Your store's data writes the email. You press send.

Alpine IQ ships a static template library plus Flows, its journey builder. Flows is marketed with "real-time triggers from POS and ecommerce integrations" and "AI Condition nodes," and it is genuinely powerful once configured. The catch is the word "configured": third-party reviewers note AIQ "requires experienced management to extract full value," an entire agency market exists just to run it, and when we audited one live AIQ deployment, the flows feature sat completely unused: zero flows configured. Templates don't know your shelf; a flow you never built sends nothing.

Our approach inverts it: the platform reads your live inventory, offers, and tickets and hands you finished campaigns. Where AIQ's data reportedly syncs with up to ~24 hours of latency and audiences rematerialize overnight, our catalog and offer feeds stay live and tickets sync nightly straight from the POS, via deep integrations with Treez and Dispense.

SpringBig's automation product is Autoconnects™. Its own page lists birthdays, anniversaries, spending milestones, visit milestones, and a "Follow Up" feature among more than 20 automation options, and claims it can "predict when a customer is likely to visit next." Notice what every one of those triggers has in common: they are calendar and lifecycle events about the member. Nothing on the page is inventory-aware: no expiring-batch trigger, no restock detection, no banner or new-brand awareness. Lifecycle automation answers "when should I message this person?" Our campaign feed answers the question neither incumbent asks: "what in my store is worth a campaign today?"

Honest note: if you depend on multi-step automation journeys today (birthday drips, abandoned-cart sequences), AIQ has them and we don't yet; ours are roadmap, not shipped. What we ship today is different: campaigns that generate themselves from live store data, which no template library does.

Generic marketing-automation tools are built around ecommerce webhooks and a blank editor. For a dispensary that means three problems. First, the terms of service: Klaviyo bans cannabis SMS outright and tolerates email at its own discretion; Mailchimp has historically restricted cannabis accounts, so your channel can vanish with your list inside it. Second, the data: they've never heard of METRC batch expiry, menu banners, restock streaks, or budtender-attributed tickets, so every "automation" starts with you doing the thinking. Third, the sending: shared IP pools where your reputation belongs to strangers.

The blank canvas is the real cost. An email program that depends on someone in the store having time to design campaigns is an email program that quietly stops. A feed of pre-built, explainable campaigns is how sending actually happens every week, and our flat pricing means sending more never costs more per message.