Shopify Counter alternatives: every sales display compared, honestly

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Shopify Counter alternatives: every sales display compared

You are looking for this page because you want to hear your store. Not check it, not refresh a dashboard — hear it. There is a moment, somewhere between a stranger deciding and your bank account moving, that most merchants never actually experience. It happens inside a phone that is face down on the desk.

Below is every device and app we know of that tries to give you that moment back, with the price each one actually charges as of 1 September 2026, with PingBell re-checked on 8 September 2026 after it changed its plans. We make one of them, so read the table first and the arguments second. We have put the places where the others beat us in their own section, near the top, because a comparison that hides them is not worth your time.

The one-line difference

Most of these products are counters. They tell you a number. The number is bigger than it was this morning, and that is nice.

ChaChing Panel is not built around the number. It is built around the instant: a colour animation and a real cha-ching, on your desk, at the moment the order is paid. The number is there too. It is just not the point.

That distinction is the whole reason this page exists — because it is the one thing an e-ink panel, a subscription running on a TV you may not own, and a pixel-art clock with no Shopify hookup all fail at for different reasons.

The table

What the table cannot show: seven panels, not one number

Every other object on this page shows you one number — a running total, a follower count, a line of text. That is the honest difference, and it is the only advantage we are going to claim here, because it is the one you can check against the device itself.

The panel ships with seven Shopify panels and rotates them, 30 seconds each:

• Total sales and net sales, with the hourly curve.
• Orders, with the average order value.
• Sessions, and live visitors from the last two minutes.
• Conversion rate, and how it is trending.

What it does not do is anything else. There is no Instagram, no TikTok, no YouTube, no crypto, no Home Assistant and no Tesla: the product was deliberately narrowed to Shopify on 1 September 2026, and the firmware refuses those panel types outright. If you want a general-purpose desk display, Divoom and LaMetric are better at that than we are, and we said so above.

The rest of what we sell is short enough to fit in a line: a real speaker that cha-chings on every order, €139 once with shipping included and no subscription, and over-the-air firmware updates free for life.

Where the others beat us

Four honest ones, and we would rather you read them here than find them yourself after buying.

• EleksCava is cheaper than we are, and by a lot. €68.95 delivered to Spain against our €139 — less than half our price. It is also on Amazon, which means next-day delivery and an easy return, and EleksMaker has been shipping hardware for years while we have not. If price is the deciding factor, this comparison ends here and they win it.
• Shopify Counter is cheaper than us, and it is official. $99, free shipping, a 2-year manufacturer warranty, and it is sold by Shopify itself — all of that for less money than our €139. It used to cost the same as ours; since 9 September 2026 it does not. That is a real advantage and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Worth knowing: Smiirl, who actually build it, sell the same 5-digit counter for $459 excluding tax on their own site — Shopify is heavily subsidising the merchant price.
• PingBell and the Cha-Ching app work in the next five minutes. No shipping, no box, no firmware. If you want the sound in your shop this afternoon, a $3.99 app beats any object that has to travel to you.
• LaMetric has better speakers than we do. Two 2-watt stereo drivers plus a 3.5 mm output. Ours is a small mono buzzer sized for a desk. If you want the sale to be audible across a warehouse, LaMetric's hardware is the stronger one — you will just have to solve the Shopify part yourself.

And one we have to say out loud because it is true and free: the Shopify mobile app already plays a cha-ching. On the official Shopify Community thread, the accepted answer to “how do I hear my sales” is to switch on push notifications. If your phone is face up, on, and not silenced all day, you may not need any of us.

And if that free cha-ching used to work and has stopped, fix that before you spend anything: we wrote up every fix for a broken Shopify order sound, device by device, including the ones Shopify's own troubleshooting page leaves out.

Shopify Counter: cheaper than us, and a very different object

This is the product most people mean when they search for an alternative, so it deserves the most space.

The Shopify Counter is a mechanical split-flap board with a wooden front, built by Smiirl, sold at $99 for five digits and $149 for seven. It is genuinely handsome, it ships free, and it carries a two-year warranty. Note it is non-returnable after purchase.

What it is good at

• It is a piece of furniture. A split-flap board reads as an object in a room, not as a gadget on a desk.
• The flaps make their own sound when they turn — a mechanical clatter. Shopify's own FAQ is precise about this: there is no speaker, but the flipping is audible.
• First-party support, and free worldwide shipping.

Where merchants say it falls down

Its companion app is published by Shopify, is free, and is rated 2.1 out of 5 across 40 reviews, with 68% of them one star. That is a public figure on the app's own listing, not our estimate. The previous version of the app, now retired as of 30 June 2025, sits at 2.0 out of 5 across 11 reviews. Two of the published complaints:

• “Counter keeps resetting to 1 after I've entered our actual order total during set-up.” — House of Scent, 4 May 2026
• “It completely ignored the settings I configured for the counter and kept counting up, even when I hadn't received any orders.” — Kokodoko Design, 6 August 2025

We will not tell you that every Counter is broken — 15% of those reviews are five stars, and a lot of merchants are happy. What we will say is that if you landed here because your numbers move on their own, you are not imagining it and you are not alone.

The honest summary

Buy the Counter if you want a piece of furniture that shows a total. Buy ours if you want to hear the sale happen in colour. Theirs costs less than ours, and they are not the same product.

Tidbyt: a good product you can no longer buy

If you have found Tidbyt in an old blog post, here is the current state of things, and we would rather be the ones who tell you.

Tidbyt was acquired by Modal. Their post of 7 November 2024 says they are “taking a break from manufacturing now Tidbyt devices for now”, and as of today every item in their store is sold out — both models, the desk stand and the wall-mount kit. Existing units keep working; Tidbyt was explicit that the service and the app platform continue.

