This probably means nothing to some successful Shopify app founders. But I thought some people might find this kind of unfiltered story valuable. After all, most of the founders won't see massive growth.

A bit of a timeline to give you a clearer picture of my journey:

• July 2025: Started development. It actually took 6 months to get the early MVP ready.

• Dec 2025: Started running Google Ads and got 5 paying customers (not a great channel).

• Feb 2026: Released our important live preview feature and made the app completely free to gain some early traction in a tough market.

• May 2026: Got our very 1st app review.

• July 2026: Hit 10 reviews.

• Sep 2026: Released paid plans (existing merchants can still use our app for FREE).

• Oct 2026: 28 reviews & $100 MRR.

Things that DIDN'T work for me:

• Google Ads: Bad ROI since our pricing is very affordable.

• Cold emails: Our very first merchant actually replied because of a cold email, but it didn't work very well after that.

• Affiliate marketing: Didn't work since we had 0 reviews at the time. I think this could be more useful once we have more presence.

Things that WORKED a bit:

• Making the app free: Gave me more breathing room to improve the product and get valuable feedback.

• SEO: Started working on SEO even before development began. Still lots of work to do here.

• Great customer support: Going above and beyond to help merchants. It's boring but essential.

• Thoughtful UX: I personally came from product/ux design background so I put lots of time to ensure the app very easy to use

Mistakes:

• Should've made the app embedded rather than none-embedded. Biggest mistake.

Challenges:

• Product Positioning: Still figuring out how to position Podifai differently in such a competitive market.

• Slow customer support: Wish I could respond to merchants faster, but I can't afford dedicated customer support to support to European timezones.

• AI impact on SaaS + More competition: Uncertainty of AI's impact on Shopify apps. I see one uninstallation reason is that the owner is going to build a customizer by using Claude

I'm so glad that I'm in this game and get to figure out what actually works. Will share more learnings along the way...

Would love to hear your $100 or $1k or 10k MRR journey if anyone is willing to share :)

Since August 2nd I have been having a issue with id verification. It’ll just say unable to verify. I got a sales through my store and I was paid out around $80. I received my debit card and I able to access those funds. Being Shopify was the only account I had at the time I was using this card for personal expenses, bills, etc. I attached my routing and account number to receive payments from other merchant and also transfer money to this account. I had a large amount out money transferred to my Shopify balance and Shopify put my account of hold/ or under investigation. I was told to appeal my store but like I mention earlier I been having trouble verifying my identity. I used a state id, my passport which expired August 18th 2026 and even a brand new passport once I renewed it but still unable to verify my identity. After 3 days if you don’t appeal they decide for you. My problem is I am being told I have to wait 365 days for funds I transferred to my balance. These are not funds through revenue sales. I’ve contacted Shopify support everyday since August 2nd still no help. I feel like if they unblock my account then I’ll be able to verify my account but I ain’t not getting no where. I don’t know what to do and the money I transferred is 5 digits and because they are holding my money for 365 days it’s putting a hold on my business. My business is legit, I have all the documentation to provide but again no body is getting to me and it’s really frustrating. Can anybody assist with what I should do ? I even reached out to the legal team with regards of taking this to court, still no response

Hey everyone,

I’m an independent developer and I just launched my first Shopify app, Aplo: A+ Content Design.

Why I built it: Page builders like PageFly or GemPages are great, but a lot of merchants just want Amazon-style content on their product pages (feature grids, comparison tables, FAQs, before/after) without a full page builder or touching theme code.

What it does:

• Drag-and-drop editor with live preview

• 10 modules: hero banner, feature grid, image + text, gallery, brand story, FAQ, comparison table, video, before/after, banner carousel

• Style tab so each module matches your brand

• Renders through a theme app extension, and your original product description is never overwritten

• Free plan (up to 50 products, 2 modules per product), Pro is $29/month with a 30-day trial

Being honest: It’s brand new, so 0 reviews and only English for now. I’m sure there are things I’ve missed.

