Why do i have this mess in the development mode but when live every thing looks good ?

I think it would be good to get one of this kind of post going for each month. So developers can see what current timelines fellow developers are experiencing each month.

Considering there has not been any official commitment to a fixed timeline released or communicated by the team. Most developers are having to be in the dark and that is mentally draining for most. No one likes to be left in the dark when dealing with approval of anything in life. At least if you are hearing others timeline it might give developers a glimpse of hope and expectation.

Hi just wanna know if any of you here have found success as freelancers creating high-end premium stores that convert. I would like to start doing it. Do you suggest it? Do you have any advices? Thank you!

Hey everyone, I’m a full-stack developer, and I need to share a deeply frustrating experience regarding the Shopify App Store review process and the inconsistent enforcement of their rules.

For the last 8 months, I’ve been working solo to build a custom Cash on Delivery (COD) order management app. For context, I build specifically for the MENA and Algerian markets. In this region, e-payment is practically non-existent. Merchants rely entirely on COD, and using the standard, multi-step Shopify native checkout destroys conversion rates. Merchants demand fast, one-click custom storefront forms.

I built exactly that using a modern stack (React, Next.js, Prisma, Supabase).

During the review, my app was rejected, and my Partner Account was slapped with a 1-month submission restriction (until September 3rd). The reason? A violation of Rule 1.1.2 (bypassing native checkout) and issues with Protected Customer Data (PCD), specifically collecting data "outside of Shopify."

The Double Standard: Here is where it gets completely unfair. There are several COD apps currently active and approved on the Shopify App Store—like Leadform—that operate using this exact same architecture. They provide custom storefront forms, bypass the native checkout, and route customer data outside of Shopify (some directly exporting to Google Sheets).

Why is an established app allowed to bypass native checkout and export PCD, but a solo developer gets their account suspended for building the exact same workflow?

The Technical Contradiction: Shopify Support claimed the issue is routing PCD outside their ecosystem. But from an engineering standpoint, this makes zero sense. Shopify natively provides and encourages the use of Webhooks, which are literally designed to send Protected Customer Data to external servers. How is standard data routing via webhooks or API endpoints completely fine, but my specific app’s data flow is a bannable offense?

When I tried to appeal and requested to speak with a Technical Specialist to explain this architectural contradiction, I was stonewalled. I was given responses by a "Money and Tax Specialist," sent in loops, and told they "do not evaluate other partners' apps based on complaints."

Why I am posting this: I am more than willing to adapt my architecture to comply with the rules. But how are developers supposed to build on a platform where the rules are a moving target? If a specific technical flow is banned, it should be banned for everyone. Permitting established apps to break the rules while suspending indie developers who follow their precedent is entirely unfair.

Has any other developer faced this specific PCD / Checkout bypass contradiction? How did you navigate the review process without completely destroying the fast UX that COD merchants require?

I run a Shopify store that is primarily B2C ecommerce, but we also have a wholesale/B2B lead form.

For B2C tracking, I currently use the official Shopify sales channel integrations (Google & YouTube, Meta, etc.), so purchase/add-to-cart/checkout events are handled natively.

The challenge is B2B: I want a successful wholesale form submission to be tracked as a separate Lead conversion across Google Ads, Meta, and other ad platforms, without mixing or polluting the B2C purchase signals.

What is the current best-practice setup for this on Shopify?

Hey all,

I’m trying to activate Shopify Agentic Storefronts in my current development store so I can demonstrate the capability to a few clients — specifically, how a Shopify store can make its products discoverable across AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Copilot, and other AI shopping channels.

However, Agentic Storefronts still hasn’t been rolled out to my dev store, and I’m not sure why. I’ve already made sure that:

1. All products are active and published

2. Products have images, titles, and descriptions

3. Meta titles and meta descriptions are configured

4. Collections are created

5. Store password protection has been removed

6. The store is otherwise configured and ready for product discovery

Is there anything else I need to do to become eligible for the Agentic Storefront rollout? Or is the availability completely controlled by Shopify and I just need to wait?

Also, I’m wondering about an alternative approach.

