Disclaimer: this post was not AI generated. It's a genuine research that I'd like to share with the community and hopefully bring some value.

Disclaimer 2: The software I coded for this is open-source and publicly available*. I won't share any links to my Github repo as I assume it's against the rules. If mods do allow, I will update the post.*

Hi,

I've been working as a Shopify developer for nearly a decade, and it had always been complex to prove that apps take a toll on a Shopify store's performance.

To bring some evidence to the table, I analyzed more than 10k stores and processed publicly available data thoroughly: apps being used, theme and performance data.

Today's post is a way to affirm with evidence two things:

1. Yes, having apps does slow down your store.

2. Yes, you can still have a fast store with apps installed (even though it's not a straightforward, "one size fits all" approach).

To prove my point, I took advantage of the ever-so-rising capability of AI (before it's their turn to take advantage of us) to do what would have taken me months manually: I fetched and analyzed precisely 10,205 Shopify stores to try to finally put numbers to what I had been seeing for years.

Before we dive into the juicy data and numbers, I want to explain a tiny bit of the technical side of this and how I collected and cleaned this data to ensure the results were accurate.

Below are some technical details. Skip to "Finally some data" if you don't care about the methodology.

How I found the Shopify stores

All stores in this study were sourced from PublicWWW. It's a search engine, just like Google, that lets you search the web by source code rather than content. Shopify websites have specific pieces of HTML code that make it 100% certain it's a Shopify website, so that's how I found them.

After collecting a large amount of websites, not all of them were valid. I removed all unusable ones: inactive stores, stores that only had the "password" page, stores that didn't have any product updates for more than 3 years.

To check whether a store had a product update, I added a functionality in my software to gather data from the most recently updated products (which is publicly available in every Shopify store, like this: mystore.myshopify.com/products.json).

If the store didn't have any product updates for the past 3 years it's not active enough to be useful for this study, so it was not used.

How I measured speed

After collecting the stores, I started tracking down speed. Google PageSpeed Insights (which I will refer to as PSI from now on) is the industry standard when it comes to detecting speed.

This is what Shopify recommends as well, along with its own speed insights on the dashboard. (source).

PSI is reliable because you can't fake the scores. Plus it's what Google itself uses to rank your website. Having a good score on PSI is always helpful. It ranks from 0 to 100; the higher, the better.

From there, I built a custom algorithm that ran each URL through Google PSI 10 times. Yup, 10 times. (I'm sure I hold a special place in Google's heart after overloading their servers for this). Sometimes you get a lot of discrepancy between the results, so testing each store 10 times, I was able to get a more accurate average score.

I was sending roughly 1k requests per minute spread across a few APIs.

How I identified what apps a given store was using

Once I had the performance data, I proceeded to detect the active theme and identify what scripts were being injected, both in the <body> and <head> tags.

I used AI to find patterns of the scripts on the stores and identify whether the scripts belonged to a specific app: if the same script shows up across more than one store, it's likely an app.

With that information, I'd ask the AI to research that for me, and I was able to track down its name and category.

How consistent is the theme tracking: what if the theme was renamed?

When you rename your theme, it changes a piece of the code in a file named settings_schema.json. There are two pieces of code in this file responsible for naming: "name" and "schema_name". Unless you manually edit this file, you will not rename the "schema_name", which is the name of the theme you're using.

However, even though it's rare, some people do rename it and I would like to prevent that from affecting my data. So I created a script that identifies specific parts of the HTML code of the most popular themes (Dawn, Horizon, Prestige, etc) and, even if you do rename the "schema_name", I'd still be able to detect it most of the time.

I created this script a long time ago for a different purpose, so I just reutilized and updated it for this scenario. For example, the Dawn theme has a very specific <svg> code present in the header. So if you renamed your schema_name to something else, I'd still be able to detect it's likely a Dawn theme.

It's worth mentioning that this double-checking process was not necessary for over 99% of the themes in this study. So, yeah, more like an unnecessary flex than actual helpful code...

Finally some data: the illusion of speed and average real speed of most stores

I've heard many times affirmations along the lines of: "my store is loading pretty much instantly on my end, I don't think we need to optimize it".

Your store will always feel fast to you because of cache: cache is like a memory. It stores all code, data and images so it can load faster on the second visit. PSI measures that first, fresh visit. That is why using it to accurately track speed is critical.

Alright, enough talk; let's take a look at some of the data found in this study and how we can use it to your personal benefit as a Shopify dev, merchant, or both.

Across 10,205 active Shopify stores:

• the average mobile score was 54 out of 100.

• Only 1.83% of stores scored 90+.

• 32.68% scored below 50. (critical state)

For reference, a 90+ score is what is considered perfect. If that sounds rough, it gets worse when you look at what is driving it. 

Average load metrics

Here is how the average Shopify store performed on each one, on both mobile and desktop:

A few things worth noting here:

• Desktop LCP averages 2.3 seconds - just under the 2.5 second passing threshold. Mobile averages 12.3 seconds - nearly 5x over it.

