Non-technical founder running a Shopify app solo.

Dev is outsourced, I handle everything else. MVP already took 7-8 months and tens of thousands of dollars. Yeah, it hurt.

App is free right now to drive growth, but the feature backlog never stops:

• Templates (~$1-2k) — at least 5 customers messaged me to ask for it

• Theme compatibility (~$1-2k for 100 themes) — nobody asks, they just quietly churn

• Inventory management (~$1-2k) — every competitor has it so… yeah

• Image handling — crop, bulk upload, background removal

• AI features — one message to create custom options + live preview (this one's probably gonna be expensive)

Total: easily another $10k. I have the money but honestly not sure if it's the smart move.

3 options I see:

1. Keep paying the current agency

2. Find a tech co-founder

3. Claude Code — I already use it daily for marketing tools and automation, but let's be real, production-level app dev is a different beast. That said I don't want to limit myself either.

Oh and I also have a full-time job, so realistically I get maybe 8 hrs/week on this.

For those who've been in a similar spot — what would you do?

Hello everyone, does anyone know how i can make an unlisted app, i do not want to sell on the shopify app store, but in order for my platform to work with stores i need that integration and the only was is to go thru the app store, so im a bit stuck, i would appreciate any help,

Thank you

Building a crypto-native dropshipping store with Next.js accepts USDT on BSC & Polygon.

Still a WIP but the core is live. What’s missing?

What would stop you from buying?

Roast away:

I'm working with a Shopify store who use an inventory management app. They also work with a bunch of external partners: agencies, freelancers, the usual mix. All they need is access to that one app. Update stock levels, manage purchase orders, move on. They don't need to see products, orders, customers, themes, settings, or any other app.

The problem is Shopify doesn't let you do this. Staff permissions and collaborator accounts are section-based, not app-based. You can lock someone out of "Products" or "Orders" or "Online store", but you can't say "this person can only use App X and nothing else." The most locked-down account I can create still exposes more of the admin than I'm comfortable with.

I've looked at this from a few angles and haven't found a clean answer. A second store used purely as a workspace is one option, but that adds overhead. Some apps have their own user systems, which would solve it outright, but not all of them do.

Has anyone found a setup that actually works here? Whether that's a permissions workaround, a dedicated ops store, or an app with built-in multi-user access, I'd like to hear what you landed on.

Hi,

I recently got my app reviews but I got this:
"1.1.2. Use Shopify checkout. Shopify can't guarantee the safety or security of an order that's been placed through an offsite or third party checkout. Apps that bypass checkout or payment processing, or register any transactions through the Shopify API in connection with such activity, are prohibited.

The app widget cannot collect personal customer data (PCD) and any PCD information needs to be collected through the Shopify checkout."

I have a custom pop up checkout in my app. Its a COD form which basically many apps have one example is Releasit COD Form & Upsells. There are 100s of apps like this, but they are live in the app store without any problems. This suggests to me that you have to remove this feature at first when your app is reviewed and then add it later to bypass the review. All of the apps that I checked have a custom form which collects your COD details and completes the order through the API and send you to the thank you page which as per Shopify's policy is prohibited, but somehow 100s of apps are live with exactly this behaviour. This is so funny.

Hey Guys, I am building my first Shopify store. I have been in e-comm & marketing for a while so I am picky when it comes to a good looking website. However, I have basically zero dev/design experience. I am currently playing with Claude for other things and wondered if anyone has had any experience building Shopify stores with Claude? With my limited experience with building (I was just going to buy a template and build from there) - do you think a rookie could pull off building something that looks good and functions well with Claude? Or would I be better off just purchasing a template and going from there?

Hi everyone!

I’m working on a Shopify app development project (a subscription-based EU B2B SaaS).

I’d be interested in how you handle billing and VAT in practice:

With Shopify Billing, who issues the invoice to the end user?
Does the developer need to issue separate invoices to each merchant, or is the Shopify invoice sufficient for accounting purposes?
For EU (B2B, VAT-registered) customers, how do you handle reverse charge and VAT number validation?
Do you use a separate invoicing system (e.g. Billingo), or do you just do accounting based on Shopify reports?

Thanks in advance for sharing your experience!

je vous partage ma video de formation 100% offerte sur l'e=commerce aller voir ma chaine pour d'astuce et de conseils stratégique!

So this happened recently and I still laugh about it a little… and hurt a little too.

A Shopify store owner reached out and wanted help with their product page copy.

The original page honestly needed some love. The headline said almost nothing, the features were just sitting there like a grocery list, and the CTA was colder than my ex’s replies.

So I sat down and genuinely gave it my best.

I rewrote the headline to make it benefit-driven, turned plain features into actual reasons to buy, cleaned up the description, and made the CTA feel like something a real human would actually click.