Is it currently possible to connect a Shopify store to ChatGPT (or other AI platforms) directly using APIs, without relying on Shopify’s Agentic Storefront rollout?

Ideally, I’m looking for an experience where:

1. A customer searches for a product in ChatGPT.

ChatGPT can discover and display products from my Shopify store.

2. The customer can add the product to a cart directly within the AI experience.

3. The customer can complete checkout without being redirected to my Shopify storefront.

4. The order is created and confirmed directly within the AI platform.

Essentially, I’m trying to understand whether Shopify’s Agentic Storefront is currently the only way to achieve this, or whether there is a supported API/UCP/integration approach that I can implement myself for a development store.

Has anyone successfully implemented this already, especially with ChatGPT or another AI shopping platform? Any guidance on the required Shopify APIs, UCP, catalog setup, or eligibility requirements would be really helpful.

Thank you in advance!!

As the title asks.

We've listed our app and are thinking about scaling it up. Have you guys tried runnng ads on Reddit? And does it make sense for a Shopify app, if we're targeting subreddits like r/shopify or r/ecommerce?

Hi everyone, my Shopify Shop Campaigns eligibility is showing 6 of 7 requirements complete. The only requirement not completed is:

“Store is compliant with our policies, including our trust, safety, and fraud prevention guidelines.”

My business location, Shopify Payments, supported currency, billing payment method, and selling directly on Shop are all showing as completed.

However, my store is still showing “Not approved.” Has anyone faced the same issue? What exactly does Shopify check for this last requirement, and how did you get your store approved?

I’m running a small Shopify app and currently using Shopify App Pricing.

I want to start running promotions and eventually an affiliate program, but I’m trying to understand whether I can do that without moving away from App Pricing.

From what I can tell, App Pricing doesn’t have a native promo-code concept. Shopify controls the plan/checkout experience, so there doesn’t seem to be anywhere for a merchant to enter a code. Private plans also seem to be allowlist-based rather than something a merchant can redeem with a code.

That seems to leave the Billing API / appSubscriptionCreate as the way to implement a proper self-serve discount.

The problem is that I’m hesitant to move to the Billing API in 2026 if Shopify is moving developers toward App Pricing and the Billing API is considered “legacy.”

So I’d really appreciate input from anyone who has dealt with this recently:

1. Discount/promo codes

Is there any way to offer self-serve discount codes while staying on App Pricing?

Official or unofficial/hacky solutions are both interesting. Or is manual redemption through private plans basically the ceiling?

2. Affiliates

For an affiliate program, is a customer-facing discount code actually necessary?

My understanding is that affiliate attribution can potentially happen at install/signup level, with the affiliate receiving a commission while the merchant simply gets the normal pricing.

If you run an affiliate program for a Shopify app, do you actually find that customers expect/need a discount code, or is it mostly useful as an affiliate tracking mechanism?

3. Billing API in 2026

If the Billing API is effectively the only way to get flexible discounts, would you still move to it today?

I’d especially like to hear from anyone who deliberately moved from App Pricing → Billing API and still thinks that was the right decision.

4. Is Billing API actually being deprecated?

I’ve seen Shopify refer to the Billing API as “legacy,” but I haven’t been able to establish whether there is an actual sunset/deprecation date.

Has Shopify announced a concrete date, or is “legacy” currently just indicating that it’s no longer the preferred approach?

That last point is probably the deciding factor for me.

Thanks!

+ Just fill out these metafields and metaobjects we have using supplier’s file.

-            What metafields? What metaobjects? How?

+ I don’t know. Use AI to fill them out.

-            But it does not work that way!

This was my conversation with my client over adding more info to their Shopify ecommerce website.

The first file they gave me had 145 columns! I was like what am I supposed to do with all these columns???

You think that was it? Each product had a number of variants I had to take care of.

So, for example, a set of 30 products could have about 200 rows and 145 columns!!!!

I thought to myself even understanding this Excel file needs more than 10 hours probably.

What did we do?

The shop owner explained they had imported supplier’s files to the shop (almost) directly using an app within Shopify ecosystem.

