Baremetrics vs Lifetimely
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Both sides assessedBaremetrics compared with Lifetimely
The same idea in two markets. Baremetrics reads a subscription billing provider and gives SaaS founders cohort economics, MRR movements, and churn; Lifetimely reads Shopify and gives ecommerce brands net profit after cost of goods and ad spend with cohort lifetime value attached. Neither works in the other's market, so the choice is decided entirely by whether you sell subscriptions or products.
Lifetimely compared with Baremetrics
The same idea in different markets. Baremetrics does subscription revenue analytics for SaaS by connecting to a billing provider; Lifetimely does profit and lifetime value for Shopify ecommerce. Both exist because founders need cohort economics rather than a revenue line, and neither is usable in the other's market, so the choice is made entirely by what you sell.
Choose Baremetrics if
SaaS companies from roughly $100,000 ARR upward that need real subscription analytics for the board and for their own decisions, and would rather get dunning and cancellation surveys from the same vendor at a $129 add-on than run a separate retention subscription.
Choose Lifetimely if
Shopify brands that need to see real net profit after cost of goods and ad spend, want lifetime value measured by acquisition cohort rather than as a single average, and would rather buy a focused profit and LTV tool than a full analytics suite.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Baremetrics | Lifetimely |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Retention | Analytics |
| Starting price | $75 per month, or $49 per month billed annually (Launch) (free trial) | Free under 50 orders a month, then about $79 (free plan available) |
| Pricing model | Tiered subscription banded by tracked ARR, with dunning and cancellation tooling sold as separate flat-fee add-ons rather than being included in any plan. | Freemium, then flat monthly tiers priced by monthly order volume rather than by revenue, sold through the Shopify App Store. |
| Free plan | No | Under 50 orders a month, including daily profit and loss, customer analytics, predictive lifetime value, and forecasting |
| Free trial | A free trial is offered; the length is not published on the pricing page | No |
| Best for | SaaS companies from roughly $100,000 ARR upward that need real subscription analytics for the board and for their own decisions, and would rather get dunning and cancellation surveys from the same vendor at a $129 add-on than run a separate retention subscription. | Shopify brands that need to see real net profit after cost of goods and ad spend, want lifetime value measured by acquisition cohort rather than as a single average, and would rather buy a focused profit and LTV tool than a full analytics suite. |
| Setup time | Metrics are live within minutes of connecting a billing source, with historical data backfilled automatically. Recover takes longer but the vendor describes the whole setup as achievable in under a day: enable it, configure the drip campaign, add the in-app reminders, and customize the card capture form. | Installation and store connection take minutes, and advertising connections a little longer. The real work is entering accurate cost of goods, shipping, fees, and operating expenses, which typically takes a few hours and determines whether the output is worth anything. |
| Learning curve | Low for the analytics; anyone comfortable with SaaS metrics vocabulary will be productive immediately. The judgement call is in Recover's paywall configuration, where the grace period before you block a delinquent customer's access is a real decision with real customer-relationship consequences. | Low for the reports, moderate for the concepts. Cohort lifetime value and payback period are unfamiliar to many store owners, and the product's usefulness depends on the operator understanding what those figures should change about the plan. |
| Platforms | Web app, Email reports, In-app banner and paywall embeds, Branded hosted payment widget, Slack | Shopify app, Web dashboard, Advertising platform connections |
| Compliance | SOC 2, GDPR, PCI handled by the underlying payment processor | Operates on Shopify order and cost data under the store's own obligations, Advertising platform connections carry each platform's own data handling terms, Profit figures are management information, not audited accounts, and should not be treated as a substitute for bookkeeping |
| Founded | 2013 | 2019 |
| Headquarters | United States | Helsinki, Finland, now operated from Singapore by AMP |
| Ownership | Owned by Xenon Partners | Acquired by AMP, a Singapore-based Shopify app company, on 1 November 2022 |
Strengths and limitations
Baremetrics
Strengths
- Comprehensive subscription analytics with no data engineering, which for a company without an analyst is the whole value proposition.
- Splits voluntary from involuntary churn clearly, which is the diagnostic step every retention project should start with and most companies skip.
- Recover's ROI guarantee, crediting the difference if recovered revenue does not cover your whole account cost, is the strongest commercial term in this category.
