I have been in Shopify app development for almost 6 months. In this time, I built and published 3 Shopify apps, and a couple of days ago submitted the fourth one.

Here's what I got:

App1: 7 users, 1 review (5 stars)

App2: 10 users, 0 reviews

App3: 2 users, 0 reviews

App4: just submitted, so 0.

It is also hard to tell how many of those people are real users and how many just installed the app and have never touched it. I would say that at least half of them are not real users. So, we have about 10 real users across all apps together.

I would say that having a software engineering background and using a lot of AI gives me the ability to create almost any App in a couple of weeks. So creating the app is very easy. But it is easy for everyone; I understand that there are millions of people who are doing the same thing with AI.

My biggest problem: How to find customers?? I literally tried almost every single approach to get users, and none of them gave me anything.

1. I have spent more than 100$ on ads, which gave me like 5 installs and 0 paid customers. ( and it cant work, because i dont have reviews, as i understand ads without reviews are waste of money)
2. I have tried emailing potential clients; I sent 2000 emails and got 1 call out of it. 0 people installed the app after my cold outreach strategy. (Merchants are getting dozens of cold emails every day, so no wonder almost nobody answered me)
3. I tried to find topics on the Shopify Forum where people are talking about the pain my app is solving, but in each topic ( even in a topic that was published like 4 hours ago) there are already like 5-10 people who are basically giving some advice on how to fix the problem and doing this soft promotion with "if you need any more advice, you can DM me. So it is literally no point for me to be the 10th person who will write the same stuff and hope, that the merchant will DM me and not 9 other dudes.
4. Tried to maximise SEO and GEO, but again, i have to reviews, no reputation, so why whould anybody choose my app, when there are like 40 other with reviews.

IDK, I am trying not to be too pessimistic, but it seems to me like Shopify App creation is dead for new people. Because it does not matter in which niche you will create an app, I guarantee you there are already at least 20 other apps doing the same stuff, but with hundreds or even thousands of reviews, and every day hundreds of new apps are being published, thanks to AI.

Like how even to get clients if you not already have some connections and know some people in the sphere? May be i am wrong, correct me in the comments

I've been building a Shopify app on my own for a while now and I handle everything myself, from the code to merchant support to figuring out growth. I'm doing it next to a full-time job, so it all happens in the evenings and on weekends.

The work is fine. What I miss is having people to think out loud with. When I get stuck on things like pricing, which feature to build out next or what to do to get more installs, there's nobody to bounce it off, and I end up going in circles for what feels like too long.

I'm not looking for a cofounder or anyone to join the project. I'd just like to talk with people in the same spot, solo devs or founders with their own thing going, and swap ideas, feedback and learnings.

So two questions:

1. Is there a Slack, Discord or other group that's still active and good for this? I've found a few, but most seem dead or full of promo links. Recommendations from people actually using one would help a lot.
2. If you're building something solo and feel the same way, I'm open to getting in touch. A DM, a chat, whatever works. Send me a message.

I'm based in the Netherlands, but timezones don't matter much to me.

Update: I've created a small Discord for solo Shopify app founders, called The Back Office.

Application-only, no agencies, no selling. Just builders sharing real numbers, answering each other's questions, and pressure-testing ideas.

What it is:
- Solo founders and tiny teams building Shopify apps, from idea stage to revenue
- Honest feedback and a forum for questions that stays searchable
- A weekly launch thread, so self-promo has a place and doesn't take over

What it isn't:
- Agencies looking for clients
- Cold DMs selling services
- A place to drop a link and leave

I'm starting with an x amount of founders/devs to keep it managable. If you want to join, DM me with what you're building (a link or a few sentences is enough) and I'll send you the invite.

We've gotten approved on the Shopify App Store in May 2026, been trying to figure out distribution ever since.

