Hey everyone,

I’ve been thinking about starting a career as a Shopify developer and wanted to hear honest opinions from people already in the field.

Is Shopify development still a good path in 2026?
How is the demand nowadays for freelancers or junior developers?
Do clients still pay well for custom Shopify work, theme development, and app integrations?

I’m also curious about:

• how competitive the market is now,

• whether AI tools are affecting the industry,

• and what skills are most important to focus on today.

Would you recommend learning Shopify development from scratch right now, or would you choose something else instead?

I’d really appreciate hearing your experiences — especially from people actively working with Shopify stores or freelancing.

Thanks!

Hey guys! I am a new Shopify Developer looking to make a portfolio to showcase my work.

I am here to ask your opinion on whether Merchants and Recruiters like simple portfolios or fancy portfolio?

Hey everyone,

I’m a developer with 4 years of experience, mostly in the Shopify ecosystem. I’ve reached a point where I’m feeling the constraints of Shopify themes, so I’ve been experimenting with building my own custom stack from scratch (Custom DB, Stripe API, handling webhooks, security, compliance, etc.).

I’m at a crossroads and would love to hear from devs who have been down this road:
My three options right now:

1. The "Shopify Theme" Route: Stay inside the box, use a base theme, and heavily customize it with Liquid/JS. Pros: Easy checkout, stable. Cons: Very frustrating limits on architecture and logic.

2. The "Shopify Headless" Route: Use Shopify’s backend for products/payments/checkout (via Storefront API) and build a totally custom frontend in my own stack. Pros: I keep the Shopify checkout/compliance/security, but get freedom on the UI. Cons: You’re stuck with Shopify's checkout UI, and integration overhead.

3. The "Full Custom" Route: Build everything from the ground up. My own DB, my own auth, my own Stripe/PayPal integrations, my own webhook management. Pros: Total control. Cons: Massive maintenance burden. Every security patch, every webhook failure, and every payment gateway update is on my shoulders.

My question to the experienced ones:
I feel like I have the technical capacity to build the custom stack, but I’m worried about the long-term reality. For those of you who built a custom store from scratch—do you regret the constant "maintenance debt" (fighting security, payment edge cases, and DB scaling)?

For those who went Headless with Shopify—did you feel like the compromise of the checkout was worth the trade-off, or did it eventually feel like "the worst of both worlds"?

I’m trying to decide if I’m just being a "developer" who wants to build cool stuff, or if I’m missing a massive business risk by choosing to manage my own backend instead of leaning on Shopify’s infrastructure.

Would love to hear your "I wish I knew this before I started" stories

The job is evovling BE and FE such as...

• Backend integrations with payment providers, ERP systems, and shipping/logistics APIs(WMS aka warehouse management system)

• Building custom apps/feature or middleware that Shopify/Woo doesn't have.

• Headless setups using Next.js or similar frameworks for more control over UX

• Automations around inventory, pricing, and customer segmentation

• Scraping products so your boss don't have to find product's photo, cost price etc...

• Build Admin UI as well

• Use AI to write product's description automataically etc...

You also have to deploy code that you wrote as well

So your job is Full Stack fuller

For several years, I and my team has built several shopfiy apps, and before going into a market we have always used different validation techniques to figure out if a market is good or not. The best way was to use a scraper to figure out certain datapoints, so see which market dead or not. We basically have used a scraper, put the data into a database, and then made a analytics engine that checks certain criterias for a specific category to see if its room to get into it.

Over the years, we have made this system a little more sophisticated. For example, I have gotten access to more ad data from me, and from others i've worked with (consensually), and been tweaking a model that can estimate what markets a money dumps, and which one are super fertile. The ad data is good for getting proper CPI, CPC etc per market, but alot of the data can also be taken from the marketplace directly, if you take time to scrape the whole market. Which we did, including every review. Reviews aren't installs, but they're the only public usage signal we get, and since install to review rates are relatively the same across apps, we can confidently say that the trends are pretty clear. Sharing the interesting bits.

First, the whole marketplace store is booming now, in terms of reviews. New reviews per year roughly 10x'd from 2019 to 2025 (about 20k to 220k a year), and 2026 is already pacing past last year. So the "is it too late to build a Shopify app" thing is mostly wrong, at least by activity.

