29 Must-Have Shopify Apps You Need in 2022 (Free & Paid)

Post Contents: [ show hide ] 29 Must-Have Shopify Apps Dropshipping Email + SMS Referral + Loyalty Notifications + Pop Ups Forms Google Shopping Abandoned Carts Social Reviews + Social Proof Cross + Upselling Customer Support Other Useful Apps Conclusion You’ve set up your store and you’re ready to roll…great work, you’re on the right track. But what happens when those sales just aren’t where you want them to be? Yes, you’ve uploaded all your products with amazing photos and juicy descriptions but is there more you should be doing to increase sales? Well, you may be missing some crucial elements to your toolkit. And yes, as you can guess from the title of this piece, we’re talking about Shopify apps. The Shopify app store offers options aplenty, but how to know which ones you actually need? There’s tons to sift through and you simply don’t have time to install and uninstall a bunch to see which works better. To save you time and many headaches we’ve whittled all the options down to 30 must-have apps for 2022, organized into 10 handy categories. Come on, let’s take a look! 29 Must-Have Shopify Apps Dropshipping 1. SaleHoo Dropship If you haven’t heard the term dropshipping yet, you may want to brush up on some research because dropshipping is the easiest way to start an online store on a limited budget. Your website provides the store front, but orders go directly to our supplier and are shipped to your customers from there. This means you never have to carry your own inventory or pay for warehousing costs. SaleHoo Dropship gives you access to thousands of pre-vetted suppliers and winning products, which you can easily add to your store with just a few clicks. Expert-curated product lists, advanced search and filtering options, bulk product and order management and profit auto-pilot are just some of the amazing features that will help you take your Shopify dropshipping business to the next level. *While the app is not officially in the Shopify app store yet (will be soon!), users are currently linking SaleHoo Dropship directly to their Shopify stores to create high profit dropshipping businesses on the Shopify stores. Helps with: Scaling and automating your Dropshipping business, searching for dropshipping products and business ideas Stand-out feature: 24/7 dedicated support from dropshipping experts Price: $27 or $97/ month 🎓Learn More: Keen to learn about Dropshipping on Shopify? Check out our handy guide! Email + SMS 2. Seguno ( 4.9 stars based on 873 reviews) Seguno is a dedicated Shopify app to help you save time managing email campaigns and anything email-related. You can manage your campaigns directly within the Shopify Dashboard and have plenty of options for setting up automations that will make your life just so much easier. These could be welcome emails, thank you emails – you name it! Helps with: Email Stand-out feature: Dynamic recommendations and discount codes for abandoned cart recovery emails Price: Free up to 250 subscribers, then $10/month 3. Klaviyo ( 4.2 stars based on 1586 reviews) Klaviyo is one of the leading apps for email marketing on Shopify. It lets you create eye-catching, targeted emails using pre-built templates, add dynamic forms to your website, utilize custom flows, and make informed decisions thanks to ROI-based analysis. Klaviyo truly covers the entire funnel for eCommerce customers, from acquisition to nurturing, conversion and retention. If you want to make use of their SMS functionalities, you do have do pay for an add-on package starting at $5/ month Helps with: Email & SMS Stand-out feature: Powerful integrations with 220+ other services Price:Free up to 250 contacts, then $35+/ month depending on your number of contacts 4. SMSBump ( 4.8 stars based on 2398 reviews) SMSBump lets you monetize the power of text messaging (and it’s also recently added email to its capabilities too). You can build flows around anything SMS-related: to segment your audience, check on packages the day of delivery, set alerts on abandoned carts, send birthday gifts, and more. The inbuilt budget control ensures you’re not overspending and timezone-specific metrics mean your customers are getting their texts at just the right time, wherever they are in the world. Helps with: SMS management Stand-out feature: A/B testing and analytics on SMS conversion Price: Free (which won’t show your business name as sender), then $19, $59 or $199/ month + SMS charges Referral + Loyalty 5. Smile ( 4.8 stars based on 4673 reviews) Loyalty and referral programs motivate your audience to purchase more by staying loyal to the brand and spreading the word about your web store. Smile lets you create these using customizable options and provides ample analytics to stay on top of what’s working or not. Helps with: Referrals and customer retention Stand-out feature: Design a points-based, referral, or VIP-based loyalty program Price: Free (up to 200 monthly orders); $49, $199 or $599/ month with increasing features 6. ReferralCandy ( 4.9 stars based on 1819 reviews) Referral Candy helps you create winning referral programs for existing customers to spread the word about your store. The app promises an easy set-up that’ll give you a running