How this list was built
Every app here was pulled from its Shopify App Store listing in August 2026: pricing, plan limits, stated features and review history. Where a listing was ambiguous, the developer’s own site was checked.
One app on this list is ours, and it is ranked first. Read the cons on entry one before you take that at face value: it is a new listing with no review history, and its Pro tier is ten times the price of BatchCard’s entry plan. If you are a one-market store issuing fifty cards a year, BatchCard at $4.99 is the cheaper answer and we would rather say so.
The two questions that actually decide this
Do you sell in more than one currency? If yes, the field narrows to two apps immediately. Ten of the twelve tools in this category say nothing about currency, which means your international customers get cards denominated in your base currency and do the conversion themselves.
How much gift card value do you issue in a month? This is where percentage fees decide the outcome. A 2 percent fee on a $9.99 plan is cheaper than a $49 flat plan up to about $16,000 a month of gift cards issued. Above that, the flat plan wins and keeps winning. A single 500-card corporate order at $50 each puts you at $25,000 in one afternoon.
What the bad reviews say
Across the low-star reviews in this category, the complaints are remarkably consistent and almost never about features.
Support silence is the dominant theme. One Datora reviewer wrote that queries stayed “pending for weeks”, that there was “no customer service available”, and that even Shopify could not reach the developer. A Gist reviewer wrote “we contact you over 3 times !!!!! no any replay”.
Second is integration drift. A Gist reviewer reported that “balances aren’t recorded correctly making accounting very difficult” and that sales data was inaccurate. That failure mode belongs to apps that maintain their own balance ledger instead of using native Shopify gift cards, which is worth checking before you install anything.
The pricing table
| App | Free plan | Cheapest paid | Top paid | % of value | Multi-currency | Code export |
|---|
| Bulk Gift Cards | 20/batch, full features | $49/mo | $49/mo | None | Yes | Yes |
| BatchCard | 25/mo, export only | $4.99/mo | $24.99/mo | None | Not stated | Yes |
| Datora | 50 total, 1-day download | $9.95/mo | $99.95/mo | None | Not stated | Yes |
| Givy | None | $14/mo + 2% | $249/mo | 1% to 2% | Yes | Not stated |
| Gift Card Hero | $9.99/mo minimum | $19.99/mo | $39.99/mo | 2% | Not stated | Yes |
| Gist (Gift Card Pro) | None | $9.99/mo + 2.5% | $499.99/mo + 0.5% | 0.5% to 2.5% | Not stated | Not stated |
| Gift Card Factory | 14-day trial | $19.99/mo | $99.99/mo | None | Not stated | Not stated |
If what you want is store credit
A lot of merchants land on gift card apps when the thing they actually need is store credit: a balance attached to one customer that applies automatically at checkout, with no code to enter or lose. That is refunds, loyalty and win-back territory.
Start at the Shopify store credit guide or the best Shopify store credit apps list instead.