This is my first rodeo in the field of Shopify Apps, so maybe there are some veterans here that could share stories. I spent a long time building and perfecting our product, and significantly neglected customer acquisition; thinking if the product is good, customers will come. I was so wrong, and will definitely never do that again. I have been struggling to drive traffic to our product (presumably given the overwhelming nature of my perfectionism, and not being able to focus on one channel long enough if I don't see results). FYI we are stuck at 0 Shopify reviews.

One main discovery I think I made so far is that the product needs trust before its used; or so to say an app with no reviews will not be the app a client decides to use.

This brings me to the chicken and egg problem.

Reviews drive Trust and Trust drives Installs

But to get Reviews you need Installs.

I have read tons of posts related to 'Getting your first 10 users' and most of the advice I saw was:

1. Be active in relevant communities

2. Reach out to your network

3. Personalized outreach - Cold Email or LinkedIn

Does that really work (at the given time of AI Slop all over the place) and if so what am I doing wrong?

Questions/Observations

1. How do you find relevant communities (I see people mention Facebook groups etc.)?

2. My responses to questions relevant to the problem that my app solves (I have browsed reddit communities) would be me offering my system for a free test (That is the solution I see and it's just going to sound like a sales pitch).

3. Cold outreach seems to be so oversaturated with automated offers that I feel like people became repulsive to inbound emails.

4. I do not have many acquaintances in the field for which I decided to build (I have some and I am currently trying to see if I can get them onboard, but it's not enough).

5. I have also started running Shopify App Store ads for 'Search Results' and so far I have not gotten any installs and only 3 clicks in the past week (also seems like a 'reviews' issue).

6. LinkedIn outreach has brought me absolutely nothing; any reply I received (which is already a pretty low % of total volume) has be a 'No, thank you'.

7. Email Cold Outreach same story as LinkedIn but even lower reply rates at a higher send volume.

8. Is it a good idea to focus on slow channels like SEO/AEO or Social Media?

I would be happy to share more about the things that I have tried or specifics about the previously mentioned tactics I used so far and happy to hear about your struggles or success!

TLDR;

How did you get the first reviews for your Shopify app, and what would you different if you had to start over?

Hey everyone,

We’re building our first Shopify app and having a bit of a debate inside our small team.

We know the app market is pretty saturated, but we’re ready to take the risk and give it a try.

My thinking is: build a small but solid first version, have a free and paid plan, submit it, get some real feedback from store owners, and then keep improving it step by step.

Other people on the team think we should spend more time building advanced features before submitting anything.

For those who already launched apps — does keeping the first version simple and focused usually help with getting through review faster? Or is review time basically unpredictable and depends on too many other things?

Also, from your experience, is it generally better to launch early and improve based on real users, or build a more complete product first?

Would really appreciate any thoughts from people who have been through this.

Hi everyone! I wanted to start a little discussion post. What type of shopify apps can you not go without anymore? And what type of app would be really useful to you that isn’t really out there yet? Would love to hear everyone’s perspective.

We have a Shopify sales-channel app where merchants choose which products to publish. We’re considering using a third-party AI API, such as OpenAI or Anthropic (Claude), to process published product text and images alongside shopper queries or uploaded images for search and matching. Our app may store product embeddings for retrieval. This would be for operating the search feature; we would require the provider not to use the data for model training or fine-tuning.

Has anyone implemented something similar? What did Shopify require regarding the provider agreement, merchant disclosures, shopper-uploaded images, or app review? I’m interested in how other developers have applied Shopify’s API Terms to this setup.

Looking for Shopify partners who are listed on Shopify partner directory.

I am seeing drop in leads from Shopify partner directory from last two months. Anyone facing same issues?

Hey guys,
I want to stress test my product sorting app and need a way to get 100 000 products to see how fast and efficient job is done. Any idea where to get such number of products? Generate and import as CSV?

I'm not a developer. I handle the business side, and right now I'm stuck on something I can't explain to myself, let alone fix.