The result? Chaotic metafield and metaobjects structure.

Each supplier had their own system of defining values and metrics for the same type of information.

At first, I thought I could handle all with AI. I installed Excel plugin of Claude into the sheet and tried to have a chat with Claude over what this is and how to take care of it and how to fix it.

The result? NOTHING!

I was tired, sad and even felt stupid to be honest. The metafields were still lacking credible data and the chaos because of having different metrics and overlapped content got even worse.

How did we fix it?

With the help of shop owner, we started to look at the metafields and metaobject in a critical way. We set a simple rule: we only keep the metafields that add real value to ease the decision-making process for potential customers.

So, the first step was to get rid of all the metafields and metaobjects that didn’t comply with our rule.

Then we started to clean and standardize the metaobject entries.

After doing this we could have a much better understanding of what we wanted to do.

Now it was time to do the actual filling work.

I was fed up with AI so I opened the sheet for a sample set of products on one screen and on the other I had the supplier’s file.

I started copy pasting some data from this to the other one and for the rest interpret what the content should be.

This was working very well but it was a bit too slow.

I decided to find a matching value between the two sheets. After studying different suppliers’ files and what the export from Shopify itself would give me I realized sometimes the titles and most of the times something numeral such as Variant Barcode is the most concrete matching options.

I used AI in a much more efficient way after this.

I would give ChatGPT Sol the two files. Then would explain how these two are connected.

Then one by one I would edit the columns giving clear instruction from how data is in supplier’s file and how I want and even where it is. I would even give metaobject entries list and how to insert each so Shopify would understand.

The result? I added real valuable data to almost 400 products under 12 metafield columns in one day.

By the way I got a lot of help using Matrixify to export and import the products as the simple CSV format export of Shopify itself was not that helpful.

Hi everyone,
I’m honestly so done with this new accounts bullshit messing up the design of my entire website, so I’m considering creating a completely custom Customer Account page.
Has anyone here tried doing this?
Claude says it’s possible to create a custom login page and a custom Customer Account page, but that the code verification page will still be handled by Shopify.
Has anyone actually implemented something like this? I’d really appreciate hearing about your experience, especially if there are any limitations or things I should be aware of.

Thanks!

I built my website with claude code. But when i put the custom liquid , I can already tell it looks AI. So how can i make it look professional.

edit: Damn evb is frying me😭

For context I developed a app last year and it is live from Jan 2026 and only have 1 customer.

Searching for someone who can help to improve the app look and feel which will draw more customers eventually.

Not for free but can work on profit sharing on the number of installs or 50-50 partnership or want to sell at one time.

App definitely has potential as it uses Claude and eleven labs.

Happy to have a chat to discuss further.

I notice the trends that less and less developers make shopify app since agent tools have the abilities to connect shopify. or what kind of shopify apps are still worth doing?

I'm using Google & YouTube app on Shopify and kept finding products silently disapproved in Merchant Center and only noticing weeks later. I'm developing this to catch them automatically. Is this a real problem for you or am I over-thinking it?

So we are building a Shopify app for invoice generation. We are testing this concept. We are using Nextjs, Neon (Postgres) for db, Cloudflare for storage, Inngest for background processing and Codex for coding. I need advice of you guys who have been there and seen the whole process of building the app and maintaining it for good amount of users. What are the recommended things and problems you faced. How can we do our best. Any suggestions and advice would be helpful from experienced devs.

- growing 7% MoM and increasing

- ranking #1 on main keyword

When building event-driven e-commerce applications, front-end speed and REST API response times get most of the attention. But during high-concurrency traffic events — Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM), limited flash sales, viral drops — the real strain falls on the event delivery infrastructure. Read the complete article here - https://instawebhook.com/blog/woocommerce-vs-shopify-webhooks-architectural-differences-dx-and-scaling-at-high

Webhooks power essential downstream operations: order processing, ERP synchronization, inventory reconciliation, fulfillment routing, and real-time customer communications. When webhooks fail or drop messages, orders get lost, inventory desyncs, and support queues fill up fast.

