Arigato Automation Alternative for Shopify: When All You Actually Need Is Tagging
👉 If tagging is the whole job: Install Taggify on the Shopify App Store →
Most merchants who go looking for Arigato Automation didn't wake up wanting a workflow platform. They wanted VIP customers tagged automatically, or wholesale orders flagged so the warehouse stops guessing, and Arigato was the app that came up.
We build Taggify, so read this knowing we sell one of the two things being compared. We'll say the useful part first anyway: if you genuinely need automation beyond tags, buy Arigato. It is a better product for that job than we are, and it isn't close. This post is for the other merchant — the one whose entire requirement fits in the sentence "tag this customer when they do that."
What Arigato is actually selling
Arigato Automation is a general-purpose workflow engine. Its pitch is 340+ prebuilt automations plus a no-code editor, and for anything the editor can't express you can drop into Liquid, GraphQL, and the REST API. Tagging customers and orders is one action among dozens — it also sends email, writes metafields, moves inventory, and chains steps together.
That breadth is real, and merchants rate it: 4.8 stars across 182 reviews at the time of writing. If your list of "things I wish my store did by itself" runs past tagging, stop reading comparisons and go install it.
The catch is that you pay for the platform whether or not you use the platform.
The pricing detail nobody mentions until you're on the billing screen
Here's Arigato's plan structure as published on its App Store listing in July 2026:
| Plan | Price | Actions/month | Who it's for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $15/mo | 5,000 | Basic stores only |
| Grow | $25/mo | 7,500 | Grow stores only |
| Advanced | $40/mo | 10,000 | Advanced stores only |
| Plus | $100/mo | 25,000 | Plus stores only |
Read the right-hand column again. The plan you're allowed to buy is decided by your Shopify plan, not by how much automation you use. A Shopify Advanced store that fires 400 tag actions a month pays $40. A Plus store doing the same 400 actions pays $100. You are buying 10,000 or 25,000 actions because of the plan badge on your account, and there's no free tier to sit on while you find out whether you need them.
For a store running one or two tagging rules, that's a subscription mostly funding capacity you'll never touch.
What Taggify does instead
Taggify does one job: it watches customer and order events and applies or removes tags based on rules you define. That's the whole surface area.
- Rules with real logic. Each rule is a set of conditions joined with AND or OR — product, collection, discount code, order total, payment gateway, existing tags, shipping country/city/postcode, vendor, browser language. AND rules short-circuit on the first failure, OR rules pass on the first match.
- Exceptions. You can exclude specific customers from a rule instead of contorting the rule to avoid them. This sounds small until you have a wholesale account that keeps getting tagged "retail."
- Past orders, not just new ones. Turning on a tagging rule usually means your history is now inconsistent with your present. Taggify can backfill tags across historical orders and customers so segments built on those tags aren't half-empty.
- An activity log. Every processed record shows what matched and what got written, so when a tag doesn't appear you can see why instead of guessing.
And the pricing is metered on the thing you actually use:
| Plan | Price | Processes/month | Extra |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 100 | $0.05 each |
| Basic | $5.99/mo | 200 | $0.04 each |
| Professional | $9.99/mo | 1,000 | $0.03 each |
| Enterprise | $19.99/mo | Unlimited + dynamic tagging | — |
Your Shopify plan doesn't enter into it. A Plus store with 300 tagging events a month pays $5.99.
The honest scorecard
| Arigato Automation | Taggify | |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Full workflow platform, 340+ automations | Customer + order tagging only |
| Custom code | Liquid, GraphQL, REST | No — rules UI only |
| Free plan | No (14-day trial) | Yes, 100 processes/month |
| Entry price | $15/mo, rising with your Shopify plan | $0, then $5.99 |
| Unlimited tier | $100/mo (25,000 actions) | $19.99/mo (unlimited) |
| Bulk-tag existing history | Yes | Yes |
| Reviews | 4.8★ (182) | 4.7★ (11) |
We're not going to pretend 11 reviews beats 182. It doesn't, and if social proof is how you buy apps, that's a fair reason to pick them.
Before you buy either one: check whether Shopify Flow already does it
Shopify Flow is free on every plan and it can add tags. For a single rule like "tag orders over $500 as high-value," Flow is genuinely enough, and we've said so in more detail before.
Where merchants outgrow it is usually one of three places: backfilling tags onto past orders, rules with enough AND/OR nesting that the Flow canvas becomes unreadable, or per-customer exceptions. If none of those apply to you, use Flow and spend the money elsewhere. We'd rather tell you that than sell you a subscription you cancel in six weeks.
One more thing worth knowing before you design a tagging scheme: Shopify caps tags at 250 per resource, and tags are shared across your whole store. Naming conventions matter more than people expect — vip-2026 beats VIP once three apps are writing tags.
How to decide in about a minute
Ask what else you'd automate this quarter. If you can name two non-tagging automations you'd actually build — abandoned-cart follow-ups with custom logic, metafield syncing, inventory alerts — Arigato earns its price and the ceiling is worth having.
If you can't, you're about to pay platform rates for one feature. Start on a free tagging plan, get your rules right, and revisit the platform question when you have a second problem to solve.
FAQ
Is there a free alternative to Arigato Automation for tagging?
Yes. Shopify Flow is free and handles simple tag rules, and Taggify has a free plan covering 100 processes a month. Arigato has a 14-day trial but no free tier.
Why does Arigato cost more on Shopify Plus?
Its plans are tied to your Shopify plan level rather than your usage, so a Plus store buys the $100 tier regardless of how many actions it runs. Taggify's plans are the same price on every Shopify plan.
Can I tag orders that already exist, not just new ones?
Yes, with either app. In Taggify that's the past-orders flow: pick a date range, and the app queues those orders through the same rule engine that handles live events.
What happens if a rule tags the wrong customers?
Set an exception for the accounts that shouldn't match, or edit the rule and re-run it. The activity log shows which records matched, so you can confirm the fix rather than hoping.
Do I need both apps?
Almost never. They overlap on tagging. Run one, and pick based on whether tagging is your whole requirement or the first item on a longer list.
Tag customers and orders automatically, backfill your history, and stop paying platform prices for one feature.
Install Taggify Free →Free plan available — 100 processes a month, no credit card.