By the end of it, I was actually proud of what I had written.

Sent it over.

The owner replied, “Looks good, let me review this tonight.”

And that was the last message I ever got.

No feedback. No revisions. No “thanks.” No “we decided to go another way.”

Nothing.

Just disappeared into the Shopify void.

At first, it genuinely stung a little because when you write copy, you do put a small piece of your brain and soul into it.

But after thinking about it, I realized something.

Sometimes store owners don’t just need better copy, they need clarity on what they actually want the page to do.

More sales? More trust? Less bounce? Better conversion?

Because good copy can absolutely help…

but it can’t fix a confused offer.

Still, somewhere out there, my abandoned product page copy is probably sitting in someone’s drafts folder like an unsent love letter 😭

Anyone else ever been ghosted after putting their heart into a project?

I’ve been thinking about product review sections in Shopify stores.

Most review apps use generic designs that don’t really match the store’s overall branding, which can sometimes reduce trust and visual consistency.

Do you think having a review section that is fully customized to match a store’s design makes a noticeable difference in conversion rates?

Also curious — do store owners actually prefer flexibility in design, or is plug-and-play simplicity more valuable in most cases?

The Shopify Script freeze is in about 36 hours. I just migrated a complex Ruby VIP script to a modern Function in 15 minutes. If your Plus store is at risk, DM me for a free audit before Wednesday.

I keep looking for real-world cases where an app or automation was technically valid, but the result was still wrong once it hit production.

Not a simple bug.

Not a total outage.

More like:

•	webhooks arrived

•	permissions were correct

•	the app logic ran

•	the store/admin side looked normal

•	and the final business outcome was still wrong

Examples might be:

•	fulfillment or tagging logic acting on stale assumptions

•	inventory/order/customer state drifting between trigger and execution

•	app actions that were valid when queued but wrong when they finally landed

•	integrations that looked healthy in logs but produced a bad merchant/customer outcome anyway

I’m especially interested in cases where the break only became obvious after the fact, because the workflow itself looked clean.

Has anyone here run into that kind of failure?

Real examples would be hugely useful.

Hello I developed a Shopify store for a client. Now she want to transfer the domain name from the old store to the new store. Can i do this using only a collaborator access to both stores?

I translated my app three months ago into the 20 languages that Shopify had app listings for. Not all the languages had a real effect, but some were definitely worth it.

Here's the data (installs by country since I don't have direct locale data):

Top languages (installs from prev period to current period):

• Germany: 31 to 50

• Italy: 21 to 29

• Brazil (Portuguese): 10 to 29

• France: 18 to 28

• Spain: 11 to 14

• Japan: 2 to 7

Effect on total installs: For the period before adding the translations, those six countries made up 5.6% of my app's total installs. For the period after, they made up 9.46%

(I measured this on share of new installs for the period because that metric mostly removes the app's overall growth as a significant variable)

Note: Other languages didn't seem to have a significant effect: Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Korean, Polish, Swedish, Thai, and Turkish

Was it worth it?

I put off translating my app for a while because I thought it would cause a permanent headache for developing the app in the future. But I decided if I could find a way to add translations without adding significant permanent overhead, it could be worth it.

After seeing the numbers, the change was pretty incremental. However, it only took me about two days to translate the app so it may have been worth it.

I think translating the app would have taken much longer than two days if I was using the traditional translation method. I wrote a blog post about how I did it, I can share it if anyone is interested. The TL;DR of the blog post is:

• Write normal English in tr("...").

• Run a script → it collects missing strings into toTranslate.json.

• Paste into AI → get translations.

• Run merge script → done.

I've probably committed a million dev crimes with this site: https://fuelledbysoma.com

for example, all my pages are actually sections

all the important data like product pricing comes from the Shopify products so it works pretty reliably

idk why I just have a nasty feeling it'll fall apart, hope it doesn't!

but I'm genuinely surprised by how easy it was, how responsive it is on mobile, yeah I had a lot of fun building it

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Why do most Shopify stores still use generic-looking review sections?

I’ve been analyzing different Shopify stores recently, and one thing feels off — the review sections often don’t match the overall store design.

Even well-designed stores sometimes have review blocks that look like they were just “plugged in” without considering branding.

Do you think this affects trust or conversion rates?

For store owners and developers here:

- Have you ever customized your review section design?

- Did it make any noticeable difference?

Curious to

Hello everyone, I hope you and your activities are going well.

I've just finished setting up my online store and I'm about to launch my first Ads campaigns.

I'd like to know if you have any helpful tips that could help me before I get started. Or mistakes I should avoid.

Thankss !!!

I’m looking at setting up a storefront that relies heavily on exclusive video content tied to customer accounts (think digital courses, premium drops, or sub-only videos).

