Looking for the Best App for Shopify Store? Here Are Your 10 Must-Haves

There are over 8,000 options on the Shopify app store. No wonder it’s challenging to choose just three to five of them and make sure they’re the best Shopify applications out there.

Luckily for you, we at DigitalSuits are no strangers to enhancing the Shopify store’s feature kit with third-party apps. As a leading Shopify app development company and a certified Shopify partner, we have rich hands-on experience with Shopify apps. So, we know which apps are irreplaceable in creating a better e-commerce store.

Today, let us draw on our experience and introduce you to the best Shopify applications in ten categories, from email marketing and shipping to order fulfillment and customer support.

1. Best app for Shopify store: rewards and loyalty programs

When done right, loyalty programs and rewards can drive customers to choose your store over competitors. They will place orders more frequently and pay more to stay with your brand, according to McKinsey.

But what does “done right” mean? In a nutshell, customers expect discounts and free shipping from a loyalty program – and they don’t want to wait too long to redeem a reward. So here’s one of the best Shopify applications to help you create an effective reward system and loyalty program.

Joy

Rating: 5.0/5

Pricing: free; $29/mo. (Pro)

Developer: Joy Loyalty

Joy managed a rare feat – earning a perfect 5.0 rating on the Shopify app store. It’s no surprise, however: the Joy app has everything you need to set up reward and loyalty programs, from redeemable points to referrals and commissions. You’re also flexible in customizing earning and spending rules for the bonuses and branding to make your program one of a kind.

Key features:

• Automatic point reward system
• Conditional point redemption and expiration
• Customer management
• Customizable branding
• Referral and commission programs

2. Best app for Shopify store: abandoned cart recovery

Like any other business, you must have some users that start shopping on your website but abandon their cart before checkout. (The cart abandonment rate is a whopping 75.6% worldwide!)

You don’t have to cut your losses here. Instead, you can recover some of those abandoned carts and reduce the loss of revenue with Abandoned Cart Recovery by Marsello.

Abandoned Cart Recovery by Marsello

Rating: 4.6/5

Pricing: $19/mo. (Standard), $29/mo. (Pro)

Free trial: 14 days

Developer: Marsello

You don’t have to play Sherlock Holmes and detect abandoned carts manually one by one. All you need is Abandoned Cart Recovery, a must-have app for Shopify stores that automatically detects incomplete orders and acts accordingly to recover them. You can set it up to send emails, show exit pop-ups, remember carts across multiple devices, and more.

Key features:

• Email reminders about unfinished orders
• Automatic exit pop-ups
• Multi-device cart synchronization
• Facebook Messenger reminders (Pro plan only)

3. Best app for Shopify store: email marketing

Email marketing remains one of the most effective tools. A recent study shows that businesses can expect an average return of $40 on every $1 spent on email marketing. Klaviyo can help you harness the power of email marketing.

Klaviyo

Rating: 4.0/5

Pricing: free (up to 250 email contacts and 50 SMS contacts); $20/mo. for email (up to 500 contacts) and $5/mo. for SMS (up to 150 contacts), with upgrades available

Developer: Klaviyo

We’ve turned to Klaviyo multiple times in the development process: MyBalto and Artisan Revere are just a couple of examples. The reason? Klaviyo comes with powerful personalization, automation, and predictive analytics features, among others. It’s also a must-have app for Shopify if you rely on comprehensive data in your marketing.

Key features:

• Automation for campaigns and event-based emails and messages (price drops, back in stock, etc.)
• Detailed customer list segmentation powered by predictive analytics
• Comprehensive real-time metric tracking (per automation, segment, etc.)

4. Best app for Shopify store: subscriptions

Subscriptions are a new goldmine. According to CaaStle data, subscribed customers of one apparel company spent on average 2.5 times more than their traditional counterparts. But consumers want a good value for their money, per McKinsey. Here’s how Appstle can help you deliver just that.

Appstle

Rating: 4.9/5

Pricing: free until $500 in subscription revenue per month; $10/mo. for up to $5,000; $30/mo. for up to $30,000; $100/mo. for up to $100,000

Free trial: 10 days

Developer: Appstle Inc.