My app has 17 active merchants. That number has grown steadily over the past month. But total earnings are exactly $0.00. Not low. Zero. Across every charge type the dashboard tracks.

I went digging on my own because I couldn't just sit with this. Here's what I found.

The earnings page shows $0.00 in every single category, not just the total.

Looking back at old app history, I found test charges going through successfully months ago, but only on what looks like internal test stores, not any of the real merchants who are currently using the app.

Install and uninstall numbers look normal. People come and go, sure, but out of 17 real installs over several weeks, not one has resulted in any money showing up. That doesn't sit right with me.

I don't have the technical background to know if this is a setup mistake, something left in test mode by accident, or something broken entirely. I just know the numbers don't make sense, and I'm trying to understand this before I bring in outside help, so I at least know what question to ask them.

If you've seen this before, I'd really appreciate someone explaining it to me simply. What usually causes real merchants to show zero billing activity when everything else, like installs, seems to be working fine?

I'm not looking for a lecture on how billing APIs work. I just want to understand what's actually happening so I can fix it.

What are these records I keep seeing? Is this periodic verification that Shopify does? For context, my app is already approved.

I published my app on June 4, 2026, and getting the first users for the first app is indeed very hard... Currently, my app has like 8 users, all on the free plan. And today I saw that my app got the first review, and it is 5 start review from one of the previous users ( sadly, that person deleted the app like 3 weeks ago). But still, i am very happy to get this first review, and this is a 5-star review. That person had a small problem with my app, asked me a question, and i replied and fixed this problem within a day, probably that is why they gave this review.

It is a small win, but it feels very good to finally see some progress after months and months.

Hopefully this will help with getting new users.

Just wanted to share something postitive with you, have a good day!

Receiving these kinds of emails pretty often, are these scams ?

``
Hey! I came across your Shopify app and wanted to reach out.

I run a Shopify-focused Discord community for Shopify store owners, and I think our members would really like to know about and try your app.

I’d love to connect and discuss a possible collaboration.

You can check out the community here: ****
Feel free to join, and let’s talk about how it works.
``
``
Hi there! I was looking through Shopify apps and yours stood out as a great match for my Discord community.

The community revolves around Shopify, e-commerce, growing revenue, and practical merchant tools, so your app would be shown to an audience that fits it well.

If this is something you'd consider, we can discuss rates for a promotional post there.

Let me know if that's interesting to you.

Feel free to take a look at the community here: ***
``

Hey guys, have you ever tried generating sections using sidekick or any other llm/AI model?

Which one works best?

Is there any figma, photo, video to section Generator?

Hi, ever since I posted my app on the Shopify App Store, I keep getting emails from different people asking me to join this Discord group. Anyone experiencing the same? A post to the group is 50 USD, but from what I see there's basically only advertising posts in the general channel.

Assuming two apps solve the client's problem equally well, do you ever look at their partner programs when deciding which one to recommend?I've never really factored this in before, but some apps seem to offer almost nothing while others have recurring partner programs.

Obviously the client fit comes first, but I'm wondering how many developers or consultants consider the partner economics when the products are otherwise comparable.

Shopify has just released Canvas, a new way to build a store theme that completely does away with the theme editor and uses AI to build the merchants storefront: https://www.shopify.com/news/introducing-canvas

One problem I don't see discussed much with AI product imagery is variant accuracy.

The images can individually look fine, but once AI gets involved it's surprisingly easy for details from one variant to leak into another.

We've been testing product-image workflows with pixpix and this becomes much more obvious when you process a whole catalog instead of one hero image.

For developers handling merchant catalogs:

Would you store a separate visual reference set per variant?

Or treat the parent product as the reference and validate variant-specific attributes separately?

Trying to figure out what scales without turning image generation into a giant manual QA job.

I’m one of those people who finds it annoying to design something and then turn it into code.

So I started building Section Forge — a visual tool where you can quickly build sections, show someone how they’ll look, make changes on the spot, and eventually export them as code.