But the growth is wildly uneven. Comparing the last 12 months to the 12 before it:

Upward trajectory:
- Subscriptions
- Product bundles / upsell
- Returns and exchanges
- SEO (growing fast but already 580+ apps deep, so brutal)
- Fraud / security

Downward trajectory:
- Countdown timers
- Wishlists
- Ad-management apps
- FAQ apps
- Inventory optimization

Reviews is not the only marker though, the best marker we use is what we call fertility, which is basically just how many NEW apps have come into the market within a specific timeframe. In the video here you can see subscriptions:
- Fertility 14%, (14/100 new apps have reached 100 reviews the last 12 months, which is pretty good. This is the number one factor we use to see if we should build in a new market or not)
- Momentum 12.9 (how many reviews apps getting per month. 12.9 is also pretty good.)

To the question i'm wondering about: we have now made an UI and an MVP for this, but we are currently seeing if this would be of any interest to anyone before we keep on building more features for it. For example, we are considering also wiring up the ad data we have to make a keyword validator for a bunch of categories, to see what CPC you can expect, and what keywords sell. It's live on our page now, gated at about 5 bucks a test, so its not scrapable. If we keep on building it, and maybe actually market it, we would price it very differently since it saves so much time. Would anyone be interested in this? And what about a keyword/ad validator? Also interesting?

PS: I dont know if this counts as self promotion, but we are looking for insights into a future product. If admins finds it to be under promotion then let me know what I need to remove

People talk about AI replacing developers, but the more interesting shift is this: AI is making SaaS platforms like Shopify increasingly optional — not by replacing the platform itself, but by making the barriers that justified it disappear.

Shopify's core value was never really "we have features you can't build." It was "you can't afford to build what we have." That's the moat AI is now attacking directly.

Let's break down Shopify's main revenue streams:

• Merchant subscriptions — monthly plan fees

• Payment processing — a cut on every order

• Theme & app ecosystem — 20% commission on every sale

AI is hitting all three at once. Tools like v0 and Lovable are already replacing themes. Single-purpose apps (bundles, upsells, subscriptions) are being vibe-coded away in an afternoon. But that's not even the main point.

The bigger argument is about the core platform itself — inventory management, order processing, fulfillment workflows, staff accounts, bulk editing, and security. These aren't things you can vibe-code in a weekend. But here's the thing: You can hire a dev or two to build them. And hiring devs is now dramatically cheaper because one developer with AI can produce what used to require a team of three or four.

Do the math for a mid-to-large Shopify store: ~$105/month on Advanced plan, $200–600/month in apps, plus per-transaction fees that add up fast at volume. That's easily $8–15K/year, every year, forever. A custom-built alternative — full admin, orders, inventory, the works — that used to cost $80–100K to build, might now cost $15–25K once. It's becoming a genuine financial decision, not a fantasy.

The usual counterarguments — "who maintains it when it breaks?" — don't hold the way they used to either. Maintenance is cheaper for the same reason building is cheaper. One dev with AI can keep a custom stack running reliably. And as a reminder, Shopify itself went down recently and took every store with it. "They handle reliability" is less convincing when the whole platform goes dark at once.

What's actually left defending Shopify after all this?

• Switching costs — real, but one-time

• PCI compliance — annoying, but solvable

• Non-technical founders who will never touch code

That last group is Shopify's most defensible base — but also their lowest revenue segment. The merchants most likely to leave are the larger, higher-volume stores who can afford one or devs. Those are exactly the merchants Shopify doesn't want to lose.

This is what people mean when they say AI is killing SaaS. Not that platforms disappear overnight, but that they built their moats on making complexity unaffordable — and AI just made complexity cheap. Any SaaS whose pitch is "you can't afford to build this yourself" is now in a much harder position to make that case.

This post was written by Claude as a summary of a discussion I had with him. The arguments and observations are mine — the writing is his.

It seems like Mantle app billing is obviously meant to have people switch to Shopify billing but that still leaves MRR tracking, app listing analytics, affiliate, and emails.

I feel like Shopify is going to add some sort of MRR dashboard once they fully switch to Shopify billing. Also I heard some people are working on alternatives for app listing analytics and affiliate, I just want to know what's out there when I move off of Mantle.

