Gatsby Was Acquired by Klaviyo: The Best Alternatives for Finding VIPs and Influencers
If you're looking for a Gatsby alternative, you're not alone. Gatsby, the Shopify app that matched customers to social media profiles and flagged influencers, was acquired by Klaviyo in 2022. The standalone product is gone.
For brands that relied on Gatsby to find influencers already buying from them, this left a gap. Klaviyo is an email and SMS platform, not an influencer detection tool. Several alternatives now exist that do everything Gatsby did — and quite a bit more.
What happened to Gatsby?
Gatsby launched as a Shopify app that solved a specific problem: DTC brands had influencers buying from them but no way to know it. Gatsby matched customer emails to social media profiles and flagged anyone with a real following.
In 2022, Klaviyo acquired Gatsby. The deal made sense for Klaviyo (adding identity data to their behavioral analytics platform), but for brands using Gatsby as a standalone tool, the results were mixed:
- Gatsby's standalone product was discontinued
- Influencer detection became a minor feature inside Klaviyo's much larger platform
- Brands using Gatsby needed either Klaviyo or a new solution
- The focused, single-purpose experience disappeared
What Gatsby did well (and where it stopped)
Gatsby got the core idea right: your existing customers include people who could drive huge value beyond their purchases. An influencer with 200K followers who bought your product organically is worth more than any paid partnership. A customer who happens to be a retail buyer at Nordstrom could open a wholesale channel worth six figures.
What Gatsby did:
- Matched Shopify customers to Instagram and TikTok profiles
- Flagged customers with large followings
- Showed follower counts and engagement metrics
- Helped brands build ambassador programs from existing customers
Klaviyo's acquisition validated the category. They recognized that knowing who your customers are — not just what they bought — was a gap in their platform.
The limitation was scope. Gatsby only looked at influencers. It missed executives, athletes, journalists, and retail buyers who could be equally or more valuable. And it stopped at identification — no outreach tools, no pipeline management, no way to act on what you found without exporting to a spreadsheet.
Why the category has moved past influencer-only detection
The problem Gatsby solved has gotten bigger:
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Influencer marketing has matured. Brands now need to find micro-influencers, nano-influencers, and niche creators — not just people with 100K+ followers.
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VIPs aren't just influencers. The most valuable customer discoveries often aren't influencers at all. They're journalists, retail buyers, executives, athletes, and other high-value people who happen to love your brand.
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Detection without activation is half the job. Knowing you have VIPs doesn't help unless you can reach them, manage outreach, and track results.
Here's what Gatsby would have missed:
- A retail buyer at Anthropologie who ordered three times → wholesale opportunity worth $200K/year
- A journalist at Vogue who bought as a gift → press feature worth millions in exposure
- An NFL player who's been a customer for 2 years → authentic brand partnership
- A tech executive whose entire team orders from you → corporate gifting program
None of these are influencer marketing plays. They're business development opportunities that require understanding who your customers are beyond their social following. This is what customer intelligence for ecommerce actually means — and why VIP detection goes far beyond influencer identification.
The best Gatsby alternatives
1. Mercana — best overall replacement
Mercana is a customer intelligence platform that goes well past what Gatsby offered. It connects to Shopify in 2 minutes, enriches every customer with 100+ data points, and detects VIPs across 15+ categories — not just influencers.
Why it's the best Gatsby replacement:
- 15+ VIP categories vs. Gatsby's influencer-only focus: influencers, journalists, retail buyers, executives, founders, professional athletes, high-net-worth individuals, Wikipedia-notable people, podcasters, celebrities, industry experts, and more
- 100+ data points per customer including social profiles across all platforms (Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, X, Facebook), job titles, interests, education, income estimates, and press mentions
- Influencer leaderboard — see your top customers ranked by followers on any platform
- Built-in outreach via Instagram DM, email templates, LinkedIn, and handwritten cards — plus pipeline management with Kanban boards. Gatsby was identification only.
- AI-powered search: Ask "show me fitness influencers in LA with 50K+ followers who bought in the last 60 days" and get instant results
- Custom signals: Define your own VIP criteria with natural language beyond the 15+ built-in categories
- Real-time alerts: Slack and SMS notifications when new VIPs place an order
- Source transparency: Every data point is clickable with cited sources and confidence scores
Key metric: 94.4% VIP detection precision, 97.1% recall, <1% wrong person rate across 317K+ profiles. Gatsby never published comparable metrics.
