Early access · Real-time VIP and buyer detection
Know who just ordered.
Somewhere in your order feed is a customer worth knowing about: a celebrity, a wholesale buyer, an investor or reporter, a creator with millions of followers. Right now they look like every other order. VIP Alert reads who each customer really is the moment they check out, then acts on it automatically.
Onboarding in small batches. Leave your store and email, and your invite goes out the moment a spot opens.
Free plan available. You are only charged when we identify someone, never for the orders we screen.
Built by Taylor Sicard, an early Shopify employee who has scaled multiple consumer brands to nine figures and advises Fortune 500 companies.
His last Shopify app was acquired by a public company.
- Klaviyo
- Postscript
- Attentive
- Omnisend
- Mailchimp
- Drip
- Yotpo
- Shopify Segments
- Shopify Flow
- Shopify Email
How it works
No dashboard to decode. Just a clear read.
Three layers turn a raw order into a person you understand, and we always say how sure we are.
Public signals, free forever
Every order is screened for public-figure and business signals as it comes in. This layer does real work, not a countdown timer, so the Free and Starter plans surface genuine VIPs. It is how we give every store a taste of what VIP Alert can see, before you pay for anything.
Professional enrichment
On Growth and up, professional data plus Google, Instagram, and TikTok signals add job title, company, LinkedIn, and social reach. Each person is identified once, then reused free while we have them on file.
A person, a grade, and a play
Detections are corroborated against public records, then turned into two reads: who they are (athlete, buyer, editor, creator) and how much they matter, as an A, B, or C grade with a 0 to 100 score. A shared name never becomes a false alarm.
We show our work. In our own test store, VIP Alert found an Olympic snowboarder by matching his hometown to the shipping city, and correctly refused to flag a deceased athlete who happened to share his name. A customer who merely shares a name with someone famous never sets off the alarm.
Inside the app
One screen, and you know your order feed.
VIP Alert lives inside your Shopify admin. Every order that comes in is screened, graded, and explained in a sentence, including the ones we cannot place.
Recent VIP alerts
- WhaleTop 5% lifetime spender just reorderedTop spender12th order · lifetime value in your top 2%A94/100
- VIPVP of Merchandising at a national retailerRetail buyerSenior buyer · major retailer · buys your categoryA90/100
- VIPActive professional athlete just orderedAthlete · ProfessionalHometown matches the shipping city · living person onlyA88/100
- VIPCreator with millions of followers in your categoryCreatorSocial profile corroborated against bio and locationA86/100
- VIPBuying assistant at a national retailerRetail buyerEntry-level buyer, but a real wholesale doorB79/100
- VIPBeauty editor at a national magazinePressWorks in media · a note while the order is freshB68/100
- NotableRetired athlete just placed an orderAthlete · RetiredSame sport, different moment. Worth a look, not a scramble.C45/100
- No matchNothing found on this customerNo public or professional signal · never billed·0/100
Customer tags, written for you
Tags land on the customer in Shopify, so Klaviyo, Postscript, and Shopify Segments pick them up with no extra setup.
Order notes before it ships
Fulfillment sees who the customer is while the box is still open.
Not just a score, a person
An athlete, a buyer, an editor, and a chef are all worth knowing for different reasons. Each one comes with the play to run.
Every VIP in one list
Search and filter the whole roster. Each one carries a confidence score, so a customer who merely shares a name with someone famous never reads as a match.
Thresholds and weighting you control
Tell it what your store cares about. A wholesale label and a beauty brand should not see the same VIPs.
How your VIPs actually behave
See what a VIP order is worth next to the rest of your store.
Alerts routed by who it is
A whale goes to a dedicated channel, a lead to the sales inbox. You decide who hears about what.
Flows into the tools you use
Tags become Klaviyo and Postscript segments, and an outbound webhook feeds anything else.
Detection becomes action
Not one more tab to check.
The moment a VIP is found, VIP Alert acts without you lifting a finger, routed by how much the customer matters. Everything is written back into your own store, so it is yours to keep.
- Native Shopify metafields for classification, grade, category, score, and confidence, ready for Segments, Flow, and analytics.