Separately, Shopify sold a co-branded Shopify Display built by Tidbyt. Shopify's own FAQ now states that Tidbyt “has been acquired and will stop manufacturing the device”, and that the original Counter app supported it “until August 30, 2025. After this date, your store will be disconnected from the device.”

So: if you own a Shopify Display, it is no longer receiving your store data. If you were about to buy a Tidbyt for your sales, you cannot. Credit where it is due — the Shopify x Tidbyt integration announced in January 2023 was a proper one, with four separate apps. It just does not have hardware to run on any more.

PingBell and the Cha-Ching app: what a subscription costs over three years

Both are good software. Neither includes anything you can put on a desk.

PingBell Core is $30 a month, or $240 a year — the same figure on pingbell.io and on its Shopify App Store listing, both read on 8 September 2026. Over three years that is $720 on the annual plan and $1,080 monthly. Core casts from a browser tab and leaves a PingBell watermark on the screen; the Apple TV, Fire TV, Roku and Android TV apps start on the Plus plan, $75 a month or $600 a year, which is $1,800 over three years. All of that is before the spare screen you need to display it on. If you already own one, fine. If you do not, that is a second purchase before you hear anything.

Cha-Ching: Order Notifications from Keel Labs is the cheaper way to get the sound: $3.99 a month for browser alerts and one rule, $9.99 for unlimited rules, custom audio and Sonos. Over three years: $143.64 or $359.64. The Sonos tier assumes you own a Sonos.

The arithmetic used to be one-sided and it is not any more. The panel is €139 once, shipping included. The cheapest subscription in that table — browser alerts and one rule — comes to $143.64 over three years, which is the same order of money as our panel, so on price alone that one is a fair fight and we are not going to claim otherwise. Everything above it costs more, and the ones that put the number on a TV cost several times more. The part that does not change is what happens in year four: ours keeps working, and every subscription in that table stops the day you stop paying.

EleksCava: cheaper than us, and slower on purpose

We have already said EleksCava undercuts us. Here is what you are trading for those seventy euros.

The screen is e-ink. 2.9 inches, 296×128, monochrome. E-ink is genuinely excellent at holding a number: it is crisp, it is readable in sunlight, and it uses almost no power sitting still. What it cannot do is celebrate. It refreshes slowly, in grey, and it does not animate. The five RGB LEDs are there to compensate for exactly that.

Ours is a 2.8-inch colour touch TFT — practically the same size as their panel, still worse in direct sun, and capable of a full-screen animation the instant the webhook lands. Two different engineering answers to two different questions: they optimised for a number you can read in daylight, we optimised for a shop that reacts.

The Shopify part is a side project. EleksCava's headline use cases are stocks and crypto; the Shopify integration lives under /lab/ on their site. Setting it up means handing over a Shopify Client ID and Client Secret through a local configuration portal. That is fine if you enjoy that sort of thing. It is not a shopkeeper's evening.

If e-ink and a lower price suit you better, buy theirs. We would rather you had the right object than our object.

LaMetric and Divoom: great panels, no Shopify

Both come up in searches for “desk display” and both are good hardware. Neither solves this problem.

LaMetric

The TIME is €199.99 in the EU store, tax included, shipped from a German warehouse. It has a 37×8 white LED display with an 8×8 colour block, and 2×2 W stereo speakers — better audio than anything else on this page. The SKY, from €199, is modular triangular lighting rather than a text display.

The gap is the integration. There is no official LaMetric Shopify app. What exists in LaMetric Market is built by a third-party developer, and the manufacturer has left users asking on its own support forum whether it still works. There is also a signal worth knowing: on LaMetric Market, where the owner has already paid for the display, the YouTube subscriber counter has 1,037 installs and the Instagram follower counter 936, while the Shopify apps sit at one install each. We counted those ourselves on 29 August 2026.

Divoom

The Pixoo-64 II is $149.99 for a 64×64 pixel LED panel at 10.3 inches. It is a lovely object for pixel art and it will count your YouTube, Twitch and Instagram followers. It has no Shopify integration and no speaker. Connecting it to your orders means writing against their API yourself.

What we are not good at

So you can decide against us on the facts rather than on a surprise.

• We are new and we have no reviews. No sales history, no long list of happy merchants, nothing you can check. Everyone else on this page has years on us. That is a real reason to hesitate.
• We only sell from our own store. No Amazon, so no next-day delivery and no Amazon returns process.
• The screen is desk-sized. 2.8 inches. It is designed for arm's length on a desk, not for a wall or a warehouse.
• The speaker is a desk speaker. It is meant to be heard by you and the person next to you.

Which one should you actually buy

• Nothing, if your phone is face up all day. Turn on Shopify's push notifications and save your money.
• EleksCava, if price decides it, or if you want a number you can read across the room in daylight.
• Shopify Counter, if you want an object with presence and you are comfortable with a companion app that has a rough public rating.
• PingBell, if you already have a TV in the room and want the whole team to see the total — budgeting for the Plus plan, which is the one with the TV apps.
• The Cha-Ching app, if you already own a Sonos and only want the sound.
• LaMetric, if the Shopify part is secondary and you want a general-purpose panel with real speakers.
• ChaChing Panel, if what you are missing is not the number but the moment: colour, on your desk, with the sound, €139 once, shipping included, and no subscription.

All prices and ratings on this page were checked on 1 September 2026 against each vendor's own website or app listing. Currencies are quoted as each vendor publishes them; we do not convert. Our own price changed on 9 September 2026 to €139 with shipping included worldwide; every other price here is unchanged. If you find something out of date, tell us and we will fix it.