Perkie is a self-hosted loyalty and rewards plugin for WooCommerce. Points live in a ledger inside your own database, and you can run the whole thing on your store alone or connect it to Tracksies HQ to target offers by customer tag and get a fuller view of each customer. It covers points, VIP tiers, two-sided referrals, review incentives, surveys and prize draws, and a redemption experience that lives right in the cart and checkout.
YITH WooCommerce Points and Rewards is a mature, popular plugin from YITH, a studio with one of the largest WooCommerce plugin catalogues around. It lets customers earn points on purchases and other actions, redeem them for discounts or free shipping, climb through points-based levels with badges, and it ships with promotional banners to nudge shoppers along. We make Perkie, so yes: we’re biased. But these are two good tools, and two good tools can suit different stores. This page tries to lay out the differences fairly so you can pick the one that fits yours.
The Quick Version
Platform
- Perkie: Self-hosted WooCommerce plugin; points ledger in your own database. Requires WordPress 6+, PHP 8+, WooCommerce 8+.
- YITH Points and Rewards: Self-hosted WooCommerce plugin, part of the wider YITH plugin catalogue.
Pricing model and price
- Perkie: Flat annual licence, A$99 first year then A$79.20 on renewal (20% off). No per-member or per-order fees.
- YITH Points and Rewards: Flat annual licence, listed at around €139.99 / US$139.99 per year including one year of updates and support. A free version with reduced functionality is available on WordPress.org.
Site licensing
- Perkie: One licence covers up to five sites.
- YITH Points and Rewards: Premium licence is sold per single site; YITH’s broader plugin club is a separate offering.
Points earning
- Perkie: Configurable points per dollar; renameable points currency; earns on subscription renewals; guests cannot earn.
- YITH Points and Rewards: Global rate based on product value (for example $10 = 1 point), with advanced rules per product, per category and per user role.
Earning triggers
- Perkie: Per-order bonus, first-order bonus, account creation, and celebration or personal dates; optional expiry with warning emails.
- YITH Points and Rewards: Purchases plus extra points for registration, daily login, profile completion, referrals, birthdays and reviews.
Redemption
- Perkie: "Your Rewards" picker at cart and checkout; discount coupons, free-shipping redemption; configurable earn rate, redemption rate, minimum redemption and max discount %; cancellable pending redemptions.
- YITH Points and Rewards: Fixed or percentage price discount, customer chooses how many points to redeem, and a free-shipping redemption option.
Tiers / ranks
- Perkie: Unlimited VIP tiers with thresholds and earn multipliers; higher tiers earn faster and can carry a standing discount; My Account progress bar; tier-up welcome email; lifetime or rolling-12-month calculation.
- YITH Points and Rewards: Unlimited levels based on total points collected, each with a custom colour and a graphic badge.
Referrals
- Perkie: Unique codes; cookie tracking (default 30 days); two-sided rewards; fraud checks (address / email-domain, minimum order value); social sharing to Facebook, X and email; referral stats in My Account.
- YITH Points and Rewards: Extra points awarded for referral registration and purchase.
Surveys / prize draws
- Perkie: Reward survey completion with points; automated prize draws among entrants; responses tie to real order history.
- YITH Points and Rewards: Not a feature of this plugin.
Review incentives
- Perkie: Points for approved reviews; photo or video bonus (requires Trustie Pro); one per product.
- YITH Points and Rewards: Extra points for leaving reviews.
Points expiry
- Perkie: Optional expiry with warning emails.
- YITH Points and Rewards: Optional expiration with automated reminder emails.
Data ownership
- Perkie: Points ledger lives in your own WordPress database; no external service required.
- YITH Points and Rewards: Self-hosted; data stays in your WordPress database.
Customer-intelligence / suite integration
- Perkie: Optional Tracksies HQ adds tag-targeted offers, customer intelligence, and tier / balance / referrals on the customer profile.
- YITH Points and Rewards: Integrates with other YITH plugins across a large catalogue; no dedicated customer-intelligence layer in this plugin.
Styling
- Perkie: Front-end elements styled to sit within your theme.
- YITH Points and Rewards: Customisation of all labels and points notices; banners are styleable.
If the quick version already points you one way, trust it. If not, here’s the longer look.
Where YITH Points and Rewards Does Well
It’s mature and widely used. YITH has been building WooCommerce plugins for years, and Points and Rewards is one of its established products. That maturity shows in the breadth of settings and the number of stores running it. If you value a plugin with a long track record and a big user base, YITH earns that trust.
It’s feature-rich for the essentials. Points on purchases, advanced earning rules per product, per category and per user role, fixed or percentage redemption, free-shipping redemption, points expiration with reminder emails: the core loyalty loop is all here and well thought through. The ability to award extra points for registration, daily login, profile completion, birthdays and reviews gives you plenty of levers to encourage the behaviours you want.
It’s competitively priced. At around €139.99 / US$139.99 per year for the premium version, it sits comfortably in the middle of the market, and there’s a free version on WordPress.org if you want to try the basics before committing. That’s a fair deal for a capable plugin.
