Triple Whale started in 2021 as a dashboard for eCommerce founders. The idea for the dashboard was to put all the important information that a DTC founder would need (e.g., Shopify sales data, Facebook performance data etc.) into a simple easy to read dashboard. When Apple launched privacy changes with their iOS 14 rollout, Triple Whale added a first-party pixel to help eCommerce brands with attribution which was made more challenging by Apple’s privacy changes. The dashboard and the attribution pixel are still at the core of what Triple Whale does today, but they have also added additional functionality like influencer & affiliate tracking, creative performance monitoring, and lifetime value calculations. Their most recent product feature announcement was the AI tool Moby which gives companies the ability to chat with their data. Is Triple Whale worth it? We think their free dashboard is a no-brainer for all Shopify brands. For their paid offering, we think it’s a great tool, but only for companies who are doing over $10M in revenue per year. Its first-party pixel is a good check against in platform metrics, its LTV analysis is great (although you can also get a point solution like Lifetimely for that), and it can do cohort analysis and identify bundle opportunities. However, for brands doing above $40M per year, then we recommend a more advanced attribution tool like Northbeam.
Best for: Free dashboard is great for companies of all sizes and paid tools make sense for companies doing $10M+ in revenue.
Triple Whale is a data tool that offers an in-depth dashboard pulling in data from multiple sources as well as first-party pixel for multi-touch attribution (MTA).
Triple Whale was founded by Maxx Blank and his co-founders in 2021 after Maxx experienced the pain of manually inputting data into spreadsheets to derive insights for his e-commerce business Madison Braids. Recognizing the need for a more automated solution, Maxx and his team built Triple Whale initially as a dashboarding tool that put all the important information on his brands performance in a single place (combining Shopify, Facebook, website data and more). When Apple introduced privacy changes with their iOS 14 rollout in late 2020, Triple Whale added a first party pixel to help brands with attribution. Since launching Triple Whale has grown rapidly, raising over $50 million, serving over 10,000 DTC brands generating $30+ billion in annual revenue, and emerging as a leading analytics and attribution platform for the DTC industry.
Triple Whale's marketing is ever present and promises a lot, so we don't blame folks who ask themselves what the hell Triple Whale actually does.
Triple Whale has two core offerings: a dashboard that stitches together data from multiple sources (Shopify, Facebook, email, web etc.) and a first-party pixel that helps with multi-touch attribution (MTA). In addition to those core offerings, they also have LTV and cohort analysis, a creative performance analysis section, and influencer and affiliate marketing tracking. They most recently launched an AI product called Moby to chat with your data and generate automated AI insights.
There is a lot to love about Triple Whale. There’s a reason it’s the darling of the eCommerce world, and it's not solely their marketing team (although hat tip to them because they are killing it). Triple Whale has created a legitimately useful product.
We think its Founders dash is something that all Shopify brands should be using. It’s free and puts all the metrics you need to know about your high level business performance in a single place. We’ve seen a lot of dashboard products (paid and unpaid), and we think Triple Whale’s is among the best.
You can tell that the Founders of Triple Whale were former eCommerce merchants because the useful, intuitive UX design flows through their entire product suite. It’s the reason Triple Whale is so popular among Founder Operators. A lot of data tools aren’t intuitive (to non data scientists), but Triple Whale’s products make complex data clear.
There is a lot to like about Triple Whale’s first-party attribution pixel as well. Its primary attribution methodology follows the in-platform attribution methodology. This is good for Founder Operators because it will be understandable and comparable to in-platform numbers. This contrasts with other attribution tools like Northbeam that take a different approach. People will argue about which is more accurate, but the other approach will require you to learn and get comfortable with that methodology, whereas if you understand the in-platform methodology, you will understand the primary Triple Whale approach.
Triple Whale also has features beyond attribution that brands we spoke with love. These include LTV and cohort analysis and the creative cockpit which we’ll cover in more detail below.
The most obvious consideration for why not to use Triple Whale is if your brand isn’t on Shopify. Triple Whale only supports Shopify brands, so if you’re using WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento or any other non-Shopify platform then this tool won’t work for you.
The second consideration is the price of Triple Whale. It’s not the most expensive Business Intelligence or attribution tool, but its paid plans aren’t cheap. We think the free dashboard is great for all businesses, but we think you should think twice before investing in Triple Whale’s paid offerings.
The first-party pixel won’t really be useful for certain types of businesses. If your business falls in any of these categories, Triple Whale’s attribution features won’t benefit you much:
This isn’t to say other parts of the Triple Whale offering won't be useful for you, but if you are buying it mainly for its attribution capabilities then we don’t recommend it if your brand falls into any of the above categories.
We think Triple Whale can unlock useful and actionable insights about your business, but be honest with yourself whether you or your team have the capacity to act on the insights. When it comes to data there is a big difference between interesting and actionable.
“Data is like garbage. You better know what you’re going to do with it before you collect it.” - Mark Twain
Some use the Founders dash only
Some use the first-party pixel (attribution data) only + other Business Intelligence tools
Some use for everything (ie the only data tool)
Founders Dashboard
This is the product that started it all for Triple Whale. It’s free and pulls data from Shopify, Meta (Facebook), your website, and email into a single view of your business performance. With it you can track metrics like nCPA (new customer cost per acquisition) that you couldn’t track in other dashboards like Shopify's.