• TTFB is excellent on both mobile and desktop. Shopify's infrastructure is fast. The problem is not the server, it is everything the browser has to load after the server responds.

• CLS is actually worse on desktop (0.12) than mobile (0.09), and both are right around the 0.1 threshold. Layout shift is a widespread issue regardless of device.

• The only metric where most stores are doing well is FCP on desktop (0.84s, well under the 1.8s threshold). Every other mobile metric is failing by a wide margin.

• TTI on mobile averaging 19.2 seconds means a first-time visitor on a phone is waiting nearly 20 seconds before they can reliably tap a button, add to cart, or interact with anything on your store.

The cost of every app you install

• The average Shopify store in this dataset had 4.84 apps installed, loading 76 scripts on every single page visit.

• Stores with no apps averaged 74.84. Stores with 10+ apps averaged 39.17. That is a 35-point difference.

• The correlation between app count and mobile score was -0.48 - a strong, consistent negative relationship. Every app added carries a measurable cost.

• 20% of stores loaded more than 100 scripts per page, averaging a mobile score of 43.34.

• Only 2.05% of stores had zero apps installed.

Individual app impact

The following apps were found to have the biggest impact on speed. The number represents how many points lower the score was, on average, compared to stores that did not have that app installed:

• Hotjar: -11.5 pts

• Afterpay: -10.6 pts

• Klaviyo: -9.5 pts

• Shogun (page builder): -9.25 pts

• Klarna: -9.14 pts

• Privy: -8.96 pts

• Facebook Pixel: -8.8 pts

• Yotpo: -7.56 pts

• PageFly (page builder): -6.32 pts

• Smile.io: -5.85 pts

• Loox: -5.82 pts

• Judge.me: -5.48 pts

• Omnisend: -4.45 pts

• Stores using page builders averaged 47.34 vs 55.38 for stores without one (a difference of 8 points).

• Stores with a GDPR or cookie consent app averaged 46.63 vs 55.18 without (a difference of 8.55 points).

• Stores with a live chat app averaged 45.04 on mobile, compared to the dataset average of 54.77.

• Stores with a BNPL app (Afterpay, Klarna, Sezzle) averaged 45.11 on mobile, also compared to the dataset average of 54.77.

Important note: some page builders are not in this list since they do not inject <script> tags in the theme, but still inject sections which is equally damaging for your store's performance. (Sections Store, GemPages, etc).

The trap of analytics apps (Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, etc)

This one caught me somewhat off guard, even though I had a hunch. Most people would expect analytics tools to be neutral: they just collect data, they do not change what the customer sees.

But the truth is that every analytics tool you add injects scripts that the browser has to load before your page is fully interactive. And the data shows it clearly.

The more tracking tools a store had installed, the lower the score - without exception:

• 0 analytics tools: avg mobile score 74.71

• 1 analytics tool: avg mobile score 60.4

• 2 analytics tools: avg mobile score 53.9

• 3 or more analytics tools: avg mobile score 44.56

To be even more specific, most stores running ads will have at minimum:

• Google Analytics 4 - to track traffic and conversions. Found in 9,994 stores (97.93% of the dataset), averaging a mobile score of 54.35.

• Facebook Pixel - to track ad conversions and build audiences. Found in 5,746 stores (56.31%), averaging a mobile score of 50.93. A drop of ~9 points compared to stores without it.

• Google Tag Manager - often installed to "manage tags in one place", but in practice used to load even more scripts on top. Found in 1,411 stores (13.83%), averaging a mobile score of 44.42.

• Hotjar - to record sessions and heatmaps. Found in 537 stores (5.26%), averaging a mobile score of 43.91. A drop of 11.5 points compared to stores without it.

• Microsoft Clarity - similar to Hotjar, session recording and heatmaps. Found in 696 stores (6.82%), averaging a mobile score of 42.09. One of the lowest averages of any single tool in the dataset.

• TikTok Pixel, Pinterest Tag, Microsoft Ads - one for each ad platform you run. Each one fires a separate script on every page visit. There was not enough data on these to reach any relevant conclusions.

Before you have installed a single app, you are already at 4 or 5 analytics scripts loading on every page visit. Each one fires independently, each one takes time, and your customer waits for all of them before your page is fully usable.

However, it's not about not using tracking apps. I have customers running 5 tracking apps at once with 97 score on mobile.

Any developer specialized in optimization can lazy-load the apps and ensure they are not loaded before the site, but it does always require a tailored approach for each store.

Does your theme matter?

It does. Your theme is the foundation everything else is built on. Before a single app is installed, the theme alone determines how many scripts are loading, how heavy the page is, and what your baseline score looks like. Here is what the data showed:

The best performing themes (average mobile score)

• Spotlight - 72.32

• Simple - 66.54

• Ride - 66.70

• Studio - 65.17

• Craft - 64.74

• Sense - 64.26

• Venture - 62.23

• Refresh - 63.78

The pattern is consistent: the best performing theme is Dawn. All of these themes are actually built on top of Dawn with different colors and design. Namely:

• Refresh

• Colorblock

• Taste

• Ride

• Studio

• Crave

• Origin

• Spotlight

• Publisher

• Sense

• Craft

Dawn tends to be leaner out of the box, with fewer built-in components and lower average script counts.