- Order notes so fulfillment sees the VIP before the package ships.
- An outbound webhook into your own stack, on top of the tags, alerts, and integrations above.
Tuned to your brand, not ours
A wholesale label and a beauty brand see different whales.
Wholesale and B2B
Catch the retail buyer or brand founder in your DTC feed before the box ships, and route them to your wholesale team.
Beauty and fashion
Spot creators and press the moment they check out, then trigger gifting and seeding flows automatically.
Investors and press
An investor, an editor, or a reporter buying your product is a warm introduction that already happened. Know about it while a founder's note still counts.
High-ticket and collectibles
Grade every big spender and set custom thresholds, so the customers that move the number get white-glove care.
What you get
Everything, in plain language.
Plain-language classification
Every alert names what the customer is, like "Wholesale buyer at a national retailer." On every plan, including free.
Identity confidence, 0 to 100
Detections are corroborated against public records, so a shared name never becomes a false alarm. Living people only.
A/B/C grades and category weighting
Grade VIPs by how much they matter, and weight seven categories to match your growth strategy.
Automatic Shopify actions
Customer tags become Klaviyo and Postscript segments, plus order notes, metafields, and outbound webhooks.
Competitor watchlist
Name the companies you care about. When someone from one of them orders, you hear about it, even on an order too small to screen normally. They never enter your VIP flows.
Slack and email alerts
Routed by impact level, with a dedicated whale channel on the Scale plan. Choose an alert every time someone orders, or once per person plus any order that moves them up a tier.
Start with the customers you already have
Screen your existing order history in one background job, not just new orders. Most stores find their first VIP in people who bought months ago.
A weekly read, and a record of what you did
A Monday email with who turned up and what your top spenders are worth against everyone else. Mark a VIP actioned once you have followed up, so nothing worth a note gets missed twice.
Your data stays yours
VIP data is written back into your store as native tags and metafields, usable in Segments, Flow, and analytics.
Pricing
You only pay when we find someone.
A flat monthly plan, plus a small charge for each person we identify beyond what your plan includes. If we cannot work out who someone is, that costs you nothing.
- Screening every order that comes in
- A lookup that comes back with nothing
- Repeat orders from the same person for 30 days
- Everything on the Free and Starter plans
- A person we identify, billed once
Most of what VIP Alert does never reaches your bill.
Scroll to compare all plans →
| Free$0/moKicking the tires | Starter$9/moLower-volume stores | Growth$29/moFull enrichment starts here | Most popularPro$99/moBuyers and editors by name | Scale$299/moSegments and custom rules | EnterpriseCustomSMS, MCP, custom | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Where the data comes from | Public sources | Public sources | Full enrichment + socials | Full enrichment + socials | Full enrichment + socials | Custom sources |
| Who they are | Athletes, actors, press | Athletes, actors, press | Athletes, actors, press | + buyers, editors, investors | + career stage, routing per persona | Custom |
| Sync frequency | Once daily | Hourly | Real-time | Real-time | Real-time | Real-time |
| Alerts per month | 10 | 25 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Records included (then per extra) | No per-person billing | No per-person billing | 30, then $1.00 each | 100, then $0.90 each | 300, then $0.80 each | Custom |
| Competitor watchlist | Not included | Not included | Not included | Add-on, $12/company | 3 included, then $12/company | Custom |
| Channels | 1 email | 1 email | 2 emails + Slack | 5 emails + Slack | 5 emails + Slack + whale channel | + SMS, escalated, MCP |
| Features | Plain-language detection | Lower order floor | + customer tags | + grades, action matrix, order notes, competitor watchlist | + custom thresholds, weighting, webhook, benchmarks | + custom features |
Growth is built for the first 50. Past about 120 people a month, Pro costs less and does more.
Deep Backfill (add-on, Growth and up). Screen your order history in one job. Bills in blocks of $49 per 250 people identified (any part of a block is a full $49), on up to your 1,000 most recent orders that are 30+ days old. It never touches your monthly allowance.
Spend cap. Paid plans have a fixed monthly ceiling on overage charges ($200 on Growth, $500 on Pro, $1,500 on Scale). We alert you at 80% and at the cap; once you hit it, identifications pause and VIP Alert runs on free public sources until next month.
