What are the best Shopify apps for a growing store?

At a glance

Which Shopify app does which job?

Start from the problem, not the app.

How we picked

How did we pick these eight?

One app per job, because a must-have Shopify app does a job nothing else on your store does. The order runs from jobs nearly every store has, like helping shoppers find products, to jobs only some stores have, like subscriptions.

We kept apps that work on a live store and print their price on their App Store listing. The ratings in the table are Shopify's own "weighted averages that prioritize the most timely and relevant reviews." Getting ready for a sale weekend? The picks change: see the best Shopify apps for Black Friday.

1 · Sledge

Best Shopify app for search, filters and offers: Sledge

A shopper types a product's name into your search and gets a page of products that have nothing to do with it. They leave without buying. The bundle you built sits on one product page they never reach.

Sledge is a Shopify search and filter app that also shows your bundles, volume discounts and free gifts where shoppers decide: in search results, on collection pages and in the cart drawer, for one flat monthly price.

Search covers the dropdown as shoppers type and the results page. On paid plans you choose how it matches words: by keyword, by meaning, or both. Pro adds synonyms written from your own catalog. Filters run on collection pages and the search page, with color and image swatches. You can pin a product to the top, boost a range or hide one, by hand or by rule.

Sledge runs nine offer types, from fixed bundles and Buy X Get Y to volume discounts and free gifts. The cart drawer adds a progress goal, recommendations and trust badges. Sledge also runs a wishlist and pre-orders. You switch Sledge on under "App embeds", the app switches in your theme editor, with no code.

Plans are a flat monthly price, never a cut of your sales: Pro $29.99, Scale $89.99, Accelerate $199 and Ultimate $399, billed through Shopify every 30 days. Sledge is free on development stores. On a live store, you don't pick a plan first: start the 14-day free trial on your own catalog.

Sledge's gaps: no email or SMS marketing, and Back in Stock alerts go by email only, on Accelerate and Ultimate. It collects and shows reviews but sends no review request emails. Its listing is young, launched in November 2023, with far fewer reviews than any other app here.

Best for: stores with enough products that shoppers search and filter.

2 · Klaviyo

Best Shopify app for email and SMS: Klaviyo

Shoppers fill a cart, leave, and nobody reminds them unless you do. Klaviyo sends email and SMS from one list of contacts, and you build its segments and flows on your Shopify orders.

The free plan covers up to 250 active profiles and 500 emails a month. Email starts at $20 a month for 251 to 500 contacts. SMS starts at $15 for 1,250 message credits, carrier fees included.

Watch how that bill grows. Klaviyo counts every profile that can be emailed, whether or not it agreed to marketing. Pass the limit on a paid plan and you move up a plan at the end of the billing cycle, and nothing moves you back down automatically. On the free plan, sending stops until you're back under the limit. Klaviyo can also bill you outside your Shopify invoice. Omnisend starts free too, for up to 250 contacts and 500 emails a month.

Best for: stores ready for flows and segments beyond Shopify Messaging.

3 · Judge.me

Best Shopify app for reviews: Judge.me

A new visitor lands on a product with no reviews and has only your word that it's any good. Judge.me's Forever Free plan collects unlimited product and store reviews, photo and video included, with Google review snippets and a reviews importer.

The Awesome plan costs $15 a month after a 15-day free trial. It adds reminder emails, questions and answers, AI replies and summaries, custom widget and email design, and 130+ integrations, Klaviyo and Gorgias among them.

Already on Sledge? Switch on "Judge.me Product Reviews" in Sledge's Settings, under Integration, and your Judge.me stars show on Sledge's own product cards. For the free plans side by side, see the best review apps for Shopify.

Best for: any store collecting its first hundreds of reviews.

4 · AfterShip

Best Shopify app for order tracking: AfterShip

Every morning starts with the same email: where is my order? AfterShip gives shoppers a branded tracking page, across 1,100+ carriers, with the carrier's delivery estimate.

It's free for 50 shipments a month. Essentials costs $11 a month, or $1 for the first month, with a 7-day free trial. It covers 100 shipments, then $0.08 each. Premium is $70 for 500 shipments, then $0.12 each.

The free plan has the tracking page but no email or SMS delivery updates, which start on Essentials.

Best for: stores whose inbox fills with delivery questions.

5 · Gorgias

Best Shopify app for customer support: Gorgias

The same question arrives by email, chat and Instagram, and you answer each one by hand. Gorgias puts every channel in one inbox, with the shopper's Shopify orders beside the message.