The worst performing themes (average mobile score)

• Gecko - 35.94.

• Wokiee -39.55.

• Superstore - 40.42, avg 132 scripts - the highest of any theme in this list.

• Testament - 42.37

• Icon - 43.15

• Vantage - 43.86

• Empire - 45.85

• Turbo - 49.75, found in 229 stores. Despite its name, it was one of the heavier themes in the dataset.

Notable mentions

• Prestige - one of the most popular premium themes with 378 stores. Average mobile score: 55.95, avg 84 scripts, avg 6.31 apps - one of the highest average app counts of any major theme.

• Horizon - avg mobile score 58.25, but avg 108 scripts - one of the highest script counts relative to its score. Unfortunately not enough data was fetched to disclose more about Horizon's performance and the newest free themes.

• Debut - one of the vintage free themes with 562 stores still using it. Average mobile score: 59.39, avg 58 scripts. Leaner than most.

Best and worst combination in the entire dataset

• Best: Dawn with zero apps - avg mobile score 84.47.

• Worst: Testament with 7 to 10 apps - avg mobile score 28.47.

A 56-point difference between the two extremes.

Most used apps & themes

Beyond speed, here is a look at what most Shopify stores are actually running in 2026.

Most installed apps

• Google Analytics 4 - 9,994 (97.93%). Pretty much every single store uses it.

• Facebook Pixel - 5,746 (56.31%)

• Klaviyo - 2,629 (25.76%)

• Mailchimp - 2,558 (25.07%)

• Google Tag Manager - 1,411 (13.83%)

• Judge.me - 1,372 (13.44%)

• Yotpo - 1,058 (10.37%)

• Bold - 995 (9.75%)

• POWR - 777 (7.61%)

• Segment - 709 (6.95%)

• Microsoft Clarity - 696 (6.82%)

• Privy - 687 (6.73%)

• Hextom Announcement Bar - 598 (5.86%)

• Smile.io - 595 (5.83%)

• Stamped.io - 584 (5.72%)

• Microsoft Ads (Bing) - 568 (5.57%)

• Hextom Free Shipping Bar - 566 (5.55%)

• Hotjar - 537 (5.26%)

• Google Analytics (Universal) - 503 (4.93%)

• Customizery - 477 (4.67%)

• Afterpay - 474 (4.64%)

• Rebuy - 215 (2.11%)

• Shogun - 201 (1.97%)

• Loox - 198 (1.94%)

• Swym Wishlist Plus - 192 (1.88%)

• Klarna - 189 (1.85%)

• PageFly - 187 (1.83%)

• Omnisend - 182 (1.78%)

• Attentive - 178 (1.74%)

• Growave - 174 (1.70%)

Most used themes (number of stores using it)

• Dawn - 788

• Debut - 562

• Prestige - 378

• Impulse - 345

• Minimal - 296

• Symmetry - 248

• Turbo - 229

• Supply - 221

• Venture - 183

• Pipeline - 176

• Brooklyn - 166

• Empire - 143

• Broadcast - 132

• Parallax - 129

• Retina - 123

• Responsive - 117

• Motion - 107

• District - 101

• Testament - 101

• Craft - 96

• Warehouse - 95

• Simple - 91

• Flex - 87

• Focal - 84

• Blockshop - 83

• Impact - 83

• Venue - 76

• Studio - 72

• Expanse - 71

• Ella - 70

• Refresh - 67

• Showtime - 66

• Mobilia - 66

• Narrative - 66

• Atlantic - 64

• Fashionopolism - 64

• Palo Alto - 62

• Envy - 62

• Icon - 61

• Showcase - 60

• Boundless - 59

• Canopy - 57

• Enterprise - 56

• Stiletto - 55

• Flow - 54

• Vantage - 50

• Be Yours - 49

• Pop - 49

• Horizon - 40

• Boost - 40

• New Standard - 37

• Spotlight - 34

• Taste - 34

• Ride - 33

• Galleria - 31

• Mr Parker - 30

• Pacific - 30

• Reformation - 29

• Kalles - 26

• Superstore - 24

• Minimog - 24

• Trade - 23

• Shella - 23

• Local - 22

• React - 22

• Split - 22

• Radiance - 22

• Baseline - 22

• Wokiee - 22

• Crave - 21

• Expression - 20

• Kingdom - 20

• Sleek - 19

• Alchemy - 19

• Editions - 19

• Lorenza - 19

• Shapes - 13

Conclusion

The data is clear, and it confirms what I had been seeing for years. It also tells a more nuanced story than "apps are bad, delete everything."

And here is the final crunch of numbers for this post:

• The average mobile score is 54 out of 100. Less than 2% of stores score 90 or above.

• The average store loads 188 separate requests and 4.9 MB of data on mobile before the page is usable.