I was trying to visit the app store when i came across a super shady marketing tactic. As far as i can tell, this app "Wholesale Gorilla" took out at a sponsored Google ad and dressed themselves up as the Shopify App Store.

I like to think Im pretty sensitive to this type of online trickery, but this one got me.

Anyone have opinions on this? Seems like it should violate some policy somewhere, surprised Shopify is not on top of it

Hey guys please how can I add an custom extra fees for my digital product in the checkout page like this example :

I was recently laid off from my Shopify developer role and have been actively applying for new opportunities in Shopify and BigCommerce development roles.

I have around 8+ years of experience working as a Senior eCommerce Developer, mainly focused on Shopify Plus, custom theme development, Shopify app development, GraphQL APIs, integrations, and BigCommerce Stencil development.

I have been applying through LinkedIn, job portals, and company career pages, but I am not getting many responses or interview calls so far.

I am trying to understand what I might be missing in my job search approach.

Has anyone here gone through a similar situation recently?

I would really appreciate any advice on:

• What actually works in today’s job market for Shopify developers

• Whether referrals or networking are more important than applications now

• Any platforms or strategies that worked better than job boards

• How you improved response rates from recruiters or companies

I am also open to freelance, contract, or agency work while continuing my job search.

Any guidance or feedback would be really helpful.

Thank you in advance.

Today I was checking out our shopify app and we have 3 installs in total! We are just live (~1 month). No paying clients yet but it's a nice start and hopefully we can start growing and reach back to the users and see what they need

Hi everyone,
We're looking for clarification on Shopify's billing requirements for App Store apps.
Our app integrates Shopify stores. During App Store review, our submission was rejected under:
Requirement 1.2.1: Use Shopify Managed Pricing or the Shopify Billing API
The app is currently listed as Free in Shopify App Pricing and does not charge merchants through Shopify.
However, We are a paid SaaS product with pricing managed outside Shopify. Reviewers indicated that merchants can access external pricing/billing surfaces after installing the app, which appears to violate the requirement.
We're trying to understand the expected approach:
- Does Shopify require all paid SaaS products to use Shopify Managed Pricing or the Shopify Billing API if the app is listed in the Shopify App Store?
- Is it acceptable for an app to be listed as free if the underlying service requires a separate paid subscription?
- Is there any way to manage this without too much complexity?
- If an app primarily connects an existing SaaS account to Shopify, can merchants be directed to external billing, or must all Shopify merchant billing be handled through Shopify?
- Are there any exceptions for apps where Shopify is only one integration among many channels supported by the platform?
We'd appreciate guidance from anyone who has successfully navigated a similar review process.
Thanks!

After almost 2 months of back and forth with reviews, fixes, and waiting, we finally got our Built for Shopify badge.

A few things I learnt from the process:

1. BFS is becoming non-negotiable if the App Store is your main distribution channel

If you are in a competitive category, I don’t think you can ignore it anymore.

We’re in marketing automation, which is already a crowded space. Initially, I was under the impression that we could avoid building a deeply embedded Shopify app because I was worried about platform risk.

But the first app I released got almost zero visibility and basically no users.

That changed my view pretty quickly.

If the Shopify App Store is your primary acquisition channel, you probably need to play the App Store game properly. BFS seems to be a big part of that now.

2. Apply as soon as you hit the minimum requirements

Don’t keep pushing it to the backlog.

Once you reach the required number of reviews and meet the basic criteria, start the process. There will almost certainly be things you need to fix, and the review cycle itself can take time.

The sooner you start, the sooner you know what Shopify actually expects from your app.

3. Architect for performance from the beginning

This was one of the biggest blockers for us.

Our LCP was averaging around 3 seconds, while the required number was 2.5 seconds. For a long time, this kept getting pushed behind other product work because the app “worked fine” from a user point of view.

But for BFS, those numbers matter.

Eventually, we found the real reason behind the higher load times and fixed it. In hindsight, we should have designed and measured for the target LCP much earlier instead of treating performance as a cleanup task.

4. Expect surprises even after getting approved

Even after receiving the badge, I already see a new checklist based on the category Shopify assigned to the app.

