17 Best Free Shopify Apps That Can Help You Grow Your Online Business
If you’re one of the millions of entrepreneurs who use Shopify to power their business, you will already know apps are an integral part of the Shopify platform.
With thousands of Shopify apps available with a huge range of functionality for your business and website needs, it can be difficult to know which are the best.
This article will break down the necessity of exploiting apps, what to take into consideration after browsing Shopify store examples and before picking an app for your Shopify store, and what the 17 best free apps can offer to help grow your online business.
Why Is It Necessary to Install Apps for Your Shopify Online Store?
Shopify apps are powerful tools that are a crucial part of the platform. 87% of merchants use these apps to run their eCommerce Business. They can offer significant benefits to store owners.
Every Shopify app offers a specialized service to add a range of functions and capabilities. Here are some of the key benefits that free Shopify apps include:
- They are a great way to access the data of an online store and provide actionable insights.
- A Shopify app can do everything an owner can on the admin panel.
- Data on purchases made through Shopify apps can be used to increase conversions through analytics on the sales process.
- Data generated by apps can be used to provide detailed analytics to target customers with effective marketing campaigns that increase sales.
- Apps can make a store more user friendly for mobile users, increasing mobile conversions.
- Some integrate with social media to make it easy for customers to share their experience on a range of platforms in just a few clicks.
- Range of options for marketing campaigns. You can segment customers to increase conversions and specific feedback.
Quick Tip: Take a look at the best Shopify store examples and check how they use the apps to supercharge their profits.
17 Best Free Shopify Apps for Your eCommerce Store
The Shopify app store offers a seemingly endless range of added functionality.Whether they’re for Shopify t-shirt stores or a more complex product collection, with over 7000 apps available, there is likely an app for almost any need.
While over half require payment, many of the best Shopify apps are totally free.
Check out this quick breakdown of the best free Shopify apps for your online store:
The free Printify Shopify app instantly integrates seamlessly with your store. It simplifies and automates the process of sourcing and creating print-on-demand products.
With over 850 products and an extensive network of Print Providers, it’s a great app for businesses of all calibers, especially Shopify clothing stores. Not only that, artists and entrepreneurs can profit too by selling fan, pride, and Spotify merch.
One of the best free apps, the Printify Shopify app has a range of benefits to save you money and time:
- Mockup generator. The mockup generator allows you to effortlessly upload your design and see a high-quality mockup image for free. You can add these highly realistic mockup previews to your shop.
- Sample orders. Ordering samples from your chosen print provider is a great opportunity to check the print quality and the finished product before offering the product to your customers.
- No minimum orders. Simply find what to sell on Shopify and create a collection without having to pre-buy or store bulk orders at your own expense with Printify’s no minimum order policy.
- Easy integration. Effortlessly connect to your store and instantly publish your product automatically.
- Sit back and sell. All order operations are automated, allowing you to focus on making sales. You can relax and track the progress of every order directly from your Printify account.
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The free Hubspot Customer Relationship Management Shopify app is a tool that provides a clear and live insight into your sales pipeline.
This free Shopify app can boost sales by giving you a platform to manage, follow and cultivate your leads and buyers. For Shopify users looking to gain more sales, this can be a great app.
It is designed to fuel growth and build relationships throughout the entire customer journey:
- Personalize and automate. Customize and automate your marketing campaigns by syncing your online store's data to the free Shopify app.
- Analytics. Let the Shopify app track your customer interactions and the data generated in a clear timeline for you to gain insights.
- Boost sales. Build a sales and marketing strategy based on data to drive conversions.
- Segmentation. Improve customer retention through personalized marketing campaigns to existing customers.
The free Oberlo Shopify app allows you to simply import Aliexpress products directly to your Shopify store, and ship them directly to your customers when you make a sale.
Oberlo acts like a virtual warehouse, dropshipping products from thousands of suppliers. Through the Shopify app you can select your items, customize the products and then publish them to your store, ready to sell.
The free plan of this app lets you manage your store with a range of functionalities:
- Easily add Aliexpress products. Check out the huge product selection and add your chosen products with one click.