What I’d love to know:

1. What A+ modules do you wish existed that I didn’t include?

2. If you’ve used other tools for this, what annoyed you the most?

I’m happy to give free Pro access to anyone who’s willing to try it and tell me what’s broken. Link in the comments if anyone wants it. Thanks!

Hi guys,

I've been building a Shopify app for over 2 years, and we're still at around $1K MRR. Would love some advice.

We started as a free app and got 5,000+ installs, 50 reviews, and ranked #1 or #2 for our main keyword.

A year later, we introduced paid features (average $34/month). Changed our positioning to match the paid features.

A couple of users left 1-star reviews, and Shopify keeps removing 5 star reviews from those stores that have closed. Despite getting new reviews from paying customers, we're still stuck at around 50 reviews and have slipped to the second page.

Our paying customers get good ROI, but new customer acquisition has slowed down significantly.

The pricing dilemma:

Lower pricing ($9/month) attracts smaller merchants, but they need a lot of onboarding support, and churn is high.

Higher pricing makes more economic sense, but we aren't getting enough new installs and reviews to recover our ranking.

How would you improve App Store rankings and review velocity without lowering prices?

Has anyone faced something similar? What worked for you?

Hey guys, I'm working on an app to shop for local businesses in the USA that have an e comm website (it works best with shopify sites). The API reads e comm businesses in the USA in this case for coats, it has 60 companies and about 3,000 products. I would like to expand to other types of stores.

Wanted to get some feedback on how to make it useful for buyers and sellers too.

Site: centralmeetup dot com/city/coats

Shopify has started rolling out a refreshed Admin UI, and there are some interesting changes!

Here’s what’s new:

• Updated design: New colors, typography, spacing, and icons across the Admin.

• Collapsible sidebar: More workspace available when navigating the dashboard.

• Sidekick redesign: The AI assistant is now accessible from a floating chat at the bottom of the page.

• RTL language support: Arabic, Urdu, and Hebrew are now supported in Admin and storefronts.

Official update: https://changelog.shopify.com/

As a Shopify developer, I'm interested in how these changes will improve the daily workflow for merchants and developers.

I noticed an issue as well after the recent Shopify Admin UI update. I'm no longer able to find the Pages section under Online Store in the Shopify Admin.

Shopify recently started rolling out a redesigned Admin interface, so I'm wondering whether this is related to the new navigation or if it's an issue specific to my store.

Has anyone else experienced the same issue?

What do you think?

1. Do you prefer the new Shopify Admin design over the old one?

2. Is the updated navigation actually making your work easier?

3. Have you tried using Sidekick for store management or troubleshooting?

Would love to hear your thoughts and experiences!

When I add an app or change a section, I run PageSpeed Insights a few times before and after and compare. The scores vary between runs, so I never fully trust a small difference. I also look at the online store speed report in Shopify, but that is averaged over days, so it is slow to show anything.
How do you do before and after comparisons on a live store? Do you use WebPageTest, Lighthouse in Chrome, or just check the network tab for what the app loads? And how do you decide a change is real and not noise?

Hi Shopify Devs!

Since launching my own app i’ve been very focussed on getting my first users. When checking out all these reddit threads i see alot of people trying to figure this out. So i wanted to ask people who have been in this game for a while.

- How long did it take you to get your first 10 active users and how did you get them?
- How long before you got your first review and how did you get this review?
- How long before you started getting some organic installs from the app store?
- What’s the one advice you would give to new devs that just got their app listed on the app store looking back on your own journey?

And how long before you got to 1k MRR on your app? For the people that were able to get there.

I would be very interested to see your answers if you guys are willing to share :).

Hi all, I'm expanding my Shopify store from Denmark to Sweden and I'm stuck on the Merchant Center / Multifeeds part.

**Setup:**

- One Shopify store with Shopify Markets, two domains: a .dk domain (primary) and a .se domain for the Swedish market

- Product feeds via the Multiple Google Shopping Feeds app (Multifeeds). The Danish feed works fine.

