Sticky
Alpine IQ

All of Alpine IQ's power. None of the ticket queue.

AIQ gives you a great platform and a full-time admin job. Sticky matches the feature set, runs on a UI you can actually use, and typically comes in at least 40% lighter on contract.

1:1 contract match
Dedicated CSM from day 1
Every AIQ capability mapped first
Persona CRM mapped 1-to-1
To send a birthday text
Alpine IQ11 steps
1Create audience in Audiences
2Build segment with 4 rules
3Link to Experience
4Configure SMS sender
5Set delivery rules & throttling
6 more steps
switch
Sticky3 steps
1Enable "Birthday" journey template
2Edit the copy
3Publish
Steps to ship11 → 3
40%+
Typical contract reduction vs. AIQ, in our experience
1:1
Your AIQ modules, mapped with parity or better
2hrs
First response under 2 hours, usually within 20 minutes
400+
Locations running on Sticky
Honest assessment

Where AIQ wins. Where it doesn't.

AIQ has built a serious platform. Below is what we've heard from the marketing teams we've moved over in 2025, what they kept, what they wouldn't go back to.

AIQ does this well
  • Customer data platform depth

    Persona CRM unifies offline + online identities better than most. Profile enrichment is a real differentiator if you stay long enough to wire it up.

  • Channel breadth

    SMS, email, push, voice, direct mail, in-app, Loops in-retailer ads. Probably the widest channel surface in the regulated-industries space.

  • Enterprise-grade controls

    Granular roles, audit trails, SOC2 posture, multi-brand parent/child accounts. If you're a 50+ store MSO, this matters.

Where it falls short in 2026
  • UI is a maze

    Audiences, Experiences, Flows, Personas, Loyalty, Marketplace, each is its own module with its own logic. Power users love it. Marketing managers hate it.

  • À la carte module pricing balloons

    Audiences priced separately. Loyalty separately. Reviews separately. Persona CRM separately. By the time you've turned everything on, you're at $2,500+/mo.

  • Onboarding can run long

    Implementation specialists, data-mapping calls, persona setup, audience scaffolding. Operators we've moved often tell us it was weeks before they sent a real campaign.

  • Support can feel ticket-and-wait

    Operators we've moved often describe next-day first responses and rotating CSMs, so knowledge gets lost between tickets.

  • AI features can feel bolted on

    AI Sales Agent, predictive scores, AI copy, each lives as a separate flow alongside the existing modules. In our view the seams show. Sticky was rebuilt with AI woven into the editor itself.

Feature parity

Every Alpine IQ feature, reimagined cleaner.

Capability
Alpine IQ
Customer Data Platform
Persona CRM
Unified customer graph + real-time POS
Loyalty engine
Tiered + gamified
Native Apple/Google Wallet passes
Audience builder
"Audiences"
18 smart segments + AI suggestions
Multi-step automations
Experiences + Flows
Visual Playmaker
Channels
SMS, email, push, voice, direct mail
SMS, MMS, email, push, wallet, in-store
In-retailer ads (Loops)
Loops
In-store Display Plays
AI assistance
AI Sales Agent (add-on)
AI woven into editor + suggestions
Steps to ship a campaign
11 steps
3 steps
Onboarding time
weeks, in our experience
14 days
Contract
annual, quoted per module
$599/mo · monthly
AIQ column reflects what operators have shown us during migrations. Check your own agreement and your own invoice, they are the only versions that bind you.
What operators tell us

The three reasons operators leave Alpine IQ.

“I need a full-time person just to run it.”

The UI is deep but the learning curve is brutal. Marketing managers need months of AIQ-specific training. On Sticky, your team ships day 3.

“The bill just keeps growing.”

AIQ's modules are priced à la carte, audiences, loyalty, experiences. Add it up and most operators hit $2,500+ per month.

“I wait days for a support answer.”

Operators describe ticket queues and next-day responses. Every Sticky account gets a named CSM: first response under 2 hours, usually within 20 minutes.

Module by module

Every AIQ module, mapped to Sticky.

AIQ ships nine separate modules. Sticky compresses them into one product. Here's where each piece lives after you switch.