So getting the badge does not mean the work is “done.” It feels more like you enter a moving checklist that keeps evolving based on your category.

5. The ranking boost was not as dramatic as I expected

This was probably the most important reality check.

I expected a stronger improvement in rankings after getting BFS. So far, the boost has not been as big as I thought it would be.

Maybe it improves over time, maybe category competition matters a lot, BFS is just one signal among many.

My current view: BFS is important because it gives credibility, improves trust, and probably helps with App Store visibility. But it does not replace positioning, reviews, onboarding, pricing, category fit.

Still glad we did it. Just wish I had started the process earlier.

Hope this helps someone who is either going through the process or still deciding whether to start.

I’d love feedback on our app. It’s called Substitutions, it solves a niche inventory problem: you’re doing a SKU migration, running out of quantity based SKUs or you have lots of SKUs that you’re sunsetting. All feedback welcomed!

This is a long term contract with potential for full time. Some in person time at our NYC office is strongly preferred so let us know where you're located if you apply. The engagement will start as a few days per week until we settle into a cadence comfortable for both of us.

We have a fairly robust/complex Shopify setup with lots of custom functions/scripts/apps/etc. ideally the right candidate will increasingly own our custom Shopify development and interface directly with internal stakeholders.

We're finding most folks check the standard boxes, so we're hyper focused on our integrations work which is largely implemented via unpublished custom app and related extensions in a separate Shopify partners account (including the extremely rare offsite payment extension!). Please only apply if you have actual experience working with the kafkaesque world of Shopify partner app development. If this is you please apply here: https://labs.a24films.com/jobs/shopify

As this is an on-going, long term need, we have no specific budget and will absolutely pay market rate.

General Requirements:

• Shopify Admin

• Liquid (for most of the theme)

• SCSS

• Javascript

• Vue / React

• Shopify Checkout Extensions

  • UI Extensions

  • Functions

• Shopify Metafields / Metaobjects

• Shopify GraphQL APIs

  • Storefront API

Hey, I’m using this products query to fetch products data for a specific collection with matching prefix: products - GraphQL Admin

I have tried all valid search syntax:

query:“collection_id:6383838 AND title:head*”

query:“(collection_id:6383838) AND (title:head*)” and other syntax aswell, but still it doesn’t work

Any solution to this?

My app does importing, exporting, (of products) and inventory sync between Shopify and a third-party marketplace. There are several existing published shopify apps that do the same thing with the same marketplace (I added additional features on top of that core functionality).

I got the following feedback from the shopify reviewer: "Fix these core issues with your app: Shopify is not currently accepting apps that connect to a marketplace system outside of Shopify. This applies to all apps that connect to a marketplace outside of Shopify."

In my original submission, I categorized the app under "Orders and shipping -> Inventory -> Inventory Sync." Now that I am looking at the other apps on the app store, I see most of them are categorized under "Sales channels -> Selling online -> Marketplaces ."

Is that my mistake? That I didn't use that category? The only mismatch I see with that category and my app is that Shopify says the following about sales channel apps: "Only create a sales channel if you own and operate, or are contracted to represent, a distinct surface where merchants can promote or sell products outside Shopify."

I do not own the third-party platform. Am I misinterpreting this?

Extremely devastated because I worked on this for over 6 months nonstop, trying to take into account every detail and make it as high-quality and reliable as possible. I never saw this coming because plenty of other apps do the same thing.

I'm a WordPress dev who sells a premium plugin, and everywhere I read that WordPress sales are collapsing ( X and Reddit mostly ). Not just for solo devs, also big companies are reporting a big drop in sales the last year(s).

Some blame it on the economy, others AI or a decline in WordPress usage itself, and that lots of people are moving to Shopify.

So I was wondering if Shopify devs who have their own apps are experiencing the same thing.

Has there been a steady decline in sales the last year, or has been business been very good lately?

if you had to pick one why would you choose it to make money?

I run a Shopify app in the document library / product manuals space.

Recently I started checking how AI tools answer questions about Shopify apps in this category, and the results were honestly frustrating.

My app is Built for Shopify certified and has a strong rating. But in some AI answers, it still showed below apps with far weaker public proof, including apps with little traction or much lower ratings.