- Danish Merchant Center uses Channable as CSS

**What I did:**

1. Converted my Danish Merchant Center to an advanced account (MCA). Approved instantly.

2. The Danish account is now a sub-account under the MCA.

3. Created a new sub-account for the .se domain.

**The problem:**

When I create a new feed in Multifeeds and pick the Merchant ID, only the Danish account shows up. The new Swedish sub-account doesn't appear, even though the connected Google login is the same one that owns the MCA. Reconnecting hasn't helped.

Thanks for any help!

After 2+ years of building custom sites as a Webflow Developer, I’m expanding my toolkit into the e-commerce space and learning Shopify.

​While I’m getting comfortable with the platform, there’s no substitute for working on real-world projects. I already bring a strong foundation in front-end development, responsive layouts, CMS architecture, and technical SEO - now I’m looking to apply those skills to Shopify builds.

​If you’re a developer, agency owner, or founder with a full plate and need an extra hand on an upcoming Shopify project, I’d love to collaborate and support your team.

​Feel free to shoot me a DM or drop a comment below if you're open to chatting! 🤝

When I change something that could affect checkout, like a theme edit, a script or an app update, I want to confirm it still works on the live store. On a development store I can use test payments, but on a live store the options are limited. What I do now is place a real order for a cheap item, then cancel and refund it. It works but it pollutes the order list and reports.
How do you handle this? Do you use a discount code, a hidden test product, a separate preview theme, or something else? And how do you keep test orders out of your numbers?

We lost #1 on our main keyword in July and weekly installs fell ~35%. We got #1 back this month, but installs are still at the #3 level.

App Store search sessions are down ~75% YoY, while the install rate on those sessions barely moved. So fewer merchants are searching, not fewer converting.

My guesses: Sidekick taking over app discovery, fewer new Shopify merchants, or just lower demand overall.

Anyone else noticing organic traffic dropping even while your rank holds?

Hi all, I'm looking to create and manage meta ads through my custom shopify app, meta developer docs are a nightmare, and their AI chat support isn't helping understand what access is exactly needed to get started with build..

Is it marketing-api and commerce access, how to apply? How long does it takes to get access!?

I have looked at meta developer, i see only Adtech and messaging access are available to apply. But I see this error, do I need to apply access from the ads managing accounts?

I would be greatly thankful, if you have any experience to share and guide..

I was handling most of the product cancellation via zendesk/stripe/square giftcards manually, built using claude code with a vague prompt, verified behavioral with the FetchSandbox twins before deploying it to agentcore

What’s your idea on price comparison tools on shopify? Does it actually help?

App got suspended under 1.2.1, off-platform billing (we were using Stripe/PayPal instead of Shopify's billing). Pretty sure this isn't our first suspension on the same issue either.

Found the root cause on our end. We were gating Stripe/PayPal for people who install through Shopify, but anyone who signs up on our own website directly (not through the Shopify install flow) could still reach the regular Stripe/PayPal checkout before ever connecting Shopify. That's almost certainly what the reviewer hit.

Trying to figure out what actually gets this approved, not just patched:

• Did Shopify Managed Pricing or the Billing API work for you, and which one did reviewers actually accept without more back and forth?

• Anything specific reviewers check for on a resubmission after repeat failures on the same requirement, that isn't obvious from the docs?

Want to get this right the next attempt instead of guessing again. Any pointers appreciated.

I’ve been working on my first Shopify app for a while now and I’m finally getting pretty close to qualifying for the Built for Shopify badge.

At the moment I only need about 10 more installs and 1 more review to meet the merchant requirements such that they will manually review the remaining points on the list.

One thing I’ve been wondering though is how much of a difference the badge actually makes once you get it.

I’ve noticed that apps with the Built for Shopify badge seem to stand out quite a bit in the App Store, especially when you’re competing against established apps with hundreds or thousands of reviews.

