Shopify Partner apps are apps built by independent developers for the Shopify App Store to automate or assist with the tasks shop owners face. The most successful help bring more people to the shop, move more visitors through checkout, or simplify running the store.
Shopify gambled early and hard on the idea that a community of independent development teams would be able to create a better ecommerce ecosystem than their in-house developers could alone. That gamble was the Shopify Partners Program.
And it has clearly paid off. Shopify now says millions of businesses trust it to power their stores. These shops are kept running by various Shopify Partners and their apps, themes, and expertise.
In this article, we are going to go through the most successful Shopify Partners Apps. These apps have helped countless business owners and customers come together.
Shopify opened its App Store to Shopify Partners, independent development teams who build the apps customers had been asking for. Shopify started out with its own suite of 40 apps; now there are several thousand, each vetted, tested and approved.
Shopify started out with its own suite of 40 apps. These were mostly integrations with established platforms, including MailChimp.
When it finally decided to open up the Shopify App Store to Shopify Partners, it created a wishlist of all the apps its customers had been begging for.
Well, the dev community answered, and it kept on answering. Now there are several thousand apps available, and more are being vetted, tested, and approved today. This process protects the shop owners while bestowing trust on all apps so business owners feel safe trying new apps.
The Shopify App Store is where shop owners find apps to automate or assist with almost any task. It sits alongside Shopify Themes, a store of template designs, and Shopify experts who help with setup, SEO and finding suppliers.
Shopify Partners can provide several different services. Shopify experts spend their time doing anything from setting up stores to providing advice on how to fine tune the store’s SEO or make contact with new overseas suppliers.
Shopify Themes is a store where design gurus can provide template store designs to shop owners to simplify the process of having a professional ecommerce destination.
The Shopify App Store is where you can find apps to automate or assist in any task a shopkeeper may have.
Apps in the Shopify App Store are grouped into categories such as sales channels, finding products, selling products, orders and shipping, store design, marketing and conversion, and store management.
The Shopify App Store has the following categories:
Sales channels
Finding products
Selling products
Orders and shipping
Store design
Marketing and conversion
Store management
Broadly speaking, these apps are designed to get more people to the shop, more visitors through the checkout process, or to simplify the process of shop ownership.
While there is no foolproof method of vetting the apps both for their quality and for their ability to help a specific shop, there are 2 things you can take to better ensure an app is the right fit for your business.
Read the reviews. While only about one in twenty users will write a review, they are usually an indication of the best and worst cases. That’s because happy and angry people are motivated, and motivated people write reviews.
Look for apps with a free trial. This will give the shop owner a chance to go through the app, see how it works, and confirm it meets their needs before spending money.
Good free trials are usually combined with emails and one-on-one customer service as the app owners want to convert to a sale. If there is none of that added customer service, that can be a red flag.
Let’s take a look at some of the most successful Shopify Partner Apps. To make life easier, the apps are divided into the following categories:
Email marketing
Referral marketing
SEO
Sales and promotions
Loyalty and reviews
Delivery and returns
Omnisend uses smart segmentation technology to make sure that each message is sent to only those customers who will find it valuable. Then, it sends those messages out through Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Facebook and Google retargeting ads, SMS, web push notifications, etc.
It also makes email campaign creation a breeze with its drag-and-drop email builder.
Omnisend has a free plan, and then variable pricing that starts at $16/month.
ReferralCandy provides the functionality to reward customers for sharing your store with their friends. This “social proof” that a store’s products are great can lead to more sales.
ReferralCandy has a free trial, and its paid plans combine a monthly fee with a success fee on referral sales.
Smile.io provides easy-to-use loyalty programs that help brands transform one-time sales into repeat customers.
Smile.io has a free tier, and its paid plans are priced by monthly order volume.
Image optimization best practices still lag behind those for written content. SEO Image Optimizer gives you the ability to add alt tags to images so they rank better and more often.
Booster SEO has a free plan, with paid plans for more features.
Plug In SEO is a simple alarm system that alerts the user when there are any issues with their SEO. It then directs the user to the problems so they can be fixed.
Plug In SEO offers a free trial, followed by paid monthly plans.
Prisync monitors your competitors’ prices and then uses a set of user-defined rules to dynamically change the prices in a shop in real time so the store remains competitive.
PriSync has a 14-day free trial, then paid plans including Premium and Platinum tiers.
ReCharge is designed for stores that have recurring billing. For example, a shop that sells subscription boxes can use ReCharge to automate those recurring invoices.
ReCharge has a free trial, then charges a monthly fee, plus a per-transaction fee on its larger plans.
Judge.me helps store owners collect and display star ratings and reviews about their products.
Judge.me has a free tier and then a second tier that costs $15/month.
Rivo helps shops engage with their customers to increase sales without a higher marketing spend.
Rivo has a free tier and then paid tiers.
Alpaca Local Pickup & delivery provides curbside pickup and local delivery functionality for stores that sell to local customers online and offline.
Alpaca Local Pickup & delivery is free to install with a per-order fee, and paid plans start at $19/month plus a smaller per-order fee.
Whatever category your Shopify Partner apps fall into, track the growth metrics they affect. To do that, you need an analytics tool that integrates directly with your Shopify account and shows how your store is growing.
Whatever category your successful Shopify Partner Apps fall into, you need to track its growth metrics. To do this, you need an analytics tool that integrates directly with your Shopify account, like Baremetrics. Start a free trial today.
Shopify Partner apps are apps built by independent development teams, the Shopify Partners, and listed in the Shopify App Store. They automate or assist with tasks shop owners face, from email marketing and referrals to SEO, pricing, subscriptions, reviews and local delivery.
Read the reviews, because happy and angry users are the most motivated to write them, and look for apps you can try before you pay, so you can confirm an app meets your needs. Good trials usually come with emails and one-on-one customer service.
Omnisend is one example. It uses smart segmentation to send each message only to the customers who will find it valuable, across channels such as email, SMS and web push notifications, and it includes a drag-and-drop email builder and a free plan.
SEO Image Optimizer, now Booster SEO, lets you add alt tags to images so they rank better and more often. Plug In SEO works like an alarm system, alerting you to SEO issues on your store and directing you to the problems so you can fix them.
Subscription apps such as ReCharge are designed for stores with recurring billing. A shop that sells subscription boxes, for example, can use ReCharge to automate those recurring invoices instead of billing each customer by hand. It charges a monthly fee, plus a per-transaction fee on its larger plans.