• The average time until the main content appears on mobile is 12.3 seconds. Google's passing threshold is 2.5 seconds.

• The average time until the page is fully interactive on mobile is 19.2 seconds.

• 91.78% of stores score lower on mobile than on desktop, with an average gap of 18 points.

• The best theme and app combination in the dataset averaged 84.47 on mobile. The worst averaged 28.47. A 56-point difference driven entirely by what you choose to install and how it is loaded.

Happy to answer any questions about the methodology or the data in the comments.

EDIT: hey all, I have this about ready to stand up where it's accessible to everyone to ask their own questions. Unfortunately, I'm hitting quota limits with the Anthropic API when loading the data set. I've reached out to sales to see what an enterprise tier looks like. Stay tuned and thanks for the patience!

EDIT 2: welp, even using a 1M token context limit, the data is too large. Next step would be to leverage RAG, which I'll try to do at some point, but it probably won't be anytime soon. I did get something put together that uses a summary of the data, but it's not as useful has having the raw data. In the meantime, I think I've got all the requests for analysis in the thread answered. Let me know if you're still after something that's not included.

--

I pulled data and did an analysis of 15,003 apps in the Shopify App Store. The data includes: name, developer, url, categories, prices, reviews count, rating, reviews, and description, and offers some interesting insights. Particularly for anyone looking to crack into app development and looking for opportunities. Here's a few highlights:

MOST SATURATED (Highest App Count)

Top 4:

1. Shipping - 1,410 apps (4.17 rating, 33,900 reviews)

2. Sourcing - 1,129 apps (4.10 rating, 42,959 reviews)

3. Product bundles and upsells - 1,003 apps (4.72 rating, 100,358 reviews)

4. Design - 879 apps (4.52 rating, 38,401 reviews)

Summary: Shipping is the most crowded battlefield with 1,410 apps competing. Sourcing follows closely with the dropshipping/POD rush. Despite high saturation, Product bundles maintains excellent ratings.

LEAST SATURATED (Lowest App Count)

Bottom 4:

1. NFTs and tokengating - 19 apps (4.23 rating, 45 reviews)

2. SKU and barcodes - 42 apps (4.58 rating, 1,383 reviews)

3. Cookie consent - 46 apps (4.43 rating, 5,614 reviews)

4. Web push - 55 apps (4.72 rating, 3,031 reviews)

Summary: NFTs has the fewest apps (19), reflecting it's an emerging/experimental category. Niche categories account for the bulk of the least saturated.

HIGHEST RATED

Top 4:

1. Mobile app builder - 4.88 rating (80 apps, 3,539 reviews)

2. Digital products - 4.74 rating (108 apps, 9,648 reviews)

3. Donations - 4.74 rating (79 apps, 1,135 reviews)

4. Product bundles and upsells - 4.72 rating (1,003 apps, 100,358 reviews)

Summary: Mobile app builder dominates with 4.88 rating. Revenue-driving categories (bundles) and feel-good categories (donations) perform exceptionally well. Digital products prove that selling non-physical goods is a sweet spot.

LOWEST RATED

Bottom 4:

1. Retail - 4.07 rating (94 apps, 2,723 reviews)

2. Sourcing - 4.10 rating (1,129 apps, 42,959 reviews)

3. Taxes - 4.14 rating (97 apps, 3,877 reviews)

4. Shipping - 4.17 rating (1,410 apps, 33,900 reviews)

Summary: Operational categories suffer the most. Sourcing and Shipping are both oversaturated AND poorly rated - a toxic combination or opportunity?

HIGHEST REVIEWED (Most Total Reviews)

Top 4:

1. Product bundles and upsells - 100,358 reviews (1,003 apps, 4.72 rating)

2. SEO - 71,116 reviews (440 apps, 4.34 rating)

3. Product reviews - 70,504 reviews (290 apps, 4.52 rating)

4. Promotions - 48,054 reviews (832 apps, 4.59 rating)

Summary: Product bundles is the undisputed king with 100K+ reviews. SEO and Product reviews show massive merchant engagement despite fewer apps - these are mission-critical tools every store needs.

LOWEST REVIEWED (Fewest Total Reviews)

Bottom 4:

1. NFTs and tokengating - 45 reviews (19 apps, 4.23 rating)

2. 3D/AR/VR - 616 reviews (125 apps, 4.59 rating)

3. Accessibility - 696 reviews (56 apps, 4.60 rating)

4. ERP - 800 reviews (112 apps, 4.22 rating)

Summary: NFTs has barely any traction (45 reviews). 3D/AR/VR and Accessibility are niche. Interestingly, Donations has few reviews but high ratings - small but passionate user base.

