17 Must Have Apps for Your Shopify Online Store in 2024

So, you have chosen the Shopify platform for your online store! Great choice. It is actually a top choice for most eCommerce business owners and that too for a good reason. Apart from its reliable and robust framework, the platform also boasts a lively app store offering a wide range of third-party solutions catering to virtually any issue you might encounter.

 A common question we often hear from online store owners is, “Which apps would be the best choices for my Shopify store? or “Which apps will help me to increase my eStore revenue?”

There are different types of Shopify apps available to choose from and it’s difficult to choose the right ones suitable for your business objectives.

 That’s why we have gathered a list of must have apps for Shopify that every new business should have. Whether you are an experienced Shopify app user or not, we are confident that you will gain some valuable insights from this list.

Must-Have Apps for Shopify

Shopify offers numerous applications that can improve the efficiency of your business operations. Although not all of these apps may be essential, it’s worth considering some of them if you want to enhance the appearance of your Shopify online store.

So, let’s look into some of the must have Shopify apps for your eCommerce store. 

Best Free Shopify Apps

1. Kit

In the realm of free Shopify apps, Kit is undoubtedly one of the top performers. This app serves as an automated virtual assistant that aids in the management of your eCommerce business. 

Upon installation and activation within your store, Kit sends you text messages containing suggestions and insights to enhance your store’s performance. Kit also integrates smoothly with several other Shopify apps.

Key Features:

• Generating business reports
• Managing customer interactions
• Creating and executing ad campaigns
• Setting goals
• Generating discounts
• Posting updates to social media accounts

2. Automizely

With Automizely, store owners can import drop shipping products with a single click, making it possible to have products available for your store on the same day you sign up. This eliminates the need to purchase bulk inventory or spend money manufacturing your own products.

This application enables aspiring entrepreneurs to launch a low-investment business. Furthermore, it facilitates order processing within the app, as the entire process is automated. With this fantastic free Shopify app, individuals who are simultaneously working a 9 to 5 job can easily manage the workload. 

Key Features:

• One-click drop shipping product import
• Order processing automation
• Seamless integration with other Shopify apps

Customer Support Apps

Yes, you are busy in managing your online store and may find it time-consuming to research for the best Shopify customer support apps for offering excellent customer service on your eCommerce website. So, I have 2 best suggestions for you. Let’s have a look. 

1. REVE Chat- Live Chat & Chatbot

REVE Chat is an omni-channel customer engagement platform that offers instant assistance on your online store, mobile apps and other messaging platforms like facebook, Viber, Instagram, telegram and WhatsApp.  It seamlessly integrates with your Shopify online store and lets you offer excellent customer support 24/7. 

REVE Chat also offers its AI powered chatbot to automate customer service and many of your business operations. REVE Chat offers 14 days FREE TRIAL to try out all its unique features. 

Key Features

• Live Chat: Let your customers initiate live chat sessions to interact with your support team for instant assistance.
• Voice and Video Calls: Voice chat and video call features allow customers to initiate live calls to your customer support agents through the chat interface.
• Chatbot: Automate your whole customer service operations with our AI-powered chatbot and provide instant assistance to customers when your team is not available.
• Co-Browsing: View and control your customer’s screen during a live chat session for providing technical support, assisting with online purchases, or demonstrating a product or service.
• Ticketing System: With the ticketing system, track and manage customer queries and chat requests efficiently through the same interface. 

REVE Chat offers many other useful features:

• Visitor analytics
• Department management
• Customer view
• Desktop notification
• Customized reporting
• Reporting & Analytics
• Canned Responses and many more

2. Gorgias ‑ Helpdesk & Live Chat

Gorgias is a helpdesk and live chat app for Shopify that allows you to centralize all customer support inquiries from various channels such as email, chat, social media, and phone, in one place. 

This app uses AI-powered automation and machine learning to help businesses streamline their customer support operations, automate repetitive tasks, and provide personalized customer experiences.

With Gorgias, you can automate responses to common questions, track customer interactions and order histories, and provide 24/7 customer support via live chat. 

Key Features

• Arrange voice, WhatsApp, chat, email, SMS, and social comments/DMs in a single feed, prioritized for efficient handling.
• Obtain complete customer information, including order and conversation history, prior to responding.
• Manage Shopify orders, including viewing, editing, and canceling, from within the Gorgias customer view.
• Enhance your customer support by monitoring team activity and support metrics on real-time dashboards.