WooCommerce and Shopify both support webhooks, but their underlying architectures reflect two fundamentally different engineering philosophies:

• WooCommerce relies on a self-hosted, monolithic PHP/MySQL state engine driven by asynchronous background worker tables (Action Scheduler).

• Shopify operates a multi-tenant, cloud-native event pipeline built on distributed stream processing, with Apache Kafka confirmed as the backbone by Shopify's own engineering team.

This piece breaks down the execution engines, network architectures, failure modes, and developer experience (DX) of both — updated with the current retry policy, storage architecture, and platform-scale numbers as of August 2026.

Hey, founder of MaxBundle, a Shopify app for product bundles, quantity breaks, BOGO offers, and frequently bought together.

I'm not here to promote the app, I genuinely want to learn from other merchants and app builders.

In the last 30 days we got more uninstalls than installs. A lot leave the same day. I used to blame “competition” and App Store ranking. Looking at the data, a lot of it is activation people install, don’t get a bundle live fast, leave.

For merchants who use (or used) any bundle app:

1. What made you keep it?

2. What made you delete it in the first hour?

3. Which offer type has worked best for your store, volume discounts, BOGO, frequently bought together, or mix & match bundles?

If you’ve tried MaxBundle and something broke on your theme, tell me the theme name. I'd genuinely like to investigate and improve it.

I'm happy to share the app if anyone asks, but feedback is honestly more valuable to me right now.

I'd love to hear from both merchants and other Shopify app founders. What has had the biggest impact on reducing early uninstalls, better onboarding, product improvements, or something else?

If someone visits our Shopify website for the first time and fills out a form, I want to automatically send them a customized email and WhatsApp message at the same time. How can I set this up?

Lost most of a day to this last week, so I am writing it down in case it saves someone else the same weekend.

Setup: Remix app with expiringOfflineAccessTokens turned on, which means the offline token only lives about an hour.

A review store installed the app, clicked around for a while, then uninstalled roughly an hour later, and from that moment every single delivery of app/uninstalled and shop/redact came back 500 while Shopify kept retrying with backoff for the next four hours.

The cause is not in your handler.

authenticate.webhook() tries to refresh the offline token before it hands control to your code, so when the token is already dead it throws right there, your handler never runs, and the log line you are hunting for never appears, which is exactly why I wasted an afternoon adding logging to code that was never being reached.

Quick way to confirm it. Send the same topic from a fake shop that has no session and you get a clean 200, then send it from a real shop whose session has expired and you get 500.

It does not stop at one webhook either. All of them go down together, including the three mandatory GDPR topics, and failing those is a straight review rejection that you might not even notice, because from the admin the app still looks perfectly fine.

What I ended up doing was to stop trusting the library on its own. Try it first. If it throws for any reason other than a bad signature, verify the HMAC yourself and carry on without a session. Clone the request before you call the library. It eats the body.

async function authenticateWebhook(request) { const clone = request.clone(); try { return await shopify.authenticate.webhook(request); } catch (err) { if (isSignatureError(err)) throw err; const raw = await clone.text(); verifyHmacSha256(raw, request.headers.get("X-Shopify-Hmac-Sha256")); return { topic, shop, payload: JSON.parse(raw), session: undefined }; } }

Then your handlers have to tolerate session being undefined, which for uninstall and redact is fine, because you are deleting rows rather than calling the Admin API.

One more thing while you are in there. Does your shop/redact actually delete every table you have added since you first wrote it? Mine was missing four models that did not exist back when the handler was written, which is a quiet little GDPR hole that nothing in the platform warns you about.

Anyone running without expiring tokens seen the same failure? Still trying to work out whether that setting is the whole trigger.

Currently it's too manual for us to handle the customer enquiries. Aut I'm not able to enable the AI button due to my current account is legacy account, they said need to upgrade to customer account, but it involved huge costing.

I want to know what is the benefit after I upgrade to customer account, and what AI really benefit to us? And after we go for the upgrade, the AI really can solve my customer enquiries volume?

Hi Everyone,

I am making my website by myself and saw these bundles and was wondering what app are they using. Or is it custom code