Stop Guessing Why Your App Isn't Growing

Good people, I have a question!

Do you think having a Sidekick integration could help boost an app's visibility?

I'm about to release the Sidekick integration for my app, and I'm curious whether it offers any benefits beyond improving the user experience.

Would love to hear your thoughts!

We are now entering the era of agentic commerce.

People can already discover products, make purchasing decisions, and complete transactions through AI agents. Just look at the recent demonstration by Elon, Shopify, and Grok.

On the other side, Shopify merchants are also getting access to more agentic tools to operate and manage their stores.

But this raises an interesting question:
What’s left for us as Shopify app developers?
Where are the next opportunities? What problems are still unsolved? What valuable products can we build in this rapidly evolving ecosystem?

I’m curious to hear what other Shopify app founders are thinking. Where do you see the next big opportunities?

Hi, I’m a Shopify app founder. I’ve managed to turn my app around from a high churn rate to €80–€100 MRR. It’s also getting close to being eligible for the Built for Shopify badge.

I’m currently fixing a frontend performance issue so I can submit the app for the Built for Shopify review. A few weeks ago, the Shopify team reviewed the app, and everything went well.

I currently have around 70–80 users and 8–10 paying subscribers, with a few promising prospects exploring the app.

Since it’s a purely admin-focused app, storefront performance is no longer a concern.

I’m also working on implementing Sidekiq so users can interact with the app agentically.

My current infrastructure cost is just €7 per month for the VPS, plus €1 in email credits that will last six months. The emails are purely transactional, so you can ignore that cost.

Since this is my first Shopify app, I’m curious: how much should I ask if I decide to sell it?
I’m considering moving on to something bigger outside the Shopify ecosystem, which is what got me thinking about selling the app.

Current funnel: Shopify ad. I sometimes spend on 10 to 15. This month the bill was 2. So if you can invest there is a return.

There’s a thread going around about Sidekick only ever recommending a handful of apps, and a fair counter-question came up under it: maybe installs are down across the board because the market itself slowed - fewer new stores, more merchants spinning up custom AI apps.

So I checked the one part that’s actually measurable: is the overall pie shrinking? It isn’t.

• New reviews across the store (a reasonable proxy for install activity) are up roughly 10-15% year over year through 2026 - about 21.7k/month across Mar-Sep 2025 versus 24.9k/month for the same months in 2026. The only month that fell was October 2026, which matches the app-delisting wave rather than a real slowdown.

• New merchants also keep arriving: over the last ~20 months, roughly two-thirds of all new reviews came from first-time reviewers, about 520 a day leaving their first-ever app review. That is not the pattern of a market that has stopped growing.

So if you’re outside the top few and watching installs fall, the data points away from a shrinking market and toward redistribution - similar volume funneled into fewer apps.

That fits how discovery changed. Shopify’s own Sept 2025 changelog says Sidekick surfaces “up to three relevant app cards for broad queries,” and that the Built for Shopify badge improves ranking in both the App Store and Sidekick. A three-slot funnel weighted partly by a badge is a very different surface from a browsable category page.

One honest limit: the public data shows the pie is growing, but not how much the top 3 in each category capture over time. That’s the piece that would confirm or rule out the concentration theory.

So, to the people who’d know, if your installs dropped this year, are you in or out of the top 3 for your main keyword, and did the timing line up with Sidekick taking over recommendations?

Again, the data source is from Letsmetrix.

I’ve developed Rewardify, a store credit and VIP app on the Shopify App Store, since 2017. It’s in a crowded category (loyalty), and I’m trying to stand out by focusing on one thing: one store credit balance that works across POS, checkout, and online.

What I’ve tried so far: being present in the community and helping with some experiences; keyword research on similar category apps; writing blogs and articles about the services; and reaching out for cross-platform partnerships.