Customer Loyalty Apps

In order to retain customers and earn their loyalty, it is essential to provide them with an exceptional experience. These applications can assist you in soliciting user reviews and establishing social proof, incorporating wishlist functionality, and developing different customer loyalty programs with just a few clicks. 

Additionally, even if you are a one-man army, you can provide excellent customer service.

1. Growave

Growave is a comprehensive marketing application that offers robust features for customer reviews, referrals, loyalty programs, wishlists, gift cards, and other user-generated content. It effectively replaces five separate applications and is specifically designed for Shopify, which means it doesn’t require any coding.  Growave is easy to use, provides customization options, and functions with ease.

Growave offers a complete set of tools to effectively reach, engage, and convert customers, including different loyalty programs, photo and text reviews, Q&A, Instagram galleries, wishlists, and social login, all accessible through a single dashboard. This application is easy to install and personalize, making the transition process seamless.

Key Features:

• Boost customer retention and encourage repeat purchases by implementing loyalty programs, VIP tiers, and rewards.
• Drive organic customer acquisition and save on advertising expenses through referral programs.
• Enhance sales by enabling wishlists and trigger emails for back-in-stock notifications. Collect photo and product reviews automatically to improve your Google search results and social proof.
• Leverage Instagram photos and user-generated content to showcase your products, build social proof, and increase conversions.

2. Yotpo Product Reviews & UGC

Gone are the days when you used to freely upload your customer feedback and images on your website. However, without suitable tools, collecting reviews, ratings, and user-generated content can be a challenge. 

Yotpo streamlines this process for you by providing email and on-site review widgets. It also enables you to import previous reviews and showcase them in multiple locations on your website and social media accounts, enhancing your social proof. The service offers a free option, and as your needs grow, you can upgrade to a paid plan. 

Key Features:

• Gain visibility on search results by leveraging Google Seller Ratings and Google Shopping Ads.
• Integrate customer reviews with SMS, loyalty, and subscription offerings.
• User-friendly platform to personalize reviews widget.
• Gather and exhibit Photo & Video reviews to strengthen social proof.
• Increase buyers’ trust by presenting pertinent content using Smart Filters functionality.

Best Shopify Apps for Online Selling

When it comes to running an online store, the ultimate goal is to make sales and increase revenue. Luckily, there are various apps available for Shopify that can help achieve your objective which is online sales. Some of the best apps for selling on Shopify include those that enable you to upsell and cross-sell to increase the average order value. Let’s discuss!

1. UpPromote Affiliate & Referral

For drop shipping businesses, affiliate marketing can be an excellent marketing model as it enables them to promote their products and generate revenue without any initial expenses. The UpPromote: Affiliate Marketing app is a top-rated choice for many companies seeking an all-in-one marketing tool to manage their affiliate marketing campaigns.

With UpPromote, you can streamline your marketing efforts and track the performance of your different affiliate programs. 

With UpPromote, you can easily create top-notch affiliate campaigns without any technical expertise, generate an unlimited number of commission programs, promptly create, and allocate coupons or referral links for affiliates and influencers. UpPromote enables you to keep tabs on every click and order from affiliates using diverse tracking methods and a dependable tracking system.

UpPromote provides a customer referral functionality that allows your customers to advertise your products without having to enroll in any affiliate program. 

Key Features:

• Produce exceptional affiliate programs that offer an array of commission options.
• Personalize incentives and discounts for customers through the Customer Referral programs.
• Monitor referral orders by using affiliate links, coupons, and linked emails. 
• To motivate affiliates, UpPromote provides powerful options such as bonuses, gifts, store credit, etc.
• Automate payment processes with scheduled auto-payments through PayPal.

2. Unlimited Bundles & Discounts

With the Unlimited Bundles & Discounts app, you can generate product bundles featuring various types of discounts. It will help your business to have a higher conversion rate as multiple discounts typically result in more sales. Now, let’s look into some of the examples:

• If you purchase product 1 and product 2 together, you will receive a 10% discount.
• If you buy 2 units of product A, you will receive a 5% discount. If you purchase 3 units, the discount increases to 10%; if you buy 5 units, the discount rises to 20%.
• Bundles with tiered pricing based on the number of items purchased.
• Bundles are scheduled for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
• Generate a dedicated bundle page to showcase all of your product bundles.

Key Features:

• Create your first bundle in a minute with a fast and easy setup process without coding.
• The automatic bundle discount feature applies discounts at checkout without any manual intervention required.
• Allows to bundle a single product with volume discounts or bundle multiple products together.