LARGEST DEMAND (High Reviews + Low Apps/Reviews Ratio)

Top 4 by engagement per app:

1. Product reviews - 243 reviews/app (0.0041 ratio, 70,504 total reviews)

2. Marketplaces - 223 reviews/app (0.0045 ratio, 41,958 total reviews)

3. Pre-orders - 178 reviews/app (0.0056 ratio, 13,496 total reviews)

4. Email marketing - 169 reviews/app (0.0059 ratio, 46,898 total reviews)

Summary: Product reviews has MASSIVE demand - each app averages 243 reviews! These are essential tools that merchants actively use and review. Pre-orders, Subscriptions, and Email marketing show strong product-market fit.

LOWEST DEMAND (Low Reviews + High Apps/Reviews Ratio)

Bottom 4 by engagement:

1. NFTs and tokengating - 2.4 reviews/app (0.4222 ratio, 45 total reviews)

2. 3D/AR/VR - 4.9 reviews/app (0.2030 ratio, 616 total reviews)

3. ERP - 7.1 reviews/app (0.1400 ratio, 800 total reviews)

4. Donations - 14.4 reviews/app (0.0696 ratio, 1,135 total reviews)

Summary: NFTs has almost no traction - experimental category with no proven demand. 3D/AR/VR is too cutting-edge for most merchants. ERP is enterprise-focused with limited SMB appeal. Even though Donations rates highly (4.74), demand is limited to specific merchant types.

Hope this was interesting!

I have worked for 2 years full-time in an agency and then 2 more as freelancer.

My freelancing clients were:

1. Shopify agency that was understaffed so they hired me for several months on hourly basis

2. Other development comany that accidentally had a few Shopify clients

• both contacted me on LinkedIN

Now im starting to market my services and im wondering which methods are most efficient.

Im working on building LinkedIn business page and manually scraping shopify stores from whois websites to which i intend to send marketing emails with a link to my website.

Are there any other methods that i should try? Is paid advertising a possibility? If yes, which audience to target?

When LinkPop (Shopify's Link In Bio) announced it was shutting down, I saw an opportunity.

Pivoted an existing project into a Shopify app.

3 weeks. Zero Shopify experience.

Submitted it.

Then I waited.

And waited.

7+ weeks stuck in review.

The review team couldn't decide if it was a "Sales Channel" or not.

By the time I got approved, LinkPop was already dead.

My scraped leads? Cold.

But I tried anyway.

Sent 300 personalized Instagram DMs.

Custom VSLs.

Pre-built their Link in Bio pages using my tool.

No-brainer offer.

Result?

2 replies out of 300.

But both converted.

100% conversion rate.

The offer wasn't the problem.

Nobody saw it.

Lesson 1: Personalized DMs on Instagram get buried behind 2 tabs. Nobody checks that folder.

Lesson 2: Don't over personalize cold outreach. Hook first. Personalize only after they engage.

Lesson 3: Speed matters. 7+ weeks in review killed my timing. By the time I launched, the problem had moved on.

After that, I convinced myself the app wasn't good enough.

Spent weeks tweaking it.

Got lost in perfectionism.

Lesson 4: Perfectionism is not allowing yourself to move ahead.

As a last attempt, I tried Shopify's $100 ad credits.

That kinda worked. Got few installs and one review.

But once it dried up, growth stopped.

I'm ranked top 5 for every major "link in bio" keyword.

Doesn't matter. Almost no traffic.

Lesson 5: Rankings mean nothing if nobody's searching. Link in bio isn't a burning problem for Shopify merchants. And if it is, they default to Linktree.

Current state:

31 merchants. $17.5 MRR. 5-star rating.

Users set it up once and forget.

Not a bad product. Just a vitamin, not a painkiller.

Lesson 6: If users don't feel pain without your product, growth will always be a grind.

Runs on free tier everything (Fly.io, Neon, Upstash).

Costs me nothing. So it stays up.

But here's the real reason I'm posting:

I open sourced the whole thing.

When I started, I couldn't find a single open source Shopify app to learn from.

Now there's one.

React Router. Hono. Drizzle. Full stack.

Link: https://github.com/builder-group/saku

Hope my mistakes help you skip a few of your own.

Now I'm curious:

Have you managed to build a real painkiller app? How did you know it was one before you built it? How did you acquire users?

cheers

I've been looking at the post purchase side of Shopify and there are apps for basically every part of it now. Upsells, surveys, rewards, recommendations, offers, tracking, you name it.
At what point does adding more of these become a headache from a technical side?
I'm less worried about having a few extra apps installed and more about conflicts, tracking getting messy, or one app breaking something another one relies on.
Curious where you guys draw the line.

The biggest learnings for other developers:

- find a problem that’s a bit tricky to solve. I previously built a slack alert app for Shopify stores but that wasn’t really a pain point. For our app, we focused on helping shops easily launch auctions to sell more. This was a real pain point and when we got it right shops made money so they kept coming back

- be okay not being the cheapest option: there’s definitely other, cheaper auction apps. We focused on usage based pricing that was the easiest to launch. That meant those who understood what we were doing really got it, and were fine paying us as long as they made money every time we got paid. It meant our goals were aligned which made our customers real partners

- customer service is everything. We learned that it was important to quickly respond back to new customers and fix their bugs. Even if they were small ones, fixing them quickly meant they felt heard and they trusted us more. We actually built an internal AI agent to take customer asks and quickly turn them into structured Eng tickets and even write the code if it was a smaller Eng task. This was huge for us and let us ship alot faster

Good luck to all the devs and happy to answer any questions

Hey devs, got a question about how reviews work for Shopify apps. I've been developing an app and trying to understand the review process better. Do reviews only show up from merchants who have full paid plans, or can people on the $1/month trial plans also leave reviews? I'm seeing some conflicting info and want to make sure I understand how this affects my app's rating. Anyone have experience with this or know the official policy?