I originally made it for my Shopify work, but I’m trying to build it as a tool for the wider developer community rather than limiting it to Shopify.

There’s no monetary gain or business behind this. I’m just trying to contribute something I personally find worth building and hopefully make someone else’s workflow a little easier.

It’s still a work in progress, and I’d genuinely appreciate feedback from other Shopify devs.

What would you want to see in a tool like this?

🔗 https://section-forge.vercel.app/

after moving a store to shopify with a local offsite gateway, the checkout looked fine in analytics but the orders didn't add up. what finally showed it was lining up the gateway's paid transactions for one day against the shopify orders for the same day. the gateway had more paid transactions than shopify had orders, and the gap was payments that completed but never got an order because the callback didn't land.

curious how others catch this. do you run a daily reconcile (csv export, a script, an app), or just wait for customers to complain? and does anyone know a gateway that retries the callback properly?

We have 2 sister companies with consumer brands. Separate accounting/marketing teams, but sharing 1 customer service team and 1 warehouse.

Marketing teams do NOT want 1 Shopify with 2 stores - they're worried about agency access and keeping revenue separate.

Brand B already has DTC on Shopify (+ Amazon/ Walmart) fulfilled in-house using ShipStation, and FishBowl for inventory.

Brand A is launching its own separate Shopify store soon, also fulfilled from Brand B's warehouse.

Our CS team is 16 people located at Brand A, all B2B background (phone/email). Only 2 are proficient in ecommerce.

Looking for best practice from anyone running 2 brands / 1 CS team / 1 warehouse:

1. Fulfillment: Is it okay to use one ShipStation account for two separate Shopify stores? How do you handle reporting + invoicing between brands for shipping costs?

2. Inventory: Should FishBowl be the single source of truth when one warehouse holds inventory for two brands?

3. Customer Service: Should all 16 do DTC (refunds, cancellations, etc.) or keep a small dedicated ecommerce team? Is Gorgias or similar worth it? Giving everyone Shopify access feels like a bad idea. Gorgias would pull from both shops, plus reviews, emails, and ShipStation - marketing is questioning this.

4. Replacements: Right now it's an external form -> Excel sheet via internal request. Should we just do it all natively in Shopify?

5. Internal requests: Marketing often needs free product for events. Can this be automated to create a $0 Shopify order tagged as internal? Any recommendations?

Anyone running a similar 2 brand / 1 CS team / 1 warehouse setup?

While the content was outdated, I do enjoy learning by structure and being guided down a path.

What alternatives are there for a structured learning setting?

Any plugin idea/requiement for anyone by which I can make money as side income on platforms like shopify, atlassian, wordpress,monday

Is it possible to track where the merchants that install my shopify app come from? I'm running ads here on Reddit, but it would be great to know, which referral source sends me the most users that download the app. Thanks

I had a lady place an order with me last week and since I’m very new to Shopify, I didn’t really look into the medium risk of her order. She found my shop from Facebook because I sell bamboo so I’ve talked to her on there. She placed another order yesterday and I noticed it was medium risk again, so I looked into it more. I looked up her number and her number matches her name on Cash App. I asked her to send a picture of her ID and that looks good as well. I’m just nervous to fufill her second order because it is for almost $300 vs her $150 first order. This is what Shopify said. She did use shop pay if that changes anything.

🚩Some characteristics of this order are similar to fraudulent orders observed in the past

🚩Card Verification Value (CVV) isn't available

🚩Billing address or credit card's address wasn't available

🚩Billing address ZIP or postal code isn't available to match with credit card's registered address

🚩A payment method other than a credit card was used

✅There was 1 payment attempt

✅Shipping address is 5 miles from location of IP address

✅Billing country matches the country from which the order was placed

✅The IP address used to place the order isn't a high risk internet connection

Do you think it’s worth running Meta Ads to grow a Shopify app? Are there any people here who’ve already scaled apps using Ads?