- A seven-email dunning drip out to day 30 plus pre-expiry and annual renewal reminders is a longer and more thorough working window than most competitors run.
Limitations
- Retention tooling is not included in any plan. Both add-ons at $129 each mean a small company wanting the full stack pays roughly $333 a month.
- No free plan, which is a direct disadvantage against ChartMogul's free tier up to $10,000 MRR.
- Recover supports only Stripe, Braintree, and Recurly, a narrower list than the platform's analytics integrations, so some Baremetrics customers cannot use the dunning add-on at all.
- Cancellation Insights is a survey with offers rather than a real cancel-flow product: no deep segmentation, no A/B testing, and a much thinner offer catalogue than Churnkey.
Lifetimely
Strengths
- A daily profit and loss statement including cost of goods, shipping, fees, ad spend, and overheads, rather than a revenue dashboard.
- Cohort lifetime value, which answers whether recent marketing is buying better customers than it used to.
- Predictive lifetime value and payback period analysis, which turn acquisition cost limits into calculations.
- A genuinely useful free tier under fifty orders a month, including predictive LTV rather than only basic reporting.
Limitations
- Shopify only, with no path for other ecommerce platforms.
- Output quality depends entirely on cost inputs, and inaccurate cost of goods produces confidently wrong profit figures.
- Not a segmentation tool, so audiences and customer segments need to come from elsewhere.
- Attribution is present but narrower than a dedicated measurement suite.
Pricing compared
Baremetrics
Tiered subscription banded by tracked ARR, with dunning and cancellation tooling sold as separate flat-fee add-ons rather than being included in any plan.
- Launch$75
- Growth$255
- Scale$1,152
The honest framing is that you buy Baremetrics for the analytics and take the retention tooling as a well-priced extra. As a metrics platform it is comprehensive and requires no data work, which for a company without an analyst is worth the money on its own. Recover at $129 with an ROI guarantee is close to a free option: if it does not pay for your account, you get credited. Cancellation Insights at another $129 is the weaker buy, since it is a survey with offers rather than a real deflection engine, and Churnkey does that job considerably better. Buying the whole stack purely for retention would be a mistake; buying it because you need metrics and getting dunning nearly free is a good trade.
Lifetimely
Freemium, then flat monthly tiers priced by monthly order volume rather than by revenue, sold through the Shopify App Store.
- Free$0
- SAbout $79
- MAbout $149
- L and aboveAbout $299 to $999
For a Shopify brand that does not know its real margin, the first month of this pays for itself several times over, and the free tier under fifty orders means a new store has no reason not to start. Against Triple Whale and the broader analytics suites, Lifetimely is narrower and considerably cheaper, covering profit and lifetime value rather than the entire measurement stack. The cost that does not appear on the pricing page is the cost input work: get cost of goods, shipping, and fees wrong and the tool produces a confident number that is simply false, which is worse than no number at all.
Editorial verdict on each
Baremetrics
Baremetrics is an excellent subscription analytics platform that also happens to sell decent retention tooling, and the order of those clauses should drive the decision. If your problem is that nobody trusts the MRR number and the churn figure is one meaningless blended percentage, Baremetrics solves that in an afternoon with no data work, and Recover at $129 with an ROI guarantee is nearly a free addition that will pay for the subscription if you have any real failure volume. If your problem is that customers keep cancelling and you want to stop them, this is the wrong tool: Cancellation Insights is a survey with a coupon attached, and Churnkey will deflect far more. The genuine competitor is ChartMogul, which has a free tier Baremetrics lacks; the deciding factor between them is usually whether you want dunning included or a CRM layer instead.
Read the full Baremetrics profileLifetimely
Lifetimely answers the two questions that decide whether a small ecommerce brand survives: what it actually keeps, and what a customer is worth over time. Cohort lifetime value with payback analysis is the part that changes decisions, because it turns arguments about affordable acquisition cost into arithmetic, and the free tier under fifty orders a month means there is no reason for a new store to operate blind. Two cautions. The profit output is only as good as the cost of goods and expense figures you enter, so the setup work is the product. And the 2026 shift to an agent that proposes and executes actions is a real change in what you are buying: useful for operators who never open dashboards, and worth approaching with the guardrails set conservatively until its reasoning has earned trust against your own judgement.
Read the full Lifetimely profileBaremetrics profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Lifetimely last reviewed 2026-09-02. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.