Shopify Counter alternatives: every sales display compared, honestly
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. 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 2 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
| Product | What it costs | Display | Sound on a sale | Shopify link | Can you buy it today? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChaChing Panel 2 (ours) | €99 once. No subscription. | 2.0" colour touch TFT IPS | Yes — a cha-ching, plus a colour animation | Direct (plus Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Stripe, WooCommerce, GA4, Home Assistant, Tesla, crypto) | Yes, from our own store only |
| Shopify Counter 5 (Shopify / Smiirl) | $99 once ($149 for the 7-digit). Free app. | Mechanical split-flap, 5 digits, wooden front | No speaker — but the flaps make a mechanical clatter when they turn | Official, first-party | Yes |
| EleksCava (EleksMaker) | €68.95 delivered to Spain ($79). Once. | 2.9" e-ink, 296×128, monochrome + 5 RGB LEDs | Yes, configurable | Yes — but it lives in their /lab/ section |
Yes — own store and Amazon |
| PingBell | $15/month or $120/year, forever | Whatever screen you already own (Apple TV, Fire TV, Android TV, iPhone, browser tab) | Yes, through that device | Yes, Shopify app | Yes, instantly |
| Cha-Ching: Order Notifications (Keel Labs) | $3.99/month basic, $9.99/month premium | None — it is audio only | Yes: browser tab, or your own Sonos on the premium plan | Yes, Shopify app | Yes, instantly |
| Tidbyt / Tidbyt Gen 2 | $199 / $189 when it was sold | Retro LED matrix in a wooden case | Gen 1: none. Gen 2: a mono speaker for alerts | Official Shopify apps existed (Counter, Orders, Sales, Stats) | No. Whole catalogue sold out; manufacturing paused after the Modal acquisition |
| LaMetric TIME | €199.99 once (EU store, tax included) | 37×8 white LED + an 8×8 colour block, 19.5×4.2 cm | Yes — 2×2 W stereo speakers, the best audio hardware here | No official one. Third-party community apps only | Yes (see note below) |
| LaMetric SKY | €199 starter kit, up to €1,109.92 configured | Modular triangular light panels, 64 zones per surface | No speaker mentioned | No | Yes |
| Divoom Pixoo-64 II | $149.99 once | 64×64 LED pixel panel, 10.3" | No speaker on the Pixoo-64 | No. It counts YouTube, Twitch and Instagram followers, not orders | Yes |
| The free option: Shopify's own mobile app | €0 | Your phone | Yes, the built-in cha-ching push | Official | You already have it |
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. €68.95 delivered to Spain against our €99 — roughly 30% less. 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 costs the same as us and is official. $99, free shipping, a 2-year manufacturer warranty, and it is sold by Shopify itself. 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.
Shopify Counter: the same price, 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. They cost the same 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 $15 a month, or $120 a year. Over three years that is $360 on the annual plan and $540 monthly — and that is before the Apple TV, Fire TV or spare screen you need to display it on. If you already own one, fine. If you do not, the screen costs more than our panel.
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.
| Over three years | You pay | You also need |
|---|---|---|
| ChaChing Panel 2 | €99, once | A USB-C socket |
| Shopify Counter 5 | $99, once | Wi-Fi or Ethernet |
| EleksCava | €68.95, once | USB-C |
| Cha-Ching app, basic | $143.64 | A browser tab left open |
| Cha-Ching app, premium | $359.64 | A Sonos speaker |
| PingBell, annual | $360.00 | An Apple TV, Fire TV or spare screen |
| PingBell, monthly | $540.00 | Same |
The arithmetic is simple and it does not need a superlative attached to it: a subscription that ends when you stop paying costs three to five times a device that does not.
EleksCava: cheaper than us, and slower on purpose
We have already said EleksCava undercuts us. Here is what you are trading for those thirty 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 2.0-inch colour touch TFT — smaller, worse in direct sun, and capable of a full-screen animation the instant the webhook lands. Two different engineering answers to two different questions.
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 small. Two 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.
- 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 2, if what you are missing is not the number but the moment: colour, on your desk, with the sound, €99 once 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. If you find something out of date, tell us and we will fix it.