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What I wish I knew before building a Shopify App

ma.ttias.ch

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Re: What I wish I knew before building a Shopify App

#11

Post by isoskeles »

Maybe not that helpful of an addition, but the most surprising thing I found was that Shopify has an option for an "app proxy", in which you can have some separate, custom web server that gets proxied through your Shopify store.

I've used this to some success in building a more robust product customization app (with functionality very specific to our business), more so than what I could find on their store. The biggest con for using the app proxy is around authentication. You can't do much special stuff with auth, basically the simplest option is to just wrap your proxied pages in a liquid check for customer.id. (Although, I can see this as a pro rather than a con, as it forces you to keep the proxy app simple.)

My biggest worry is one day Shopify just decides to discontinue app proxies. It doesn't seem like an option they try to point developers toward, so I don't trust it and am thinking about building on top of their API to avoid this.

Re: What I wish I knew before building a Shopify App

#12

Post by drchiu »

colesantiago wrote: post #3

Shopify is an extremely restrictive platform for merchants and developers, I urge people not to use it if they wish to build on top of it. There isn't ways to have a custom checkout (one page) with this system and subscriptions are not natively built in, relying on a third party ecosystem. Theme development is also arcane and not the standard way web developers build a simple website. Oh and they disallow you to use…

Subscriptions is now available as part of their API. It does require a bit of time* to understand it though.

* - May vary depending on your level of experience with GraphQL

Re: What I wish I knew before building a Shopify App

#13

Post by [deleted] »

colesantiago wrote: post #3

Shopify is an extremely restrictive platform for merchants and developers, I urge people not to use it if they wish to build on top of it. There isn't ways to have a custom checkout (one page) with this system and subscriptions are not natively built in, relying on a third party ecosystem. Theme development is also arcane and not the standard way web developers build a simple website. Oh and they disallow you to use…

[deleted]

Re: What I wish I knew before building a Shopify App

#14

Post by LargeWu »

colesantiago wrote: post #3

Shopify is an extremely restrictive platform for merchants and developers, I urge people not to use it if they wish to build on top of it. There isn't ways to have a custom checkout (one page) with this system and subscriptions are not natively built in, relying on a third party ecosystem. Theme development is also arcane and not the standard way web developers build a simple website. Oh and they disallow you to use…

They integrate with a lot of payment gateways, even if Stripe isn't one of them.

https://www.shopify.com/payment-gateways/united-states

Re: What I wish I knew before building a Shopify App

#15

Post by drchiu »

deedubaya wrote: post #8

I've heard shopify has been shaking down SaaS apps for past revenue % which they charge outside of the shopify ecosystem. Does anyone know if this is true or have more details?

Yes, this is true. There's a lot of pressure, I suspect, since they've come out as a publicly traded company.

I've built on Shopify before. While they're great, you'll find that it's hard to grow your company in it (save for a few notable exceptions). And then there's the platform dependent nature of it all.

I would not build a business on top of another company's platform.

Re: What I wish I knew before building a Shopify App

#16

Post by drchiu »

My biggest problem with the ecosystem is how Shopify tries to deflect their own customer problems onto their partners to solve. And oftentimes, these same customers expect the partners to solve it for free.

Examples:

- Their default theme (provided by Shopify) has problems. Blame it on the app developer. "It's the app's fault." Yes, there are some poorly developed apps, but this lumps together the good with the bad.

- Customers use the app review system to hold developer hostage for feature requests. "Create this feature for us and I'll edit my review."

- Shopify's customer service reps says, "It must be the app that's causing this." Reading the CSR's emails, it is clear that this person does not understand the (technical) issues and is only trying to close the ticket. Customer takes what the CSR says as gospel and you, as the developer, spends a lot of time trying to fight that mindset.

I can't help but feel a big part of Shopify's early strategy was that the demographic of customers they were trying to attract just weren't a great type of customer, and that the partner program allowed them to enlist a lot of hungry developers willing to work for free (or next to nothing).

There is definitely room for improvement. I have mixed feelings about it, as their ecosystem provided me with a way to make a living many years ago. I don't depend on them anymore, but I wouldn't argue against trying your luck out there if you're starting out. Just recognize that there is a certain culture and way of practice there.

Re: What I wish I knew before building a Shopify App

#17

Post by boringg »

deedubaya wrote: post #8

I've heard shopify has been shaking down SaaS apps for past revenue % which they charge outside of the shopify ecosystem. Does anyone know if this is true or have more details?

They did that for a couple developer companies that were intentionally not paying their rev-share agreement. There was an article on HN about it recently.

It made sense that they would take down bad actors in the community.

Re: What I wish I knew before building a Shopify App

#18

Post by LMYahooTFY »

So I appear to be on a Shopify black list.

I've called them, my bank, and on a few occasions even tried other people's cards.

I'm declined no matter what, by Shopify. It's been this way for well over a year. Sometimes retailers will manually process a transaction, but otherwise it's infuriating for me to see Shopify grow in the market.

Re: What I wish I knew before building a Shopify App

#19

Post by JaggedJax »

deedubaya wrote: post #8

I've heard shopify has been shaking down SaaS apps for past revenue % which they charge outside of the shopify ecosystem. Does anyone know if this is true or have more details?

Their terms seem a little unclear to me, but it seems that they claim they are due a percentage of anything you charge a customer who uses your Shopify app, even if you don't bill extra for use of that app.

However in practice I have found Shopify not too strict about fees charged outside of Shopify. I suppose if you were actually charging your customers specifically for the app but doing it outside Shopify to avoid the cut they would come after you.

I find BigCommerce a worse offender here. They copied Shopify's terms and constantly hound you asking for a cut of money even if you offer a free plugin with your standard service. Their method of collecting this info is also arcane, manual, and threatening. I would drop BigCommerce support in a second if they challenged us on this. So far they have backed down when we tell them we don't charge extra specifically for BigCommerce. But they still hound us monthly to submit a $0 report.

Re: What I wish I knew before building a Shopify App

#20

Post by colesantiago »

drchiu wrote: post #12
colesantiago wrote: post #3

Shopify is an extremely restrictive platform for merchants and developers, I urge people not to use it if they wish to build on top of it. There isn't ways to have a custom checkout (one page) with this system and subscriptions are not natively built in, relying on a third party ecosystem. Theme development is also arcane and not the standard way web developers build a simple website. Oh and they disallow you to use…

Subscriptions is now available as part of their API. It does require a bit of time* to understand it though. * - May vary depending on your level of experience with GraphQL

*API

But not natively within Shopify's UI, You have to use 3rd party apps have to make use of this API. For merchants this is useless to them if they don't want to use a 3rd party app for this feature.

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