AI Auto Tags Alternative for Shopify: Read the Metering Before You Read the Feature List
👉 Tag customers and orders on rules you control: Install Taggify on the Shopify App Store →
Every auto-tagging app on the App Store shows you a feature list. Almost none of them make you read the meter, and the meter is the part that decides your bill in November.
We build a competing app, so weigh this accordingly. But every number below is off the two public listings as of 18 August 2026, and you can check each one in about four minutes.
The two meters, side by side
Shop Circle's app — it's called AI Auto Tags, Flows & QR Codes now, and long-time users still call it Order Tagger — counts order tags. Taggify counts processes, where a process is one customer or one order that the rule engine evaluates.
That difference sounds academic until you write a rule that applies four tags to an order.
| Taggify | AI Auto Tags (Shop Circle) | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Any Shopify plan | Basic and Grow plans only |
| Free plan allowance | 100 processes + 1,000 past orders | 1 workflow, 100 order tags |
| Rules / workflows | Unlimited on every tier | 10 (Starter) → 50 (Growth) → 100 (Pro) |
| Metered unit | Processes (a customer or order evaluated) | Order tags applied |
| Paid tiers | $5.99 / $9.99 / $19.99 | $5.99 / $19.99 / $49.99 |
| Top-tier allowance | Unlimited processes at $19.99 | 5,000 order tags at $49.99 |
| Backdating past orders | 1,000 included on every plan, free included | $10 for the first 1,000, then $2 per 1,000, and not on the free plan |
| Overage | $0.05 → $0.03 per process by tier | Additional tags per their T&C |
Two things jump out of that table.
Their free plan has a Shopify-plan gate. It reads "available for merchants on Basic and Grow plans." If you're on Starter, or you're on Plus, the free tier isn't yours — you start at $5.99. Ours doesn't care which Shopify plan you're on.
Backdating is a separate purchase over there. Tagging your history is the first thing most merchants want, because a segment built on new orders only is useless for six months. On their side that's $10 for the first thousand orders and $2 per thousand after, on top of the subscription. On ours, a thousand past orders are included in every plan including the free one.
Where metered backdating gets expensive
There's a review on their listing from BETA5 Chocolates, dated November 2024, that describes running a backdating job which applied the wrong tag to nearly 400 orders — and being told the way to fix it was to run another backdating job, at additional cost.
One review out of 198, and the app sits at 4.9 stars overall, so don't read it as a verdict on the product. Read it as a property of the pricing model. When the bulk operation is the metered thing, a rule you got slightly wrong costs you twice: once to apply it and once to undo it. That's a design consequence, not a support failure, and it's worth knowing before you point a backdating job at four years of orders.
What they do better, plainly
Skip this section and you'd be reading an advert rather than a comparison.
- Reviews and age. 198 reviews at 4.9 stars, live since August 2016. We have 11 reviews at 4.7 and launched in June 2019. If review count is how you pick apps, they win and it isn't close.
- Languages. Their admin ships in 18 languages. Ours is English only.
- Integrations. They have a Shopify Flow trigger, Zapier, Zapiet and QR-code generation. We integrate with Shopify Admin and stop there.
- Natural-language rule building. You can describe a workflow in a prompt instead of assembling conditions. We make you build the rule.
If you need Zapier in the chain or a Spanish-speaking ops team in the admin, install theirs. That's the honest answer.
What we do better
- Customers are first-class, not a footnote. Their metered unit is order tags; customer tagging is in the feature list but the meter isn't built around it. Taggify tags customers and orders on the same footing, with customer-trigger rules on account creation and update, not just on orders.
- Rules aren't rationed. Ten active workflows on a $5.99 plan runs out faster than you'd think once you're tagging by region, by payment gateway, by product, by order value and by first-versus-repeat. Every Taggify tier is unlimited rules; you're metered on volume processed, not on how many ideas you've had.
- Exceptions. You can exclude specific customers from a rule that would otherwise catch them — the wholesale account that shouldn't get the retail tag, the staff account that shouldn't count as a VIP.
- AND/OR logic per rule. Each rule is either "all conditions must match" or "any condition matches," decided per rule rather than globally.
Which meter fits your store
Pick by shape, not by brand.
Choose tags-metered if you apply one or two tags per order, your rules are few and stable, and you'd rather pay for a wider integration surface than for volume.
Choose process-metered if a single order can pick up several tags, you tag customers as much as orders, or you expect to keep adding rules. A store applying four tags per order burns its tag allowance four times faster than its process allowance.
And do the arithmetic on your actual last month rather than on the plan names. Pull your order count for July, multiply by the average number of tags one order would collect under your rules, and compare that to both meters. Most merchants find the two apps sit within a few dollars of each other until backdating or rule count enters the picture — and then they diverge sharply.
Frequently asked questions
Is "AI Auto Tags, Flows & QR Codes" the same app as Order Tagger? Yes — same listing, renamed. It's published by Shop Circle and launched in August 2016.
Can I move my existing tags across? Tags live on the Shopify order and customer records, not inside either app, so switching apps doesn't delete anything. What you rebuild are the rules.
Does Taggify tag orders that already exist? Yes. Every plan, free included, covers 1,000 past orders for bulk processing, and larger histories are billed per additional 1,000.
Do I need an app at all if I have Shopify Flow? Sometimes not. Flow is free and handles straightforward order-triggered tagging well. Merchants usually move to a dedicated tagging app for bulk historical tagging, exceptions, and customer-side triggers — we wrote about that trade-off in our Shopify Flow comparison.
Which one is Built for Shopify? Both carry the Built for Shopify badge as of August 2026.
Taggify tags customers and orders on rules you write, with unlimited rules on every plan and 1,000 past orders included — free plan too, on any Shopify plan.
Pricing, ratings and plan details for both apps were read off their public Shopify App Store listings on 18 August 2026 and change without notice — check both listings before you decide.