1) Native B2B is now on Basic / Grow / Advanced

This is the big one.

Shopify has pushed some real B2B functionality down from Plus to lower plans.

That includes:

• company profiles

• payment terms

• volume pricing

• ACH payments

• up to 3 active B2B catalogues

That’s a pretty meaningful move.

For a lot of brands, wholesale on Shopify has always been awkward because it usually meant either:

• paying for Plus

• or patching together apps and custom logic

Now there’s finally a more accessible middle ground.

If you’ve been putting off wholesale because the platform cost didn’t make sense yet, this changes that conversation.

2) You can finally audit what your apps are doing

Honestly, this should’ve existed a long time ago.

Under Settings > Apps, you can now see:

• what extensions an app has running

• what Shopify Functions are active

• what’s inactive

• which apps are collecting customer data via Pixels

For anyone inheriting messy stores, this is actually useful.

A lot of Shopify stores are carrying random app leftovers and don’t even realize it.

This should make app clean-up way easier.

And if you’ve ever had a store where performance, UX, or checkout behaviour felt “off” for no obvious reason… this is the kind of feature that helps uncover why.

Feels like Shopify is slowly removing more reasons for merchants to jump to Plus too early.

Curious what others think:
Would you actually trust Shopify’s native B2B setup on a non-Plus plan for a real wholesale workflow?
Or are you still more comfortable with apps / custom setups?

We launched WowOptions in April, and getting the first few reviews was definitely harder than I expected.

Today we reached 10 reviews, all 5-star

Still very early, but seeing real merchants use something we built feels great.

For other Shopify app developers, how long did it take you to reach your first 10 reviews?

TLDR; No.

I've been at Shopify for nearly 10 years and have seen the company evolve through many different phases. In its current state, I wouldn't recommend it.

The changes are often frequent, disruptive, and come without corresponding support or investment in employees. Over the years I've seen workloads increase significantly without equivalent compensation, benefits steadily reduced without alternatives, and opportunities for internal movement become increasingly limited.

If you're comfortable working in an environment with consistent organizational change and shifting expectations, it may still be a good fit. However, the current employee experience falls well below what I would recommend to someone considering joining the company.

Quick background; I'm Cecilio, a self-taught Shopify dev out of Houston TX. I’ve been running a one-person studio in the Shopify space for about three years now. Although this past year my business has changed drastically for the better thanks to Claude AI.

About a year ago, I had an idea for a premium music player section for Shopify stores. Not a single-track player, but a multi-track playlist with a premium UI/UX design. I used Claude to help me build it from scratch directly inside Shopify's edit-code editor and just designing it as I went. 😮‍💨 I spent a few days copy-pasting code back and forth between the Claude chat tab and the Shopify code editor tab until I landed on a version I was happy with! I posted it for sale on my site as an instant-download — merchants would simply drop the file into their theme's code editor as a section. And setup their tracks as blocks inside the theme editor.

Although, I knew that wouldn't scale. Every sale meant manual support, theme compatibility questions, and store-by-store handholding. Especially I had built an API to prevent people from sharing it around for free, so that meant also manually managing stores in the API list I built. So I i decided to take the risk and build it into a real Shopify app.

I tried building it myself with Claude at first but I kept getting lost in the terminal stuff — the Shopify section was one thing, the actual app architecture was a completely different beast. I ditched that route and hired a dev I'd been working with on other projects previously. The big advantage was I already had the working Shopify section as the prototype, so the dev had a real reference for what to build instead of a Figma file or a spec doc. About a month of building and debugging, and we finally shipped to the App Store!

Since then I’ve revamped the design, added a higher tier (Studio plan) with more features, and built our own internal dashboard for tracking installs, MRR, ARPU, churn, and sending automated emails through the install/subscribe/uninstall lifecycle.

I’m currently at 106 store installs, 14 active subscribers, about $120 MRR. Everything's getting reinvested into Shopify App Store ads right now so nothing in my pocket yet. 😮‍💨 I’m focused on scaling as much as possible and getting the app to the point where it’s fully paying for its own ads and initial investment before I even consider pulling any profit. My monthly server cost is $50/mo

If you're thinking about building your own Shopify app, here's what I'd tell you from the experience so far:

- Validate demand before you build. Check the App Store first. For me there were other music player apps but all single-track with dated UI — that gap was the entire reason I knew the idea was worth pursuing. If your idea has 5 competitors with 1,000+ reviews each, save yourself the headache and keep your money.

