SourceMedium vs Lifetimely

Why teams choose SourceMedium over Lifetimely

Lifetimely does cohort LTV and profit reporting for Shopify stores well and has a strong reputation for ease of use. Pricing is transparent and all features are on every plan, including free — a genuinely customer-friendly model. The tradeoff: you're limited to what the app can do. No multi-touch attribution. No SQL access. No data warehouse. Single-currency display only. SourceMedium includes LTV and retention analytics alongside everything Lifetimely can't offer.

Where the approaches differ

Attribution: Lifetimely offers only first-touch and last-touch — no multi-touch, no linear, no time-decay. SourceMedium provides multi-touch attribution built on deterministic data from Shopify checkout and ad platform APIs — no new pixels required.

Data access: Lifetimely shows you what their app decides to show you — no standard SQL access and no warehouse foundation you can build on. Exports are report-level. SourceMedium gives you a BigQuery warehouse where any tool, any team member, any question has access. Tableau, dbt, Python, Hex, your own scripts — anything that supports BigQuery connects natively, no vendor permission required. Included compute means your team can run custom transformations, build dbt models, and do real analytical work.

Scope: Lifetimely is a Shopify LTV tool. SourceMedium unifies commerce, ads, email, subscriptions, and ops — reconciled into one schema with 2,500+ automated quality checks running daily across every source. When your numbers reconcile back to Shopify and your ad platforms, you stop debating data in meetings and start making decisions.

A named analyst, not a help center: Every account gets a dedicated Customer Solutions Analyst — US-based, with experience working across DTC marketing, ops, finance, and C-suite teams. Included solution hours cover onboarding, roadmapping, and ongoing prioritization. No offshore support, no upsold services — just structured help from someone who's done this before.

Forkable Looker Studio templates: Every Looker Studio template is open-source and forkable — copy it, customize it, build something entirely new. Your reporting layer belongs to you, not a vendor's proprietary dashboard.

Unlimited data storage: Centralize more than just ecommerce data — bring in finance, ops, or any custom source into the same BigQuery warehouse at no extra cost. One foundation for the whole business, not just a Shopify LTV app.

Multi-currency: Lifetimely displays data in the store's default currency only. Brands selling internationally need analytics that handle the complexity of multi-currency operations.

The ownership stress test: If you walk away from Lifetimely tomorrow, what do you keep? Your dashboards and historical analysis stay behind in the app. Leave SM, and your BigQuery warehouse, dashboards, and SQL keep working.

AI you can verify: Lifetimely's Amp AI answers questions but doesn't show how it got there. SourceMedium's AI Analyst returns the SQL behind every answer — copy it, run it in BigQuery, verify the result yourself.

When Lifetimely might be the better fit

Lifetimely works for single-store Shopify brands that only need profit tracking and cohort LTV, don't need SQL or multi-touch attribution, and want simple order-volume-based pricing starting at $149/mo.