Rise Gift Cards & Store Credit

UPDATE 9/7/2021: At the request of Rise, I am updating my review and adding some stars to my formerly one-star review. Before writing my initial review, I reached out to customer service via chat to confirm that, if I uninstall the app, customers would not be able to access their gift card codes in their email. After expressing my disappointment that this is the case, I was told by CS that they wished they had better news (and obviously no resolution). After writing the review, I was offered 12 months of continued support at no charge. Hopefully, all of the gift card recipients will have redeemed their gift cards by then. In the meantime, I have quit using Rise and returned to using Shopify's included gift card process. The original review starts below. Short version: Buyer beware. Don't use this app unless you plan on using it forever. I started using this app during the pandemic, since I wasn't open to walk-in shopping and people were buying gift cards online to support the store. Once gift cards sales dropped off, I planned on discontinuing using the app. Turns out, if you want t stop using this app, customers who purchased (or received) gift cards will no longer have access in their emails to the code that allows them to use the gift cards. Not a good look for me or the gift card giver! So I can either screw my customers or continue paying $20/month until all gift cards have been redeemed. Apparently, I can download the codes and the customers can get them from me. But wow, that's a huge headache for them and for me! I wish I had never used this app.

**Update** Customer service from Ari was fantastic and incredibly helpful. I can't say enough about the fast thorough response. There are some work arounds to help with the issues I have already mentioned. There are updates coming soon that should make this program top notch. So far we do really like this app. we Look forward to working with Ari and Rise more. Will update again after the next updates.

Rise has a lot of potential. The gift cards are great and fully customizable. They are much better than the stock gift cards from Shopify. It was easy to set them up and match them to our stores theme. There are a few major flaws however. The app page says that you can offer loyalty points or cash back. Unfortunately loyalty points are not an option once the app is installed. We decided to try the cash back as rewards program but ran into the following problems. The first is that store credit and gift cards are all accounted for the same in a customers account and through Shopify. This means a customer could have store credit of $5, earned through a purchase, with an expiration date coming up soon. They could also have a gift card balance of $5 that never expires. When they log into their account it will just show $10 and not show them an expiration or separate what is credit and what is gift card. On the merchant side all we can see the difference directly in the customers profile but not in Shopifys accounting. So Shopify just shows that the merchant has a $10 liability instead of $5. Legally this is an issue for the merchant. This app has a lot to offer and great potential. However, until the store credit, loyalty rewards, and gift cards are separated and fully visible for the customer and for the merchants accounting, we just can't use this program.

Updated review Dec. 13, 2022 - The head of customer service from Rise.AI personally reached out to me today to address concerns and issues I was having trying out the Rise.AI app. He went through with me all of my concerns and issues one by one. He also explained some of the challenges from their side with being able to satisfy all of my concerns. Although he was not able to resolve every issue and concern that I have, he was able to help me with some workarounds that I can live with and he offered to further provide advice and how to continue to improve the ROI for me using this app.

I look forward to receiving his promised follow up on the action items from our call this morning together, but for now I am changing my rating to 5 stars as I am excited about the app but more importantly I am very grateful for the prompt and caring customer service and issue resolution response. I will continue to update the review here if the follow up expectations on the action items are not met but I do highly approve of the customer care from the support team at Rise.ai.

Dec. 12, 2022 - Just installed the app and learning its features and issues. I do not have a lot of information on performance yet. But here are my initial impressions:

This app is geared for large stores. If you are a small store like mine, don't expect to get some really needed basic features that almost every other single app provides as part of its basic packages. Ie. email white labeling - you have to pay close to $500 a month just to have this feature. Even small stores look very bad when emails to our customers are sent from a weird domain name that has nothing to do with our store and most likely will be blocked by most email servers as junk email.

Beyond that, here are my other impressions so far:

Pros:
> point features and workflow setup are really cool
> Gift card features are awesome
> being able to award store credit instead of a crazy reward point system is very nice
> Customer support has been very quick, responsive and helpful so far and although setup is a little more complex and harder to understand than other apps, documentation and support has been really good.

Cons:
> The biggest con is a couple of features that all stores need regardless of size that only come in a super premium $500 or greater plan. IE. email white labeling, apply store credit at checkout. This makes this app not really great overall for small stores.
> Workflows are missing a couple of features that would be useful - awarding credit for social media likes/follows, subscribing to email, birthday/anniversary rewards
> Only way the account modules work is with basic shopify customer account page. It would be great to have this functionality be able to integrate to other customer account pages like FLITS or other apps

Overall I am lukewarm on this app right now. Seems to have some good features that I want to try out instead of the normal point reward apps and I like the store credit and gift card features but I am still very disappointed in the missing features or features that you have to pay $6000/year for. So if you are a small store like mine, I would really think twice about this app and the cost/benefit of the features that you can apply in your store.

Great service on minor issues, has worked well on our store!

Amazing service and Great app! Thanks so much Ari for answering all of my questions today!

Just started with this app, very easy to navigate/set up gift cards and the customer service is spot on!

Very straight forward set up and good customer service! Very happy with this gift card option for my site!

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AWESOME customer support. Also loaded with great features and different types of reward programs. Easy to use too.

Great experience, made everything super simple. Revenues increased immediately and exceeded the plan price from day 1.