Best Shopify Apps for Product & Inventory

The Best Product and Inventory Apps are designed to assist you in sourcing high-quality products to add to your online store and simplify inventory tracking. These apps provide a wide range of features to help you discover new products and manage your inventory efficiently.

1. Spocket

Spocket brings together a vast network of reliable dropshipping suppliers from the US, EU, and worldwide for sourcing products to sell in your store. They offer a diverse selection of products that can help you stand out in today’s highly competitive market, where customer expectations are high due to the presence of giants like Amazon. 

All of their suppliers are trustworthy, which helps you avoid the risks of canceled orders or missing deliveries. There is a free plan available, and all paid plans come with a 14-day free trial. 

Key Features:

• Experience faster shipping through dropshipping and access a vast range of US and European products.
• Benefit from significant discounts and wholesale prices with no minimum order requirements.
•  Branded Invoicing is available.
• Full automation for AliExpress dropshipping operations.
• Receive 24/7 customer support for any queries or concerns. 
• Easy migration from DSers or Oberlo.

Business Operations

For many entrepreneurs, dealing with the administrative and financial aspects of their businesses is the least enjoyable part. Nonetheless, if you can streamline your operations, you’ll have more time and energy to dedicate to the areas of your business where you excel at. As you focus more on your strengths, your business will grow faster. Shopify offers several useful apps to help you here! Let’s discuss this.

1. Hextom: Workflow Automation

Performing administrative tasks can be a time-consuming activity. However, with the use of this application, you can automate your daily workflows and streamline tasks such as removing all the out-of-stock products, fraud detection, and vendor notification. 

You also have the flexibility to schedule workflows to run on a regular basis, such as weekly or daily sales reporting. The free version of the app allows up to five active automation, with a limit of 50 automated actions per month. 

As your business expands, you may opt for the premium plan to add more automation and tasks based on your requirements.

Key Features: 

• Transform all the manual and repetitive work into automated workflows with ease. 
• No coding skills are necessary to create automation. 
• Automate routine tasks like fraud detection and removing out-of-stock products.
• scheduling different tasks like daily sales reporting and payment reminders with ease. 
• The application can also automatically notify vendors when their products are ordered, allowing them to quickly fulfill orders.

2. Rewind Backups

Ideally, your store’s data would always remain secure, and in the event of a mishap, Shopify would be capable of restoring it for you. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. The good news is that Rewind Backups takes care of this concern by automatically backing up your store daily. In the event of any data loss or mishap, you can quickly revert to the most recent functioning version of your store.

With the addition of the Rewind Protection Suite, you can benefit from 24/7 monitoring for downtime affecting your store and third-party applications, as well as a staging environment that remains fully synchronized. Additionally, the suite provides alerts for bulk product changes, enabling you to prevent, detect, and recover from any undesirable modifications.

Key Features:

• Automatic backups in real-time, on a daily basis.
• You can easily restore multiple items simultaneously.
• The Protection Suite provides complete prevention, protection, and restoration of solutions for your business needs.
• The setup process is quick and simple, and the platform comes with a dedicated and dependable customer support team. 
• A 7 days free trial is available. 

Apps for Traffic Generation

Your store won’t generate any sales if nobody visits it. Although you can opt for other ways to create excitement and interest in your store both online and offline, but these must-have apps for Shopify are specifically designed to increase traffic to your store.

1. Instagram Shop by Sauce

This application allows you to showcase your products to your Instagram followers, enabling them to make purchases directly from the platform. It also simplifies the process of creating a marketing library of user-generated content. In addition, you can identify your influencers and seek their help to expand your business. 

The sauce is a comprehensive visual discovery and social shopping suite that empowers you to create attractive and conversion-boosting shoppable posts for your online store and Instagram Shopping, powered by user-generated content (UGC) and verified data from influential retailers. It enables you and your products to stand out from the competition, providing you with the tools to build stunning and compelling posts.

Key Features

• This platform allows you to incorporate Instagram Shopping into multiple platforms, including an Instagram shop, web store, product detail pages (PDPs), and emails.
• You can capture attractive posts from different customers and influencers, tag products, and showcase them in PDPs for an enhanced user experience.
• UGC marketing automation feature enables you to promote your brand through your loyal customers.
• The influencer Marketing function lets you search for 69 million influencers, run paid collaborations, and track their ROI.

2. Elfsight Social Share Buttons

Elfsight Social Share Buttons is a third-party Shopify app that enables you to add social media sharing buttons to your eCommerce website. This app helps store owners to promote their products and content on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn by allowing visitors to easily share the content. 