One of the most powerful apps for e-commerce stores, Appstle has everything you need to deliver a rich subscription experience to your customers. It’s also an extremely flexible tool: you can offer a variety of loyalty benefits, different subscription types, and custom UX features.

Key features:

• Pay-as-you-go and prepaid subscriptions with the free trial and build-a-box options
• Tiered discounts, custom shipping, and other loyalty features
• Bundling, upsells, and customer retention tools
• Integrations with Zapier, PageFly, Klaviyo, and other Shopify apps
• 0% transaction fees

5. Best app for Shopify store: reviews and customer photos

Social proof and public opinion matters: Local Consumer Review Survey 2022 from BrightLocal shows that 97% of the surveyed consumers read reviews online to search for local businesses. Here’s how Yotpo can help you do it. H3 Yotpo Product & Photo Reviews

Rating: 4.9/5

Pricing: free (up to 50 monthly orders); $15/mo. (50 monthly orders); $24/mo. (100 monthly orders); $49/mo. (250 monthly orders)

Developer: Yotpo

We used Yotpo in developing a store for a kitchen knife manufacturer, Artisan Revere. So, we can attest that collecting and displaying reviews is as easy as it can be with this app. And thanks to Yotpo’s partnership with Google, these reviews can drive more organic traffic from search results to your store.

Key features:

• Easy customers’ photo and video collection
• Smart filters for delivering relevant content to users
• Customizable widgets for presenting reviews on your website
• Integrations with Facebook, Instagram, and Google
• H2 Best app for Shopify store: shipping

6. Best app for Shopify store: shipping

U.S. shoppers expect fast delivery from online stores. For instance, 42% of shoppers expect two-day shipping for online purchases. To help you match these expectations, you can take advantage of Shipway, one of the best Shopify applications.

Shipway

Rating: 4.9/5

Pricing: $19.99/mo. (500 orders + 1 courier integration); $39.99/mo. (1,200 orders + 3 courier integrations); $99.99/mo. (3,000 orders + 5 courier integrations); $169.99/mo. (5,000 orders + unlimited courier integrations)

Free trial: 7 days

Developer: Shipway

Shipway is a five-in-one app that lets you automate everything related to shipping. From automatically processing orders to choosing the right courier service and creating a branded return workflow for your customers, you can automate most of your shipping efforts with Shipway – and manage everything from one panel.

Key features:

• Automatic multi-channel order processing in a single dashboard
• Courier aggregation for prompt delivery (51 courier integrations available)
• Bulk label and invoice generation
• NDR follow-ups
• In-built fraud detection
• SMS and WhatsApp notifications
• A return page with automated return pickups

7. Best app for Shopify store: order fulfilment

Fulfilment costs have been rising in the US both for B2B and B2C segments. But as the purchasing power of consumers is in decline, shoppers often can’t afford to pay the price. So, your task is to bring down your order fulfilment costs and duration – and Auto Fulfill is the right app for this job.

Auto Fulfill

Rating: 4.3/5

Pricing: $20/mo. (up to 500 unfulfilled orders); $30/mo. (up to 1,000 unfulfilled orders); $40/mo. (up to 2,000 unfulfilled orders); $50/mo. (up to 3,000 unfulfilled orders)

Free trial: 7 days

Developer: Estore Automate

If you’re tired of sending order details to your vendors manually, Auto Fulfill is the Shopify app must-have for you. It can take care of sending unfulfilled order data while you take care of more essential business operations. Auto Fulfill will also help you keep track of orders and update tracking without breaking a sweat.

Key features:

• Fulfillment tracking and report generation
• Order scheduling and relaying via vendor links or Google Sheets
• Bulk and location-based fulfilment
• Packing slip generation
• No impact on your website load speed

8. Best app for Shopify store: dropshipping

Clothing, home and garden, jewelry and watches are the top three dropshipping products on Shopify. So, if you want to get in on it, here’s how Spocket can help you set up your dropshipping business with ease.