Questions
Fair questions, straight answers.
What counts as a billable record?
A record is one customer we successfully identify, whether we research them fresh or already have them on file. Paid plans include a set number of records each month, then charge a small amount per extra record. No match, no charge. Repeat orders are free while we have the customer on file; about 30 days after we identify someone, their next order refreshes the data and bills one new record, because we do not keep a person on file forever.
How does competitor tracking work?
On Pro and above, you list the companies you want to watch by name or domain. When someone whose email is on one of those domains places an order, you get an alert, and we screen that order even if it falls under your minimum order value, because a competitor buying one unit to take apart is exactly the order most stores throw away. They are tagged so you can exclude them from your marketing, and they never enter your VIP flows or receive VIP treatment. It is priced per company you watch, with an identification allowance for each, so one large company can never consume the budget for the competitors you actually care about.
Why does VIP Alert skip my smallest orders?
On paid plans we only research a new customer once their first order clears a minimum value, which defaults to $50 and is yours to change (set it to 0 to screen everything). It keeps your included records going to the customers most likely to matter. A competitor on your watchlist is the deliberate exception: those orders are screened whatever they are worth.
Does the free plan actually do anything?
Yes. The free plan runs genuine detections on every order, not a trial that quietly stops working. It costs us money to run (servers, alerts, support), and we cover that on purpose: it puts a working version of VIP Alert in front of every store. Once you see who is actually in your order feed, most stores want real-time screening, full enrichment, and automation. That is when you upgrade.
Will this slow down my checkout?
No. Screening runs after the order is placed, on a webhook or a scheduled batch depending on your plan. Your customer's checkout is untouched.
How does the Deep Backfill work?
On Growth and up you can screen your order history in one background job. It bills in blocks of $49 per 250 people we identify (any part of a block is a full $49), scans up to your 1,000 most recent orders that are 30 or more days old, and never touches your monthly included allowance. As with everything else, you are only charged when we identify someone.
What makes someone a whale?
A whale is a top spender for your store: the top 5% by lifetime value (their total spend with you) or by single order value. So a customer placing a small order still flags as a whale if they have already spent big overall. A famous or senior customer who is not a top spender is a VIP, not a whale. On higher plans you can tune the percentile.
How do you avoid false matches?
Every public-figure detection has to earn its confidence score through corroboration: birthplace against shipping city, employer matches, and agreement across sources. Living people only. A customer who shares a name with a celebrity will not be flagged unless the evidence lines up.
How does it work with Klaviyo, Postscript, and my other tools?
VIP Alert writes Shopify customer tags like vip-alert:whale and grade-a. Any tool that builds audiences from Shopify customer tags picks them up automatically: Klaviyo, Postscript, Attentive, Omnisend, Mailchimp, Drip, and Yotpo, plus Shopify Segments, Flow, and Email. You can trigger flows for your highest-value customers without extra setup.
Is my data private?
VIP Alert uses public sources and licensed professional enrichment data. It does not scrape private accounts. Enrichment results in the shared cache are GDPR-purged on a rolling basis, and all VIP data is written back into your own Shopify store.
What happens when I uninstall?
Screening stops and billing stops. The tags and metafields already written to your customers stay in your store, because that data is yours to keep.
Why it exists
VIP Alert started with one order. A professional athlete checked out like any other customer. Taylor Sicard sent a handwritten note, and learned the athlete had bought it because most of his team already had one.
That thank-you turned into a harder realization: hundreds of orders had come and gone that deserved the same extra mile, and no store can catch them by hand. VIP Alert is that instinct, rebuilt so every store gets it automatically. Taylor helped build Shopify's Partner Program early, and has scaled multiple consumer brands to nine figures.
The math only gets harder from here. Paid acquisition costs more every year, retail shelf space is harder to win, and the creators worth knowing are buried under sponsorship requests. A customer who already bought and loves your product cuts through all of it. VIP Alert finds those people in the orders you already have.
Turn your order feed into a guest list.
Get on the early-access list and see who is already shopping with you.