Triple Pixel
Triple Pixel is the fancy name for Triple Whale’s first-party attribution pixel. The pixel helps with multi touch attribution (MTA) and is installed by embedding it in your Shopify theme and cart (Checkout.liquid) so that the pixel sits on every page of your site. As of March of 2024, you can also install the pixel on headless Shopify implementations. Their primary attribution model is last click and cash based so will more closely mimic the in-platform data. This makes for less of a learning curve vs other attribution models / methodologies.
Creative Cockpit
The creative cockpit is another catchy name for Triple Whale’s creative analysis tool. In it you can see how individual pieces of creative are performing. It’s a more user friendly way to analyze which creatives are driving the best performance. The creative cockpit is a competitor to Motion's creative analysis tool, but we think Motion's product is better if this is your number one goal.
Retention Tools
Triple Whale has a suite of tools that can help you increase LTV and retention. It has an LTV summary tool where you can track LTV performance. It has a cohort analysis tool that shows you how your customer cohorts are performing. It also has a SKU level tool that highlights products that are purchased together to identify potential bundling opportunities.
Benchmarking
Benchmarks allow you to compare your performance against peers across a variety of metrics. Curious how your Facebook ROAS compares to peers? See it in the benchmarks section of Triple Whale’s dashboard. The benchmarks aren’t perfect, but are helpful in getting a directional sense of how your data compares to the competition. The benchmarks are currently available for 21 separate categories from clothing to pet supplies.
Triple Whale has a great forever free dashboard product that we recommend for all eCommerce companies. Its dashboard includes a web and app version that gives a high level overview of your business performance. We like it over Shopify’s free dashboard because it includes data from other channels like Meta (Facebook) and metrics like MER that aren’t available in Shopify’s free dash. The dashboard centralizes data from Shopify, Meta, and your website in a single view. With the free dashboard you also get a simple one question post purchase survey tool (e.g., How did you hear about us?) which we recommend all brands start tracking. There’s a reason eCommerce founders track this dashboard constantly.
Now there’s a reason they offer this great free product. They want folks to upgrade to the paid plans.
Triple Whale’s paid plans are priced based on revenue, so pricing will scale up as revenue scales up. This is an important consideration for high AOV product companies. For these companies, a page view based pricing model like Northbeams might be less expensive. Inversely for low ticket items, Triple Whale pricing might be cheaper than page view based pricing models.
Triple Whale offers three tiers of paid plans: Growth, Pro, and Enterprise.
The Growth plan starts at $129 / month or $107.5 / month when billed annually (~17% savings). With the Growth plan you get access to the pixel, the affluencer hub (influencer and affiliate), and a more detailed post purchase survey (up to 7 question vs 1 in the free plan). In the Growth plan you also get additional support with live chat and group onboarding.
The Pro plan starts at $199 / month or $165.8 / month when billed annually (~17% savings). With the Pro plan you get everything in the Growth plan in addition to AI recommendations, RFM audiences (automated customer segmentation), Activity Feed (timeline of actions taken across platforms to see what actions led to performance changes), Cart Analysis (see what products are purchased together), Customer Data Platform (CDP), Cohort Analysis, and 60/90 day LTV analysis.
The Enterprise plan starts at $279 / month or $232.5 / month when billed annually (~17% savings). With the Enterprise plan you get everything in the Pro plan in addition to access to the creative cockpit, product analytics, and access to APIs to push data from Triple Whale to other locations.
Read our full guide on Triple Whale alternatives
Multi Touch Attribution (MTA)
Lifetime Value (LTV) Analysis
Creative Performance Analysis
Business Intelligence (Dashboarding & stitching together multiple data sources)
Is Triple Whale only for Shopify?
Yes, as of this writing Triple Whale only works for Shopify brands.
How does Triple Whale compare to Northbeam?
We've done a whole breakdown on Triple Whale vs Northbeam. The TLDR Triple Whale is great for small and medium size eCommerce companies, whereas we recommend Northbeam for $40M+ revenue Enterprise companies.
Who owns Triple Whale?
Triple Whale is an independent company with funding from NFX, Elephant, and Shopify.
How much is Triple Whale?
Triple Whale has a forever free Founders dashboard and its paid product pricing starts at $129 per month.
Does Triple Whale support headless eCommerce?
Yes, as of March of 2024 Triple Whale supports headless Shopify implementations. Keep in mind that Triple Whale still only supports Shopify and not other eCommerce platforms.
What are the cons of Triple Whale?
Triple Whale only works on Shopify. It’s also not cheap, so we don’t recommend it for brands that are doing less than $1M per year and likely isn’t necessary unless your brand is doing over $10M per year.
How many customers does Triple Whale have?
Triple Whale has over 10,000 customers.
Is Triple Whale Soc 2 compliant?
Triple Whale achieved a SOC 2 Type 1 attestation in August 2023, and is working toward accomplishing our SOC 2 Type 2 attestation in mid 2024.
Is Triple Whale GDPR compliant?
Yes, Triple Whale is GDPR compliant.
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