Top 14 Shopify Apps Every Store Owner Needs

Last updated on 14 December 2023

Shopify has blown the socks off the ecommerce space in recent years, making it easier for most people to create their own online store which was really difficult and expensive 10 years ago.

Now, this new age of entrepreneurs is flying to create online stores of their dreams, now accessible to everyone. Shopify is now one of the leading ecommerce platforms, currently with many options of apps, accessibility and ease of use.

Reasons why we know these apps are top quality

We have been creating Shopify stores since 2014, so we’ve seen the progression of how fast and powerful it has gotten over the years. Throughout this time we have tested a bunch of apps that have worked well for us and we want to share this valuable information with you.

Back when we started there wasn’t much support or info out there for this stuff so we went through a bunch of issues with apps causing heavy site speed issues, messing up theme code and other stuff.

So what we want is to help you avoid running into these issues! Below is a list of our favourite apps we have used for different things. If you find this useful and have any questions, please comment in the comments section at the bottom of the page.

Top Shopify Apps

1. DDA – Best for selling digital downloads

If you sell digital products, then the DDA App is the way forward. This is the leading app in digital downloads as it provides some unique features that no other downloads app has.

Some features this app has are; the ability to not send the download link to fraudulent orders, attach multiple files to one product, add the download links to the summary page & customer accounts, customisation of email templates and much more.

If you want to see more information on the digital downloads app for Shopify, check this blog out.

2. GemPages – Page Builder Shopify app

If you’ve been searching for the best Shopify apps, it is safe to say you’ve seen GemPages topping a few of those lists. Indeed, GemPages is widely regarded as one of the most powerful page builders for Shopify. This page builder helps you build, design, and optimize your store pages without coding skills.

You can build your store from scratch or get your creative juices flowing with an array of inspiring templates to choose from. It’s also easy to add some bells and whistles. Just drag and drop any element you want to any position on the page. You will have complete freedom to customize those elements as your wish!

And don’t forget to make use of GemPages built-in marketing toolkits and sales-supporting features to turn your eCommerce store into a cash cow! 

3. Coin by ShopPad – Auto currency switcher based on IP Address

Again Shopify has some great features these days, one of which is Shopify multi-currency. They teamed up with payment processor Stripe to create Shopify Payments a couple of years ago. This has been a great success for Shopify as it’s a no-brainer to go for on-card checkout payments.

For Shopify owners, they slashed the transaction fee to 0% when using Shopify Payments to give an incentive for store owners to use it. Of course, since, this has now increased to a 2.9% fee. Check out our Shopify tips & tricks blog to find out how to use Shopify multi-currency.

So one highly suggested and tested app to show your customers the prices in their currency that is compatible with Shopify Payments is Coin by Shoppad.

Once you set up Coin, it can read the IP address of the customer and show them their currency without them having to go to the currency selector and change it themselves. This avoids friction when a customer goes to your store which some store owners find valuable.

4. PickyStory – Bundle Upsell

PickyStory helps you sell more products to each customer and turn more store visitors into buyers. By offering product bundles and deals throughout your store, you can tempt your customers into a larger purchase, increasing your AOV and store revenue. 

Offer bundles of related products on your product pages, set up galleries of shoppable looks, offer bundles as a single product, and much more. Optional, flexible discounts can be added to every deal, including BOGO and free product offers. 

Inventory is automatically tracked at SKU level for each of the individual SKUs within any bundle or deal. Plus, deals are set up with clicks and can be easily dragged and dropped onto your store’s pages – no code required! 

5. Pagefly Page Builder – For building pages

This app is one of the most important if you want to customise your pages in detail. When customising with the themes options on Shopify, you are quite limited with where you can place things and you cannot change much. But what Pagefly has done is allow you to fully customize your page. You can do pretty much everything you can think of when it comes to designing a page. You can add additional CSS, move images/text, Heading tags and also integrate with other apps.

The user interface has been getting much better over the years too, it’s design is really easy to use. Once you understand how the interface works with columns and sections, then it’s super easy. You don’t need to use code to make it work, anyone can use this.

