r/shopifyDev

Hi everyone,

I submitted my first Shopify app for review 3 days ago. Before submitting, I carefully went through the Shopify App Store requirements, followed the guidelines, tested the onboarding flow, prepared the demo video, and made sure everything was working as expected.

So far, my app is still in the "In Review" stage, and I haven't received any feedback or update from the review team.

I know review times can vary, but I wanted to ask the community:

• Is a 3-day wait normal these days?
• How long did your most recent app review take?
• Did you receive any communication during the review, or only after it was approved/rejected?

I'm not complaining—just trying to understand what the typical review timeline looks like for other developers.

I'd really appreciate hearing about your recent experiences.

Hi everyone,

I'm building a Shopify app that integrates with the TikTok Marketing API.

During the TikTok Developer registration process, I'm asked to verify my phone number via SMS.

My issue is that I'm based in India, where TikTok is banned, and OTPs are never delivered to my +91 number.

Things I've already tried:

• Multiple resend attempts
• Different browsers
• VPN (US/Singapore)
• Email verification works, but phone verification does not

My questions:

1. Is TikTok blocking OTP delivery to Indian numbers?
2. Did anyone successfully register from India?
3. Is using a US/Singapore number the only practical solution?
4. Can an existing developer account add another team member so I don't need phone verification?

I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who has recently integrated the TikTok Marketing API or TikTok Shop API.

Thanks!

Hey everyone,

I launched my Shopify store recently and a few customers have been telling me that the site either loads really slowly or doesn't load at all. The weird part is that it's completely inconsistent.

For me, the store works fine most of the time, and some other people can access it without any issues, while others can't get it to load.

I've already gone through the usual things like checking image sizes, DNS settings, and making sure browser extensions weren't affecting my own tests, but I still can't figure out what's causing it.

Has anyone experienced something similar with a new Shopify store? Could it be an ISP or regional issue, caching, or something on Shopify's side? At this point I'm just trying to narrow it down instead of randomly changing things.

Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks!

Hi @everyone

I completed my app development and now I am planning to go live.

But while checking the review requirements, I found that Shopify billing must be used in paid apps.

My app is relying on our main system (which is a Calling automation platform) to bring calling features within Shopify

The thing is my app is not even that big and adding our whole billing flow in Shopify is just overkill.

Is there any alternative where this can be skipped (at least for some time so that we can go live as well as work on billing in the background) .

Background

• 30+ immigrant, unemployed for a few weeks now
• 10+ years product/ux design experience
• First-time founder
• day 367ish of this journey
• 3430 hours worked on this app myself (1956 hours in 2025 + 1474 hours in 2026)
• Savings poured into R&D

Results

• Hit 400 active merchants
• Got a handful of heart-warming reviews, especially about our UX
• Fewer theme compatibility headaches after a team change (huge relief)
• Seeing more organic clicks from SEO/AEO surprisingly. SEO still feels like flying blind to me.
• Forced to work on my app full-time due to the layoff a few weeks ago

Challenges

• Merchants liked us about our simplicity, but our features are NOT rich/powerful enough yet comparing with the competitors existed for 5-10 years
• We're attracting more starters and less mature merchants
• Feature prioritisation is mostly based off customer support tickets & gut feeling.
• Backlog feels endless

Mental stuff

• Every time we released a new feature, I thought things would be easier. In fact it's just consistently hard 😄
• Noticing myself mentally procrastinate doing marketing work. e.g. I should've posted on Linkedin 2 weeks ago
• It's a mental game. You got to know yourself and got to know how to make yourself to move forward.

Goals of the upcoming 3 months

• 600+ new active merchants in the next 3 months
• 20+ total reviews by the end of September

Anyone going through similar journey? Solo founder? Women in the Shopify space?

My Shopify App

Decided to kick the tires on Shopify's UCP and built https://weird.shopping

Basically a "fun gift" finder. It takes a natural-language description, uses Sonnet 5 to translate it into a handful of product-search queries, then fans those out against Shopify's Global Catalog over UCP (JSON-RPC search_catalog against the public MCP endpoint) and merges the live cross-merchant results.

