The 11 Best Shopify Apps, According to Our Experts

With Shopify being one of the leading eCommerce platforms worldwide, the recent growth in online sales has prompted many eCommerce digital marketers and online store owners to search for the best Shopify apps on the market. Shopify is not only secure and reliable but also highly customizable with a treasure trove of tools and functionalities available to shop owners. 

Due to a range of mobile and digital drivers, worldwide eCommerce sales are expected to reach as much as $6.5 trillion by 2022. Although this is great news for online store owners, it can be challenging to know which apps will be the best at marketing your online Shopify store. That’s where we come in!

We know that the Shopify app store is gigantic with plenty of great apps to choose from, which is why we’ve compiled our top picks for the top Shopify apps to help drive your eCommerce marketing forward.

Best Shopify App for Subscriptions: ReCharge 

Source: ReCharge

ReCharge is a Shopify app that allows you to sell subscription products to your customers. It allows for recurring payments, and a seamless setup with Shopify in minutes. ReCharge also has a customer portal that makes it easy for your customers to manage their subscriptions, payments, and orders. 

ReCharge is a great solution for any eCommerce store owner who wants to quickly transform once-off products into subscription products, regardless of the size of the store. With enhanced analytics and a powerful UI that allows customers to manage every aspect of their subscription, ReCharge is one of the top Shopify apps available. Best of all - you can get started with a 60-day free trial. 

Here are a few great ways you can maximize your customers’ experience with ReCharge:

• Allow your customers to easily exchange one subscription for another, encouraging them to try out new products.
• Customers can easily change delivery options and dates, preventing them from canceling orders or missing deliveries. 
• If a customer cancels a subscription you can ask for a reason so that you can easily offer them an incentive to continue their subscription.

We’ve compared ReCharge with Bold, which also integrates with multiple payment gateways, but found ReCharge to be one of the best apps for Shopify to set up subscriptions and recurring payments. 

ReCharge has a five-star rating on G2 and customers report that they are most impressed with the app’s many features, and ease of use. With a robust platform and a fully-integrated checkout experience, ReCharge is undoubtedly on our list of the best Shopify apps. 

Best Shopify App for Shipping & Orders: Free Shipping Bar

Next on our list is Free Shipping Bar, a toolbar that displays free shipping offers on your store to boost sales and increase customer cart values. Available in many languages, Free Shipping Bar is perfect for all types of Shopify stores, and on our list of the best Shopify apps for eCommerce store owners. 

Free Shipping Bar can display different free shipping offers based on a customer’s location, device, and pages visited. Free shipping can be a great incentive for customers shopping online, and this allows you to make customers aware of your free shipping offer, and how they can qualify.

Here are a few of the features of the Free Shipping Bar:

• Show a message to congratulate customers when they qualify for free shipping
• Show your free shipping offer in a slide-out bar configuration
• Use geo-targeting to show free shipping options to customers in a specific location
• Track the performance of each bar
• Use real-time exchange rates to automatically convert the free shipping amount
• Enjoy a fully customizable, responsive message bar

You can opt for the free plan, which gives you a fully customized banner that can be displayed at any position in your store. You can also target specific devices or pages, and even use emojis as part of the message on your shipping bar. With almost 9,000 reviews on the Shopify app store, users enjoy the easy setup and customizable features and it’s clear to see why this is one of the top Shopify apps.

Best Shopify App for Contests: Gleam

Source: Shopify App Store

If online competitions are your thing, Gleam is one of the top Shopify apps on our list. Designed for Shopify, Gleam is considered to be the industry standard when it comes to running engaging content for your eCommerce business. With an intuitive drag and drop interface, you can design any competition for your business, helping to grow and engage your community.

Here are just some of the great features of Gleam:

• Natively integrate with Shopify or manually embed onto pages
• Collect media from your entrants
• Integrate with social media channels
• Custom designs available
• Huge list of entry methods - including Eventbrite, Discord, Facebook, and more
• Supports more than 30 email marketing providers

With Gleam, you can easily run photo contents and show off the entries in a beautifully designed gallery. You can also choose between different plans, with a free plan available for your Shopify store. This is one of the best Shopify apps available, trusted by thousands of businesses worldwide. 

Best Shopify App for Marketing Automation: HubSpot or Klaviyo

When it comes to Shopify email marketing, we consider HubSpot and Klaviyo among the best Shopify apps for eCommerce store owners. Both of these are excellent marketing software apps for Shopify store owners and they offer a wealth of features to customize your marketing automation efforts.

HubSpot is well-known for its powerful marketing abilities and it is used by thousands of businesses worldwide. It is the leading mid-market CRM and marketing automation platform, and you can now seamlessly integrate HubSpot with your Shopify store. Here are some of the features to enjoy:

• Sync your customers, products, and deals
• Create abandoned cart email nurturing and smart CTAs in content
• Combine ad campaigns with Workflows to automate actions
• Seamlessly integrates with Facebook, Google Ads, Zapier, and more
  

The HubSpot Shopify app is free to install, with paid options available. The integration with your Shopify store works with all versions of HubSpot.