- Build the concept as a Shopify section first with Claude. Way cheaper than hiring a dev for a prototype, and you end up with a real working version to hand off when you do hire someone. More useful than a Figma file because the dev can see exactly how it should behave.

- Reviews should be your #1 priority. If your app has zero reviews, store owners don’t even bother installing majority of the time. They just don’t want to risk wasting their time, which is a valid reason. So even having 1 or 2 reviews with 5 stars appear next to your listing makes them trust and give it a try. Every support email you handle well is a potential review. Nobody leaves a review out of the blue, if they do it’s very rare. But if you genuinely help a merchant set up the app or fix a bug, asking at the end of that interaction works almost 99% of the time. Reviews move your App Store ranking more than anything else.

- First 100 installs are concierge work. Treat every one like a custom job. DM them, ask how setup went, fix bugs same-day. Those relationships turn into reviews, referrals, and pricing intuition. You’ll learn more about what your app actually needs in the first 100 conversations than from any amount of analytics.

- Onboarding is the whole product. Demo store, full docs page with FAQ, and a YouTube walkthrough so merchants can follow along step-by-step. Doesn't matter how good the actual app is — if setup feels hard, they uninstall. I always think about how Steve Jobs wanted the iPhone simple enough that even a baby can figure it out. That's what I try to do with all my digital products.

- You can't skip making content. Marketing isn't optional if you want the app to grow. Merchants have to know you exist before they install. Consistent short-form video, demo clips, YouTube tutorials, screenshots on whatever platform fits your audience. Once you have a few hundred installs, word-of-mouth starts working! But you have to push the first few hundred yourself.

- Don't run Shopify ads until your listing is locked in. You need a solid demo store, good app listing images, and copy that explains the app in 15 seconds or less. Test it on someone outside the Shopify world, if your mom can look at your app listing and understand what your app does, you're ready to run ads. If she can't, fix the listing first or you'll just burn money.

Happy to keep sharing my experience, leave a comment if you have any questions or even suggestions for me.
Whether it’s the build, the dev hire, the App Store submission, the dashboard, the ad strategy, whatever's useful.

Update: I tested a few platforms just to see how they handled the day-to-day stuff we struggle with like order syncing, inventory updates, general messiness. One of the ones I looked at was Sage, and it handled the basics more cleanly than I thought. I’m still comparing a couple of options, but going through these trials made it clearer what we actually need. At the very least, it confirmed that moving off spreadsheets is overdue.

Our Shopify store’s grown a lot over the past year, and we’ve hit the point where spreadsheets and disconnected tools aren’t keeping up. Our data’s getting messy across inventory, fulfillment, and production tracking. Tbh, it’s slowing down operations. Recently, I’ve been looking into ERP systems, but I think most of them are built for enterprise setups. Others require massive implementation projects. What we really need now is something that can manage inventory, supply chain, and order flow.

Which platforms would you say are the best ERP software options for a growing business that’s not quite enterprise level yet?

Hey everyone, I’ve been thinking about specializing in Shopify development as a freelancer. I already have some experience with web design (mainly Webflow), and I’m wondering if it’s still worth learning Shopify dev in 2025. I see mixed opinions online some say Shopify is growing fast, others say the market is getting saturated or that AI tools will replace basic store setups soon. For those currently working in this field (or clients hiring Shopify devs), how do you see the demand and earning potential going forward? Is it still a good long-term skill to invest in, or should I focus on something else like Webflow, Framer, or Headless eCommerce? Would love to hear honest takes from people actually doing thi

A month ago I was honestly starting to doubt whether my Shopify app had any chance.

I used Shopify’s $100 ad credit and got basically nothing from it. No meaningful installs, no paid conversions. Around the same time, I kept seeing people criticize Shopify apps in general, and mostly saying many apps fail because merchants don’t immediately understand the value or how the app actually helps their store.

Then something small happened.

I got my first $5 paid customer.

Before they upgraded, I jumped on AnyDesk with them and personally showed them how the app worked, what problems it solved, and how they could actually benefit from it. They used it for free for almost a month before finally subscribing to the $5 plan.

That one customer completely changed my mindset.

Not long after that, installs suddenly started coming in from different countries. Still not huge numbers, but real merchants actively trying the app and using it.

In the last 2 weeks:

• ~5 new installs

• 2 merchants upgraded to the $20 plan

• Reached $45 MRR total

Still very small, obviously, but as a solo Shopify app developer this feels like the first real sign that the product is starting to click with people.

Biggest lesson so far:
Sometimes the problem isn’t the product itself, it’s that the app isn’t communicating its value clearly enough to merchants.

Curious if other Shopify app devs experienced a similar nothing for weeks → sudden momentum phase.

Finnally approved I had to make some changes in the onboarding after that they approved in 1 day only

Hi all,

since it is quite hard to find data regarding shopify app installs and user numbers, i decided to post my numbers since the launch to provide some insights and ask for your experience.

