Landara vs Lifetimely
Lifetime value, or landed cost?
Lifetimely is a customer analytics tool: lifetime value, cohorts, repeat-purchase behaviour and a P&L view built on a cost you enter per product. Landara builds that cost, from the purchase order and the freight and duty invoices, keeps FIFO layers, and posts the COGS journal. One tells you what a customer is worth; the other tells you what the goods cost.
Two different jobs
Lifetimely: customer economics
Lifetimely, part of the AMP suite, is strong on the customer side: lifetime value by cohort and acquisition channel, repeat-purchase curves, payback periods, and a profit and loss dashboard that pulls ad spend and costs together. It can pull expenses from QuickBooks Online. Product cost comes from Shopify Cost per item or a value you enter.
Landara: what the goods cost
Landara reads the purchase order and every freight, duty and clearance invoice, allocates them across the line items by value, quantity, weight or volume, keeps a dated FIFO cost layer per receipt, and posts the period Dr COGS / Cr Inventory journal to Xero or QuickBooks Online. It writes landed cost back to Shopify Cost per item, which is where Lifetimely reads it.
Which one do you actually need?
You need Lifetimely if
- • You want lifetime value by cohort and acquisition channel
- • Repeat-purchase behaviour and payback period drive your decisions
- • You need a P&L dashboard that pulls ad spend and costs together
- • Your question is what a customer is worth over time
Landara has no customer analytics and no cohort views of any kind.
You need Landara as well if
- • You import, so freight and duty are a real share of unit cost
- • The product costs in your dashboard came from Shopify and nobody has updated them
- • Your accountant needs a posted COGS journal, not a dashboard export
- • You want inventory valuation reconciled to the Inventory asset account
An LTV figure is revenue over time minus cost over time. Landara makes the second half real.
Cohort analysis on a cost that excludes freight and duty overstates the value of every cohort by the same margin.
Not sure? Ask your own AI
Open the assistant you already trust with a prompt that points it at our public product file and asks it to interview you, then recommend what fits. It is told to say so plainly if Landara is not the right tool for you.
Read the exact prompt we send
I run a Shopify store and I use, or am considering, Lifetimely for customer analytics. I am also looking at Landara (landara.co). Please fetch https://landara.co/llms-full.txt so you know what Landara actually does, then help me work out whether these compete or complement. The background to test me against: Lifetimely is a customer analytics tool covering lifetime value by cohort, repeat-purchase behaviour, payback period and a profit and loss dashboard, and it can pull expenses from QuickBooks Online. Its product cost comes from Shopify Cost per item or a value entered per product; it does not build cost layers from receipts, does not allocate freight or duty into unit cost, and does not post COGS or inventory journals. Landara reads the purchase order and the freight, duty and broker invoices, allocates them across the line items, keeps perpetual FIFO cost layers, posts the period COGS journal to Xero or QuickBooks Online, and writes landed cost back to Shopify Cost per item. Ask me whether I import stock, what share of my unit cost is freight and duty, when Cost per item was last updated, and whether my cohort profitability figures are ever checked against my accounts. Then tell me whether I need one, the other, or both, including telling me plainly if Landara is not the right fit.
The late-invoice test
A container of 1,000 units lands. Supplier invoice: $10,000 ($10/unit). You receive stock, Shopify Cost per item says $10, and you sell 400 units in the first three weeks. Then the forwarder bills $1,800 freight and the customs broker bills $700 duty + $250 clearance. True landed cost is $12.75/unit. COGS on the 400 units sold is understated by $1,100, and the 600 on hand are undervalued by $1,650.
In Lifetimely, nothing changes when the freight and broker invoices arrive. Every cohort that bought those 400 units keeps a contribution margin $1,100 too high, and the payback period on the channel that acquired them looks correspondingly shorter. In Landara, you attach the two invoices to the shipment, the FIFO layer re-costs to $12.75, the period COGS journal trues up, and Cost per item updates so the cohorts computed from then on are right.