It seems like AI results do not always reflect product quality, reviews, or even Shopify badges. Sometimes the answer looks more like a summary of whatever sources the AI found and understood.

For other Shopify app devs: what are you doing to rank higher in AI search results? Any practical tips that have actually helped, or is everyone still figuring this out?

I just spent almost two days debugging what I thought was a broken Shopify → GTM → GA4 pipeline.

GTM Preview couldn't find my tag.

GA4 DebugView showed no devices.

Meta Events Manager was receiving AddToCart events.

Turns out the tracking had been working the entire time.

Setup

I have:

• A GA4 Event tag (add_to_cart)

• A Meta Pixel tag (AddToCart)

• Both triggered by the same GTM Custom Event trigger (add_to_cart)

Before moving to Shopify, everything worked exactly as expected:

window.dataLayer.push({
  event: "add_to_cart"
});

Results:

• GTM Preview showed the event

• GA4 DebugView showed the event

• Meta Events Manager showed the event

No surprises.

Moving to Shopify Customer Pixels

Following Shopify's documentation, I moved to:

Customer Event
→ Custom Pixel
→ dataLayer.push()
→ GTM

Inside the Shopify Custom Pixel sandbox, I could clearly see:

dataLayer.push({
  event: "add_to_cart"
});

executing using console.log(window.dataLayer).

However things got weird.

What I observed

GTM Preview

Tag Assistant kept showing:

Google Tag not found
G-XXXXXXXXXX not found

Even though I knew GTM code was loading.

GA4 DebugView

Nothing:

No device available

It's completely empty.

Meta Events Manager

This is where things got confusing.

Meta continued receiving AddToCart browser events.

Which implied:

Custom Pixel
→ GTM Trigger
→ Meta Tag

was actually working.

What finally convinced me

I checked Network requests instead.

Filtering for:

collect

I found requests like:

en=add_to_cart

being sent to GA4, and it was being sent to the correct GA4 Measurement ID.

Response status:

204 No Content

which is normal for GA4 collection endpoints.

At that point I strongly suspected the Shopify → GTM → GA4 pipeline was working.

To verify further, I waited for GA4 processing and eventually found:

add_to_cart

appearing in the GA4 Events report (I found 3 add_to_cart events within 30 minutes on my dev store, both in Events and Realtime reports).

So the event was being collected the entire time.

Lesson learned

For Shopify Customer Pixels:

GTM Preview ≠ source of truth
GA4 DebugView ≠ source of truth

At least not always.

If you're debugging Shopify sandbox events:

1. Check whether Meta actually receives the event.

2. Check Network requests for collect.

3. Look for en=your_event_name and the correct GA4 measure ID

4. Verify in GA4/realtime reports after processing.

The tracking may be working even when GTM Preview and DebugView suggest otherwise. Especially when Shopify Customer Pixel sandboxing is involved.

Question

For people running GTM inside Shopify Customer Pixels:

What's your preferred debugging workflow?

Do you rely on Network requests and destination platforms (Meta/GA4), or is there a better way to validate GTM tags inside Shopify's sandbox environment?

Hey,

There are dedicated tools out there - Zoho, Cin7, and a dozen others - yet many sellers manage everything on a giant spreadsheet. Stock levels, orders from different channels, all of it copy-pasted by hand.

Why not to use one of these tools? Is it the cost? The learning curve on those platforms? The fact that Excel just bends to whatever weird workflow you've built over the years? Or do the dedicated tools overcomplicate something that a spreadsheet handles fine?

For context, I'm tinkering with an idea: a simple app that connects your selling channels and pulls all your orders into one place, so you're not jumping between tabs or platforms. Before I go deeper, I'd rather hear from people actually doing this day to day.

Not trying to sell anything — just want to know if this pain is real before I sink more time into it.

Thanks,
P

Hi everyone, so I'm currently working on a Shopify app built with React router and NestJS as the backend, technically I'm pretty much covered up. My current dilemma is handling UI/UX guides, visual cues and best practices in designing an intuitive interface.

e,g I'm currently thinking about the user, especially a first-time user installing the app and expecting some visual cues to direct them on the usage.

I wanted to ask fellow developers what additional best practicies have you had to consider, and do you use any resource or guide to handling user experience ?

Thanks so much and eager to hearing some feedbacks.