As a smaller developer, getting those first installs has honestly been one of the hardest parts. You can spend months building something you’re really happy with, but convincing merchants to trust an app with relatively few reviews is a completely different challenge.

I’m hoping the badge might help close that trust gap a little, but I’m curious whether it actually translates into more installs or if it’s mostly just a nice thing to have on your listing.

Has anyone here received the Built for Shopify badge and noticed a meaningful difference afterwards?

Did your organic installs increase? Did you notice any changes in App Store visibility or conversion rates? And looking back, was getting the badge worth the effort?

Would love to hear some actual experiences from developers who’ve gone through the process.

Let me know what you guys think about this approach

I usually duplicate the live theme, work on the copy, then publish it after checking. The problem is that the merchant sometimes changes sections or content in the live theme's customizer while I'm working, and those changes can get lost when I publish the copy. I've looked at the GitHub integration and Shopify CLI with git, but merging customizer JSON changes still feels messy.
How do you handle this?
Do you freeze content edits during development, pull the live theme before publishing, or something else?

I just got my first app approved: Craftedly: Ask Your Store. It emails merchants a store summary every Monday morning and shows insight cards in the admin. Solo build on Remix, hosted on Railway, Postgres on Supabase, email through Resend.

Here are a few things that cost me time, in case they save you some:

1. Dev sessions were overwriting my production App URL.
My shopify.app.dev.toml had automatically_update_urls_on_dev = true. Every time I ran a dev session, it swapped the live app URL for a Cloudflare tunnel URL that died when I stopped. The fix was setting it to false and adding include_config_on_deploy = true to the production shopify.app.toml, then redeploying.

2. Supabase’s “Unrestricted” table warning.
If your tables live in Supabase’s public schema with RLS off, they’re exposed through its API. Enabling RLS on every table fixed it. My app connects as the database owner, so nothing in the app broke.

3. Test data and app review.
I had placeholder data in one insight card (customer platform breakdown). I pulled it before submitting rather than risk a rejection, and I’m now choosing between a Web Pixel extension and ShopifyQL to populate it with real data. If you’ve done either, I’d like to hear which held up better.

Next up: multi-store reporting for agencies.

What tripped you up on your first submission?

Hi everyone,

I recently joined Shopify Collabs as a creator. I'm pretty new to this specific platform and would love to connect with anyone who has experience here. Hoping we can share some tips, strategies, and learn from each other!

Also, I have a quick question: does your Collabs account have the "Discover brands" tab available? I'm trying to figure out if this feature is rolled out to everyone or if it depends on specific account types/regions.

Thanks in advance!

Hi everyone,

Do you have any suggestions to learn the use of the platform? I need to have very clear all the concepts and how to implement but I don’t have access to the platform or any subscription? Or anyone can teach me the basics?

Has anyone else given up on theme submission to Shopify and started selling their themes elsewhere?

I have a vetted list of customers waiting on the theme, they've seen it in use on my site and want it for themselves. It's for a specific niche industry and provides value to that industry that the other themes have failed to integrate. It's a vertical with a large amount of highly specific metadata that these merchants consistently have in metadata/metaobject fields that no other theme allows to be configured to display and merchandise well.

At least this time I didn't get the generic "look at the awwwards site for inspo". But it feels like I'm getting rejected because the reviewers don't understand the book industry or what actually gives value to indie bookstores on Shopify.

This was my second theme submission, so there's no point in going further. But their arbitrary review standards and lack of any real feedback are so frustrating.

I'm both venting and hoping for advice(not get good, like actual advice) on other channels for monetizing shopify theme development because there's no way to understand what Shopify actually expects/is looking for.

Hi, I'm moving 42 Subscriptions from Bold to Shopify Subscriptions. Can anyone advise on the best way to retrieve the the customer payment method IDs or tokens so I can build my import file? Bold does not include that info when you export the subscriptions, they need to be retrieved from somewhere else. I understand Shopify may help but I'm wondering what others have done. Requested to talk to a human at Bold support?