The app also offers customizable options to match the website’s design and branding, and it can be installed and customized without requiring any technical skills. The Elfsight Social Share Buttons app helps you to increase social media visibility, drive traffic, and potentially increase sales by making it easier for visitors to share content on their own social media profiles.

Key Features

• This app provides over 40 embedded social network options for your online store. 
• You can choose to display the social share buttons inline or as floating options for perfect eye positioning.
• Extensive customization options for the button design, enabling you to seamlessly integrate the buttons into your store’s design and branding.

Email & SMS Promotional Marketing

Email marketing and eCommerce are closely linked, and with these apps, you can seamlessly integrate your Shopify store into your email marketing workflow. These apps simplify your email marketing tasks, making it easier to manage campaigns and build email lists, even if you’re new to creating marketing messages. 

Some of these apps also offer the added convenience of allowing you to reach customers via text message, extending your marketing efforts beyond email inboxes.

1. Drip: Marketing Automation

With Drip, now you can link your Shopify store to your email marketing platform and create automated email campaigns while segmenting your subscribers according to their purchase records. Additionally, Drip enables you to communicate with your clients via text messages.

You can utilize its analytical tools to identify which emails generate the most sales and which subscribers spend the most money on your business.

Key Features

• Create highly deliverable email campaigns with an intuitive email builder. 
• A visual workflow builder enables you to run multi-channel automation.
• Real-time segmentation is possible using all of your store and customer data. 
• The platform provides high-quality forms, pop-ups, and quizzes that are effective in gathering email addresses and zero-party data.

2. Constant Contact: Email & SMS

Constant Contact is an email marketing platform that offers a Shopify app integration. With this integration, you can easily sync your Shopify customer data with Constant Contact and create targeted email campaigns based on purchase behavior and customer segmentation. 

The app also allows for the creation of signup forms and popups to capture new leads and grow an email list. Constant Contact’s reporting and analytics features provide insights into email campaign performance, allowing for data-driven decision-making to improve marketing efforts.

Key Features

• Build automated paths to send personalized communications that convert.
• Create automated paths for sending personalized communications that lead to conversions.
• Abandoned cart email automation to recover lost revenue. 
• Real-time data syncs ensure that your contact list is always up to date.
• Easily add images, product descriptions, and prices directly into your emails. 

Shopify Apps for SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a crucial aspect of any website. Although your Shopify store includes some built-in SEO features, they may not be sufficient to compete with other websites in your niche. Therefore, using these apps can aid in improving your SEO and increasing organic traffic.

1. Plug In SEO

Plug-in SEO is a Shopify app that assists in optimizing your website for search engines. It performs a comprehensive website audit and provides a detailed report of any issues that may be affecting your search engine rankings. 

The app also offers guidance on how to fix these issues and improve your website’s overall SEO. It includes features such as meta-tag optimization, image compression, broken link detection, and structured data implementation. With Plug-in SEO, you can continuously monitor your website’s performance and make adjustments to improve your search engine rankings over time.

Key Features

• You can conduct an SEO audit on your website and receive simple, step-by-step instructions to address any issues.
• SEO templating to get ranks for your targeted keywords on your pages and blogs.
• Utilizing JSON-LD structured data, broken link fixing, and keyword targeting can help you improve your SEO rankings.
• Get access to helpful videos, detailed SEO articles, and support from the app’s team.

2. Booster SEO & Image Optimizer

Booster SEO & Image Optimizer is a Shopify app that helps online store owners improve their website’s search engine optimization and image optimization. This app, previously named SEO Image Optimizer, simplifies the process of managing your website’s search engine optimization, and it can be accomplished quickly without requiring any technical SEO expertise. 

The app is capable of optimizing your metadata, ALT text, sitemaps, schema data, and other elements, leaving you free to focus on other aspects of your business.

Key Features

• Enhance your website’s page load speed and boost its SEO scores by utilizing an image compression engine.
• Optimizes your meta tags to improve your website’s ranking and conversion rates. 
• Employ the AutoPilot feature to identify and resolve SEO problems according to your personalized criteria.
• Keep an eye on broken links that may damage your SEO and use automatic redirection tools to fix them.

Which Shopify Apps do you select?

So, in this blog, I have listed the top Shopify apps for your consideration. Selecting the right apps can significantly enhance the functionality and performance of your online store, leading to increased sales, improved customer engagement, and streamlined management processes. 

By carefully evaluating your business needs and selecting apps that align with your goals, you can create a tailored ecosystem of tools that work best for your business. Remember to regularly review and update your app selection to ensure your store is always operating at its optimal capacity.