15 Best Shopify Apps for Store Management & How to Choose

You may have wondered why you need additional apps in Shopify. You already pay for the platform, you bought a domain, and now it’s asking for more? It’s easy to feel like you’re being pushed into paying for an incomplete product. But that’s not the case.

Some stores thrive without additional apps, but with them, sellers can improve their branding or go beyond what Shopify offers by default. We will introduce you to some of the best Shopify apps for ecommerce that can help you boost your marketing strategies and grow as a merchant. 

Read to the end to find out which apps are best suited for novice sellers!

Shopify has built a huge ecosystem for commerce. Therefore, it would be counterintuitive for an all-in-one website-building platform to rely on external plugins to improve the experience. Naturally, Shopify has built its own app store designed solely for e-commerce.

Apps help businesses automate processes and expand store functionality. They are especially useful for those who run their own store and need the best Shopify apps to increase sales, but for specific reasons, cannot afford to hire a designer, marketer, or SEO specialist. Apps offer a cost-effective alternative to lighten the load.

Shopify App Store library has over 8,000 extensions for all kinds of purposes. But the concept of “best” is quite relative. A brand-new but mediocre app may have five stars but no reviews, while another, older one has already built a reputation and is improving its product thanks to reviews.

The best Shopify app is one that delivers results and has an appropriate price-quality ratio. This approach lets you customize your store with only the tools you actually need, rather than piling on features you’ll never use.

15 best Shopify apps for store optimization

There are no such universal applications; otherwise, the library would be at least half as long. What dropshippers need may not be suitable for wholesalers, and vice versa. That’s why we offer an overview of Shopify’s best features in five categories: conversions, retention, inventory management, marketing, and design.

Criteria for selecting the best apps on Shopify

Our list has not been sponsored by any external party. We have compiled a selection of the 3 types of best Shopify apps for specific business tasks, in our opinion. For the selection, we chose apps with a rating of 4.5 stars or higher and the most favorable conditions in both the free and paid versions.

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Best Shopify apps to increase conversions

High traffic is not necessarily an indicator of a store’s success. This raises the logical question: “Why do I have so many visitors and virtually no sales?” Below, we present what we consider to be the three best Shopify conversion-focused apps to help improve your sales strategy.

Upsell ReConvert

Key features:

• Customizable thank-you and post-purchase pages.
• One-click upsell funnels.
• Smart product recommendations.
  

Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans scale with order volume. Free trial available.

The purchase process isn’t over until the buyer confirms payment in the cart. However, the checkout is also a platform for product recommendations. We recommend Upsell ReConvert as one of the best Shopify apps to increase sales. You can set up smart recommendations on product pages, thank-you pages, at checkout, and other store pages, leading to an increase in average revenue.

In addition to the usual product recommendations to add to the cart, Upsell ReConver also prides itself on its one-click upsells. Even after paying for an existing cart, the buyer is offered a list of products that can be paid for immediately without re-entering payment details or creating a separate cart.

The application offers several service packages based on order volume, while the free plan is designed for development stores. Among the disadvantages is the limited language support, which can confuse non-English-speaking users.

Lucky Orange

Key features:

• Heatmaps and session recordings.
• Conversion funnels.
• Real-time visitor monitoring.
  

Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans based on traffic volume.

Successful salespeople develop their business when they are ready to analyze their shortcomings and learn from their mistakes critically. Among the best Shopify apps for conversions, Lucky Orange was created precisely for these needs. It gives a clear answer to the question “Why am I not converting?”

The app gives a behind-the-scenes look at customer behavior through heatmaps, cart overviews, and session recordings that reveal friction points. Tariff prices depend on the number of website visits and the amount of session storage included in your plan, but Lucky Orange will be helpful even for small stores. 

The free version stores up to one hundred sessions per month. This volume may be sufficient for a general assessment of user behavior. It provides enough data to analyze and refine the store’s design and functionality. As your store grows and traffic increases, you will have the opportunity to expand the app’s functionality.

Loox

Key features:

• Photo and video review collection.
• Automated review requests.
• Referral and sharing tools.
  

Pricing: Paid plans only; free trial available.

People tend to trust a store more if they have real customer testimonials, rather than just a block of text. Loox incentivizes users to leave such reviews, for example, by offering discounts or coupons.

This app is an example of the best Shopify Plus apps. It automates review requests, integrates seamlessly with Shopify themes, and includes widgets that look clean and on-brand. The app integrates with many other apps (some of which you’ll see in our review) and can collect feedback by integrating data from similar apps.

Best Shopify Apps for retaining customers

A happy customer is good, and a happy customer who comes back is even better! Customer retention is just as necessary as conversion. Below, we’ll briefly talk about apps that can increase your store’s credibility.

Klaviyo

Key features:

• AI-powered marketing and customer agent.
• Automated SMS and Email campaigns.
• Customer lifetime value predictions.
  

Pricing: Free to install; usage-based pricing.

Customers appreciate being treated as a person, not just a number in a sales statistic. Yet navigating customer profiles and finding the right communication strategy can be challenging. However, you can automate this process with Klaviyo, one of the best Shopify Plus apps for personalized marketing. 