- Automatic update of product inventory. Saving you time and negative reviews by updating your store automatically.
- Switch suppliers. With multiple product suppliers available, you can simply switch to prices and delivery times that will give you the best margin and boost sales.
- Automated pricing. This free Shopify app makes it easy to update prices in bulk, using rules created by you. You can use this feature to maintain your online store's margins, or effortlessly adjust prices, using flash sales to get new customers.
This free Shopify app can boost sales through upselling and cross-selling.
This app provides a platform to customize order thank you pages and landing pages with a drag and drop builder. Also available are features such as countdown timers, personalized recommendations, reorder buttons and surveys that are designed to increase sales.
More than 40,000 Shopify stores have downloaded this app from the Shopify app store:
- Drag and drop page builder. With no code design elements, you can drive sales to build your upselling pages simply, to increase your order value.
- Trigger-based thank you pages. Keep the right customers engaged and use triggers to offer the right upsell to targeted customers.
- Magic designer. Your customized upselling thank you page will automatically sync with your store’s checkout page settings.
- Advanced analytics. Check out the performance of each page and optimize each to increase repeat sales and customer lifetime value.
Sales Notification is a free Shopify app that can push sales for store owners. This can be achieved by displaying recent sales notifications to store visitors and encouraging purchases through social proof.
The app has a range of features available, including setting cart notifications, creating recent visitor alerts, and hiding items that you don’t want to include in notifications.
Key benefits of Sales Notification include:
- Build trust. Let your customers know what other website visitors are buying on your store using social evidence.
- Social proof. You can demonstrate to your customers how busy your store is by displaying recent visitor notifications and adding social evidence with the cart notifications function.
- Get results from Pop-ups. Use pop-ups to notify customers of sales to increase purchases through social assurance.
Replay Site Recorder & Surveys is an analytics tool that helps store owners optimize and improve their websites. It provides live recordings of visitor sessions so you can track how shoppers interact with the store.
The key feature of this app is the data protection compliant recording of the visitor’s precise mouse movements, typing, page exploring, clicking, and scrolling made by the user during a session to your store.
There are a range of benefits available from these session insights:
- Understand users better. Get a visual representation of how your visitors think. This can help you understand what they like and what they don’t.
- Behind the numbers. Clearly check out the real reasons behind your analytics and zero in exactly where any problems lie.
- Increase conversion rates. By building on the last couple of points, you can improve the functionality of your site to push sales.
- Feedback on new features. All feedback is useful on newly implemented features and you can track the success or failure by analyzing recordings of site traffic.
Offer product match quizzes that help your online website visitors find the right products. These custom branded quizzes can be easily created in minutes with no previous design or coding experience required.
Jebbit’s visual builder enables you to build personality quizzes, dynamic surveys, product match quizzes, and lead generation forms for capturing email addresses.
The app features a range of benefits:
- Simple. A wide range of no-code elements allows you to build sleek quizzes that fit into your brand easily and quickly.
- Customized quizzes. Drive personalized product recommendations for every visitor and create custom quizzes.
- Analytics. See how your customers engage with your quizzes to optimize and drive conversions.
Thank you email auto marketing allows you to automatically send a thank you email to your customers after they perform an action on your Shopify store.
This marketing automation tool has four types of Shopify email marketing campaigns available. From new orders, new customers, newsletter subscribers, and fulfilled orders, this app can be an effective way to gain more loyal customers.
The free plan of this app offers a range of benefits to boost your marketing efforts:
- Build trust. Send email campaigns from your own domain.
- Take care of every customer. Immediately after performing an action, customers can receive emails that enable you to build a personal connection and promote your brand.
- Reports. Inform your email marketing strategy with data on sent emails, opened emails, spam, and subscribers.
Sales Countdown Timer displays a customizable countdown timer on your online store.
The app offers countdown timers for your Homepage, Collections, or Product pages. Choose between header, bottom bar positions, or announcements bars. All come with fully customizable background patterns and 11 different design templates.
Key benefits of this free app include:
- Create a sense of urgency. Convince shoppers to complete a purchase ASAP.
