Announcing ClearMargin: Shopify Profit Analytics That Won't Break the Bank

If you run a Shopify store, you probably know the feeling: Shopify tells you how much you sold, but not how much you actually made. Revenue is not profit.

For years, Lifetimely was the go-to solution. Simple profit dashboards, clean LTV cohort analysis, fair pricing. Then AMP acquired it in late 2022, raised $30M+ in VC funding, and pricing jumped from ~$34/month to $49-999/month. The free plan got gutted to 30 days of data. App Store reviews now say what everyone's thinking: overpriced for what it is.

We're building ClearMargin to fill the gap.

What ClearMargin Does

ClearMargin is a Shopify app that gives you two things: a real-time profit & loss dashboard and customer lifetime value tracking. That's it — the two features merchants actually use, without the bloat.

Real-Time P&L Dashboard

See your actual profit, not just revenue. ClearMargin pulls your orders from Shopify and calculates the numbers that matter:

• Gross revenue — total sales
• Cost of goods sold — pulled directly from Shopify's inventory data
• Shipping costs — actual charges from each order
• Transaction fees — calculated from your Shopify Payments rate
• Refunds & returns — deducted automatically
• Ad spend — manual entry for Meta, Google, TikTok (API integrations coming in v2)

The result: your actual net profit and margin percentage, updated in real time.

Customer LTV Cohort Analysis

Monthly cohort grids showing cumulative revenue per customer over time. Group customers by the month of their first purchase and watch how their value grows (or doesn't) over the following months.

This is how you answer questions like: "Are the customers I acquired in January more valuable than the ones from March?" and "How long does it take for a customer to become profitable after acquisition costs?"

Top Products by Profit

Not which products sell the most — which products actually make you money. Revenue minus COGS, ranked. You might be surprised which "best sellers" are actually dragging down your margins.

Who It's For

ClearMargin is built for small-to-mid Shopify stores — the ones doing 200 to 2,000 orders per month with $10K-$100K in monthly revenue. Typically 1-3 person operations where the founder is making decisions based on gut feeling because the analytics tools are either too expensive or too complex.

If you're currently using spreadsheets to track profit, or not tracking it at all, ClearMargin is for you.

Pricing

Two plans, both straightforward:

• Starter — $19/month — Up to 500 orders/month, 12 months of history
• Growth — $29/month — Up to 2,000 orders/month, full history, cohort analysis

Both include a 14-day free trial with full Growth features. All billing goes through Shopify — no separate payment setup.

For context: Lifetimely now starts at $49/month. Triple Whale starts at $129/month. We think $19-29 is a lot more reasonable for the same core features.

What's Coming

ClearMargin is currently in development. The MVP focuses on getting the P&L dashboard and LTV cohorts right — nailing the basics before adding complexity.

After launch, we're planning ad platform integrations (automatic Meta/Google/TikTok spend import), email digests with daily or weekly P&L summaries, and eventually multi-platform support for Etsy and WooCommerce sellers.

If you want to know when ClearMargin launches, sign up for our newsletter. We'll send exactly one email when it's ready.