referral program in 30 minutes or less. There are also ample tracking features which help you identify top referrers, referral sales, and social shares with our dashboard. A nice touch is a dedicated customer success team that will proactively get in touch and help you optimize your program. Helps with: Creating custom referral programs Stand-out feature: Automatic reward delivery to make the referral process easier Price: 30 day free trial, then $49 or $299/ month Notifications + Pop Ups 7. PushOwl ( 5 stars based on 2321 reviews) PushOwl executes tailored sales campaigns using web push notifications (the ones you get in your browser). These could include abandoned cart or back-in-stock notifications and can be tailored to target specific demographics and audiences. The handy thing about web push notifications is that they can be sent anonymously to anyone who opts in – as opposed to email and SMS where you need to first collect customer data. Helps with: Web push notifications Stand-out feature: Updates customers with back-in-stock notifications for retargeting Price: Free up to 500 impressions per month, then $19 or $38/ month 8. Sales Popup Free Shipping Bar ( 4.8 stars based on 3924 reviews) Have you ever been to an online store and had notifications pop up about items selling fast? This is exactly what Sales Popup Free Shipping Bar does, and more! You’re able to create a variety of notification pop-ups and bars on your site, such as the free shipping/ quick announcement bar (often at the top of a website), stock countdown bar, product visitors counter and countdown timer. These notifications features are great at both creating urgency to buy, but also building trust because your customers can see that other people are buying your product. Helps with: Building trust and creating urgency Stand-out feature: Live sales notifications Price: Free basic plan, then $3.99, $9.99 or $29.99 a month (30 day free trial) 9. Poptin ( 4.8 stars based on 219 reviews) Using Poptin, you can create custom pop-ups and forms to collect email addresses from your website visitors – all using a foolproof drag and drop system, no coding required! The app also lets you include lots of useful extras in your pop-ups, such as HTML, backgrounds, images, videos, icons, link and close button, spinwheel, news ticker and more. And A/B split tests will help you figure out what’s working (or not) Helps with: Growing email lists Stand-out feature: Advanced targeting options and exit intent trigger Price: Free up to 1000 visitors/ month, then $25, $59, or $119+ / month 10. Optimonk ( 4.9 stars based on 574 reviews) OptiMonk promises high-converting pop-ups that don’t annoy your visitors. In a world of crazy bounce-rates and short attention spans that’s exactly what you need to keep your visitors interested and convert them into paying customers. The app features more than 200 templates that can be customized with an easy drag-and-drop editor, countdown timers, notification bars and personalized offers based on shopper’s carts. Helps with: Driving conversion through popups Stand-out feature: Spin wheel popup to gamify your email signups Price: Free up to 15,000 monthly page views, then $29, $79, $199+/ month 11. Free Shipping Bar ( 4.9 stars based on 10,884 reviews) This hugely popular app is a very straightforward and therefore effective tool for your website. As opposed to the other Free Shipping Bar app in our line up, this one focuses solely on the free shipping bar that often appears at the top or bottom of websites. This bar is fully customizable and can be configured to be shown differently to different visitors depending on who they are and where they’re from. Helps with: Advertising free shipping and other alerts Stand-out feature: Location-sensitive alert configuration Price: Free basic plan or $9.99/ month with additional features 12. Personizely ( 5 stars based on 207 reviews) Personizely is a conversion-focused app that can be applied broadly across a range of different functions: email pop up, exit popups, cart abandonment popups, upsell popups, cross sell popups, free shipping bars & promotion bars, sales motivator bars, and website personalization. So you really are getting a lot of bang for your buck here! It can help you to easily adjust your website according to a visitor’s activity history, referral source, geolocation, cart value, order history, and many more, by creating multiple variations using its visual on-site editor. Helps with: Converting visitors based on their behavior Stand-out feature: All your on-site conversion tools in one place Price: Free 14-day trial, then from $29 10,000 visitors) Forms 13. Form Builder ( 4.7 stars based on 737 reviews) Form Builder does what it says on the tin: it lets you create easy-to-fill forms. But this is no small advantage: These forms allow your visitors to reach out to you, place custom orders, donate money, drop feedback and more – enabling you to create leads, build your email list and work on customer retention. Helps with: Creating leads through custom forms Stand-out feature: One-click install to start building your form Price: Free (1 form with 12 fields) or $10/ month for the premium version (7 day free trial) Google Shopping 14. Effortless Marketing