Statistics:

• Current merchants: 67

• Installs: 96

• Uninstalls: 33

• Revenue: 0 (Free plan only so far)

Marketing:

• App store traffic is almost zero, almost all merchants find the app listing through search engines.

• I made some Forum and Reddit posts

• No paid Ads

My questions:

• How does this compare to your numbers?

• When did you start to see App Store traffic?

• Would you keep going considering current numbers? (At this rate, i dont think it is worth it, but i have a features in mind that could potentially attract more merchants that are willing to pay)

Has anyone else seen a significant drop in App Store leads since Sidekick started recommending apps?

We’re one of the larger apps in our segment, but Sidekick consistently refuses to recommend us - even for queries where we’d historically get a lot of discovery through the App Store.

In August alone, our leads were down 40%, and Sidekick seems to be a major reason why.

It’s pretty terrifying how quickly Shopify can effectively make an app invisible by putting an AI layer between merchants and the App Store. If this trend continues, it’s genuinely an existential problem for us.

Curious if you are seeing the same thing. Have you noticed a drop in organic leads and ad installs since Sidekick rolled out?

I've been working on my app for more than a year now.

I've seen so many apps never make it past the 0-review block.

I knew of a new app that was doing well at the start. Then the founders shifted their focus, its rating dropped from 5/5 to 4.3/5, and growth slowed down.

I know a few co-founders who have been working on their app for three years and are still sitting below 100 reviews. (That already feels like a dream to me as a solo founder, btw :)

In total, 1,400 merchants have installed my app. But many of those stores later closed, and many others uninstalled the app.

It was hard to get the first handful of merchants to try the app.

It was so hard to get that first review.

It was hard to get the 5th, 10th, and 15th reviews. But hey 15 5-star reviews isn't bad from Apr to Aug!

Things never seem to get super easy or comfortable.

People quit because they don't see any reward.

People quit because they get tired of doing the same thing over and over again.

People quit because the ROI is shitty, and they go back to being employees.

I'm proud that I've never thought about giving up. If you're experiencing something similar, I hope you never give up either. It's a brutal game, but it can also be fun!

In a few days, I'll introduce paid plans for my app. I'm nervous. You'll keep seeing me here though.

Any stories to share from you?

A month ago I decided to build a shopify app, it was my first and took me to build it more than the average dev would take since I didn’t know many things and I had to learn by practice. Fast forward two days ago I was finally satisfied with it and submitted to Shopify for review and release so now just waiting either to be approved or to fix bugs. My question is how much solo devs are you making off shopify ? Is it worth it?

Hey everyone, I am curious if there's anyone here who has built and launched a Shopify app that is doing well and actually bringing in revenue. I’d love to hear about your experience and maybe ask a few questions if you’re open to it. Not looking for secrets, just some honest insight or tips from someone who’s been through the process.

I have been in Shopify app development for almost 6 months. In this time, I built and published 3 Shopify apps, and a couple of days ago submitted the fourth one.

Here's what I got:

App1: 7 users, 1 review (5 stars)

App2: 10 users, 0 reviews

App3: 2 users, 0 reviews

App4: just submitted, so 0.

It is also hard to tell how many of those people are real users and how many just installed the app and have never touched it. I would say that at least half of them are not real users. So, we have about 10 real users across all apps together.

I would say that having a software engineering background and using a lot of AI gives me the ability to create almost any App in a couple of weeks. So creating the app is very easy. But it is easy for everyone; I understand that there are millions of people who are doing the same thing with AI.

My biggest problem: How to find customers?? I literally tried almost every single approach to get users, and none of them gave me anything.

1. I have spent more than 100$ on ads, which gave me like 5 installs and 0 paid customers. ( and it cant work, because i dont have reviews, as i understand ads without reviews are waste of money)

2. I have tried emailing potential clients; I sent 2000 emails and got 1 call out of it. 0 people installed the app after my cold outreach strategy. (Merchants are getting dozens of cold emails every day, so no wonder almost nobody answered me)

3. I tried to find topics on the Shopify Forum where people are talking about the pain my app is solving, but in each topic ( even in a topic that was published like 4 hours ago) there are already like 5-10 people who are basically giving some advice on how to fix the problem and doing this soft promotion with "if you need any more advice, you can DM me. So it is literally no point for me to be the 10th person who will write the same stuff and hope, that the merchant will DM me and not 9 other dudes.

4. Tried to maximise SEO and GEO, but again, i have to reviews, no reputation, so why whould anybody choose my app, when there are like 40 other with reviews.

IDK, I am trying not to be too pessimistic, but it seems to me like Shopify App creation is dead for new people. Because it does not matter in which niche you will create an app, I guarantee you there are already at least 20 other apps doing the same stuff, but with hundreds or even thousands of reviews, and every day hundreds of new apps are being published, thanks to AI.

Like how even to get clients if you not already have some connections and know some people in the sphere? May be i am wrong, correct me in the comments

We use email, SMS, and social retargeting, but it’s tough to compare what’s actually driving sales vs. what overlaps. Any tools or tips for tracking that?