The 18 Best Apps for Shopify Stores
Shopify is a powerhouse in the e-commerce industry, they offer one of the most complete e-commerce store-building platforms. Part of the reason why they are so successful is the thousands of third-party apps that support their platform.
In this list of Shopify apps, we will be going over which app categories are the most effective for e-commerce store performance. We will also recommend the best options for each category with reasons why they are great choices.
1. Product Page Enhancement
This category includes apps that help improve the visual appeal and functionality of your product pages. These apps are known to offer features like product image zoom, 360-degree display, and additional customization features.
Recommendation: PageFly - Customer Page Builder
PageFly is by a large margin, the most popular drag-and-drop Shopify page builder. PageFly is designed with an intuitive interface, powerful customization capacity, and a huge library of functionalities and features to make eCommerce effortless and help businesses build the perfect online stores fast and easily without any programming knowledge.
Highlights:
- PageFly has impressive customization power which proves to be an upgrade over the standard Shopify page builder
- The app also comes with an extensive library of 60+ elements, pre-built sections, and third-party elements with 40+ templates for most industries
- Optimized code for better loading speed - pages built with PageFly have slightly better page speed than those built with default Shopify Page Builder
Pricing: Free plan available. Monthly plans start from $24 a month.
2. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing includes leads that originate from partnerships, influencers, or any social shares. It is common for brands to incorporate a reward for endorsing their product which makes it advantageous for those who share. Affiliates generally have a dedicated audience, which means that the leads have a high conversion potential. Affiliate marketing apps are an effective way to set up your own custom program with additional advanced features.
Recommendation: UpPromote - Affiliate and Referral Marketing
UpPromote promises an effective and fully brandable program for businesses looking to focus on affiliate marketing. They offer industry-leading feature customization, with great design, and accurate tracking and insights. They handle everything you need to operate an advanced affiliate program for impact.
Highlights:
- Streamlined and highly customizable features, enable you to scale your affiliate program with ease.
- Customizable design and engaging rewards, make it highly attractive for users to engage with your brand
- Accurate data and security features make it possible to generate reliable leads and to optimize
Price: Free plan available. The growth plan starts at $29.99 a month.
3. Live Chat & AI Chatbot
Live chat and AI chatbots are powerful upgrades to the standard Shopify store. They deliver a dynamic and engaging experience for shoppers with the ability to accelerate resolution rates and resolve issues at an instant. These apps can give your customers an improved experience by making their shopping experience hassle free and cultivate loyalty. AI and Live chat are quickly growing segments to the e-commerce industry and are prized for their effect on the customer's experience.
Recommendation: Tidio - Live Chat and AI Chatbot
Tidio is a comprehensive customer service solution that combines live chat for Shopify with advanced chatbot capabilities. With a dedicated integration for Shopify, it allows you to monitor the impact of chatbot interactions on your sales. You can customize chatbot triggers based on your customers' product browsing behavior and even include product card suggestions within chatbot messages for a seamless shopping experience.
Highlights:
- AI Customer service automation
- 30+ pre-built templates for Chat bots
- Integrates with Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, Zapier
Price: Free to Install. Plans start at $25 a month.
4. Search Engine Optimization
SEO apps are widely used and highly recommended for their ability to improve your store’s visibility to search engines. These apps help you optimize your product descriptions, meta tags, and other critical elements necessary for a strong SEO profile.
Recommendation: Avada - SEO and Image Optimizer
Avada is an SEO optimization app designed for Shopify merchants to increase organic traffic and improve ranking. They claim to be able to boost your traffic in a matter of minutes, which is why they are such a great addition to your e-commerce store. SEO is a complex topic for most sellers, so having a way to automate the process is a huge advantage. SEO is responsible for the quantity and the quality of visitors to your store through organic search and Avada is one of the best choices available.
Highlights:
- Avada features an automated SEO audit function that can identify weaknesses
- Their SEO app can optimize your entire site for ranking, performance, and any issues found in the audit
- Avada can successfully identify and generate reports, identifying weaknesses in our SEO profile
Price: Free plan available. With additional plans starting at $34.95 a month.
5. Abandoned Cart Recovery
Every e-commerce manager understands that cart abandonment is a major hurdle, so having a solution is a priority. These apps use automated email reminders to customers who have added items to their cart but haven’t completed their purchase.
Recommendation: PushOwl - Web Push Notifications
PushOwl is one of the highest-rated cart abandonment apps on the Shopify app store. They utilize personalized web push notifications for a dynamic user experience. Reach your subscribers with perfectly timed automated notifications to drive engagement. PushOwl promises they can reduce cart abandonment rates, increase sales, and build engaging marketing campaigns.