There's no free plan, only a 7-day free trial. Starter costs $10 a month for 3 agents and 50 tickets, then $0.40 for each extra ticket, with live chat. Basic is $60 for unlimited agents and 300 tickets, then $40 per extra 100.

Ticket pricing means a busy month costs more. The agent sidebar also no longer shows a shopper's live cart, as Gorgias confirmed in a reply on its App Store reviews. Tidio has a free plan to start on.

Best for: stores with two or more people answering shoppers every day.

6 · Smart SEO

Best Shopify app for SEO: Smart SEO

Google shows your product with a cut-off title and a description you never wrote. Smart SEO writes page titles, descriptions and image alt text with AI. Alt text is the line that tells Google what a picture shows. It also checks for broken links and optimizes your images.

The free plan includes a sitemap, 50 optimized images, 20 AI generations, a broken link check on 100 pages and an SEO audit of 20 pages. Pro costs $14.99 a month and does titles, descriptions, alt text and images in bulk. Business, at $24.99, adds AI bulk edits, and Premium is $49.99, each after a 7-day free trial.

Best for: stores with hundreds of products and no time to write each page's details.

7 · PageFly

Best Shopify app for landing pages: PageFly

Your theme can't build the launch page you sketched for the new collection. PageFly builds pages and sections by drag and drop, from 320+ templates, with no code.

The free plan publishes one page or section. Builder costs $24 a month for 5 pages or sections, plus $5 for each 5 more. Accelerate, at $99, adds unlimited pages and A/B testing, and Enterprise is $299.

Every page builder adds weight to the pages it makes, so open each new page on your phone before you send traffic to it.

Best for: campaign and landing pages your theme's sections can't make.

8 · Recharge

Best Shopify app for subscriptions: Recharge

Your regulars reorder the same coffee every month, by hand, when they remember. Recharge's Starter plan puts a subscription widget on the product page, with a self-serve customer portal, cancellation prevention and failed-payment recovery.

A $25 plan carries no transaction fees for your first 50 subscribers, with a 60-day free trial. Starter costs $99 a month plus 1.49% + 19¢ per transaction, and Plus costs $499 plus 1.34% + 19¢. Recharge can bill some charges outside your Shopify invoice.

From Starter, every transaction pays a fee on top of the monthly price. If you need only the basics, Shopify's own Subscriptions app is free.

Best for: products people use up and buy again.

Before you pay

What does Shopify already do for free?

Most Shopify apps come from third-party developers. The ones Shopify makes are usually free and supported by Shopify. Five of them are worth trying before you pay for an app.

Start there, and add an app the day the free one stops doing the job. For search, that day comes when you need a 26th filter, or when shoppers stop finding what you sell.

App count

How many apps should a Shopify store have?

Count jobs, not apps. Koala, which sells Shopify apps, counted a median of 14 apps across the 300 highest-traffic stores it tracks, in one snapshot from September 2026. More apps than jobs means you pay twice somewhere.

Every app that shows something on your storefront adds code the page has to load. Apps that work only inside your admin add nothing to the page. Here's how to tell if too many apps slow your store.

Removing an app isn't always clean. Uninstalling stops future charges, but you may still pay for the current billing cycle. Some apps leave code in your theme that isn't removed automatically. Others keep data you can't get back, so export it first. And a charge billed outside Shopify doesn't stop when you uninstall.

To remove one, go to Settings > Apps, open the menu next to the app and click Uninstall. Before you do, cut your app bill job by job.

The monthly bill

How much do these Shopify apps cost a month?

All eight on their entry paid plans cost $149.98 a month. On the free plan where one exists, and the entry plan where it doesn't, the same eight come to $64.99. Sledge, Gorgias and Recharge are the three with no free plan on a live store.

App subscriptions run on their own 30-day cycle and show on your Shopify bill. Usage-based apps bill for what you used in that period. On this list, the bill grows with profiles at Klaviyo, tickets at Gorgias, shipments at AfterShip and transaction fees at Recharge. Klaviyo and Recharge can also bill outside Shopify.

Sledge takes no cut of your sales. Each plan covers a set amount of sales made through Sledge each month, up to $8,000 on Pro, and Sledge's AI features pause at that cap. The plans side by side are on Sledge pricing.

Where to start

Which app should you install first?

The one for the job losing you sales today. If shoppers leave without buying, start with search or reviews. If they buy once and never come back, start with email.

On a paid Sledge plan, Growth Intelligence reads 90 days of your orders and a week of your searches, then suggests fixes. It shows one "Est. potential" total for those fixes, in your store's currency, so you know what they could add before you pay for the next app. It runs weekly on Pro and daily on Accelerate and Ultimate.