Migrating from another GWP app
Most stores running Valotrix Cart Rewards arrived from an incumbent - BOGOS, Monster GWP, Bold Brain, or one of the smaller "$0 variant" apps. This is the playbook for the switch: install in parallel, re-create your top promos, run a 24-hour overlap, then uninstall the old app.
Total time: about an hour, plus 24 hours of overlap.
Map the concepts
The vocabulary differs across apps. Here's how the concepts line up:
| Other apps call it... | Valotrix Cart Rewards calls it... | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Offer / promotion | Campaign | Top-level container with start/end dates, on/off toggle. |
| Rule / condition set | Rule | A condition tree + a reward. A campaign can have multiple rules (e.g. tiered). |
| Tier | Rule | Each tier of a tiered campaign is a separate rule in Valotrix Cart Rewards. |
| Gift product (often $0-priced variant) | Gift line | Valotrix Cart Rewards uses the real product variant; the discount is applied at checkout by the Shopify Functions discount API. No $0 duplicates. |
| Per-order fee / usage fee | Flat monthly price | $24 / $49 / $99. No transaction fees. No Plus surcharge. |
| Customer segment | Customer condition | Logged-in state and tag match (customer.is_logged_in, customer.tag_in) - see Customer targeting. For order count or B2B segmentation, apply a customer tag from your B2B / lifecycle workflow and match it via customer.tag_in. |
| Geo / market rule | Country / market condition | See Multi-currency & Markets. |
If the term you're looking for isn't on this table, search the full FAQ or email valentin@valotrix.com.
Step 1 - Install Valotrix Cart Rewards first
Don't uninstall the old app yet. Install Valotrix Cart Rewards from the App Store in parallel: see Install.
After install, enable the theme app embed (see Enable app embed). Both apps' embeds can run simultaneously - they don't conflict on the embed surface itself, only on cart-line ownership.
Create your first campaign while the old app is still running. The Valotrix Cart Rewards campaign won't actually fire on the storefront until you flip it from Draft to Active, so this is safe.
Step 2 - Pause the old app's storefront output
You want the old app's admin to stay alive (for archives, analytics history, and the ability to revert) while the old app's storefront output stops adding gifts.
For each major GWP app:
- BOGOS - in BOGOS admin → settings, toggle off "App active on storefront" (exact label varies by version).
- Monster GWP - in Monster admin → general settings, toggle off "Enable app on store".
- Bold Brain (legacy) - disable the app's theme block in your theme editor.
- Other apps - either disable their theme app embed (Online Store → Themes → Customize → App embeds), or set every offer in the old app to Inactive.
Reload your storefront, add a trigger product, and confirm the old app no longer auto-adds a gift. This is the cleanest test: if the old app's gift is gone, you're ready for Valotrix Cart Rewards to take over.
Step 3 - Re-create your top 3 promos in Valotrix Cart Rewards
Don't try to migrate everything. Re-create your top 3 active promotions in Valotrix Cart Rewards - the ones that drive the most revenue. The long tail can wait until after the migration is done.
For each, pick the matching recipe:
- Threshold-based free gift ("spend $50, get a tote") → Spend $50, get a free tote.
- BOGO ("buy sneakers, get socks") → Buy one, get one.
- Tiered spend ("$50 / $100 / $200, more gifts each tier") → Tiered spend.
- Customer choice ("pick one of three gifts") → Customer choice popup.
- VIP-only / customer-tag-gated → VIP only.
- Geo-targeted → Geo-targeted.
Save each campaign as Draft while you're re-creating them. Don't activate yet.
Step 4 - Run a 24-hour overlap
This is the careful part: for 24 hours, both apps are installed, but only Valotrix Cart Rewards is firing. The old app is in archive-mode (its admin still works, but its storefront output is off, per Step 2).
Activate your Valotrix Cart Rewards campaigns one at a time. Check each:
- The simulator agrees (see Preview before going live).
- A real cart on your storefront triggers the gift.
- Checkout shows the gift line at -$X.XX with a 100% discount applied.
- The order completes cleanly and the Valotrix Cart Rewards analytics dashboard records the order with
ordersWithGifts > 0.
Watch Analytics for 24 hours. You're confirming that Valotrix Cart Rewards is firing the same set of carts the old app used to fire - give or take small differences caused by condition-mapping nuances.
If everything looks right, proceed to Step 5. If something looks off, you can roll back to the old app in 30 seconds (re-enable its storefront output, deactivate Valotrix Cart Rewards's campaigns).
Step 5 - Uninstall the old app
When you're confident the new setup is correct:
- Shopify Admin → Apps.
- Find the old GWP app.
- Click the three-dot menu → Uninstall.
- Confirm.
Shopify will remove the app's permissions, its theme app embed registration, and its background jobs. Any leftover discount entries the old app created stay in your Discounts list - you can clean them up manually if you want a tidy admin.
If the old app created $0 product variants (most do, except apps that use Shopify Functions like Valotrix Cart Rewards), those variants stay in your catalog after uninstall. Walk through Products → filter by the gift product, and delete any $0 variants that are no longer needed. They don't break anything if you leave them - they're just stale.
What you DON'T migrate
A few things don't carry over, by design:
- Historical orders - Valotrix Cart Rewards's analytics start counting from your install date. The old app's order history stays in its own admin (read-only after uninstall - keep the dashboard URL or export CSVs if you want a permanent record).
- Per-customer redemption counts - Valotrix Cart Rewards tracks redemptions per rule starting from the rule's first fire. If a customer used the old app's gift 5 times, Valotrix Cart Rewards won't know that.
- Customer segment tags - those live in Shopify Customers, not in your GWP app. They're untouched by either install or uninstall.
- Discount-code history - Shopify owns this. Untouched.
- Theme widget customizations - Valotrix Cart Rewards has its own widget settings (colors, copy, animation). Re-set them in the Valotrix Cart Rewards campaign Messaging tab.
If you're trying to migrate a multi-thousand-customer redemption history specifically (e.g. to enforce "max 1 lifetime redemption per customer" across the migration), email valentin@valotrix.com - there's a CSV import path for high-volume cases.
Next: How Valotrix Cart Rewards compares to other GWP apps →