🎥 Video: Loyalty Program Gamification that Builds Skills and CLV.
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Loyalty programs have come a long way from the old "collect points, get a discount" setup. These days, more brands are adding game-like elements, like challenges, leaderboards, and badges, to make things more engaging and actually fun for their customers.
And the shift is real: 43% of companies say gamification is the most impactful way to boost customer engagement right now.
But it's not just about adding bells and whistles.
Gamification helps people interact more, builds real habits, and keeps your brand at the top of their mind without always leaning on promos or discounts to get there.
In this guide, we're digging into the best gamification platforms out there. You'll find side-by-side comparisons, key features, pricing, and real-life examples of how teams are using these tools to drive loyalty and performance.
Gamification has been part of loyalty programs for a while, yet now it's being used in smarter, more strategic ways. From AI-driven rewards to eco-friendly challenges, here's what brands are focusing on right now to keep customers engaged and coming back.
👉 Of course, if you want a deeper dive into what's shaping loyalty programs this year, check out the full Loyalty Program Trends Report for more insights, stats, and examples.
Tailored experiences are the standard now, not the exception. Around 58% of brands are prioritizing personalization in their loyalty programs, using real-time data to shape what customers see and earn. It's about suggesting the right challenge or reward at the right time. A growing number of experts are also bringing in AI to do the heavy lifting behind that personalization.
Points still have a place, but loyalty programs are moving toward experiences people actually want to talk about. Think exclusive content, surprise rewards, or interactive games instead of yet another 10% off code. About 32% of brands are leaning into immersive experience elements that are based on rewards this year, and 80% of consumers say they're into it, specifically if it makes things feel more fun and less like a transaction.
People use loyalty programs on their phones, in stores, and online, all in the same day. Around 21% of businesses now prioritize designing for mobile (a jump of 8% compared to one year ago) because it makes it easier for customers to engage with their brand anytime, anywhere. Some programs even blend mobile with in-store experiences or build in AR/VR elements for campaigns that go way beyond the basics.
Eco-friendly options are popping up in more loyalty programs, and customers are here for it. Around 73% of millennials take sustainability into account when deciding what to buy, and brands are using gamified challenges to reward choices that support the planet. Recycle something, bring your own cup, donate points to a climate cause – these all show up as tasks with real rewards attached.
The old way of measuring loyalty program success was: "Did they redeem something?" That's changing. Around 60% of brands now track customer lifetime value (CLV) as one of their main metrics. Long-term behavior and repeat engagement matter a lot more now than one-off transactions. Gamification helps with that, nudging customers to come back, interact more, and build habits.
📊 Want to dive deeper into these trends? Check out the full Loyalty Program Trends Report from Open Loyalty for more data and insights.
To help you compare options quickly, we've pulled together a detailed side-by-side table of top gamification platforms. The data is up to date as of May 2025 and includes insights from trusted sources like G2, Capterra, vendor websites, and user reviews.
You'll find key details on pricing, features (like points, leaderboards, and challenges), integrations, support levels, and even common drawbacks, so you can choose the right fit without hopping between tabs all day.
All data is based on the latest available information as of May 2025.
There's no one-size-fits-all when it comes to gamification. In this section, we break down 15 leading gamification software options based on features, use cases, and real user feedback from platforms like G2 and Capterra.
Each is tailored to different goals like loyalty, onboarding, sales motivation, or customer engagement. You'll get a clear snapshot of who each platform is for, what it offers, and how it compares on key features like points, badges, challenges, and integrations.
⚠️ All data is current as of May 2025.
If you're building a serious loyalty program from the ground up, check out Open Loyalty, which is a gamification platform that combines loyalty and gamification mechanics. It's API-first and totally flexible, which means you can shape your rewards, tiers, and gamification flows however you like, and plug it into your existing tools. It's especially great if you've got multiple channels (web, mobile, store, and more) and want full control.
Enterprise teams running loyalty programs in retail, e-commerce, or CPG who need a scalable, highly customizable platform that plugs into existing systems and boosts customer satisfaction.
Great for brands looking to move beyond basic point schemes and build out complex, behavior-based loyalty journeys.
Need to launch a quiz, game, or contest fast? Drimify has you covered. It's a no-code platform with loads of templates, spin-to-win, trivia, surveys, you name it. Perfect for marketers who want something engaging without bugging the dev team.
Marketing teams, HR departments, and educators who want to create fun, engaging content like quizzes, games, and contests without writing code. Perfect for campaigns, lead gen, training, or brand activations.