Spocket

Rating: 4.6/5

Pricing: free; $29.99/mo. (Premium); $49.99/mo. (Pro); $99.99/mo. (Empire)

Free trial: 14 days

Developer: Spocket

Need access to fast-shipping products and vendors for your dropshipping business? Spocket has you covered. This app allows you to look up any product, find the right vendor, and import the item to your store in seconds. It’s integrated with AliExpress, too – so it’s ideal for AliExpress dropshipping operations.

Key features:

• Access to thousands of vendors and US and European products with reverse image lookup
• Discounts and wholesale prices without minimum order requirements
• Fully automated AliExpress dropshipping with seamless product import and order fulfilment
• Branded invoice generation

9. Best app for Shopify store: store design

Your store’s design is your first impression on a potential customer. It’s also key to a great user and customer experience, as well as making your SEO efforts more efficient.

You don’t have to start designing from scratch. You can use an app like PageFly to create beautiful, optimized pages in a matter of minutes!

PageFly

Rating: 4.9/5

Pricing: free; paid plan starts at $24/mo.

Developer: PageFly

PageFly is an unrivalled page builder for Shopify stores: it allows you to create pages of any purpose and complexity: from landing and home pages to product, collection, and password pages. It’s also fully compatible with Shopify themes and comes with in-built SEO and speed optimization.

Key features:

• Intuitive drag-and-drop page builder
• Out-of-the-box responsive design
• Diverse element types (slideshows, blocks, tabs, accordions, and more)
• Marketing element types to boost conversion (sale countdowns, badges, etc.)
• Clean code optimized for search engines and fast loading speed

10. Best app for Shopify store: customer support and FAQs

Customer experience is a primary competitive differentiator for your store; it can prompt a shopper to place another order on your website or never return to it again. Customer support is a vital part of customer experience – and you can excel at it with the HelpCenter Shopify app.

HelpCenter

Rating: 4.7/5

Pricing: free (10 tickets/mo.); $8/mo. (50 tickets/mo.); $45/mo. (300 tickets/mo.); $100/mo. (1,000 tickets/mo.)

Free trial: 15 days

Developer: Shark Byte, Inc.

HelpCenter is a Shopify app must-have for any store owner that cares about the customer experience. It offers a robust toolkit with all the ingredients for an excellent CX: the live chat, chatbot, FAQ builder, contact form, and ticketing system. It’s also easy to use and affordable, especially for new businesses.

Key features:

• Multi-language FAQ builder with in-built SEO
• Live chat and chatbot for your store
• Ticketing system for managing tickets from multiple sources (email, Facebook, live chat)
• Contact form with pre-built templates and widgets

Final thoughts

Shopify apps are here to help you create a better e-commerce store with all the features you and your customers may need. However, you should opt only for the best Shopify applications to avoid problems with performance, functionality, and load speed.

The best way to see if an app lives up to your expectations is to take it on a test drive. Check out the demo store and use that free trial to try the app in the field conditions if you’re considering a paid one.

Frequently asked questions

What’s the best app for Shopify store to increase sales?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer here. To increase your online store’s sales, you have to consider multiple aspects of marketing and customer experience and see which strategy will pay off the best.

For some businesses, honing their email marketing strategy with Klaviyo is the best solution to boost sales. For others, recovering abandoned carts is a better way to go.

You can also look into Shopify apps like Wiser, AVADA Boost Sales 14 in 1, and SMART Bundle Upsell. They are designed to help you personalize the shopping experience, upsell and cross-sell.

How many Shopify applications should I install?

Three to five is the optimal number of app installs for a Shopify store. That’s because the more apps you install, the more likely they will slow down your website – and that’s not great for the user experience.

Make sure to test your store’s load speed every time you add a new application; their impact can differ. You can consult our comprehensive Shopify store speed optimization guide for more information.

What are the best Shopify applications for dropshipping?

In our opinion, Spocket is a must-have app for Shopify dropshipping business. It’ll help you find products from vendors all over the world and add them to your store in a couple of clicks. Other noteworthy dropshipping Shopify apps are Printful for print-on-demand businesses and Oberlo for Aliexpress dropshipping.