By the Numbers 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 assessedBy the Numbers compared with Lifetimely
Overlapping in reporting, different in purpose. Lifetimely is a profit and lifetime value product built around net margin after cost of goods and ad spend, with a free tier under fifty orders. By the Numbers is a segmentation product with reporting attached. If the open question is whether the business makes money, take Lifetimely; if it is who to talk to next, take this.
Lifetimely compared with By the Numbers
Adjacent rather than competing, with real reporting overlap. By the Numbers is a segmentation app with broad reporting attached from $19; Lifetimely is a profit and lifetime value tool with a free tier. If the question is who to talk to next, By the Numbers. If it is whether the business makes money after cost of goods and ad spend, Lifetimely. Stores running both should check where the reporting duplicates before paying twice.
Choose By the Numbers if
Cost-conscious Shopify stores that want a real RFM segmentation model with fast audience syncing into email and paid social, plus broad reporting, without paying analytics-suite prices or waiting a day for audiences to refresh.
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 | By the Numbers | Lifetimely |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Segmentation | Analytics |
| Starting price | $19 per month (14 days trial) | Free under 50 orders a month, then about $79 (free plan available) |
| Pricing model | Flat monthly subscription sold through the Shopify App Store, with tiers rising by feature and scale from a $19 entry 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 | 14 days, no credit card required | No |
| Best for | Cost-conscious Shopify stores that want a real RFM segmentation model with fast audience syncing into email and paid social, plus broad reporting, without paying analytics-suite prices or waiting a day for audiences to refresh. | 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 | About a minute to install and connect, with the RFM matrix populating shortly after against the store's existing history. Sync connections to Klaviyo, Meta, Google, and TikTok take a few minutes each. | 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 to moderate. The pre-built matrix and reports require nothing, but getting value from the seventy-five filters means knowing what you want to isolate, which is more work than describing a segment in a sentence. | 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 | Shopify app, Web dashboard | Shopify app, Web dashboard, Advertising platform connections |
| Compliance | Operates on Shopify customer data under the store's own privacy obligations, Server-side conversion tracking makes the store responsible for the lawful basis of the data it forwards to ad platforms, Audience syncing to Meta, Google, and TikTok carries the store's own consent obligations for advertising audiences | 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 | 2022 | 2019 |
| Headquarters | Not disclosed | Helsinki, Finland, now operated from Singapore by AMP |
| Ownership | Privately held, operated by Unsupervised LLC | Acquired by AMP, a Singapore-based Shopify app company, on 1 November 2022 |
Strengths and limitations
By the Numbers
Strengths
- The lowest entry price in the category by a wide margin, starting at $19 a month.
- A genuine sixteen-cell RFM matrix rather than the simplified three-bucket version most cheap tools ship.
- Hourly audience refresh, faster than the daily sync most competitors offer.
- More than seventy-five segment filters spanning orders, products, lifetime value, and acquisition channel.
Limitations
- Almost no public information about the vendor: no named founders, no funding history, no disclosed team.
- Shopify only, with no path for stores on other platforms.
- Segments are built by assembling filters rather than described in plain language, which is slower for non-analytical users.
- No documented public API, so segments cannot be pushed into custom internal systems.
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
By the Numbers
Flat monthly subscription sold through the Shopify App Store, with tiers rising by feature and scale from a $19 entry plan.
- EntryFrom $19
- Higher tiersPublished on the App Store listing
On paper this is the best capability-per-dollar in the category and it is not close: a sixteen-cell RFM matrix, seventy-five filters, hourly syncing, and thirty-eight reports for a starting price under a fifth of what Tresl charges and a third of Repeat Customer Insights. The question is not whether it is cheap, it is whether the vendor is durable, since there is no public corporate information behind an app around two thousand stores now depend on. For a store weighing $19 against not segmenting at all, that risk is easy to accept. For one about to make it the backbone of every audience in Meta and Klaviyo, keep the segment definitions documented somewhere you control.
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
By the Numbers
By the Numbers is the best capability-per-dollar in customer segmentation, and the gap is large enough that price alone settles many decisions. A real sixteen-cell RFM matrix, seventy-five filters, hourly syncing into Klaviyo and the ad platforms, and a broad reporting layer starting at $19 is not a stripped-down version of what competitors charge $150 for, it is most of the same job done more cheaply and, on refresh speed, done better. Two caveats. The vendor publishes essentially nothing about itself, so keep your important segment definitions written down somewhere you control, and confirm on the App Store listing which tier actually includes the sync before assuming the entry price covers it. For a Shopify store that has been putting off segmentation on cost grounds, there is no longer an excuse at this price.
Read the full By the Numbers 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 profileBy the Numbers profile last reviewed 2026-09-02; Lifetimely last reviewed 2026-09-02. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.