Insights + Klaviyo & Gorgias integration + Live chat support
Custom pricing
Everything in Pro + AI review tools for shoppers + Smart segmentation + API integrations & Webhooks + Customer success manager
Everything in Pro + AI review tools for shoppers + Smart segmentation + API integrations & Webhooks + Customer success manager
The email plan is customizable based on the number of emails sent per month and is free for the first 10,000 emails. Meanwhile, the SMS plan costs $0.0072/SMS. The subscription plan requires you to contact the team for a custom solution.
Pricing Winner: Maestra
Its all-in-one scalable tech stack and end-to-end white glove support make it perfect for midmarket businesses, SMBs seeking enterprise features, and enterprises looking to reduce costs. It also has a simple pricing structure, allowing businesses to pay for what they need. Smile.io and Yotpo start out cheaper if you need a simple loyalty program solution but quickly become expensive as you scale and start relying on third-party programs for more robust marketing features.
Yotpo vs Smile.io vs Maestra: Pros & Cons
Smile.io
Smile.io Pros
Smile.io Cons
✅ Robust reward features
❌ Limited segmentation
✅ Customizable API
❌ Limited omnichannel marketing
✅ Affordable plans
❌ Basic support
✅ Detailed reports
❌ No free plan
Yotpo
Yotpo Pros
Yotpo Cons
✅ Customizable plans with free products
❌ Limited segmentation
✅ Comprehensive loyalty features
❌ Limited omnichannel marketing
✅ Ad optimization features
❌ Basic support
✅ Robust integrations
❌ Complex pricing
✅ User Generated Content
Maestra
Maestra Pros
Maestra Cons
✅ Real-time CDP with AI-Powered segmentation
❌ Limited reviews and UGC features
✅ Full-journey white-glove support
❌ No free plan
✅ Real-time site personalization with in-session segmentation
❌ Pricing caters to growing businesses
✅ Hyper-personalized and flexible promotions and loyalty strategies
✅ Omnichannel marketing
Final Verdict: Smile.io vs Yotpo vs Maestra
Smile.io
Yotpo
Plus
Best for:
Micro-businesses or early-stage e-commerce brands seeking a simple loyalty and rewards solution
Micro-businesses or early-stage e-commerce brands seeking a simple loyalty and rewards solution
Best for:
E-commerce SMBs looking to leverage UGC, reviews, loyalty programs, and basic marketing campaigns
E-commerce SMBs looking to leverage UGC, reviews, loyalty programs, and basic marketing campaigns
Best for:
Midmarket companies with an established marketing team and steady store traffic looking for a unified marketing platform to drive growth through hyper-personalized promotions across all channels
Midmarket companies with an established marketing team and steady store traffic looking for a unified marketing platform to drive growth through hyper-personalized promotions across all channels
If you don’t have a loyalty program and need something simple and cost-effective, Smile.io is the best place to start. Once your needs expand a bit and you want to run simple marketing campaigns based on your loyalty programs, look into Yotpo.
Both should be your go-to tools when you’re just beginning your marketing lifecycle.
They’re very simple and not flexible or scalable, which you don’t need at the beginning anyway. However, as you scale, you’ll reach their limits and will be forced to start integrating with third-party platforms to get all the functionality you need. You’ll end up managing multiple platforms, overpaying, and struggling to keep all your customer data consistent across marketing platforms.
That’s where Maestra comes in.
It’s the best solution once you become serious about the customer journey and start thinking about interaction history-based personalization across all possible channels (email, SMS, website, paid media, call center, mobile app, and offline).
Use Smile.io if:
- You want an affordable loyalty and rewards solution
- You don’t need ad, CDP, or user segmentation features
- You’re a micro-business or early-stage e-commerce brand looking for basic features
Use Yotpo if:
- You need separate product options and multiple pricing models
- You want to leverage UGC and reviews in your marketing campaigns
- You’re an SMB just starting out and looking for a slightly more affordable solution
Use Maestra if:
- You want a unified martech stack with robust CDP and omnichannel marketing features
- You want a dedicated customer success manager to help plan and execute marketing
- You’re a growing SMB or midmarket company looking to scale your marketing channels