Spinify turns your sales process or support team's daily metrics into real-time competitions. Think leaderboards on TV screens, badges, and hype messages that keep reps motivated. If you're looking to add a spark to team performance, this one's worth a look.
Sales managers, support leaders, and revenue teams are looking to keep employees motivated with real-time recognition, leaderboards, and friendly competition. Highly useful for performance-driven teams that love a little friendly rivalry.
Antavo is all about helping enterprise brands run smart, scalable loyalty programs, without needing developers to make every change. You can build tiers, challenges, and rewards with a drag-and-drop backend, and connect them across channels like your app, website, and even physical stores.
Mid-size to enterprise brands (especially in fashion, automotive, and travel) looking for a highly customizable, no-code loyalty platform with strong API capabilities.
Running an online store on Shopify or BigCommerce? Smile.io is one of the easiest ways to get a points or referral program up and running. It's intuitive, works right out of the box, and has a free plan to get you started.
Small to mid-sized eCommerce brands using Shopify, Wix, or BigCommerce that want a plug-and-play loyalty program with a friendly UI.
Annex Cloud is a full-service loyalty and advocacy partner. They'll help you build programs with points, referrals, and even user-generated content, and guide the strategy too. Good fit if you're a bigger brand and want someone to walk the journey with you.
High-end companies in retail, CPG, or healthcare are looking for a full-suite loyalty and advocacy platform with services included.
Voucherify is built for dev teams that want full control over coupons, referrals, and loyalty logic. It's lightweight and gives you the building blocks to create super-tailored reward experiences, if you're ready to get hands-on.
Tech-savvy teams that want to manage coupons, referral programs, and loyalty logic through APIs, especially SaaS and retail developers.
Synerise is a platform for customer data, automation, and personalization. Customer loyalty is part of the package, but the real strength here is how it uses AI to tailor every customer interaction across channels.
Large enterprises are seeking an AI-powered customer data platform (CDP) that includes loyalty and marketing automation in one solution.
Already in the Oracle ecosystem? Their CX Loyalty module adds loyalty functionality right into your existing CRM and marketing setup. It's designed for big enterprises that need everything centralized and secure.
Global enterprises that already use the Oracle CX suite want loyalty functionality deeply embedded into their existing CRM, marketing, and sales tech.
Yotpo is a go-to for DTC brands that want to bring loyalty, reviews, referrals, and SMS together in one place.
If you're on Shopify and want to make your customer retention efforts feel less scattered, this is a solid all-in-one option.
Shopify and DTC e-commerce brands are looking to combine reviews, referrals, and loyalty in one marketing toolset.
Gametize makes it easy to build fun, interactive experiences, quizzes, polls, and challenges for anything from team training to customer engagement. It's especially popular in education and internal comms, but flexible enough for marketing use too.
Companies and educators are running training programs, social engagement campaigns, or internal team challenges.
Best for lightweight, quick-to-deploy gamified content, with a learning or event context in particular.
Influitive helps B2B brands turn their best customers into advocates. You can create gamified campaigns that reward people for referrals, reviews, and participating in your community.
It's a great way to scale word-of-mouth, especially in SaaS.
B2B marketing teams are looking to build advocate communities and incentivize customer referrals, reviews, and social proof. It's a loyalty-meets-advocacy platform for turning happy customers into promoters.
LoyaltyLion is built for e-commerce brands that want to keep customers coming back. You can set up points, referrals, and tiered rewards that sit right on your storefront. It's easy to use and is designed to drive repeat purchases without needing a big tech team.
E-commerce brands, especially on Shopify or BigCommerce, are looking to boost repeat purchases with a plug-and-play loyalty solution. It's designed for online stores with repeat order potential.
Talon.One is for companies that want to go deep on custom promotions and loyalty logic. It's all API-based, which gives your team loads of flexibility to build rules, run campaigns, and scale across multiple channels – just bring your devs.
Product and marketing teams in larger companies need highly customized loyalty and promotion logic. Great if you need more than just points and want full control through the API.
Centrical is all about helping employees stay motivated, hit goals, and keep learning. It mixes gamification with real-time feedback, microlearning, and coaching tools.
If you've got a big sales or support team, this can really level up day-to-day performance.
HR, LandD, and operations leaders focused on performance, training, and motivation for large employee teams, primarily in retail, sales, or call center environments.