This B2C CRM app functions as a pocket AI assistant, communicating with customers via email and SMS. With deep Shopify data integrations, Klaviyo builds highly specific segments based on behavior, purchases, or browsing activity.

Recharge

Key features:

• Prevents cancellations.
• Customer portal for easy management.
• Recovers order errors.

Pricing: Paid plans only; free trial available. Includes fees per transaction.

Losing loyal customers is always painful, but it doesn’t always mean they no longer need your product. Your customers may simply be looking for a more profitable alternative. We chose Recharge as one of the best Shopify apps to increase sales because it helps you track and retarget users.

The app retains customers by minimizing churn rates and turning products into recurring revenue. It handles subscription setups and improves customer self-management. Instead of cancellations, Recharge offers alternative products and encourages purchases with reminders about discounts or store credits.

Smile

Key features:

• Points-based loyalty programs.
• Reward channels.
• VIP tiers.
  

Pricing: Free to install; paid plans scale with order volume.

People always come back to the best stores. The Smile app gives them a reason to do so. Manage on-brand point rewards on every order, create membership or VIP rewards, and motivate your customers to become your advocates.

The free version of the application can already support 20 languages, so your customers from all over the world can unite in one big group.

Best Shopify apps for managing inventory & operations

Let’s say the above apps have helped you grow your store. But with big sales comes big responsibility. In this case, for paperwork. Here are three apps that will help you stay afloat amid receipts and figure out logistics.

Key features:

• Custom invoice, packing slip, and label templates.
• One-click printing.
• Supports multilingual documents.

Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans scale with order volume. Free trial available.

If you don’t know where to start with process automation, managing paperwork is a good place to start. Order Printer Pro allows you to create unified order printer templates, including bulk orders. The app saves time on managing invoices, receipts, and quotes, especially useful for international orders.

Order Printer Pro is often mentioned among shopify best apps for simplifying order documentation because of its affordability. All packages have the same list of services, meaning they scale solely based on the number of orders. The free version supports up to 50 orders per month. However, their paid subscriptions are very affordable compared to many apps.

Key features:

• Multi-carrier shipping labels.
• Automated tracking notifications.
• Cross-border shipping optimization.

Pricing: Free to install; premium features with fees per label. Free trial available.

Sendcloud is a software and logistics automation platform for online stores that simplifies shipping, tracking, and returns management. It allows you to connect your Shopify store to many carriers, including DHL and FedEx.

If you want to expand your store internationally and avoid confusion about who to ship everything through, Sendcloud will simplify the process and connect you with a carrier in your country in two clicks.

Key features:

• Real-time shipment tracking.
• Branded tracking page.
• Automated delivery notifications.

Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans scale with order volume.

If the previous application helps you decide on delivery methods, Parcel Panel will ensure you don’t receive messages like “Where is my item?” or “How long will it take for delivery?”

Parcel Panel focuses exclusively on tracking deliveries and helps you organize returns and exchanges. It is also helpful for dropshippers. With the free version, you can track and analyze up to 20 orders per month.

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Best Shopify marketing apps

You may consider your product the best in the world, but try to prove it among a sea of competitors. Below, we present the best apps to help you get noticed.

Plug in SEO

Key features:

• Automated SEO audits.
• Fix suggestions for meta tags & speed.
• Structured data improvements.

Pricing: Paid plans only; free trial available.

Remember how we mentioned the Lucky Orange app? It tracks and analyzes user behavior, pinpointing room for improvement. But how do you figure out exactly how to improve your site’s ranking? The Plug in SEO app will help you with that.

If you are not planning to hire an SEO specialist yet or want to learn how to work with one yourself, Plug in SEO is the best marketing app for Shopify to go with. It scans your store for broken links, missing metadata, slow pages, and schema errors. Then it provides clear, step-by-step instructions for fixing them, making SEO services more accessible to non-experts.

Key features:

• Affiliate program management.
• Influencer tracking links.
• Automated commission payouts.

Pricing: Free to install; paid plans scale with the number of referrals.

Earlier, we discussed apps for managing loyalty and feedback programs. However, there’s another way to boost trust in your brand: through affiliate programs. We’ve chosen UpPromote for our list, and it’s frequently mentioned among the top apps for Shopify for managing affiliates. 

UpPromote is committed to its users’ success and long-term cooperation, so even in the free version, you can connect up to 200 partners and influencers. Manage signups, generate referral links, track performance, and automate payouts with a single dashboard.

The app also ensures legal compliance and helps prepare W-9 forms (a U.S. tax document used to collect taxpayer information from affiliates who earn payouts). In more advanced versions, you will have access to automatic PayPal payments and suppor for creating tax forms.

Privy

Key features:

• Popups and email capture forms.
• Exit-intent targeting.
• A/B testing for pop-up performance.

Pricing: Paid plans only. Free trial available.

If you’ve been wondering where they make cool pop-ups, one answer is Privy. Its pop-ups, banners, and forms are designed to capture attention at the right moment using targeting rules such as scroll depth or exit intent.

The application has its own catalog of templates and interactive windows, which are easily edited using drag-and-drop.

