Loyalty Gator vs Sidedoor

Loyalty Gator provides cloud-based customer loyalty, gift card, and employee incentive programs for businesses. Programs can award points for purchases, actions, or referrals, and support digital punch cards and other reward options. The company says businesses do not need a point-of-sale connection. Customers can enroll online and check balances through the business website on a computer, tablet, or smartphone. Businesses can review customer activity and marketing reports and export customer lists for campaigns. The service offers a developer API and Zapier connections, plus integrations including Mailchimp, Shopify, QuickBooks Online, and Square. Its TangoCard connection lets customers redeem points for electronic gift cards. Plans include unlimited loyalty transactions and no transaction fees, subject to fair use and possible extra bandwidth charges. Bite supports up to 100 customers; Snack supports up to 5,000 and adds birthday points and Zapier integration; Meal supports up to 10,000 and adds a customer web portal, referrals, social integration, Google Analytics, and Tawk.to integrations. A 30-day free trial and money-back guarantee are listed, excluding custom development and white-label services. The company says cancellation after the trial requires 30 days' notice.

Sidedoor is a bookings and venue management platform with distinct guest-facing and operator-facing apps. Guests can browse participating venues, request guest-list entry, reserve tables and check in with QR codes. Free membership includes guest-list bookings, priority queue skips at participating venues, reward points and five free keys. Venue tools include reservations, guest lists, ticketed events, gift vouchers, email marketing, analytics and business intelligence. Venue staff can use native Android and iOS apps offline. The operator platform offers role-based access by venue and module, administrative audit logging and lock-screen protection on shared devices. Sidedoor says its hosting and databases are encrypted, passwords are hashed, optional two-factor authentication is available, and Stripe processes card payments without Sidedoor storing full card numbers or CVV codes. Connected services include Alliance iPOS, Google Business, Stripe and an open API; Square and Epos Now are listed as coming soon. Developers can use REST API documentation and tokens. Venue plans include Starter at £99 per month, Pro at £299 per month and Max at £499 per month; paid guest memberships are annual.