Levels and badges out of the box. YITH lets you create unlimited levels based on total points collected, each with its own colour and graphic badge. If gamified status with visible badges is what you’re after, that’s built in.
Promotional banners. YITH ships "Target" banners and "Get points" banners you can place to nudge shoppers toward earning and spending. It’s a nice touch for keeping the programme visible on-site.
A big catalogue and ecosystem. Because YITH makes so many WooCommerce plugins, Points and Rewards can sit alongside familiar tools from the same studio, with a consistent look and a single vendor to deal with. If you already run YITH plugins, that consistency counts for a lot.
Where the Approaches Differ
Tiers and referrals depth
Both plugins offer levels and both offer a form of referral, but the depth differs. YITH’s levels are points-total milestones with a colour and a badge: reach a threshold, wear the badge. Perkie’s VIP tiers add an earning multiplier and an optional standing discount at each tier, so higher tiers earn faster and get a permanent perk, with a My Account progress bar, a tier-up welcome email, and a choice between lifetime and rolling-12-month calculation.
On referrals, YITH awards extra points for referral registration and purchase. Perkie’s referral system is built around unique codes with cookie tracking (30 days by default), two-sided rewards for referrer and friend, fraud checks on address and email domain plus a minimum order value, social sharing to Facebook, X and email, and referral stats in My Account. Both get customers referring; Perkie leans further into it as a standalone growth channel.
Surveys and customer intelligence
This is where the two diverge most. Perkie can reward survey completion with points and run automated prize draws among entrants, with responses tied to real order history so you learn something useful about who’s answering. Connect Tracksies HQ and you can also target offers using HQ’s customer tags (mint and email a coupon when a tag fires), with loyalty standing shown on the HQ customer profile. YITH Points and Rewards stays focused on the points-and-levels loop and doesn’t include surveys, prize draws or a customer-intelligence layer.
Data ownership and the suite
Both plugins are self-hosted, so in both cases your points data lives in your own WordPress database, which is a real strength either way. The difference is what sits around the core. Perkie is designed to work standalone, and optionally to plug into Tracksies HQ when you want the customer-intelligence and tag-targeted offers. YITH’s strength is the opposite kind of breadth: a large catalogue of separate plugins from one studio that you can assemble as needed.
Styling and brand consistency
YITH lets you customise all labels and points notices, and its banners are styleable. Perkie’s front-end elements are built to sit within your theme so the rewards experience feels like part of your store rather than a bolted-on widget. Both give you a tidy result; the emphasis differs slightly in how much lives inline versus in dedicated banners.
When YITH Points and Rewards Is Your Answer
You want to try before you buy. YITH has a free version on WordPress.org so you can run the basics at no cost. Perkie is a paid licence from day one.
You already run YITH plugins. One vendor, a consistent look, and tools your team already knows. That’s a real advantage and Perkie can’t offer it: Perkie is a focused product, not a catalogue.
Daily login and profile-completion points matter to you. YITH awards those out of the box. Perkie’s triggers cover orders, first orders, account creation and celebration dates, so if the daily-login habit loop is the mechanic you’re after, YITH has it and Perkie doesn’t.
You want ready-made level badges. YITH ships graphic badges per level, which is a neat bit of gamification with nothing to build. Perkie’s tiers work through earning multipliers and standing discounts instead. Badge art syncs via HQ if you go that way, but out of the box YITH is the quicker win.
Who Should Choose What
YITH Points and Rewards is a good fit if:
- You want a mature, widely-used plugin with a long track record.
- You’d like to trial a free version before paying.
- You already run YITH plugins and value staying in one catalogue.
- Points-based levels with colours and badges, plus promotional banners, cover what you need.
- You want a solid, well-priced core loyalty loop without extra layers.
Perkie is a good fit if:
- You want VIP tiers with earning multipliers and standing discounts, not just badge milestones.
- A deeper, two-sided referral programme with fraud checks and social sharing matters to you.
- You want surveys, prize draws and customer intelligence alongside points.
- You’d like the option to connect Tracksies HQ for tag-based earning and a fuller customer profile.
- One licence covering up to five sites suits how you work.
Switching from YITH Points and Rewards
Moving loyalty programmes is usually the part people dread, and the worry is always the same: what happens to the balances customers have already earned? Perkie handles this with a retroactive points import. It can award points for historical orders, with a preview so you can check the numbers before anything is written, and background processing so a large catalogue of past orders doesn’t stall your site. That means existing customers can carry their earned value across rather than starting from zero, which keeps the goodwill you’ve already built. It’s a practical migration, and you get to see what will happen before it happens.
Go Have a Look
If YITH’s mature core loop, free trial version and big plugin catalogue sound like the right fit, take a look at YITH WooCommerce Points and Rewards. If VIP tiers with real earning multipliers, deeper referrals, surveys and the option of customer intelligence sound more like your store, come and see what Perkie can do. Both are capable tools built by people who care about loyalty done well. You do you.
