Audits and app rescue, including the answer you may not want.
Apps arrive on our desk for the same handful of reasons: the developer is gone, the review score is falling, an API version is about to be deprecated, or nobody can say what will break if they change anything. All of those are recoverable. What makes them expensive is starting the fix before anyone has mapped what is actually there.
So we start with a fixed-price audit — architecture, security, API versions, performance and Built for Shopify readiness — and give you a written answer with priorities and costs. Sometimes that answer is "this is cheaper to rewrite". We would rather say it in week one than discover it in month four.
What the engagement actually contains.
Inherited an app nobody wants to touch? We take over codebases, pass Built for Shopify checks and bring the review score back up.
- 01
Architecture and code audit
What the system does, where the risk is concentrated, and what it would take to change safely — written for a decision-maker, not as a linter report.
- 02
Security review
Authentication, session handling, webhook verification, secret storage and tenant isolation. The failures here are the ones that end an app rather than annoy a merchant.
- 03
API-version migration plan
What breaks at the next deprecation, in what order to fix it, and how long it takes — before the deadline is the incident.
- 04
Built for Shopify readiness review
A gap list against the current requirements, with the cheap wins separated from the structural ones.
- 05
Takeover and maintenance
We pick the app up: monitoring, merchant support, releases and version migrations, by the same people who did the audit.
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.
Nineteen apps we maintain ourselves
Every one of them has lived through Shopify’s deprecation cycles — the work we would be doing for you is the work we already do.
Support is what our reviews mention
Across 255 public reviews, the recurring theme is response time and custom changes — which is what taking over someone else’s app is mostly made of.
Three Built for Shopify apps
We know what the badge requires because we have passed it, not because we read the checklist.
What people ask before starting one of these.
What does the audit cost and how long does it take?
It is fixed-price and scoped to the codebase — typically one to two weeks, ending in a written report with a prioritised plan you own. If you then want the work done, the audit is not repeated as billable discovery.
Can you improve a falling App Store rating?
Partly, and honestly: fixing the underlying problem and answering reviews quickly moves the recent-review trend, which is what merchants actually read. Nothing removes old reviews, and any agency that implies otherwise is selling you something.
What if the original developer is unreachable?
Common, and workable. We need the Partner account, the repository and the infrastructure access; where one of those is missing, the audit includes what it takes to re-establish control — including rebuilding a deployment path from source when there is no working one left.
More general questions — cost, ownership, what happens after launch — are answered on the home page FAQ.
Have a audits & app rescue 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