Persona CRM
Customer Graph

Unified profiles across offline + online + loyalty + POS. We import every AIQ identity merge and rebuild the resolution rules.

Sticky → Customers
Audiences
Smart segments

18 prebuilt segments that auto-refresh. AI suggests new ones from your POS patterns. No rule-builder PhD required.

Sticky → Segments
Experiences + Flows
Playmaker

Visual canvas. Triggers, waits, branches, exits, all on one screen. Includes 12 prebuilt journey templates.

Sticky → Plays
Loyalty
Wallet loyalty

Tiers, points, gamified rewards, plus native Apple/Google Wallet passes. We unify AIQ's primary + extended loyalty ledgers on import.

Sticky → Wallet
Marketing channels
Messaging stack

SMS, MMS, email, push, in-app, all under one composer. Direct mail and voice via partner integration; we won't pretend we built them.

Sticky → Messaging
Reviews
Review plays

Post-purchase review requests with response routing to Google, Weedmaps, Yelp. Built as a Play, not a separate module.

Sticky → Plays
Loops
In-store Display

Promo graphics and clip videos targeted by audience. Push to your in-store screens or your menu boards via tablet integration.

Sticky → In-store
AI Sales Agent
AI woven through

Not a bolted-on chat widget, AI lives inside the editor, generating copy, suggesting segments, scoring sends, and recommending next plays.

Sticky → AI
Analytics
Revenue attribution

SKU-level revenue per send. Predictive CLV. Send-time learning. All in one dashboard, not three separate report builders.

Sticky → Analytics
Why this matters

AIQ is nine products with a shared login.

Persona CRM lives in one place. Audiences in another. Experiences route to Flows. Loyalty has its own dashboard. Reviews has a third. Loops a fourth. Reporting reports per module, not per customer. You spend more time piecing context together than running campaigns.

Sticky is one product. One customer record. One canvas. One report that already ties it all together.

AIQ  ·  9 modules  ·  4 separate UIs
Persona CRM
Audiences
Experiences
Flows
Loyalty
Reviews
Loops
AI Sales Agent
Analytics
consolidated
Sticky  ·  1 product  ·  1 canvas
sticky
Customers · Plays · Wallet · Analytics
Six lines to check on your own invoice

AIQ pricing, item by item.

These are the line items we've seen across the contracts we audited in 2025. Pricing varies by negotiation; the structure does not.

Persona CRM
Required for everything else
check yours
The foundation module. Everything else plugs into it, and in our experience the price scales with your active profile count. Find that line on your invoice and ask what it becomes at your next member milestone.
Loyalty
Separate module fee
check yours
Tier and gamification logic, with the wallet pass behind a further add-on. Check which of the loyalty features that closed your demo are inside your base module and which arrived as their own line.
Experiences + Flows
Automation engine
check yours
Without this, you're stuck doing manual sends. Flows is the newer add-on layered on top of Experiences; together they're the workhorse of any real lifecycle program.
Reviews + surveys
Reputation management module
check yours
The review-request flows and NPS surveys live in their own bucket, which means another decision every month about whether it is on or off.
Loops (in-retailer ads)
In-store display network
check yours
Pays for the Loops creative manager and targeting rules, with media spend on top. Worth it at scale, hard to justify on three stores.
AI Sales Agent
Newest add-on, premium tier
check yours
Conversational SMS / chat agent. Drives meaningful lift when it works; works best after 60 days of training data. Premium tier only, with token-based usage caps on top of the monthly.
Stacked total
Add up every module on your own invoice. That total is the only number worth putting next to $599.
Run the math
The AIQ-specific playbook

We know where the bodies are buried.

AIQ migrations have their own gotchas. Our migration team has moved dozens of operators off, we know what breaks, what to preserve, and what to throw out.

CDP export & dedup

We pull every member record from AIQ's Persona CRM, including the hidden “unified profile” merges, and reconcile them against our customer graph.

Loyalty ledger rebuild

AIQ's loyalty runs off two ledgers (primary + extended). We unify them, preserve tier status, and map redemption rules to Sticky's loyalty engine.