Some features you get are creating Blogs, Product Pages, Collection Pages and much more.

6. Sufio – VAT invoices and VAT prices

One issue we have had with Shopify is that they don’t make it easy for customers to enter their VAT number into their account so they can receive a VAT invoice. It’s pretty silly really that Shopify hasn’t added this crucial feature as VAT is business tax and used in nearly all businesses.

On the other hand, apps have arrived to solve this big issue. Sufio is a good app that allows your customer to enter their VAT number into their account. Once they place the order, they will receive a full VAT invoice.

Check our extensive guide if you want to learn how to set up Digital Goods VAT tax in Shopify.

7. Selly United

This app we found is the best for site speed and it looks great on the storefront. Most apps we have tried were very sluggish, not customisable and added heavy code to the theme. But Selly has smashed this one, it runs really nicely and actually increases conversion value heavily.

10. Slide Cart

Ultimate Cart Drawer is a little heavier on your themes code but it brings some pretty amazing features which we find valuable. It replaces your standard cart page or drawer to a new up-sell/cross-sell section where your customers can see offers and more items similar. There’s a brilliant option where you can have a price threshold to reach to receive free delivery or a free product.

11. Judge.me – Review App

One thing you should do is give confidence to your customers. Customers need to trust you before they are willing to make a purchase. Judge.me app has done wonders for our stores with its intricate settings and options available.

The great thing about Judge.me is that it integrates with other apps very well. It also gives your genuine reviews a ‘Verified’ icon to prove that these reviews are genuine and not fake.

This gives much more confidence to the customer knowing that these apps stand up for them and not only for the business. It works hand in hand with businesses and customers.

12. GoAffPro Affiliate Marketing

If you have thought about tapping into affiliate marketing to get more traffic, then our experience with GoAffPro has been great. The platform is super easy to use and has many features that you would never have expected but are very useful!

Another feature we think is great is you can link a discount code to an affiliate so when a customer uses the discount code, the affiliate will get their commission, so it avoids using affiliate links which people can be turned off by.

GoAffPro also has automatic payouts for many different types of payments including Paypal, Visa, Bitcoin and much more. You can also tie it to your own domain name, for example, affiliate.yourdomain.com.

13. EU GDPR Cookies notification

This is pretty important when it comes to regulation in the EU. We have tested a bunch of these apps and found most of them were very heavy on the theme’s code which is not what any store owner wants! We all want fast running stores.

This app we found runs very smooth and adds hardly any extra speed to the store. It’s fully customisable with colour and text so there are no limitations in any way. Highly suggested to use this one over any other, that’s why it’s in our list of the top Shopify apps.

12. Klaviyo – Great but it’s expensive – Best for established stores

Klaviyo has some insanely good features. This enables you to export custom email lists with customer lifetime value and import them into Facebook Ads to create lookalikes. You can also email people who have bought specific products or done specific things in the shop.

You can also create flows, for example, a birthday flow. This means it links to the birthdays ready by Shopify and you can set up a flow to send an email with a birthday discount code. Flows can be used in many ways and Klaviyo has many templates for this.

The only issue we have with Klaviyo is that the UI is very confusing for a beginner and takes time to get used to it. Also, it’s very expensive. The pricing plans are listed below.

Check here if you want to find some good Shopify Cart Recovery apps.

13. Shopify Email – Very good price but limited options – Great for beginners

Shopify Email is a very new addition to Shopify in 2020. But it solves a great issue when it comes to start-up companies. We found a lot of email apps were very expensive for a startup as email marketing doesn’t come into effect until you get enough emails to market to. Shopify has solved this issue with overpriced email apps and is charging store owners? per email. This makes it better for store owners to only pay for what they use rather than a monthly subscription. This gives you time to build up your email list.

Our thoughts

These are the apps we have tried & tested over the years and have proven their way. If you think there are other top Shopify apps that are worthy of this list, please contact us and let us know!

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