Shopping Product Feed ( 5 stars based on 16 reviews) EM Shopping Product Feed lets you recreate your product feed on Google, Facebook and Microsoft to take advantage of these powerful sales channels. It’s always good to not have all your eggs in one basket, and having your product feed outside your own shop can not only create more sales but also drive traffic to your own website. Helps with: Google Shopping Stand-out feature: Create instant product feed Price: Free 15. App for Google Shopping Feed ( 4.9 stars based on 287 reviews) This app assists you with all things Google: It lets you upload your shop into Google Shopping feeds, create and verify your Google Merchant Center account, plus it helps you run Google Ads. You’re able to easily improve your Shopping Feed with product-specific recommendations for customers and improve sales that way. Helps with: Running your Google Shopping feed Stand-out feature: Use multi-currencies and multi-languages to set up global stores Price: Free (up to 10 orders), $4.99 (10+), $14.99 (<300), $29.99 (<750) Abandoned Carts 16. Carti Abandoned Cart Recovery ( 4.9 stars based on 92 reviews) Recovering lost sales by enticing customers back to their abandoned carts is huge! It can reduce cart abandonment by 10-30% and is said to provide a ROI of $8 per email sent. The Carti app helps you run multi-channel abandoned cart campaigns through push notifications, email, and SMS and the free version is as feature-packed as the paid ones, which is great when you’re just starting out and don’t have much spare cash. Helps with: Recovering sales from abandoned carts Stand-out feature: Browse abandonment tool Price: 30 day free trial, Free up to $100 of extra sales, then from $9.99/ month (up to $200) Social 17. Instafeed ( 4.9 stars based on 1152 reviews) Instafeed lets you integrate your instagram account with your Shopify store. This means you’re able to create social proof for your store, as well as increase engagement on your Instagram feed, meaning more shoppers and more followers. It’s a win-win! Helps with: Instagram integration Stand-out feature: Create shoppable Instagram feeds (only on paid version) Price: Free up to 250 contacts, then $5.99 or $19.99/ month 18. Outfy ( 4.8 stars based on 1205 reviews) Outfy integrates with all the major social media channels (aside from TikTok) and helps you with the sometimes tedious process of running engaging, busy social media accounts. You can automatically create product videos and other creatives based on what’s in your shop and share those on your social channels. There are also a range of good-looking themed templates to manually create content, but do so with a much quicker turnaround. Posts can be published instantly or scheduled for a later time and date. Helps with: Automating product creatives Stand-out feature: Autopilot automatically creates product videos, collages, and GIFs and shares them on social media Price: Free (2 posts per day), then $15, $30 or $60/ month Reviews + Social Proof 19. Judge.me ( 5 stars based on 9942 reviews) Judge.me is an app to collect reviews from your customers and integrate them into your store and product pages. You can do this via email, SMS, web and push notifications, creating great social proof for your store along the way. Helps with: Collecting customer reviews Stand-out feature: Review carousel to showcase your best ratings Price: Free, or $15/ month 20. Loox ( 4.9 stars based on 9103 reviews) Loox is an app to help you collect reviews from your customers to create social proof for your store. It allows store owners to send automatic review requests to customers in return for discounts each time photos and reviews are submitted. The interface is straightforward and easy to use, allowing you to collect both photo and video reviews – a huge game changer in the age of video! Reviews can be shared on social media, Google shopping and dedicated Happy Customers pages or widgets on your site. Helps with: Social proof Stand-out feature: One/Two-sided incentives (Give 10%, Get $5) Price: 14 day trial, then $9.99 (100 review request emails), $34.99 (300), $299.99 (unlimited) Cross + Upselling 21. Frequently bought together ( 4.9 stars based on 2074 reviews) It’s not a secret that cross and upselling are a huge opportunity for increasing sales. The customers targeted here are clearly already interested in your brand, so if you play your cards right, this could work in your favor. Be too pushy or obvious however, and you might lose the sale altogether. The Frequently bought together app uses clever algorithms to determine products purchased together and utilizes this data to make recommendations to your customers. Hence the app needs little setup too, which is a bonus for the time-poor solopreneur! Helps with: Increasing sales Stand-out feature: Apply discounts to cross-promoted products to improve conversions Price: Free or $9.99/ month (free 30 day trial) Customer Support 22. Tidio - Live Chat & Chatbots ( 4.8 stars based on 1495 reviews) Customer support is a big deal, perhaps no more so than in the commerce business because a happy customer is a loyal customer that will bring in more sales through their loyalty. Tidio lets you support your customers through Live Chat, chatbots, Instagram