Shopify App Development as an Indie Developer

In this series of posts, I want to share my personal experience as a Shopify App Developer. I began developing Shopify apps in 2021, creating solutions for both custom clients and public users via the Shopify App Store.

Over time, I released three apps—two smaller ones and one larger project that took over 12 months to develop. These apps were continuously updated and maintained for two years, but eventually, I decided to shut everything down to focus on another area.

This post is about following custom Shopify Apps with related experiences during development, deployment and also customer support:

• Shopify Translation App
• Shopify Inventory App called PowerTools
• Shopify Local Delivery and Pickup App

😭 First failed Shopify app had a very good name Translee

Let's start with the easiest app I created during that time. The project was called Translee, and it was a simple translation app which used Deepl.com APIs for translating.

From the architecture, you can imagine how complex this app was 🤣... But anyway, let's move on.

When providing your app to the App Store, it is crucial to have well-designed screenshots. I'm attaching the style I used so you can see what definitely will not work. Go and use a professional service for this—you are not a designer.

Oh, while looking through my folders, I also found the three key benefit images, which look better in my opinion.

Things to consider when creating a Shopify app

Each shopify app is allowed to access specific areas of the customers shop. If you use one of the permissions you should read to guides on how to remove it properly, because if not done right, when user uninstalls your app maybe his shop will be broken and you'll get banned from the Shopify App Store.

How much would this app costs when developing in a company or hiring external Shopify developers?

Well, it depends to be honest on various aspects, if you need someone with low budget the development would take maybe more time to finish, but I think this translation app could be done for something between $5,000 - $10,000. You have also consider the costs for maintaining and hosting.

How long does it take to develop this custom Shopify app?

Basically, I worked with a friend on this project, and it took about two months of development. We used the Polaris UI Framework from Shopify and a backend built with C# ASP.NET Core, which, in my opinion, worked very well and was stable. When considering developing this type of app, you need to be aware of some very hard-to-find pitfalls, which I will show you later.

What was the reason for using C# ASP.NET Core?

As both of us were software developers at the time and we wanted to publish this app globally on the Shopify App Store, we chose this framework. It can be hosted on managed services from Azure, which, to be honest, worked very well—no downtimes or issues noticed with the Azure App Service. There are many frameworks that can be used for custom Shopify development, but you'll find very skilled freelancers out there who can add features to your project in no time. Some of them helped with bug fixes and database optimizations, which I'll also explain later.

But if you don't want headaches around hosting your app, updating it, and need a reliable solution for all of this, then PaaS (Platform as a Service) is the way to go. Imagine this scenario: you’ve wasted $10,000 on development and are trying to host the whole thing on your own VMs or dedicated servers. While your users are installing the app and noticing lags or issues, you won’t even realize that something is wrong, because I know for sure... you won’t have set up any monitoring solutions for your brand new Shopify app.

What was the monetization model for this app?

This app used a subscription model—what a question! Since everything is subscription-based now, this answer is pretty clear. We offered 1, 3, and unlimited languages, along with auto translations. Whenever a user changed something, whether it was a product, blog, or even in their template files, the translation would start automatically.

Why didn’t this work out?

I'm sure everyone has a different perspective on failed projects and their own past experiences, but in my opinion, the big game changer was the following:

When starting a new Shopify store, you can select from some default apps to get started, like Google Integration, Pinterest, and more. There was also a dedicated page for selected Shopify apps when users wanted to add translations to their store. If you don't rank there—and ours didn’t—you are basically invisible. Users who are just starting out won’t search for your app because they already have a selected choice from highly-ranked apps with almost 5,000 reviews or more. So, no matter what your ***ing price is, you have no chance of surviving this game. You're out.

😭 Second failed custom Shopify app called Power Tools

This project was developed for the Shopify App Store, as well as the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. It consists of three different solutions. With this app, the shop user could scan variant barcodes, assign multiple users without upgrading their subscription, assign bin locations, and also print pick lists. For some clients, it was extended to print packaging labels via SendCloud. It featured the following functions:

• Variant Inventory Tracker via Barcode
• Bin Locations for each Variant
• Pick Lists as PDF or Mobile View
• Shopify Stock Alerts via Mail

Synchronizing data from Shopify to your own systems can be a headache

I noticed too late that our synchronization didn’t work well for all users. During that time, I was getting 3-5 daily installs from Shopify shops. A few of them subscribed, but I’ll explain the issues later in this post. I received emails from shop users reporting issues with the app, data loss, and more.

Shopify embedded Apps Framework

In all of my apps, I used the Polaris framework from Shopify. It is well-documented and an easy-to-use interface framework to get started. However, there is one big problem with it: you are locked into Shopify and would need to develop a new UI for another e-commerce solution, like WooCommerce or BigCommerce. When launching on the Shopify App Store, this might be great.

Managing other freelance developers on Upwork

On this project, I developed most of the stuff alone and later agreed with two developers—one for frontend (React) and one for backend development (C#, .NET Core). Since I had worked with these frameworks before, it was a good solution for me.

If you’re considering hiring freelance developers, I would suggest checking if they have any active projects at the moment, as this might delay the delivery you have planned.

Thang very good frontend developer from Vietnam

Thang worked on several bug fixes that occurred during that time, while I was working full-time on another project. I passed him the "glory work," and he finished everything with ease. Link to his profile.

Mobile App Solutions and Publishing to App Stores

As mentioned earlier, this project includes two mobile apps. When the user installed the Shopify part, they were able to add users with specific rights on the mobile app. Some users were responsible for updating variants and locations, while others might have been responsible for preparing orders with the pick list.

Shopify and Webhooks, for me a nightmare

Because I did it wrong at the beginning, it started with error spam messages across all the shops that had installed the app. Later, I realized that using a connection with AWS would be better than Webhooks.

I was very good at producing errors

From the beginning of my career as a Software Developer, I was very good at producing errors that shut down everything.

Here I found an invoice of the errors I had to pay, as an Indie this was expensive...

Stay tuned for Part 2!