Best Shopify apps 2026: by category, with prices and when to build custom

Most lists of Shopify apps are written for starters and dropshippers, earn a commission per install and skip the question that matters once you sell seriously: what does this app cost in year three, what does it do to your store speed, and what do you keep when you cancel it? This guide is for brands that already sell on Shopify or Shopify Plus, or are moving there.

Per category you get a table: the apps we come across most in projects, what they are for, the price on the Shopify App Store or the vendor's site (as of October 2026) and what to watch for, followed by our view. Then the hidden costs of apps, a worked example of a monthly app stack, and when a custom app or Shopify Functions beats another subscription.

One disclosure up front. Flatline is a Shopify Platinum Partner and a Klaviyo partner, so we are not neutral. There are no affiliate links in this article and no app paid to be in it. Where we could not verify a price on a primary source, we say so and leave the price out.

Key takeaways

• Start native. Translate & Adapt (free, automatic translation into two languages), Search & Discovery (free), Shopify Messaging (10,000 emails a month free) and Shopify Flow cover more than most brands assume.

• App Store charges are billed in US dollars every 30 days. Our example stack for a brand with 1,000 orders a month costs about $251 plus €120 in label fees per month, before Klaviyo and before Shopify itself.

• Many apps price on volume. Smile costs $79 a month up to 1,000 orders and $199 from there (2,500 orders included, then $20 per extra 100).

• Some apps charge more on Plus for the same limit. Searchanise is $19 a month for up to 1,500 products, or $49 on a Plus store.

• Payments: iDEAL | Wero via Shopify Payments costs €0.29 per payment on Basic to Advanced and €0.15 on Plus. A third-party provider such as Mollie adds a Shopify fee of 0.6% of revenue on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus.

• Plus-only: custom apps that contain Shopify Functions, and checkout UI extensions in the information, shipping and payment steps.

• Plan the exit. 48 hours after you uninstall an app, Shopify asks it to erase your store's data. Export reviews, points and subscriptions first.

How we chose these Shopify apps

For a brand past the starter phase we used five criteria. Does Shopify already do this natively? Does the app meet Shopify's speed rule? To be listed, an app may not lower your storefront Lighthouse performance score by more than 10 points (shopify.dev). Does the price scale sensibly with orders, products or returns? Can you get your data out? And does it fit the Dutch and European market: iDEAL | Wero, PostNL, EU languages, consent rules?

Start with what Shopify already gives you

Check this list before you install anything. In app audits we regularly find paid apps that duplicate a free Shopify tool.

Best Shopify apps for email and SMS marketing

Email and SMS is usually the largest single app cost in a mature store, because the price follows the size of your list. It is also the category where the app pays for itself most clearly, provided the six lifecycle flows run: welcome, browse abandonment, cart abandonment, checkout abandonment, post-purchase and win-back.

Our view. Klaviyo is the email platform we come across most often in projects, and we are a Klaviyo partner, so weigh that. For a store with a few thousand subscribers and three flows, Shopify Messaging is often enough and costs little or nothing. Switch when you need segments on predicted value, flows that branch on behaviour, or SMS next to email. Klaviyo's paid tiers scale with active profiles; check your own tier on Klaviyo's pricing page rather than trusting a blog figure, ours included. More on how we set it up: Klaviyo for Shopify brands.

Best Shopify review apps, including Kiyoh and Trustpilot

Two kinds of reviews matter. Product reviews sit on the product page and feed star ratings into Google Shopping. Shop reviews are about your company: delivery, service, returns. In the Netherlands, Kiyoh and Trustpilot are the known names. Many brands need one of each.

Our view. Judge.me is the product review app we come across most often in projects, because the free plan has no review cap and the paid plan is flat. Yotpo makes sense when you also want its loyalty and UGC tools and accept volume pricing. For shop reviews, pick the platform your customers already recognise in your market. One warning from migrations: reviews belong to the review app. Only the importer of the next app moves them, so export before you switch.

Best Shopify loyalty apps

Loyalty programmes are priced on orders. That sounds fair until you grow: the app bill rises with your success, whether the programme drove those orders or not. Points are also a liability on your balance sheet until they are redeemed or expire.

Our view. Measure before you buy. Compare the repeat purchase rate and the time to a second order for members and non-members after six months. If the gap is small, a well-built post-purchase flow in your email platform does most of the work for a fraction of the price. Selling in stores too? Check POS support.

Best Shopify search and filter apps

Shopify's own Search & Discovery app handles filters, synonyms and boosts for free. Apps add typo tolerance, AI or semantic search, merchandising rules and analytics on searches without results.

