Shopify continues to grow at unprecedented rates, with a record breaking Black Friday/Cyber Monday and a 94% increase in 2020 EOY revenue. One of the most interesting parts of the Shopify ecosystem is the App Store. There are plenty of service app stores (Slack, Salesforce, Github, etc.), but what makes Shopify particularly interesting is the usage and quality:
87% of merchants use at least one app
The average merchant uses 6+ apps (!)
All apps go through a thorough app review, to enforce UX, data security, and consistent branding
(Most) apps charge via consolidated billing via Shopify (Shopify takes a 20% cut of payments going through them)
In mid-2018 Shopify paid out $100M to app developers, and in mid-2019 they reported 25M+ total installs. They haven’t shared any usage numbers in 2020/2021, but installs have almost certainly doubled in the past year.
Shopify Apps fall into 3 categories:
Private/Custom: These are 1-off apps made for specific stores and are unlisted in the app store. In my experience, most app development consultancies will be making apps for clients this way. Many Shopify Plus integrations fall into this bucket as well.
Unlisted: These are apps installable by everyone, but not marketed through Shopify itself (though they must satisfy all of the Shopify App Store guidelines)
Listed: These are apps available to everyone, and discoverable on Shopify
Below, I’m going to take a deeper dive into high level app store trends (exclusively on the public marketplace - Listed apps). All data is as of April 01, 2021.
Overall
The total number of Listed apps is increasingly quickly, with almost 6000 in the store today, a ~50% increase from a year ago and more than double 2019.
“Free” apps are apps that include a free plan (though might also include paid plans with more functionality or higher usage limits)1. The number of free apps has increased significantly as the Shopify ecosystem has matured, with more competition & copy cats. In 2019, less than 40% of apps had free plans; this year, there are more free apps than paid-only apps.
The biggest categories of apps are design, conversion, marketing, and order/shipping management.2
Unsurprisingly, while the app store has doubled in size, the breakdown of app categories has remained pretty balanced over the years.
Reviews & Ratings
The biggest signal for installing an app is Reviews. Shopify doesn’t reveal any installation numbers publicly, but Reviews tends to be a reasonable proxy for the popularity of an app. The average number of reviews per app is 86, but the median is only 4 (25% of apps have 0 reviews). Reviews and app usage are extremely whale-heavy, with 75% of reviews coming from the top 5% of apps.
A small aside on Revenue: There are plenty of sources that project revenue from price + review count. To accurately estimate this value, you typically have to figure out two conversion rates:
Review / Installs Ratio
Install Value (for a free app: Free-to-Paid conversion * Paid Avg Price)
These two numbers vary wildly based on the type of app and target store, so I won’t attempt to do it here. From what I’ve seen, the Reviews/Installs Ratio can range from 5 to 40.
If we look at Shopify App Reviews given by month, we see a big bump starting around March 2020 (which correlates the pandemic timing, and fits the Shopify growth numbers well).
If we look split by paid vs. free app, we see that the ratio has been relatively steady between the two (but free app reviews outnumber paid apps significantly, as they presumably have a lot more trial installs).
Splitting reviews by category, there are some interesting differences in both average and median review count by category, and the differences between category.
Shopify App reviews tend to be positive: 85% of reviews given are 5 ⭐. The average app rating is 4.3 ⭐, and the median is 4.8 ⭐.
Prices
Out of the 5853 apps in the App Store at the time of writing, 30% had only a free plan. Some of these linked to existing accounts (particularly ad accounts, like the popular Google Channel) and others charged recurring or usage-based pricing outside of Shopify (like Omnisend).
For paid-only apps, monthly prices ranged from $0.01 to $6666 (no one said group shopping was cheap!). For paid apps with multiple pricing plans, the average cost was $78. The cheapest plans averaged $31 and the most expensive averaged $142.
Top Apps
All time app charts are interesting but tend to bias towards early apps in the store. Instead, the more interesting view is apps that have received reviews recently3.
Most reviewed free Shopify apps (from January through March 2021):
Facebook channel (1.1k reviews, 4.5 ⭐)
DSers‑AliExpress Dropshipping (1.1k reviews, 4.9 ⭐)
Judge.me Product Reviews (715 reviews, 5.0 ⭐)
PageFly Landing Page Builder (696 reviews, 4.9 ⭐)
Google channel (618 reviews, 4.6 ⭐)
Most reviewed paid Shopify apps (from January through March 2021):
Ali Reviews ‑ Product Reviews (854 reviews, 4.9 ⭐)
Loox Product Reviews Referrals (593 reviews, 4.9 ⭐)
VITALS | 40+ apps in one (457 reviews, 5.0 ⭐)
Feed For Google Shopping (380 reviews, 4.9 ⭐)
GemPages Flexible Page Builder (285 reviews, 4.9 ⭐)
Most reviewed Shopify apps by category (January through March 2021):
Store Design: Ali Reviews ‑ Product Reviews
Marketing: Facebook channel
Sales and conversion optimization: Ali Reviews ‑ Product Reviews
Reporting: Packlink PRO Shipping Platform
Orders and shipping: AfterShip Order Tracking
Trust and security: Free GDPR + EU Cookie
Finances: Data Export Reports
Productivity: Automizely: Pop Ups & Email
Inventory management: Etsy Marketplace Integration
Customer support: Whatsapp Chat +Abandoned Cart
Finding and adding products: DSers‑AliExpress Dropshipping
Places to sell: Facebook channel
If we look at all time reviews, we don’t see any overlap!
Most reviewed free Shopify apps (all time):
Privy ‑ Pop Ups, Email, & SMS (24k reviews, 4.6 ⭐)
Free Shipping Bar (10k reviews, 4.9 ⭐)
BEST Currency Converter (7.6k reviews, 4.8 ⭐)
Ultimate Sales Boost (6.8k reviews, 4.8 ⭐)
POP! Sales Pop & Social Proof (6.8k reviews, 4.7 ⭐)
Most reviewed paid Shopify apps (all time):
Loox Product Reviews Referrals (6.6k reviews, 4.9 ⭐)
Ali Reviews ‑ Product Reviews (5.7k reviews, 4.9 ⭐)
Sales Pop Master ‑ Countdown (5.4k reviews, 4.7 ⭐)
Infinite Options (3.3k reviews, 4.9 ⭐)
Feed For Google Shopping (2.5k reviews, 4.9 ⭐)
Conclusion
The Shopify App marketplace is growing quickly, and is a great channel for many e-commerce tools. In Part 2, we’ll look at some of the success factors of highly and lowly rated apps.
Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or ideas on other ways to slice and dice the data! You can find me online at @kunal_modi.
This terminology is a little confusing, but this is how the filters work on the Shopify App Store
Apps can fall into multiple categories on the official Shopify app store, so I reused that methodology here.
I somewhat arbitrarily set a 3 month window (2021-01-01 - 2021-04-01), which also doesn’t account for a lot of EOY seasonality.