- Optimized for mobiles. Phone or tablet users will see a countdown timer sales countdown bar optimized for their screen size. This can help drive mobile conversions.
- Grab shopper's attention. Drive sales using the announcement bar. Highlight offers by creating a free shipping bar.
The Privy Shopify app is an exit intent, cart abandonment and email marketing tool designed to increase conversions. WIth customizable, mobile-friendly displays, no coding skills are required.
The free plan offers pop-ups, email sign-ups, coupons and the spin-to-win wheel. It offers unlimited pop-ups and email sign-ups. Extra targeting features are available in the paid plans, such as coupon redemption tracking and cart value banners.
Key benefits of this all-in-one tool include:
- Increase average order value. Display a free shipping bar and run cross-selling campaigns.
- Grow your email list. Collet more contacts using the hundreds of pop-up customized templates available.
- Increase sales. Exit-intent and email pop-ups can be crucial in driving sales. Use the app's features to incentivize customers to convert.
Quick Tip: Increase your reach and sales by learning about Shopify email marketing from our easy guide.
The free version of this Shopify app can improve your Shopify store’s search engine optimization. The app ensures it is meeting Google’s best practices for Google images search engine result pages.
Arguably the best free Shopify app on Shopify’s app store for stores where customers search for products through google images. This app constantly monitors your store and optimizes meta tags, alt text, sitemap, JSON-LD, and marks all your images with the correct alt image tags.
There is a range of benefits that set this app apart from other apps:
- Automated. Sit back and let the app optimize your Shopify SEO without spending time working on technical SEO yourself.
- One-click install. Get the SEO manager to work in minutes. Knowing your store will rank better for customers looking for your products with Google search and increase your traffic.
- Support team. The 24/7 US-based support team is available to help with any SEO questions.
Quick Tip: Increase profits by optimizing your store – just follow our Shopify SEO guide to get started.
The Free Shipping Bar app allows you to offer free shipping as a slide-out on your product pages. With over 66% of consumers expecting free shipping with every online order, make sure your customers know your shipping rates.
The key feature this app offers is the option to display your free shipping offer in a customizable slide-out bar. It also includes messages as the cart fills, congratulations for reaching free shipping goal amounts, and tracking the performance of each bar.
There is a range of benefits to integrating this app with your store:
- Upsell. Bring attention to a free shipping threshold that can drive increases in sales.
- Raise awareness. Ensuring your website visitors know you offer free shipping can increase conversions.
- Avoid cart abandonment. Cart abandonment rates can be as high as 70%, with hidden extra costs like shipping the primary cause. If your store is seeing a lot of cart abandonments, try implementing free shipping and install this app.
Go beyond automated push notifications and use this app to build customer loyalty with trust badges or display user-generated content.
Trust Hero trust badges can improve the customer experience by displaying badges of payment and support for your store. The app also features reviews and testimonials from your loyal customers.
Key benefits of installing this app include:
- Mobile-friendly design. Mobile eCommerce sales are forecast to double by 2025, with the U.S. market alone worth $728 Billion. You can build trust with customers using mobile shopping by making them feel more comfortable.
- No code. One-click install means no need for developers to add trust badges to your store's pages.
- Reduce cart abandonment. 15% of cart abandonment can be due to payment security fears. Trust badges from VeriSign, TRUSTe and McAfee can cost over $400 per year when buying certificates. Use Trust Hero to build confidence entirely free.
Product Reviews is a strong tool that does exactly what it says. You can add a product reviews feature to your site’s pages. With reviews playing a critical role in deciding to purchase a product for 89% of consumers, a product review app can have a strong impact on your business.
The app’s key features include a no-code edit and customization. Importantly, SEO-friendly review scores, ability to CSV import and export, bulk action management, and flexible theme-friendly design are also available.
There are a range of advantages to installing this app:
- SEO friendly. Improve your SEO results with the reviews score to rank better in search engines.
- Drive sales. Essential social assurance can build trust with your clients and encourage sales.
- Customizable design. The fully flexible design can look great with all Shopify themes.
Yotpo helps you generate, grow, and showcase product reviews. Use this app to build customized loyalty programs and referral programs to drive repeat sales, referrals and social engagement.