Highlights:
- PushOwl has proven highly effective in collecting and targeting email subscribers
- With this app, you have the ability to craft and automate web push notifications for targetted messaging
- PushOwl has extensive personalization features and performance tracking can build highly impactful messages to persuade shoppers to complete their purchase
Pricing: Free plan available with a 14-day free trial. Paid plans start at $19 a month.
6. Email Marketing
Email marketing, recognized as one of the most effective tools, becomes even more impactful when paired with tools like Linked Helper. These invaluable apps not only streamline the management of marketing campaigns but also facilitate the creation of high-converting strategies. With the ability to collect customer email addresses and craft precision-targeted emails, these tools prove indispensable for promoting products and exclusive offers.
Recommendation: Omnisend - Email Marketing & SMS
Omnisend leverages two of the most effective communication methods to drive high-converting marketing campaigns. Omnisend makes it super simple to craft beautiful email and SMS campaigns. Since email and SMS are considered one of the most effective marketing channels for conversions, this app will prove to be one of your most important apps with its elevated functionality.
Highlights:
- Keep active communication with customers with email, newsletter, and global SMS campaigns
- Choose from endless options to create fully branded messages
- Automate your entire outreach marketing and start growing your customer list
Price: Free plan available. Standard plans start at $16 a month.
7. Reviews and Social Proof
Reviews are another powerful tool commonly used to cultivate a positive reputation. Creating an app can help your e-commerce business collect customer reviews, which can, in turn, build trust and credibility. These apps are also known to improve how you feature these reviews in your store, enhancing their visibility.
Recommendation: Growave - Reviews and Social Proof - All-in-One Marketing
Growave is the all-in-one marketing platform that helps Shopify brands reach, engage, and retain their customers with ease. Growave is best used for building social proof with its interactive reviews widget, custom review pages, and automated review request emails. What really makes Growave effective is the ability to grant rewards for images and reviews.
Highlights
- With Growave you have interactive review widgets, review request emails, and the ability to create dedicated review pages
- You can fully brand your widget, and emails and review landing pages
- Use rewards to engage and motivate reviews and photo reviews with the additional ability to capture loyalty members
Price: Free Plan Available. Paid plans start from $49 a month.
8. Inventory Management
This category of apps is primarily concerned with managing your stock levels and automating reordering products. E-commerce businesses that see inefficiency in inventory levels stand to improve their operating efficiency and understanding of product performance.
Recommendation: Thrive - Inventory Management
Thrive is a centralized inventory management app devised for Shopify merchants to optimize their inventory levels, view their data more efficiently, and automate their working processes. It enables you to save time, cut costs, and most importantly make smarter business decisions while managing your e-commerce business. Thrive by Shopventory is rated as one of the most popular inventory management solutions on the official Shopify app store and has our vote of approval.
Highlights:
- Thrive offers multi-location support enabling you to keep real-time tabs on multiple locations and channels
- Automatically scan, transfer, and reorder products for efficient inventory management.
- Data-rich reporting allows you to make more informed decisions using advanced inventory management tools
Price: 30-day free trial. $99 a month for standard plans.
9. Shipping and Order Tracking
These apps can assist with shipping options, printing labels, and automating order fulfillment processes. Many would consider them essential for managing product shipment, which could become a major pain point for customers.
Recommendation: Track123 ‑ Order Tracking and Shipping
Track123 is an order management app that helps to deliver a fully branded order tracking experience. With this app, you have access to thousands of couriers around the world and real-time updates on orders. This app automates the entire process and provides opportunities for marketing and cross-selling. Track123 is also compatibly with dropshipping allows merchants to control the details of their notifications.
Highlights:
- Access to thousands of couriers with an app
- Monitor with real-time updates and order tracking
- They provide a fully branded experience for merchants
Price: Free plans available. The growth plan starts at $9 per month.
10. Live Chat and Customer Support
Integrating live chat or custom support apps can dramatically improve your responsiveness and in turn support important sales. They help by providing real-time assistance to customers on your website, answering their questions, and addressing their concerns.
Recommendation: Gorgias - Helpdesk & Live Chat
Gorgias is a brilliant customer support helpdesk designed specifically for Shopify stores. Gorgias offers centralized control of your full customer service function for the quickest and most efficient resolutions. Reduce customer friction and accelerate resolutions with self-service options. Gather deeper custom profiles, unify all interactions in one platform, and respond immediately.