“Experiences” → Plays

Every AIQ Experience becomes a Sticky Play. We keep triggers, timing, and suppression lists intact. No in-flight customers dropped mid-journey.

Flows reroute

If you've built journeys on top of AIQ's newer Flows engine, we map the conditional logic into Sticky's Play canvas, preserving every branch.

Opt-in audit

We verify every member's consent trail and preserve the original opt-in source. Your compliance posture at or above AIQ on day one.

Loops creative migration

If you ran Loops in-store, we port the targeting rules and creative library into Sticky In-Store Plays. Your menu boards keep playing through cutover.

Same plumbing

Every POS you connected to AIQ, we connect to too.

Dutchie
POS · Ecom
Treez
POS
Flowhub
POS
COVA
POS
BLAZE
POS
Weedmaps
Listings
+12 more
Custom · API
Case study · 18 stores · first 100 days

One real program beats five quotes you can't check.

Farmer Jane runs 18 dispensaries across Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Over the first 100 days on a spend-linked wallet program, their loyalty members spent 18.5% more per order and came back 3.3 days sooner than everyone else.

Figures from the joint Farmer Jane and Sticky 100-day performance review. Farmer Jane did not come to us from Alpine IQ, and we'd rather say so than imply otherwise.

Read the 100-day review
18.5%
Bigger orders from members
3.3d
Sooner back through the door
11.8% of revenue
On 10.1% of orders. Members weren't just showing up more, they were building bigger baskets when they did.
Philosophy

We built Sticky because AIQ is an enterprise toolkit pretending to be a marketing app.

AIQ's depth comes from breadth, every module added to the suite. Sticky's depth comes from compression, every concept rebuilt under one mental model. You pay for results, not for the privilege of joining nine UIs together.

One product, not nine

Customers, plays, wallet, analytics, all share one record, one event stream, one billing line. Configuration in one place.

Bundled pricing, no module upsell

Loyalty, plays, attribution, in-store, reviews, all in the same plan. You'll never get a "want to enable that?" email mid-quarter.

Month-to-month available

Annual plans get a discount, but they're never required. No auto-renewal traps. Leave when you want; we'd rather earn the renewal.

Frequently asked

Common questions about switching.

Will I lose the depth AIQ gave me?

No. We map every AIQ capability to a Sticky equivalent before signing. Persona CRM → Customer Graph. Audiences → Smart Segments. Experiences → Plays. Loyalty → Wallet. We share the parity doc, you decide.

How do you handle the AIQ loyalty ledger?

AIQ runs primary and extended loyalty ledgers separately. We pull both, reconcile them, and import a unified balance per member. You'll see a before/after report and approve it before we cut over. Balances reconciled and verified on every migration.

What about Flows? I just built those.

Every Flow becomes a Play in Sticky's Playmaker. We preserve triggers, waits, branches, and exit conditions. Members in-flight at cutover keep moving without restart. You won't notice the seam.

Can I keep my AIQ-built mobile app?

If you want, yes. We can keep the app shell live and push notifications through Sticky. Most operators retire it, because the native Apple and Google Wallet pass installs in one tap with no app-store overhead. We'll guide your member-base announcement either way.

My AIQ contract auto-renews soon. What do I do?

Tell us your renewal date. We send you the cancellation-notice template, walk you through delivering it, and time the Sticky go-live for the day after AIQ ends. Get the notice in on time and you don't pay two vendors at once.

Is AIQ's AI Sales Agent something I should keep?

If it's been live for 60+ days and is producing real revenue, we hand-port the agent training corpus into Sticky's AI plays. If it's been live less than 30 days, we usually recommend starting fresh on Sticky, the AI tooling is deeper there because it was built native, not grafted on.

What if it goes badly? Can I go back?

You're month to month, so the worst case is you leave. No contract to unwind, no notice period to serve, no exit fee. That is the whole answer, and it's the reason we don't dangle a refund window at you: you were never locked in to need one.

Send us your AIQ contract. We'll match it. Cleaner.

Your CSM will take a look, map every module to Sticky, and come back with a contract that's at least 40% lighter. If we can't, we'll tell you.