Pricing: From $79/mo. First 1,000 enrichments free, no credit card.
2. Upfluence — best for influencer marketing teams
Upfluence is an influencer marketing platform with customer matching capabilities. It covers more ground than Gatsby with influencer discovery, campaign management, affiliate tracking, and a large external influencer database beyond your customer base.
Strengths: Large influencer database, campaign management, affiliate features.
Limitations: Focused on influencer workflows, not broader VIP detection. Higher price point. Doesn't detect non-influencer VIPs like athletes, executives, or retail buyers. No customer enrichment with 100+ data points.
3. Aspire — best for creator programs
Aspire is a creator management platform built for ambassador and affiliate programs. If you need structured workflows for applications, content approval, and payment management, Aspire handles that well.
Strengths: Ambassador program management, content workflows, influencer search.
Limitations: Built for influencer marketing teams managing campaigns. Doesn't enrich your broader customer base. No VIP detection beyond influencers. Higher price point for larger teams.
4. Klaviyo (native) — already in your stack
Klaviyo is the email and SMS marketing platform that acquired Gatsby's technology. Some of Gatsby's capabilities may have been folded in.
The limitation: Klaviyo's strength is email/SMS marketing with behavioral data (opens, clicks, purchases). Identity enrichment and VIP detection across multiple categories isn't their focus. For dedicated customer intelligence, purpose-built tools go deeper.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Mercana | Upfluence | Aspire | Gatsby (Discontinued) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Influencer detection in customer base | Yes | Yes | Yes | Was core feature |
| Social profile matching | IG, LinkedIn, TikTok, X, FB | IG, YouTube, TikTok | IG, YouTube, TikTok | IG, TikTok |
| Non-influencer VIP detection | 15+ categories | No | No | No |
| Customer enrichment (100+ data points) | Yes | No | No | No |
| Influencer leaderboard by platform | Yes | Limited | Limited | No |
| Automated outreach from platform | Email, IG DM, LinkedIn, cards | Email only | Email only | No |
| Pipeline management | Built-in Kanban | Campaign-focused | Campaign-focused | No |
| AI-powered search | Yes (natural language) | Filtered search | Filtered search | No |
| Custom VIP signals | Yes (plain language) | No | No | No |
| Company detection | Yes | No | No | No |
| Shopify integration | 2-min OAuth | Yes | Yes | Was Shopify app |
| Klaviyo integration | Yes | Limited | Limited | Yes |
| Starting price | $79/mo | Higher (contact sales) | Higher (contact sales) | Was free/affordable |
How to migrate from Gatsby
If you were using Gatsby before the Klaviyo acquisition, switching to Mercana takes about 10 minutes:
- Connect your Shopify store — 2-minute OAuth, read-only access
- Backfill your customer base — Mercana enriches existing customers, not just new orders
- Set up VIP alerts — Slack notifications when VIPs order
- Review your influencer leaderboard — customers ranked by social following across all platforms
- Start outreach — use built-in tools instead of exporting to spreadsheets
You'll likely find VIPs you never knew about — not just influencers, but athletes, executives, journalists, and retail buyers that Gatsby couldn't detect. For a how-to guide on finding influencers specifically, see How to Find Influencers Already Buying From Your Store.
Bottom line
Gatsby validated that ecommerce brands need to know who their customers are. Klaviyo's acquisition proved the category is worth buying into.
But the category has moved past influencer-only detection. The best Gatsby replacement isn't another influencer tool — it's a customer intelligence platform that detects VIPs across every category that matters for your business, and helps you activate them. If you're also evaluating B2B enrichment tools, see our Clearbit alternatives guide for why those don't work for ecommerce.
Related articles
- How to Find Influencers Already Buying From Your Store — A step-by-step guide to customer-first influencer discovery
- VIP Customer Detection for Ecommerce — Go beyond influencer detection to find all VIP types
- Clearbit Abandoned B2C: The Best Alternatives — The best ecommerce customer enrichment tools
- 5 Best OuterSignal Alternatives for Ecommerce — Compare top customer enrichment tools
- Customer Intelligence for Ecommerce: The Complete Guide — What customer intelligence is and why DTC brands need it
Try Mercana free — 1,000 enrichments, no credit card required.
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