Highlights:
- Unifies all customer interactions under on help desk that enables immediate action
- Has automation options that allow for self-service and create deeper customer information
- Speed up resolution times with quick responses, a unified helpdesk, and automation
Price: 7-day free trial. The starter plan begins at $10 a month.
11. Upsell and Cross-Sell
These apps work by suggesting related or high-potential products along the customer's journey. They are considered valuable because they make timely recommendations that could lead to higher average order value.
Recommendation: ReConvert - Post Purchase Upsell
ReConvert is a simple yet powerful app that empowers you to build customized thank-you pages for your Shopify store. Use it to boost your AOV via post-purchase upsells, countdown timers, and related products. Plus, enhance your retention with post-purchase surveys, a re-order button, and more. With an intuitive drag-and-drop page builder, advanced analytics, and powerful integrations, there's no reason not to join 28,000+ other merchants who are maximizing their revenue with ReConvert today.
Highlights:
- Boost revenue with triggered thank-you page upsells & cross-sells
- You can create high-converting pages without the use of code and scripts
- Tailored analytics allow you to test and optimize your campaigns for effectivity
Price: Free for development. $4.99 a month on basic plans.
12. Loyalty and Rewards
These apps are an effective way to implement a complete customer loyalty program into your e-commerce store. They work by rewarding points, discounts, and tiers for customer activity. They are meant to retain customers long-term and stretch their value, while also improving the functionality of your e-commerce store.
Recommendation: Growave - Loyalty Rewards - All-in-One Marketing
Growave offers multiple apps under one single platform; Reviews, Rewards and Loyalty, Wishlist, and Instagram. Beyond what's mentioned here, there are also email notifications, analytics, and full brand customization. Rewards serve as a central component of this app, where you can create incentives for a variety of goals. With the ability to fully control what and how you reward interactions with your brand Growave becomes a strategic and versatile tool.
Highlights:
- When you install Growave you receive a bundle of different marketing apps that work together from one platform
- Growave allows you to reward points for a broad variety of actions like social media follows or reviews in addition to purchases
- Growave’s apps are highly scalable, with case studies showing how brands accumulated thousands of reviews accumulated through loyalty rewards
Price: Free Plan Available. Plans start at $49 a month.
13. Analytics and Reporting
One of the biggest advantages of e-commerce is the abundant data. Having a comprehensive analytics app can improve your understanding of customer trends, marketing performance, and conversion rates. This could in turn lead to more attuned decision making and better strategy.
Recommendation: Data Export IO - Reporting and Analysis
Data Export IO is one of the most comprehensive reporting solutions for Shopify stores. This app brings you a much-needed improvement in how you visualize your shop data. Take a deeper dive into customer trends and draw more accurate projections with this enhanced reporting solution.
Highlights:
- Observe organized data from a list of premade reports, with improved visualization options
- Customize and improve your data visualization with advanced filtering options. Find key details in your store data
- Export data in multiple formats for further analysis and reporting. Use your data in CSV, Excel, or PDF formats
Price: 15-day free trial. Basic plans start at $7 a month.
14. Social Media Integration
Especially useful for e-commerce businesses that utilize social media actively. These integrations can turn your social media into a storefront, enabling you to sell directly on your most active social media platforms.
Recommendation: Wave - Instagram Feed & TikTok
Wave Instagram Feed & TikTok is a complete Instagram feed app, which is fully compatible with a new Instagram API integration. It’s been one of the first apps to integrate the Facebook Graph API, allowing for a more secure and stable connection. The tool offers a simple and easy-to-use interface while keeping all of the advanced features of the best apps in its segment
Highlights:
- Engage customers using premade templates and turn your social media into a storefront
- Implement mobile-optimized social media campaigns for extra reach and engagement
- Tag products on the Instagram gallery and embed them anywhere on your store
Price: 14-Day Free Trail. One plan at $4.95 a month.
15. Multi-Currency Apps
These types of apps are considered necessary for any international expansion. We know that complying with localized markets requires a lot of work and research. Multi-currency apps can alleviate a major hurdle when operating in a broad industry like e-commerce.
Recommendation: Auto Currency Switcher - Multi-Currency Converter
Auto Currency Switcher is essential for Shopify businesses looking to breach international markets. This app makes it t makes it possible to target new markets with automatic currency conversion with additional improvements to the design and user experience.
Highlights:
- Automate currency conversion based on the customer’s country and customize it to fit your vision
- Enjoy an improved design for your currency switcher with a super simple setup and usability
- Target global markets with seamless currency conversion
Price: 15-day free trial. With a free plan available.