Our view. Start with Search & Discovery and look at your search data for a month: how many searches end without a click? If that share is high, or your catalogue runs into thousands of products in several languages, an app earns its fee. Note that availability changes too: on 20 October 2026 Boost AI Search & Filter, a well-known search app, was listed as not currently available on the App Store. That is a reason to keep your filter logic in metafields you own, not only in an app's settings.

Best Shopify subscription apps

Here the native app is a real option: Shopify Subscriptions is free and covers subscribe and save. Specialist apps add portals and churn tools, and most charge a share of each transaction on top of a monthly fee.

Our view. Do the sum per subscriber. At 2,000 subscribers paying €30 a month, 1.49% plus $0.19 adds about €894 in percentage fees plus 2,000 × $0.19 in fixed fees each month, on top of the $99 plan. If you mainly need subscribe and save, start native. Plan any switch carefully: the subscription contract lives in the app and the card details at the payment provider, so many subscribers have to authorise their payment again. Also check that the app supports your payment provider.

Shopify B2B and wholesale: native or an app?

B2B is no longer Plus-only. Basic, Grow and Advanced include up to three B2B catalogues. Plus has unlimited catalogues. Apps such as SparkLayer fill the gap for stores below Plus with wholesale portals, quotes and sales agents.

Our view. If B2B is a serious part of revenue, native B2B on Plus is usually the cleaner route, because orders, customers and stock stay in one model. Mason Garments and John Beerens both sell B2C and B2B on Shopify; John Beerens does so with more than 20,000 SKUs in one store. Whatever you choose, your ERP stays the owner of the price. Shopify shows it; it does not decide it. Read more on Shopify B2B.

Best Shopify translation apps

Selling in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany means translations. Shopify Markets handles domains, currencies and pricing per market. The translation itself can come from Shopify's own app or from a specialist.

Our view. For two extra languages Translate & Adapt is enough for most brands, and it is free. Word-based pricing looks cheap until you count: 2,000 products with 150 words each is already 300,000 words per language. Before you choose, ask where the translations live: in Shopify's own translation storage, or at the vendor. That decides what you keep when you cancel. High Clean now runs live in eleven languages, and Stoov merged four stores into one Plus store with Markets (+13% conversion, +50% site speed). Both show that languages and markets are a structure question first and an app question second.

Returns and shipping apps (including Sendcloud and MyParcel)

Returns apps give customers a self-service portal and push them towards an exchange instead of a refund. Since 19 June 2026, EU rules also require a withdrawal function for online contracts (Directive (EU) 2023/2673). Check that your returns setup covers it; several apps now advertise an EU withdrawal button.

For shipping, the two names we come across most in Dutch projects:

Our view. Count returns, not plans. A store with 1,000 orders and a 10% return rate handles 100 returns a month: on Return Prime Grow that is $19.99 plus 40 extra requests at $0.49, so $39.59. If you already use Sendcloud Premium, its return portal may replace a separate returns app.

Payments in the Netherlands: Shopify Payments or Mollie

Not an app category, but in the Netherlands the first question in every stack review. iDEAL | Wero is available in Shopify Payments for customers in the Netherlands paying in euros, according to Shopify's Help Center. If you use a third-party provider such as Mollie, Shopify charges an extra fee on top of that provider's own fees.

Our view. On Advanced, €1 million in online revenue through a third-party provider costs €6,000 a year in Shopify fees alone, before the provider's own fees. Be clear what you pay that for: a payment method Shopify Payments lacks, one provider across platforms, or an accounting link. Also note: when you refund an iDEAL | Wero payment through Shopify Payments, the processing fee is not refunded. Choose the payment mix yourself, from your own checkout data, with iDEAL | Wero at the top for Dutch customers. For the full cost picture see what Shopify costs.

Page builder apps

Page builders let marketers build landing pages without a developer. Online Store 2.0 themes now offer sections and blocks that cover much of the same ground, inside the theme and without an extra subscription.

Our view. A page builder is useful for campaign pages that live for weeks. For your homepage, collection and product templates, sections in your own theme are faster to load and easier to maintain. Content you build in a builder lives in that builder's format. Before you cancel, check what remains of those pages. For upsell and bundle apps, see our earlier list of Shopify apps for conversion.

Analytics and consent apps (Consent Mode v2)

For visitors in the EEA, Google requires you to collect consent and send consent signals if you want to keep using measurement, ad personalisation and remarketing (Google Ads Help). Shopify has its own cookie banner and customer privacy settings, and supports Google Consent Mode v2. A third-party banner must be integrated with those settings, as Shopify explains.