Side by side
As of August 2026. Competitor cells link to their own documentation.
| Lifetimely | Landara | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary job | Lifetime value, cohorts, repeat purchase, P&L dashboard | Landed cost, FIFO COGS, inventory valuation |
| Where product cost comes from | Shopify Cost per item, or a value entered per product | Built from receipts: purchase order plus freight, duty and clearance |
| Freight and duty inside unit cost | Only if you calculate it yourself and enter it | AI reads the PO and freight, duty and broker invoices; allocate by value, quantity, weight or volume |
| Cost layers per receipt | Perpetual FIFO ledger (moving average optional) | |
| Accounting integration | Pulls expenses from QuickBooks Online. Does not post journals | Bills and POs with the original PDF attached, plus period COGS and revaluation journals to Xero or QuickBooks Online |
| Inventory valuation vs the books | Reconciled to the Inventory asset account, with an adjusting journal | |
| Cohorts, LTV and payback period | ||
| Shopify Cost per item | Reads it | Writes it |
| Works alongside the other | Yes | Yes. Landara supplies the cost the cohorts are measured against |
| Pricing | Free tier up to 50 orders a month, paid tiers by order volume up to $299/mo | Free up to 250 orders/mo, then $49 to $179, unlimited users |
Sources: Lifetimely Shopify App Store listing, AMP help centre (product costs explained), AMP QuickBooks Online integration page. Checked August 2026.
See Landara pricing.
The switching cost is the real price
Nothing switches. Lifetimely keeps doing cohorts and Landara puts a real landed cost into the field it reads. Landara is free up to 250 orders a month, then $49 to $179, so you can cost a single container and watch whether your contribution margin per cohort moves before deciding anything. If it does not move, you did not have a landed-cost problem and you have your answer.
Cohorts measured against a real cost
Payback period and contribution margin are only as honest as the cost subtracted from revenue. Landed cost usually moves both by 15% to 35% for imported goods.
Your accountant gets an output too
A reviewed period COGS journal and an inventory valuation reconciled to the Inventory asset account, which a customer analytics tool is not built to produce.
Common questions
Where does Lifetimely get product cost from?
From Shopify Cost per item, or from a cost you enter per product. It does not derive the cost from your purchase orders and freight invoices, so the figure is only as current as the field it reads.
Does Lifetimely post COGS to Xero or QuickBooks?
No. It can pull expenses from QuickBooks Online into its profit and loss view, but that is a read. It does not post cost of goods sold or inventory journals to either platform.
Does Lifetimely include freight and duty in cost?
Only if you have worked out the per-unit landed cost yourself and entered it. Lifetimely does not allocate a freight, duty or broker invoice across the units on a shipment.
Can I use Lifetimely and Landara together?
Yes, and it is the intended combination. Landara writes landed cost back to Shopify Cost per item, which Lifetimely reads, so cohort profitability and payback periods are measured against a cost your accountant would recognise.
Is Landara an alternative to Lifetimely?
No. Landara has no cohort analysis, no lifetime value modelling and no customer analytics at all. It is the cost layer underneath whichever analytics tool you use.
Why is my cohort profitability higher than my actual profit?
Most often because the product cost feeding the cohort excludes freight, duty and clearance. For imported goods that gap typically runs 15% to 35% of supplier price, and it applies to every cohort equally, so the ranking may be right while every absolute figure is wrong.
“Landara has made it much easier to keep track of my actual product costs. I really like that it takes things like shipping and duties into account instead of just showing the basic cost. Simple app, easy to use, and I’m already getting a much clearer idea of my real margins.”
“I installed Landara because I was getting tired of guessing what my inventory was actually costing me. What I liked most was being able to see the product cost together with things like shipping and duties, I've been trying to keep a closer eye on my margins, so having those costs in one place has made things much easier for me. It didn't take me long to get setup either, which was a nice bonus.”
“I honestly didn’t expect Landara to make this part of my store that much easier. I installed it mainly to get a better handle on my actual product costs, and I was pleasantly surprised by how everything comes together. I’m still exploring it, but so far it’s been really useful and I’m impressed with how it works.”
“I've just started using Landara, and so far I'm impressed with how it handles landed costs. I especially like being able to account for things like freight and duty instead of treating the supplier price as the whole cost. Still exploring the app, but it already looks like it could save me a lot of spreadsheet work.”
Cohorts are only as honest as the cost you subtract
Landara builds landed cost from your actual invoices and writes it back to Shopify, so the analytics on top of it get more accurate.