Best Shopify apps for optimization & design

Shopify has been a platform for millions of sellers for over a decade, so if you want to stand out from the crowd, you need to make a good first impression. The applications presented below will help you make this possible.

TinyIMG

Key features:

• Image compression.
• Automatic alt-tag and filename optimization.
• Site speed audits.

Pricing: Free to install; premium features scale with the number of images.

For the seller, every minute of your user’s time is at stake; they will not linger for you without a good reason if your page takes years to load. Often, a large load falls on images, and TinyIMG can help with formatting.

In addition to editing images and optimizing file sizes and speed, TinyIMG will also help convert “image.jpg” into a clear, concise name for algorithms. For small stores, the free version should suffice for the load, allowing you to optimize up to 50 images per month.

PageFly

Key features:

• Drag-and-drop page builder.
• Conversion-focused templates.
• Flexible integrations with Shopify apps.

Pricing: Free plan available; pay-as-you-go premium features.

Shopify offers many of its own page design themes, but if you want more customization, your best option is PageFly. It’s easy to navigate, and you won’t have to worry about coding elements, because there are none! It’s an easy-to-use, no-coding webpage builder.

The free version allows you to create only 1 slot, but keep in mind that as the number of elements increases, any design enhancement tool will load the page more slowly. We advise you to choose wisely which part of the site you want to improve. For example, you can focus on a powerful landing page or a beautifully designed thank-you page.

Tidio

Key features:

• Live chat and AI chatbot.
• Multichannel support (Messenger, Instagram, email).
• Automated responses for FAQs.

Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans scale with the number of chats.

To conclude our list of applications, we will discuss a program for setting up chatbots on websites. We will discuss Tidio and its built-in AI assistant, Lyro. The app is designed to help relieve the flow of frequent question tickets.

Tidio supports conversations in 5 languages, with a limit of 100 conversations per month in the free version. Visitors can get answers quickly via live chat or AI-powered bots, reducing abandoned carts and improving satisfaction.

Easy way to compare top Shopify apps at a glance

What should you do if, even after reading articles with recommendations for the best Shopify apps, you still feel lost and don’t know where to start? Shopify understands this confusion and has built an instant comparison feature into its app store.

Take a segmented approach to decision-making – start by searching for applications based on your goals. There’s a difference between the general query “best apps for all stores” and “best apps for dropshippers” or “best apps for pop-up windows.”

In the Shopify App Store, you can select up to four apps, view a brief report on their features, and ultimately choose the one that best suits your needs in terms of price and quality.

How to choose the right Shopify app for your store

There is no development without criticism, and this applies to applications as well. Don’t fall for the most popular Shopify apps with 5-star rating apps and no negative reviews. Every app will claim to have the best advantages on its product page, but the criticism from experienced users will tell you more about the app at first glance.

Negative reviews help identify pitfalls, bugs, or limitations that only become apparent after a specific period of use. For example, the limited functionality in the free version of the application is more of a hindrance than a help.

New or small stores with limited budgets should focus on essentials:

• Email marketing tools.
• Basic design apps.
• Core store-optimization extensions.

Growing stores that want to scale or improve conversions can start adding upsell and cross-sell apps:

• Abandoned-cart recovery tools.
• Marketing automation.
• Analytics to better understand customer behavior.

Large or complex stores, especially those with many SKUs, dropshipping operations, or multi-channel sales, benefit most from advanced inventory systems:

• Order-fulfillment tools.
• Custom page builders.
• Deeper integrations.

How many Shopify apps should you use?

Apps and extensions have one primary purpose – to streamline your process. If you find yourself spending hours fiddling with dozens of apps instead of doing more productive business tasks or relaxing, you need to review their effectiveness. Many merchants start by looking for Shopify apps that increase sales, but adding too many at once can do more harm than good.

The more apps you add to your store, the more they will pull your site. We recommend refraining from crash testing your SEO optimizer when handling 50+ apps. For beginner stores, selecting up to 10 is enough. As your store grows, you will be able to add a few more apps and afford better premium options if you choose to spend.

Many stores can run on free apps alone, but sometimes a single paid app with an annual subscription can replace juggling five free extensions. Whatever the case, always keep in mind one crucial tip:

Never forget about backups.

You never know what errors or bugs may pop up with the next app update. Often, apps support integration with each other, as indicated on the store page. However, there are frequently cases when sellers have lost promotional codes or discounts due to system failures.

Final recommendations: our top 5 Shopify apps

There are many apps, but which one to install first is still a question. Take it step by step. If you are just starting your business, we offer a short list of top Shopify apps that deliver the most value in their free or entry-level plans.

Top 5 budget-friendly apps for new Shopify stores:

1. Lucky Orange: Heatmaps, visitor insights.
2. Order Printer: Invoices, packing slips.
3. TinyIMG: Image compression, speed optimization.
4. Plug in SEO: Storewide SEO checks.
5. UpPromote: Affiliate program management.

Should you need expert help tailoring your store setup, improving performance, or building conversion-friendly pages before adding apps on top, Web Help Agency can support you with clean, reliable development and white-label implementation. Contact us, and we’ll discuss how to get the most out of the best Shopify apps for ecommerce.