Gamification is producing real, measurable outcomes in the wild. From retail to digital health to SaaS onboarding, brands across industries employ gamification software to drive user engagement, improve retention, and increase revenue.
Below are real-world loyalty implementation examples showing how different teams are putting these tools to work and what kind of results they're seeing.
limango, a leading German fashion retailer targeting young families, wanted to improve purchase frequency and boost average order value, especially among a segment of customers spending less than €100. Instead of rolling out another generic promotion, they teamed up with Open Loyalty to build a gamified challenge-based loyalty experience.
They launched a time-limited campaign encouraging customers to complete specific actions, like placing orders, logging in regularly, or exploring new product categories, to earn points and unlock rewards. The loyalty mechanics were designed to be intuitive, engaging, and personalized to shopper behavior.
The results were impressive:
Notably, the campaign helped limango deepen long-term customer relationships by creating a more interactive and rewarding shopping experience.
dacadoo, a Swiss-based digital health platform, helps users track their fitness, lifestyle, and mental well-being through a mobile app. Their goal was clear: increased motivation and user stickiness that keep people coming back.
To do that, they embedded gamification at the core of the user experience, building in features like personal challenges, health scores, streak tracking, and real-time feedback. Users could earn points and progress through levels by completing daily activities like walking, logging meals, or joining fitness goals.
The impact:
Gamification gave dacadoo users a reason to interact more consistently, driven by rewards and enjoyment, not obligation.
There's no shortage of gamification platforms out there. Some are built for quick-hit marketing campaigns, others shine in internal team engagement, and a few focus tightly on product onboarding. However, a more flexible and customizable solution like Open Loyalty can be a strong fit if you're managing a larger-scale loyalty program, especially one that spans multiple channels or regions.
Most loyalty software is limited to preset templates or fixed flows. That's fine if you're just launching a simple points program. Yet, if you need to customize every rule, connect your app with your POS system, or build a fully branded loyalty dashboard, those canned tools hit their limits fast.
Open Loyalty is built differently since it’s API-first and headless. That means you can design the loyalty experience exactly how you want and plug it into any frontend or backend system. Whether you're rewarding in-app activity, in-store purchases, or newsletter signups, it's all under your control – no duct-taping required.
This isn't a startup tool for early-stage growth hacks.
Open Loyalty powers loyalty programs for over 100 enterprise customers in 43 countries, including major global brands like Heineken, ALDO, and JTI. It's backed by a €167 M+ parent company, and its tech stack has been recognized by the likes of Google and Deloitte for its scalability and performance.
So if you're planning to scale across markets or regions, this platform is ready for it.
While some gamification tools focus on surface-level engagement (badges, leaderboards, and games that look amazing but don't move the needle), Open Loyalty is built with long-term metrics in mind.
The platform helps brands drive Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) and reduce reliance on constant discounts through behavior-based incentives, personalized rewards, and smart segmentation.
Just take a look at limango: they used this enterprise loyalty software to increase average order value by 41% and triple repeat purchases. Or dacadoo, who saw 7x better retention by layering gamified health goals into their app.
👁️ Calculate your positive loyalty program ROI (ROI Worksheet included).
Enterprise customers need more than flashy features, they need peace of mind. Open Loyalty offers 99.9% uptime SLAs, 24/7 monitoring, and is fully ISO-certified for data security. It also supports multi-region cloud setups, so you're covered on compliance, too.
To be clear: Open Loyalty isn't trying to be everything to everyone. If you want to launch a fun spin-the-wheel game for an email campaign? Drimify probably gets you there faster. Trying to pump up sales reps? Spinify is built for that. Need onboarding walkthroughs in your app? UserGuiding has you covered.
That said, if you're building a long-term, omnichannel loyalty program with custom rules, tiered rewards, and enterprise-scale needs, Open Loyalty is one of the few platforms truly built for that job.
Picking a gamification platform can feel overwhelming. There are tools for sales teams, tools for onboarding, tools for marketing games, and full-blown loyalty engines, and they all sound great (on paper).
Still, the best tool for your business depends on what you're building, who you're building it for, and how deep you want to go.
Discover our breakdown of the key things to consider.
Before diving into features and pricing, take a step back and ask: What are you actually trying to achieve?
If you're building a loyalty program that spans multiple channels or you want to reward customer behavior beyond just purchases, you'll need a platform that gives you flexibility and control. That includes things like custom reward logic, segmentation, and the ability to work across web, mobile, and in-store environments.