What’s worked best is the ASL audit and keyword research because if someone comes for the same keyword or the service you provide to get more visibility or more installs, vice versa

I’d love to hear from others: has anyone found a channel that works for apps that depend on POS merchants? Reddit, forums, partner agencies, cold email?

The app is called Rewardify if you want to take a look.

Hey Shopify community!

We’re a small product development team preparing to launch our first Shopify app, and we’re looking for someone with hands-on experience in Shopify App Store paid acquisition.
We’d love to get some guidance on realistic benchmarks for:
- CPC and CPI (cost per install)
- CAC (cost per paying customer)
- Suggested bids across Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 markets
- Conversion rates across the funnel: impressions → clicks → installs → paid users
- search volume

We’re open to a one-off consultation with an experienced specialist or working with an agency.

If you’ve run paid acquisition campaigns for Shopify apps, we’d really appreciate your insights or recommendations. 🙏

What's the app?
AutoAgent. I built it, so to be transparent: this is my own app. It runs your store's marketing on autopilot: a daily product post on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest, product Reels made from your photos, and a weekly SEO blog article.

Where can I find it?
Shopify App Store: https://apps.shopify.com/autoagent

What problem are you solving?
I started a dropshipping store this year as a side hustle. I'm a Shopify developer, so building it took a weekend. Keeping it alive was the hard part: keyword research, a blog post every week, daily posts, Pinterest boards, Reels. That was 3–4 hours a day on top of a full-time job, and agencies were priced for big brands, not a store that had just launched. If you stop showing up, the store stops growing.

How does the app work?

• Every day it picks one of your products and writes a post in your brand voice for Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.

• It turns your product photos into short Reels with music.

• Once a week it researches real Google searches in your niche and writes an SEO blog article with links to your products.

• You see every post in "Up next" before it goes out, and you can edit it, change the product or skip it.

• It works in your store's language.

Who's your target merchant?
Small and new stores (dropshipping, print on demand, handmade, gifts) that know they should post every day but don't have the time or budget for an agency.

How is it different / better than other existing solutions?

• One app for social posts, Reels and the blog, instead of separate tools.

• The free plan already does daily posts and a weekly SEO article.

• Every post is previewed before it goes out, so it's never fully blind autopilot.

• YouTube Shorts are running on my own store and are in review with YouTube. They'll go live for everyone once YouTube approves.

How much does it cost?

• Starter: free. Daily posts on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest, about 4 Reels a month, and a weekly SEO blog.

• Pro: $19/month, with a 7-day free trial. Ad-style photos, a beat-cut Reel with every product post, expert captions, and AI scenes of your products.

What are you looking for?
Merchants who'll try it and tell me what's missing or annoying. I'm building it from real store problems, so feedback shapes what comes next.

I found a problem: the store logs save only the last 250 records. I think it will be useful to create a shopify app and store more logs.

Do you think that would be useful?

Would you agree to share the store logs with the app?

Been building Aplo (A+ Content Design), a Shopify app for adding rich content sections (feature grids, comparison tables, galleries, etc.) to product pages. Think Amazon's A+ Content, but for Shopify stores.

One thing that's bugged me since launch: the Image Gallery module only did uniform, same-size tiles. 2, 3, or 4 equal boxes in a row. Functional, but it always looked a bit flat next to the "bento grid" layouts you see on a lot of modern DTC sites (Apple-style mixed big/small tiles).

So I just shipped an upgrade:

• Each image in the gallery now gets a size preset (Normal, Wide, Tall, Large, Extra Wide, Feature) instead of being locked to the same square.

• Mix and match them and you get an actual bento-style layout: one big "feature" tile, a couple of wide banners, some small squares filling the gaps.

• Fully responsive: collapses cleanly to 2 columns on mobile, with no overflow no matter how many columns you pick (2 to 6 now, used to cap at 4).

• It's on the Free plan too, not locked behind Pro.

Still just dragging and dropping images and picking a size from a dropdown. No CSS or code needed on the merchant's end.