Whole thing's a Vite/React SPA on a Cloudflare Worker. The Worker handles the LLM call + UCP fetches server-side.

Folks got some weird stuff in their shops. 🙃

Hey all,

We're trying to migrate a store from an app store bundling app with Shopify Bundles. Is it possible / how do we surface the Shopify Bundle app products on the PDP? We're trying the storefront API but we cannot get variant selection to work yet.

I was hoping this would be simpler - as it's pretty simple to showcase the products inside the bundle within a cart, but not on the PDP. Are we missing something? Is there a simple or known way to handle this?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

– Custom Online Print Shop (Remote)
We are looking for an experienced Shopify developer to build a custom online print shop similar to Vistaprint or Custom Ink.

Project Overview
The Company is a custom printing business offering:
DTF Transfers
Gang Sheets
Custom T-Shirts & Apparel
Embroidery
Custom Hats
Banners
Flyers
Business Cards
Lawn Signs
Mugs & Tumblers
Uniforms & Jerseys

Required Features
Full Shopify store build
Professional homepage and service pages
Product catalog setup
Garment selection workflow
Artwork upload functionality
Product customization options
DTF gang sheet builder integration
Online payments and checkout
Mobile-optimized design
Basic SEO setup
Integration with existing Shopify apps where needed

Please Send:
Portfolio of Shopify stores you've built
Examples of print shops, apparel stores, or product customization projects
Estimated timeline
Estimated project cost
What information/assets you would need from us to begin.
Your location

Send email to joanamos555@gmail.com. Please the email subject should just be "PRINTSHOP". Please include a quote for the full build.

Online e-commerce store

Probably a month ago i was checking that do people vibe code and deliver e-commerce websites but eventually dropped the client and i thought its too risky - i had security features in mind but still i thought it was risky

But now i think shopify is the best thing for this

I can make a shopify store and even get the website looking as i want it to right by coding it right?

If you guys know how i can code my websites layout and frontend and use it on shopify please do let me know

And also if that was a wise decision or i just lost a 500$ client.

Set up CAPI a few weeks back (Shopify + a bit of custom backend for some events). Pixel's still running alongside it too. Was hoping EMQ would climb more than it has tbh. Just kind of stuck in the 5-6 range and nothing we try seems to push it past that.

Right now we're sending hashed email on most events, hashed phone only at checkout. No externalid yet since guest checkout makes it messy to have a consistent customer ID to hash.

Few things I'm genuinely unsure about:

Does adding externalid make a real dent in EMQ or is it more of a nice to have once email/phone are already going through?

Anyone noticed a real bump from adding fbp/fbc on top of hashed PII or is that more marginal than it sounds?

Is there just a natural ceiling here given how much guest checkout traffic we get (roughly 40% of orders)? Like is that an excuse and there's more to squeeze out?

Not chasing a perfect score, just trying to figure out if we're missing something obvious or if this is close to as good as it gets.

Curious what actually worked for you all. Also lemme know what you tried that didn't really move anything!

Hi,

Recently we created Shopify public app(External APP) using next.js. While submit review they rejected and informed we didn't implement billing API properly. We are using partner account and checked with development store but its worked.

Rejection scenario:
We have given one test login with already installed store, While reviewer click upgrade, it return your account dosen't have permission to access this store. Because that store is test store and is under my partner account, And also while development other store not supported.

IF anyone facing this? please help me how to solve this.

Trying to understand the real-world friction here, from people who've actually done it.

If a new partner (say an affiliate or creator-marketing tool) asked you to either install a small Shopify app or paste one line of code on your order-confirmation page — basically the same as adding a Meta or Google pixel — how much of a hassle is that actually?

Specifically curious:

• Is "paste one line on the confirmation page" genuinely quick, or does it sit in a backlog for weeks in practice?
• Does giving an unknown/early-stage tool access to your order data raise trust concerns, even if the technical effort is small?
• For those who've added these kinds of integrations — what actually made you say yes vs. not bother?

I'm looking to partner with dev agencies & freelancers for a revenue sharing model of our app that you can benefit from.
The app is a product options app with upsells & customised product designer. Multi currency support with real usecase.
Looking forward to hearing from interested agencies/freelancers

I'm looking for insights on the process, any rejections, remedies, things that don't match the documentation or are vauge.