Klaviyo is a very popular Shopify email marketing app that helps you recapture lost sales and segment your audience for super-targeted email campaigns. It has powerful reporting abilities to allow you to make better sales decisions with accurate data to help you effectively measure your sales.

With Klaviyo you can control the customer experience and deliver a personalized journey that leads to long-term relationships and higher conversion rates. Klaviyo listens to cues from customers and visitors and turns that information into relevant, personalized messages across all channels.

Here’s what Klaviyo offers:

• More than 100 pre-built integrations - including Facebook, ShipStation, Privy, and more
• Create dynamic forms with a free Form Builder
• Centralized customer profiles 
• Personalized automation using the Flow Builder
• Social advertising by seamlessly syncing customer lists
• Build emails using pre-made templates

Klaviyo for Shopify is free for up to 250 email contacts, with various paid plans available. With a four-star rating on the Shopify app store, this is undoubtedly one of the top Shopify apps to use. 

Can’t decide which email marketing app to use? Read our blog where we compare HubSpot and Klaviyo and choose the best solution for your online store, based on your specific needs.

Improve Your eCommerce Conversions and Drive Sustainable Results With Our eCommerce CRO Guide

Best Shopify App for Fraud Protection: NoFraud

Fraud prevention is something that should be high on any eCommerce store owner’s list. And to help manage this effectively, NoFraud offers the perfect solution. It allows you to prevent fraud chargebacks and accept more orders, eliminating the overheads of an in-house fraud prevention solution.

A great benefit of NoFraud is that it is able to accept orders that other solutions reject due to Cardholder Verification fraud suspicions. This is one of the best Shopify apps for fraud prevention as it eliminates the need for manual review, and decreases customer dissatisfaction by providing instant decisions. 

NoFraud is currently the highest-rated fraud prevention app for Shopify and uses real-time virtual identity verification. As a result, it can deliver real-time decisions for every transaction and utilizes thousands of data points and almost every fraud detection technology at its disposal. 

The result? A fully-automated fraud prevention system that requires no input from merchants. Here is more information on how this app works:

• When the extension is enabled, transactions are screened for fraud after being placed by the customer
• Get an actionable response with a Pass or Fail result
• Choose to manually cancel transactions flagged for fraud or have them automatically canceled
• High-risk transactions are sent to a U.S.-based team of fraud analysts for manual approval
• Receive an email with the transaction’s updated status

With chargeback protection and order flexibility, NoFraud is a great solution for any eCommerce store. It allows for a customer-managed blog list and allowlist, along with a customized review process and detailed reporting on order statuses. 

Being one of the best apps for Shopify, it seamlessly integrates with ReCharge, Bold Subscriptions, One Click Upsell, and more. Flexible pricing plans are available, along with a two-week free trial.

Best Shopify App for SEO: Plug in SEO

When it comes to running an eCommerce store, SEO is an important part of your brand’s success. That’s why you can benefit from one of the top Shopify apps, Plug in SEO. This app allows you to improve the SEO for your eCommerce business, and increase traffic to your store. 

Plug in SEO has plenty of features that you’ll enjoy, such as the ability to bulk edit SEO data, fix headings, edit image ALT tags and filenames, and optimize your blog content. It allows for improving SEO on special pages such as Collection, Filters, Search, and Tags, and it can also fix 404 broken links. It also easily integrates with Google, Bing, Locksmith, Search Console, and others. 

Another great feature of this top Shopify app is that it can perform automatic SEO audits and email you a report, or allow you to check SEO problems in the app. Want to improve your on-page SEO? Create SEO content with powerful keyword research and optimize your blog posts and product descriptions. 

With SEO being so complex, at Campaign Creators, we often integrate Plug in SEO with other, more enterprise SEO tools such as Ahrefs, but it’s a good starting point for online store owners. Get started with a free plan, or opt for the Plus plan that is priced at $20 per month.

Best Shopify App for Loyalty: Rise

Source: Rise

Gift cards and loyalty programs are becoming more popular every year, and eCommerce store owners are making the most out of this by using top Shopify apps such as Rise. Offering a simple yet powerful solution to loyalty programs and gift cards, Rise allows you to launch customized rewards programs. 

From advanced gift card programs to loyalty workflows, Rise is a great solution and definitely on our list as one of the best Shopify apps available. Here are a few of its features:

• Build enhanced gift card programs and store credit programs
• Allow customers to send branded gift cards and vouchers to recipients via email
• Migrate store credits, loyalty points, and gift cards free of charge
• Offer gift cards across multiple channels, including online and point of sale
• Send bulk gift cards and discount campaigns
• Create automated bulk vouchers based on specific triggers

This is a great app to complement your Shopify email marketing efforts, as you can easily promote gift cards and loyalty programs to your mailing lists. You can easily schedule and send gift cards when needed, sell on Facebook and Instagram, and even create bulk campaigns. 