If your focus is more campaign-driven, like onboarding, limited-time engagement, or collecting leads, there are lighter tools that can get you started quickly without much setup. These can be great for testing ideas or running short-term experiences.
For longer-term goals, like increasing customer lifetime value, reducing churn, or shifting away from heavy discounting, you'll want a solution that can grow with you. Think scalable architecture, customizable reward mechanics, and room to adapt as your program matures.
Some platforms, like Open Loyalty, are designed to handle that kind of depth while still being flexible enough to support creative campaigns and loyalty experiments along the way.
👁️ Grab gamified loyalty marketing campaign templates. They are ready to use!
Some tools are ready-made. You log in, choose a template, maybe change a few labels, and go live in a few hours. That's perfect for short-term campaigns, but what happens when you want to change your rules, test new customer segments, or build a reward engine around custom events?
That's where many platforms hit a wall. Open Loyalty doesn't.
With a headless, API-first architecture, you can control every loyalty mechanic: points logic, challenge thresholds, tier upgrades, referral flows, everything. You're not stuck with rigid settings or UI limitations. And because it's decoupled from the front-end, it works anywhere: mobile apps, POS, kiosks, eComm sites, and more.
If your brand values consistency and customization, this kind of freedom is hard to find elsewhere.
Gamification really works when it's connected to your customer data. For that to happen, your platform needs to play nicely with the tools you're already using, whether that's your CRM, ecommerce backend, analytics stack, or marketing automation.
Some tools are built to snap into popular systems with minimal setup. Others offer more flexibility, giving you room to build custom workflows across multiple touchpoints, very useful if you're working with a more complex martech environment.
If you're running a loyalty program that spans channels or has unique data flows, look for something API-first. Platforms built this way can integrate with everything from your website and mobile app to your POS system or CDP, without forcing you into a one-size-fits-all model.
Solutions like Open Loyalty are built with this in mind, offering deep integration capabilities that let you orchestrate personalized loyalty campaigns across your entire ecosystem.
👁️ Read more on loyalty program integrations. Discover the benefits of composable architecture when off-the-shelf plugins don't work.
Cost always matters, and it's not just about the sticker price, as much as how the pricing model lines up with your growth
Some platforms charge per user or per admin, which can make sense for smaller teams or internal engagement tools. Others offer flat monthly fees, which might seem affordable at first, but often come with limits on usage or access to key features.
If you're running a customer-facing loyalty program, like one with thousands (or even millions) of members, you'll want something that scales with you. That's where usage-based pricing models (like the one Open Loyalty offers) come in handy. Instead of paying for seats or tiers, you're paying based on actual program activity, which makes costs easier to manage as you grow.
It's the kind of model that's flexible and built to make sense down the road, too.
If your gamification strategy is going to be customer-facing, revenue-driving, and running 24/7, then uptime, data security, and support are non-negotiable.
Open Loyalty runs with a 99.9% SLA, global data center options, 24/7 monitoring, and ISO-certified infrastructure. You also get version control, real-time diagnostics, and deployment support when needed.
A campaign tool might be fine with email support and a chatbot, but when your loyalty platform is powering CLV targets across five markets, you need more than a help center link.
Gamification is evolving fast, and the tools you use need to keep pace with trends like:
Open Loyalty is designed for these kinds of strategies to help your team lead the way. It's trying to be the loyalty infrastructure behind your business for years, not quarters.
👁️ Find out what gamification is in business with a loyalty program.
The best way to evaluate a platform? Use it like your customers would.
That early test phase is where you'll feel the difference between a gamification "widget" and a loyalty platform that's meant to drive meaningful results.
Read more: Loyalty software buyer's guide.
Loyalty programs that incorporate game mechanics see stronger engagement, higher retention, and more consistent long-term value. These programs help customers stay engaged beyond just purchases, through challenges, rewards, and interactive experiences.
Nonetheless, not all gamification tools are built the same. Choosing the right one depends on where you're headed. The key is to match the platform to your goals, scale, and strategy. Features are important, but so is the platform's ability to evolve with your business, adopt new trends, and deliver long-term value, and even introduce new knowledge to your team about what drives true loyalty.
What to do next?
If you're currently evaluating gamification tools, here's what we recommend:
And if you're looking for a loyalty platform that gives you full ownership of your program logic, integrates across channels, and supports enterprise growth, take a closer look at the enterprise loyalty platform.
👉 Want help finding the right fit? Check out our loyalty software comparison guide or book a demo to see how Open Loyalty can support your strategy.
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