Hi everyone,

I'm building my clothing brand, LOCARD, and I've designed a completely custom website using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Claude Code instead of a standard Shopify theme.

I've uploaded it to Shopify, but I'm struggling to make it work properly with Shopify's backend.

I need help connecting it to:

• Shopify products
• Collections
• Product pages
• Add to Cart
• Cart
• Checkout
• Variants
• Search

I don't want to use a standard Shopify theme like Dawn. I want to keep my current design exactly as it is and simply make it work with Shopify.

I've attached a few screenshots of the website.

Has anyone done something similar before or have any advice on the best way to approach this?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Looking for an App that has those 2 features:

1. Set Up Tiered Bundleson Shopify

such as 10% off for 2 items, 15% off for 3 items, and 20% off for 5+ items. It should work across any products. Any recommendations for a reliable and customizable solution?

2. Upsell in cart. When products A, B and C are in cart -> it will propose product D, and swaps all those A,B,C into it. When user decides to.

Hey everyone,
I’m building a Shopify app and I’m curious to hear from developers who have already reached the point where their apps generate meaningful revenue and users?

I’m less interested in the technical side and more interested in how you approached marketing and customer acquisition.

Some questions I’d love to hear your thoughts on:
How did you get your first 10–100 customers?
What marketing channels have worked best for you (Shopify App Store SEO, content marketing, cold outreach, paid ads, partnerships, social media, communities, etc.)?

What strategies have continued to work as your app has grown?

If you were starting from scratch today with a brand-new app, what would you do differently?
Would you recommend focusing on acquiring a small group of users manually at first? If so, what’s the best way to find and approach them?

I’d really appreciate any lessons, mistakes, or advice from your own experience. Thanks in advance!

So I run a tiny web design studio in the EU, mostly fashion and skincare e-commerce on Shopify. For context, I came from product design (a few years at Uber before going solo), so I lean heavy on the strategy and UX side rather than just building.

I start from a solid premium theme and modify it a lot. Custom sections, custom Liquid, real layout work, not just swapping the logo and colors. Around that I do the whole thing: research, positioning, copy, QA, and all the EU compliance stuff (returns, iDEAL, right of withdrawal). Basically the client hands me a vague idea and I turn it into a finished store.

Lately I keep running into threads here where people mention numbers like €8k for a custom build, or $30k for branding plus design plus dev plus copy, and agencies quoting six figures. And I'm sitting here going, am I way under?

So, honest question for people doing similar work:

- How do you actually land on a price? Like what moves the number for you? Number of products, custom features and sections, integrations, number of templates, revision rounds? I'd love to understand the logic, not just the figure.

- What are you actually charging for a project like this (premium theme plus heavy customization plus strategy plus copy)?

- The strategy and discovery part, do you charge for it separately or just fold it in? I keep reading that helping a client figure out what they even want should cost 2 to 3x more, but I never actually do that.

- If you've raised your prices, what made it click? What changed?

Honestly trying to figure out if I'm underpricing or if it's just impostor syndrome talking. Real numbers, and the reasoning behind them, would help a lot.

Hey everyone,

I’ve been using the Store Census database to pull Shopify store leads for my outreach, and I wanted to see if anyone else is running into this same issue.

I just exported a list of 1,000 leads, but realized that about 20% of them don’t even have a primary email attached. Instead of just giving me complete data, the platform is pushing me to unlock their "decision maker emails" to fill in the gaps—which obviously costs more money/credits.

It’s frustrating because it feels like a bit of a bait-and-switch when you're expecting a fully enriched list.

A few questions for anyone else doing ecommerce outreach:

1. Did you pay for the upgrade? If you paid for the decision-maker emails, was the data actually accurate, or did it just bounce anyway?
2. How are you filling the 20% gap? Are you just running the domains through Apollo/Hunter, or using another scraper to find those missing emails?
3. Are there better alternatives? Is there a Shopify store database you prefer that doesn't nickel-and-dime you for the actual contact info?

Would love to hear your workflows or if there's a more cost-effective way around this. Thanks!