Rise integrates with Apple Pay, Klaviyo, Shopify POS and more, and it’s great for last-minute shopping and countdown wishlists. Start with a seven-day free trial and choose from a range of paid plans. 

Best Shopify App for Enterprise Split Testing: VWO

Running comparisons and analyzing data is an important part of your online business’ success, which is why VWO is one of the best Shopify apps for split testing. Split testing, or A/B testing, can be seen as a controlled experiment for marketers, where you can determine which version of a specific element is the most effective. These elements can include landing pages, email campaigns, or even paid ads. 

With VWO, you can seamlessly integrate with popular tools such as Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics, and there are also plugins for popular eCommerce platforms such as Shopify, Magento, and WordPress. 

Every visitor to your website has unique attributes and VWO automatically collects attributes such as the location of the visitor along with the device used to access your website, among others. This means you can test different versions of a specific page or product offer, to create the best digital experience for your visitors and boost your bottom line in the process. 

Beyond split testing, VWO also offers heat mapping, which we at Campaign Creators use regularly. It easily integrates with Shopify and pricing plans start from $199 per month.

Best Shopify App for Reviews: Yotpo

Next on our list of top Shopify apps is Yotpo - a leading eCommerce review platform. Founded in 2011, Yotpo helps thousands of businesses boost their direct-to-consumer growth. With Yotpo you can collect customer reviews, product ratings, and photos, using automated emails or the review widget. 

Yotpo is an official Shopify Plus Technology Partner and currently has almost 2,000 five-star reviews in the Shopify app store. It can also help you boost sales with social proof, as it allows you to showcase your customer reviews on your store’s homepage, on product pages, or on your social media channels. 

With Yotpo you can easily import reviews from platforms such as Bazaarvoice, Judge.me, Loox and PowerReviews. Here are a few other great features of Yotpo:

• Collect photos, ratings, reviews, and Q&As from customers
• Increase conversion rates by showcasing customer content
• Boost brand discovery by leveraging their official partnership with Google
• Build a powerful brand community
• Use customer feedback and analytics to make better business decisions

Integrating Yotpo with your eCommerce Shopify store is easy and you can do it in just one click. You can start with the free plan and upgrade to one of their paid plans as you scale your business. 

Best Shopify Apps for Text Marketing: SMSBump and TXTFi

For eCommerce store owners wanting to add SMS marketing functionality, SMSBump and TXTFi are two of the best Shopify apps you can use. They allow for features such as SMS marketing and purchases through SMS, making it easy for your customers to interact with your brand.

SMSBump allows you to build your subscriber list with the use of pop-ups, email invites, floating buttons, and more. You can also sell more with the pre-built SMS flows, which include abandoned carts, new orders, customer win-back, and product upsells, among others. SMSBump has built-in GDPR and TCPA compliance and easily integrates with popular Shopify apps for loyalty programs, reviews, and more.

TXTFi has a five-star rating on the Shopify app store and supports SMS ordering, easy setup within minutes, and a fully automated system once it’s set up. Your customers can now easily reorder with automated text messages, as it automatically reaches out to your customers. Customers can add items to their cart within the text message conversation and use the generated link to complete the purchase.

Both SMSBump and TXTFi are free to install, with paid plans available. 

Best Shopify App for Post Purchase: Carthook

Source: GetApp

Ever wanted to offer your customers right after they’ve reached the checkout page? Now you can! With Carthook, you can make post-purchase offers to customers, in between the Checkout page and the Thank You page. This makes it easy for customers to accept an offer without having to re-enter their payment or shipping information. It’s definitely on our list of top Shopify apps for store owners.

Here are a few great ways in which you can use Carthook with your Shopify store:

• Build an unlimited number of upsells and cross-sells. You can build different post-purchase funnels that are triggered based on what your customers bought on the checkout page.
  
  
• Measure your success. Track the success of each funnel by monitoring conversion rates, tracking AOVs, and compare revenues from post-purchase funnels to total checkout revenue.
  
  
• Boost your AOV. With Carthook you can boost your AOV (average order value) by making relevant post-purchase offers to your customers. 

Start your Carthook journey with a 14-day free trial and see how easy it is to make post-purchase offers to your customers and increase your revenue in the process. 

Add Functionality and Build Your Brand With Shopify Apps

When it comes to choosing the best Shopify apps available, at Campaign Creators we have you covered. With these great apps, you can boost customer retention, add functionality to your eCommerce store, build your brand and customer loyalty. 

We’ve specifically chosen the best apps for Shopify that will allow you to increase your sales and stand out from the crowd. These Shopify apps are among the best available, and they definitely tick all the boxes. Plus, they have been tested by our team of in-house marketers so you know they’re good! 

Want to know more about boosting your online eCommerce business? Learn how to improve your eCommerce conversions and drive sustainable results with our step-by-step CRO guide today!