Our view. One banner, linked to Shopify's privacy settings, and a test with consent denied. The usual fault is not the banner but the tags behind it: a pixel that fires anyway, or GA4 that receives nothing. Test in a real browser, with consent denied and granted. Better measurement also makes conversion optimisation possible.

ERP, PIM and other integration apps

With ERP, PIM, WMS and marketplace connectors, an app choice becomes an architecture choice. We use one rule, the Floor Plan: every object has exactly one owner system. The ERP owns the master price, cost price and invoice. The PIM owns product content per language. Shopify owns the shop floor: order, checkout, discount, market and B2B catalogue. Most integration problems are ownership problems.

Ask the ERP vendor to confirm in writing which Shopify connector it supports before the scope is fixed. More on how we approach this on Shopify ERP integration and Shopify integrations.

Shopify POS

If you have physical stores, Shopify POS keeps stock, customers and orders in the same system as your webshop. OGÉR moved from Magento to Shopify Plus with POS; according to their CCO, revenue rose 45%.

Our view. POS apps are where retail processes meet the ERP. Decide which system owns the in-store order and the customer record before you choose extensions.

The hidden costs of Shopify apps

The listed monthly price is only part of what an app costs. These costs show up in almost every app audit.

They add up, in dollars

App Store charges are billed in US dollars every 30 days. Ten apps at $20 to $200 each is quickly $500 to $1,000 a month, plus usage fees per return, label, transaction or order tier.

Speed and scripts

Shopify allows each app to lower your Lighthouse performance score by up to 10 points. That rule applies per app; nobody tests the sum of eight apps that each load scripts on every page. Removed apps also leave theme code behind, so check after every uninstall.

Data ownership

Reviews, loyalty points, gift card balances, subscriptions and translations can live in the app, not in Shopify. 48 hours after you uninstall, Shopify sends the app a request to erase your store's data (shopify.dev). Export first, and know which importer takes the data on.

Worked example: what a typical app stack costs per month

A fictional but realistic brand on Shopify Advanced: Dutch, German and English, 3,000 products, 1,000 orders and 1,000 labels a month, 10% returns. Prices as of October 2026.

Add Shopify Advanced at €289 a month (annual billing, so €3,468 a year), and you pay about $3,007 plus €4,908 a year before Klaviyo and before payment fees. That is not a reason to avoid apps. It is a reason to know what each one returns. Grow the same brand by 30% to 1,300 orders and Smile moves to Growth at $199, while return and label fees rise with volume.

Two rules we use. Every app needs an owner and a number it moves, such as search conversion or repeat rate. And once a year, put the apps from Settings › Apps next to the invoices and give each one a single label. Keep if it earns money now. Improve if it works but is set up badly. Bin if nobody knows when it last made money. We call this the Moving Box and run it on every migration and theme rebuild.

App or custom: custom apps and Shopify Functions

Shopify lets you build a custom app for your own store with the Shopify APIs. On Basic, data access for custom apps is limited; from Grow it is full, according to Shopify's pricing page. The real dividing line is Shopify Functions: the logic that runs inside Shopify for discounts, shipping, payments and cart validation.

According to shopify.dev, stores on any plan can use public App Store apps that contain Functions. Only Shopify Plus stores can use custom apps that contain Functions. Functions run within fixed limits: 11 million instructions, 128 kB input and 20 kB output for carts up to 200 line items, and no bulk price transformation across all line items. Checkout UI extensions for the information, shipping and payment steps are also Plus-only (shopify.dev). Shopify Scripts were switched off on 30 June 2026; Functions replace them.

Our view. Build when the logic is what makes your business different, when an app forces you to bend your process, or when the app fee over 36 months plus usage fees exceeds the cost of building and maintaining it. Buy when the need is common and the vendor knows more about it than you ever will. Custom code also has a monthly cost: someone maintains it when Shopify changes an API. We build custom apps and Functions as part of Shopify development, and on Shopify Plus that is often where the extra plan cost pays back. Moving from another platform? Then the app list is part of the Shopify migration scope.

Our view

We are a Shopify Platinum Partner and a Klaviyo partner. We earn nothing from the apps in this article, but we do earn from building on Shopify, so read our view with that in mind.

For most brands we work with, the best Shopify app stack is short: Shopify's native tools where they suffice, one strong app per real need, and custom work only where the logic is your own. In our experience a long app list usually means one thing: nobody owns it.

And sometimes the honest answer is that Shopify is not the right platform. If your model needs a product configurator far past three options and 2,048 variants per product, price logic that cannot live in your ERP, or full control over checkout code and hosting, an open-source platform such as Shopware or Adobe Commerce may fit better, with more maintenance as the price. If you need ten apps to work around the platform instead of with it, that is a signal worth taking seriously before you add an eleventh.