and Messenger. It automatically deals with normal support tickets through smart chatbots, and filters out the edge cases that need more personal help on live chat. Customizing chat widgets gives ample options and doesn’t require any coding skills. Helps with: Customer relationships Stand-out feature: Supports multiple languages to cover more areas Price: Free for up to 100 unique reachable customers per month, then  $19 or $49 per month Other Useful Apps 23. Plug in SEO ( 4.7 stars based on 2552 reviews) SEO consideration can seem like a foreign language if you don’t know much about it! Plug in SEO makes sure the SEO for your web shop is working optimally, offering suggestions for descriptions, titles, links, keywords and more – all editable in bulk using handy templates. It includes a keyword tool to track top-performing keywords. Helps with: Search engine optimization Stand-out feature: Provides detailed instructions for fixing SEO (including code snippets) Price: Basic SEO scanning is free, full toolkit costs $20/ month 24. Printful ( 4.5 stars based on 3854 reviews) Using what’s basically an offshoot of the dropshipping model, print-on-demand lets you sell custom-printed t-shirts, posters, mugs, and other products (you name it!) without holding any of your own inventory. So you can easily trial lots of different designs and options without ever losing any money if they ever don’t work out. The Printful app lets you add products to your shop effortlessly and makes the whole process (from ordering to returns) smooth and easy for you. Helps with: Selling print-on-demand products Stand-out feature: Blind order fulfillment (the customer’s package won’t say that it’s from Printful) Price: Free or $49/month for Pro plan 25. Shoppable Product Video & Quiz by Tolstoy ( 5 star rating based on 79 reviews) The power of video online is ever-increasing and this former Shopify staff pick lets you capitalize on just that. Make your shopping experience interactive by creating personalized product recommendations, quizzes and video chats, using a vast video library sourced from TikTok, Minta, Vimeo and more. Helps with: Interactive marketing Stand-out feature: Create shoppable videos for SMS and email marketing Price: Free or $19+/ month 26. Return Prime ( 5 stars based on 222 reviews) Ideally you don’t want to be seeing many returns at all! But it’s bound to happen at some point and having a smooth returns & exchange experience can make the difference between losing a customer forever or having them return. Return Prime is the top-rated Returns app on Shopify and comes with a whole host of easy-to-use features. It lets you define the returns-window and automatically restrict customers from returning products, it’ll ask customers for photos before the return is processed, gives you options for refunds via gift card or coupon, lets you send custom emails and more. They’ve really thought of everything when it comes to making an often tedious process nice and streamlined. Helps with: Managing returns Stand-out feature: World-class support Price: Free (5 requests per month), then from $9.99 (30 requests) 27. Prisync ( 4.9 stars based on 91 reviews) Market research is so important when it comes to picking and pricing your products! Prisync is a competitor price tracking & monitoring app that also offers dynamic pricing and automatic pricing optimization. This means you’ll always stay competitive when customers are comparing you to other businesses in your field or niche. Helps with: Tracking competitor activities Stand-out feature: Price updates 4x daily Price: Free 14-day trial, then $99 (up to 100 products), $199 (1000) or $399+ (5000+) 28. UpPromote: Affiliate Marketing ( 4.9 stars based on 5697 reviews) Affiliate sales can be a huge revenue driver, with some businesses reporting up to 50% of their sales coming from affiliates. What this means is that affiliate partners such as influencers promote your product for you in exchange for a commission. It’s just another way to leverage social proof where customers are more willing to trust a person or brand they know and follow, rather than a potentially unknown brand that’s only promoting themselves. The UpPromote app helps you set up and manage your affiliate program(s), customize default commissions, convert customers into affiliates and track their performance automatically using affiliate links, coupons, SKUs, or emails. Helps with: Running Affiliate Marketing programs Stand-out feature: Each partner has his/her portal to get resources and monitor the performance Price: Free (up to 200 referral orders a month), $21.99 (300), $69.99 (600) or $139.99 (unlimited) Conclusion As you can see, there’s a whole lot more to running a Shopify store than the actual store. Having a sophisticated, well-chosen toolkit to fit your business will make all the difference when it comes to driving conversions and sales – and take your business to the next level. If you’re a dropshipper and you’re interested in finding out more about our newly released SaleHoo Dropship app, why not chat to our customer support team? They have all the intel and are always happy to help. Are there any other apps that you’ve found useful in your business? Let us know in the comments below!