16. Subscription Apps
These apps are the easiest and most effective solutions for businesses that employ recurring payment systems as part of their business model. They make it simpler for businesses that are reliant on these types of systems, to manage their billing systems.
Recommendation: RecurrinGO! Subscriptions
With RecurrinGO! Subscriptions, you can increase your AOV by selling products as a subscription and offering recurring payments to your customers. The app comes with all the features needed to set up a high-converting and successful subscription business. RecurrinGO! Subscriptions is fully integrated with Shopify Checkout to provide a seamless shopping experience and ensure robust security. It offers a 14-day free trial period to test it.
Highlights:
- Pay-per-delivery and prepaid subscriptions
- Automatic charges and recurring invoices
- Flexible discount options
- Subscription widget customization
- Intuitive customer portal
Price: 14 day free trail available
17. Exit-Intent and Pop-Ups
These apps display a pop-up when a user is trying to leave your store. They offer them a last-minute deal to encourage shoppers to stay and make a purchase and they are also considered a practical way to capture intent.
Recommendation: Poptin - Exit & Email Pop-Ups
Poptin is a user-friendly lead capture platform that allows users to create high-converting pop-ups and exit intent forms. Opt-ins are proven effective for lowering bounce rates, reducing cart abandonment, and accumulating email subscribers. They have been popularized in e-commerce as a non-intrusive solution to high cart abandonment rates. Poptin has dozens of templates that you can use to create highly engaging campaigns. However, Poptin is more than just that, they also have detailed customization, 50+ native integrations, A/B testing, analytics, and additional features.
Highlights
- Poptin offers numerous templates and is fully customizable for a fully branded experience
- Poptin generates top-of-line UX design for highly engaging and non-intrusive experience
- With effective triggers, coupled with promotional offers, they can create highly personalized offers
- By utilizing A/B testing and customer data you can craft the most effective campaigns
Price: Free plan available for up to 1000 visitors. Basic plans start at $25 a month.
18. Complete Dropshipping Solution
If your looking to start dropshipping Syncee is your best choice. Dropshipping is a no inventory business model that allows you source products and deliver directly to customers. They cut out storage, product management, and delivery. Dropshipping is a growing global industry and Shopify is home to some of the most effective dropshipping businesses.
Recommendation: Syncee - Product Import Export App for Shopify
Syncee is a global B2B dropshipping and wholesale platform that helps retailers and suppliers connect. On its Marketplace there are millions of ready-to-sell items from trusted dropshipping suppliers in various categories, from Fashion through Home &Garden to Pet Supplies. With all the powerful automated solutions, like product uploads, updates, and order synchronization dropshipping is a breeze. You can add the products you like to sell to your catalog and effortlessly populate your online store. Start your online business today with no upfront inventory costs and no risks.
Highlights
- Dropshipping products with fast shipping you can add to store in a fewclicks
- Automated product uploads, updates, and order synchronization
- Powerful product filtering and editing tools
- Highly customizable pricing settings
Price: Paid plans start at $29/Month. 14-day FREE trial.
Conclusion
The Shopify app store stands out amongst other e-commerce platforms for having some of the most advanced third-party apps. These apps bring real value to merchants, making it both easier and more effective to operate an e-commerce business. This list of the top Shopify apps is comprised to guide merchants in their selection of the most effective additions to their e-commerce store.
Frequently asked questions
What are the benefits of Loyalty Programs?
They are linked to lower customer acquisition costs, increased average order value, and lifetime value of customers. They are considered robust ecommerce marketing tools. Loyalty programs are also databases of all your members that can be used in combination with emails to re-market shoppers.
Can you combine Reviews with Rewards?
Rewards compliment Reviews very well. They make it more worthwhile for the customer to leave a review and improve your company profile at the same time. Stores with hundreds or thousands of reviews have excellent track records and greatly benefit from them.
Can you display reviews and review requests in emails?
Reviews and review request can both be featured in emails, along with a few other customization options. It is highly encouraged to combine them with reward points to increase the rate of their collection and personalize your emails so that the right people are seeing the right messages.
Do Reviews impact SEO?
Reviews are excellent for SEO and make your shop stand out. They can be used to build your website's profile and can featured across your marketing channels.
Why should you use Instagram UGC?
There are several benefits to using Instagram UGC; it turns your Instagram into a shoppable store, it creates beautiful catalogs in your site and it provides a layer of authenticity with UGC. You can also turn your Instagram into an additional sales channel, while boosting your social media.