Shopify app development, from empty repo to App Store listing.
A public Shopify app is not a web app with an OAuth screen bolted on. It is an embedded Polaris surface inside the merchant admin, a Billing API subscription that has to survive plan changes and refunds, a webhook pipeline that cannot drop an order, mandatory GDPR endpoints, and a listing that App Review will read line by line. Most of the cost of a first app is discovering those requirements in the order Shopify enforces them.
We have taken that path nineteen times, and three of those apps carry the Built for Shopify badge — so the requirements are not something we look up, they are how we start. You send the spec; we come back with what the platform will allow, what it will charge you, and what it will reject, before a line is written.
What the engagement actually contains.
End-to-end App Store products: embedded admin, billing, webhooks, GDPR endpoints, listing and review-ready QA. We have taken this path 19 times.
- 01
Embedded admin, built on Polaris and App Bridge
Navigation, loading states, toasts, resource pickers and contextual save bars behave the way merchants already expect, because they are the platform’s own components — not a lookalike that drifts every time Shopify ships a release.
- 02
Billing that survives real merchants
Recurring charges, usage charges, trials, plan upgrades and downgrades, and the awkward paths: a merchant who uninstalls mid-trial, reinstalls next month, and expects their data to still be there.
- 03
Webhooks and jobs that cannot silently drop
Idempotent handlers behind a queue, with retries, dead-letter visibility and replay. An order webhook lost at 3am is a support ticket you will never be able to reconstruct.
- 04
Mandatory compliance, done before submission
The three GDPR webhooks, data retention answers, and the privacy and support URLs App Review checks. These are the cheapest rejections to avoid and the most common ones to hit.
- 05
The listing, not just the software
Listing copy, screenshots, the demo store and the video, prepared with the app rather than scrambled together the week you want to launch.
- 06
Built for Shopify readiness from day one
Performance budgets, embedded navigation, App Bridge session tokens and the review criteria that get measured — built to those requirements from the start instead of retrofitted after the first rejection.
Where we have already done this.
Our own catalogue, not a case study written for this page. Every name below is public software you can open right now.
Easy Reports & Data Export
4.9 across 80 public reviews, Built for Shopify, and one merchant running 60+ scheduled reports daily and monthly for two years.
Users Insights & Social Login
86 reviews, Built for Shopify, running on multi-store Shopify Plus setups including ANINE BING and MORI.
Easy Tagging: Bulk, Auto & AI
Built for Shopify, 53 reviews, and a rules engine deep enough that merchants automate tagging they used to do by hand.
What people ask before starting one of these.
How long does a public Shopify app take to build?
A focused first version is usually 6–10 weeks of build, then App Review on top — a few days to a couple of weeks depending on the listing. The build is the predictable half; we submit with compliance endpoints, listing copy and media already in place, because that is what most rejections are actually about.
Do we need our own Shopify Partner account?
Yes, and you should want one: the app, the listing, the revenue and the merchant relationships all live in it. We work inside your Partner account and your repository from day one, so nothing has to be migrated out of ours later.
Can you get us the Built for Shopify badge?
We build to the requirements — performance, embedded navigation, Polaris patterns, session tokens — and three of our own apps carry the badge. Shopify makes the final call and we will not promise their decision, but we can promise the work is not what fails it.
More general questions — cost, ownership, what happens after launch — are answered on the home page FAQ.
Have a public shopify apps project?
Send the spec and an engineer answers within 48 hours — how we would build it, the rules that apply, and a price. The first working build follows days later, not quarters.
- A costed answer within 48 hours
- A working build you can click in days, not quarters
- Fixed price or T&M, quoted before we start
- Server, domain, SSL and monitoring handled — or shipped into your cloud
- You own the repo, the Partner account and the infrastructure
Prefer the company site? devcloudsoftware.com