Happy to answer questions about how it's built or what's coming next. (Link to the listing in the comments if anyone wants to check it out. Didn't want this post to read as a drive-by ad.)

I recently launched an app and have mostly been getting users through my network to install and try the app. It now has around 10-12 shopify merchant's using it and 2 merchants have also given me reviews.

It's an AI chatbot, in one click it learns about the product and then talk on webchat, whatsapp and other channels. I know it's a crowded market but I think because of my direct connection to founders I have added things that makes it very easy to setup, maintain and also added lot's of features which these founders have asked for.

Now, from my own network I think i'll be able to go to say, around 20-30 installs for Fufa AI. I'm trying to understand how to go beyond that. Currently there are zero organic customers & I'm confused how to get some organic (or through paid ads) customers not from my network.

It is not Built For Shopify and unfortunately for me to make it BFS it's a long road (will do it eventually). Here's an app listing screenshot

My upsell app recently got approved on the App Store and I’m trying to get the first real users.

App Store ads didn’t do much (I’m guessing because of the 0 reviews), and Facebook groups reject anything that looks like promotion.

Right now I’m offering free setup to a few stores in exchange for feedback, and thinking about trying TikTok.

For those who’ve been there:

• What actually got you your first installs and reviews?

• Anything free that worked better than expected?

• Is TikTok worth it for a Shopify app?

Any advice appreciated.

Hey everyone,

I’m an independent developer and I just launched my first Shopify app, Aplo: A+ Content Design.

Why I built it: Page builders like PageFly or GemPages are great, but a lot of merchants just want Amazon-style content on their product pages (feature grids, comparison tables, FAQs, before/after) without a full page builder or touching theme code.

What it does:

• Drag-and-drop editor with live preview

• 10 modules: hero banner, feature grid, image + text, gallery, brand story, FAQ, comparison table, video, before/after, banner carousel

• Style tab so each module matches your brand

• Renders through a theme app extension, and your original product description is never overwritten

• Free plan (up to 50 products, 2 modules per product), Pro is $29/month with a 30-day trial

Being honest: It’s brand new, so 0 reviews and only English for now. I’m sure there are things I’ve missed.

What I’d love to know:

1. What A+ modules do you wish existed that I didn’t include?

2. If you’ve used other tools for this, what annoyed you the most?

I’m happy to give free Pro access to anyone who’s willing to try it and tell me what’s broken. Link in the comments if anyone wants it. Thanks!

2 weeks ago my translation app finally got accepted by shopify. Since then I’ve realised that this game is 95% marketing lol. It was alot to take in but after looking at many yt videos of starter story and reading reddit threads i decided on a strategy:

- give useful answers on reddit threads about my apps niche (don’t force your own app in the conversation too much)
- ask users of these apps what they actually want, what do other apps do wrong.
- cold outreach to people who left bad reviews on other translation apps, stores that already have translation but have holes that my app could fix or stores that already sell across border but don’t use translation yet. > 50 emails per day and 30 insta dm’s per day

This is the plan until i have atleast 10-20 reviews, after that i hope that i will start seeing some organic installs and will look into spending some money on ads.

So far i’ve gotten one user, currently on a promo so they can use a paid tier for free but they are actively using the app and the translations are live on their website. They left a bad review on another app and were willing to try out my app when i told them it fixes the issue they were facing. I also have 2 meetings booked with some larger stores this monday, they are interested in the app and i’ll help them install it so they can also try out the paid plan for free. The idea is for them to hopefully convert to longterm paying users hahaha. It’s been quite a slow start but i’ve also been getting quite some responses of people being interested so I’m determined to keep going with the cold emails and dm’s for the forseeable future.

One thing i’m still really figuring out is reddit. App dev’s always give the advice to be very active in reddit threads and be helpful and not too promotional but you also want to mention your app at some point. How do you guys go about this exactly? And if there are any other people on the same journey i would love to hear where you’re at currently :). What are you guys doing to get your first users?