The popular Shopify app offers the ability to create a membership program and launch a custom no code loyalty or referral program. You can also send out requests for customer reviews and even select the reviews to showcase. The paid plan’s advanced features include email integration and a no-code rewards page builder.
Key-values of this customer service app range from:
- Increase lifetime customer value. Reward customers for valuable actions that generate sales or for personal events like birthdays with loyalty points.
- Increase repeat purchases. Offer a range of points redemption options such as free shipping or discounts to increase sales.
- Increase conversion rates. Increasing the reviews your products get builds trust with your potential clients, driving sales.
Promo.com allows you to automatically generate promotional videos for your store, products, Instagram, Facebook messenger stories, and any other channel where you can post videos.
The app creates videos optimized for your marketing goals by pulling existing images and video content from your store. You can then customize the video further with a range of audio and visual styles.
Benefits of using Promo.com include:
- Attract traffic. Use engaging branded videos of your products to enhance your website and immerse visitors.
- Boost conversions. Adding a video on your landing page can boost your conversion rate by up to 80%. You can increase yours with an easily made video.
- Publish anywhere. Drive traffic back to your store by directly publishing your videos and promoting them on your choice of social media channels.
Smart SEO automates the potentially challenging prospect of optimizing your store’s SEO to-do list. The overall aim is to increase the quality organic traffic your store receives.
This Shopify app automatically fixes broken links, manages your site map to keep it SEO friendly, and optimizes store images with alt tags. The app can also generate meta tags based on a rules template you create with a simple tool.
There are a range of reasons to check out this marketing automation tool:
- Drive more quality traffic. Effective SEO will increase organic traffic. These relevant leads are already looking for your product.
- Make more sales. Organic traffic from search engines has a 14.6% conversion rate, so you can benefit from SEO driving quality traffic to your website.
- Constant promotion. Ranking on a search engine offers constant promotion.
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What Should You Consider Before Installing a Shopify App?
Take a look at what Shopify apps can offer to simplify managing integral aspects of your growing business. There are, unfortunately, some downsides to running a range of apps at once:
- Slower site-speed.
All the apps you have installed are loaded at the same time as your site. If you use a wide range of apps this can slow down your site speed and provide a negative customer experience.
With 53% of mobile visitors leaving a page if it takes too long to load, try using a free website speed test like Pingdom to see whether you need to cut some apps.
- Apps not working together.
Some apps are not compatible, and sometimes one does not work with another. Without researching compatibility, you can lose the benefits of both. Check whether other users have run into issues before running the combination together.
- Site clutter.
Installing a range of apps that offer pop-ups and chat support can negatively impact the user experience by taking focus away from your products. Avoid this and check that none of your apps fulfill the same purpose. Any value gained from an app will be offset if they annoy or distract your customers.
- Outdated apps.
Apps can become outdated when the problem they solve is no longer an issue. You can check your apps through your Shopify admin, making sure they are up to date and not sending out useless push notifications before installing a spicy new app.
Quick Tip: Today, there are plenty of Shopify alternatives that come with great apps – BigCommerce, for example. Explore our BigCommerce vs Shopify comparison to see what kinds of apps they offer.
Start Your Online Business With Shopify
Shopify is one of the most popular eCommerce sales channels available. The platform powered 20% of all eCommerce websites in 2020. Among these, 3.76 million live websites include huge brands like Nestle, Pepsi, Unilever, Budweiser, Gymshark and celebrities like Kanye West.
Take a look at the most successful Shopify stores to gather inspiration for your storefront.
Connect your Shopify store with the easy Printify integration to start making sales today. Here are four quick reasons why you should choose Shopify as your sales platform of choice:
- Build a brand.
Use Shopify free tools to pick a store name, purchase a domain and launch a brand.
- Sell Everywhere.
Make sales from your eCommerce store, in person, online marketplaces and social media channels from one platform.
- Shopify App store.
With over 7000 apps available, you can easily find apps that add value to your store.
- Shopify experts.
Hire an expert to help you with everything from setup to design and marketing.
Start Your Print-On-Demand Business Today!
Written by
James Weavers
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