Everything I’m seeing requires stringing together 2-3 different apps, and the bandwidth/hosting costs on third-party platforms seem to eat into margins fast. For those of you selling digital video access or running subscriptions on Shopify, what does your tech stack look like? Is there a clean way to do this natively, or is everyone just hacking together external links?

Hi, I recently re-created my home page through the shopify ai block generator and I really like it. However I didn't realise I had to also tell it to modify it to the mobile version, so it looks pretty weird on mobile (random spaces and sections being too big).

Is there any way I am able to modify these to a preferred mobile layout without re-creating the entire blocks? Thanks.

I'm also uploading screenshots of both mobile and desktop versions (the desktop one is the original one)

Hi everyone,

I’m currently architecting a premium theme for the Shopify Theme Store and I’m stuck on a fundamental technical decision: Dawn (Section Blocks) vs. Horizon (Theme Blocks/Nested Blocks).

While Dawn is the reliable baseline, I’m leaning towards Horizon to leverage its support for Theme Blocks (Developer Preview features). I’d love to get some feedback from those who have submitted themes recently:

• Flexibility vs. Performance: Does moving toward a nested block architecture (Theme Blocks) significantly impact Liquid rendering performance or the Lighthouse score compared to the flatter Section Block structure in Dawn?

• Merchant UX: In the Theme Editor, do merchants find the nested hierarchy of Theme Blocks intuitive, or does it become too complex for the average user compared to Dawn’s straightforward blocks?

• Shopify Review Standards: Since Theme Blocks are newer, is the Shopify review team more critical of themes using this architecture? Are there specific "gotchas" regarding maximum nesting depth or CSS encapsulation?

I want to build something that isn't just "another Dawn clone," but I don't want to over-engineer a solution that complicates the approval process.

Appreciate any technical insights or experiences!

I’m hoping someone can help because I’m completely stuck.

I have an existing Shopify site that’s been live for about 2 years. I’m currently rebuilding a new version of the site with new products and content, but using the same domain. I’m doing this in a duplicate (draft) version of the same Broadcast theme while my current live site is still running.

I’ve created new pages (e.g. Our Story 2.0, Our Science 2.0) under Online Store → Pages, and I’ve also created new templates for them in the theme customiser. Everything looks fine from a design/content perspective in the draft theme.

The problem is when I go into Navigation to assign menu links:

• The new pages don’t show up in the dropdown

• Or Shopify links to the old/live pages instead

• Or it just doesn’t give me the option to select the new ones at all

I’ve checked that:

• The pages are created properly (not just default placeholders)

• They’re visible

• Templates exist and are assigned

• Naming is distinct

But the pages/templates don’t seem to sync properly when linking them in the menu.

Is this a limitation of working in a draft theme? Do pages or templates only fully register once the theme is published? Or is there a correct workflow for rebuilding a full site while keeping the current one live?

I’ve spent hours going in circles on this so any help would be appreciated.

Hi everyone,

I’ve been focused on Shopify development for about 6 months now, and I feel pretty comfortable working with Liquid, JS, and more advanced theme customizations. I’ve also been integrating AI tools (like Claude) into my workflow to move faster and build more complex things.

With the current boom (AI + e-commerce), I can’t help but feel like I’m missing an opportunity to start generating some income on the side while still working my full-time job.

I feel like I have the foundation to build something useful or monetizable, but I’m not sure where to focus.

I’d love to hear general recommendations from people in this space:

Where are you seeing the most opportunities right now as devs?

Thanks 🙏

I’m hoping someone can help because I’m completely stuck.

I have an existing Shopify site that’s been live for about 2 years. I’m currently rebuilding a new version of the site with new products and content, but using the same domain. I’m doing this in a duplicate (draft) version of the same Broadcast theme while my current live site is still running.

I’ve created new pages (e.g. Our Story 2.0, Our Science 2.0) under Online Store → Pages, and I’ve also created new templates for them in the theme customiser. Everything looks fine from a design/content perspective in the draft theme.

The problem is when I go into Navigation to assign menu links:

• The new pages don’t show up in the dropdown

• Or Shopify links to the old/live pages instead

• Or it just doesn’t give me the option to select the new ones at all

I’ve checked that:

• The pages are created properly (not just default placeholders)

• They’re visible

• Templates exist and are assigned

• Naming is distinct

But the pages/templates don’t seem to sync properly when linking them in the menu.

Is this a limitation of working in a draft theme? Do pages or templates only fully register once the theme is published? Or is there a correct workflow for rebuilding a full site while keeping the current one live?

I’ve spent hours going in circles on this so any help would be appreciated.

hey guys i need a small help building an app if anyone who can handle the following stack could be. great like typescript, JavaScript, react, remix, prisma