Between subscriptions for both my business and personal life (not to mention managing the passwords for each of them!), I feel, in the words of the original Mean Girls cast, personally victimized by subscription culture.
However, I do have to admit that subscriptions are incredibly useful tools. During the day, catch me setting up Shopify sites that solve complex inventory, design, or business-related problems using apps that yes, are subscription-based. At night, catch me binge-watching the latest show using (my mom’s) streaming subscriptions, playing Spelling Bee on (my mom’s) NYT subscription, or sharing photos with my friends using (my) iCloud subscription.
The TL;DR is that my mom should probably cut down on subscriptions AND that when it comes to my clients, it’s important to me to have a subscription-conscious approach to how I create and hand off tech stacks.
Below, I listed my go-to recommendations for e-commerce businesses on Shopify, as well as whether or not each platform has a free tier.
1. Product Reviews
Reviews build social proof, are good for SEO, and corroborate that the super-awesome things you say about your business are actually true. In a world (or, rather, Internet-world) where consumers are fed unsolicited targeted ads about how every product they see is the greatest, feedback from verified consumers is a helpful step in the shopping process.
Two platforms that I find myself typically recommending to Shopify clients are Yotpo and Judge.me. More on both below:
Yotpo
While both Yotpo and Judge.me offer similar services, Yotpo is a little more robust. In addition to collecting and displaying ratings and reviews on product pages via home page carousels, Yotpo offers features for visual user-generated content, review requests, moderation, syndication, analytics, and integrations with the rest of a brand's marketing stack.
Pros:
- Lots of functionality for collecting and displaying reviews
- Highly customizable review displays
- Supports photos and other user-generated content
- Automated post-purchase review collection
- Integrates with a wide range of ecommerce and marketing tools
- Makes sense for brands that may eventually want a more sophisticated reviews and loyalty ecosystem
Cons:
- Can be more advanced than a small store with just a few products actually needs
- … and more advanced functionality means a higher price point
Judge.me
When you find a free tier that’s actually useful, of course you’re going to talk about it. Judge.me is one of those unicorns, and thus, my favorite recommendations for smaller businesses. The free plan currently includes unlimited product and store reviews, unlimited photo and video reviews, review widgets, star ratings, review importing, and Google rich snippets: a lot of functionality for $0/month.
However, don’t get too excited… we are in a subscription economy after all. While the free tier comes with unlimited reviews, email template customization is very limited. This means that you’re highly limited in how you can customize the template that is sent out to customers asking for said reviews. If that’s important to you, it might be worth considering the paid version.
Pros:
- Excellent and useful free tier
- Unlimited reviews, even on the free plan
- Photo and video reviews included
- Easy to get up and running
- Google rich snippets are supported
- Paid plan is still relatively inexpensive if you eventually need more functionality
Cons:
- The default design feels less polished than other review platforms, like Yotpo
- Many customization and integration features require the paid plan
- Larger brands may eventually outgrow it
2. Shopify Flow
In this house, we love automation, and Shopify’s native “Flow” app does just that.
The app, which comes pre-downloaded to Shopify (and is free), lets you create workflows using triggers, conditions, and actions.
For example, you can automatically:
- Tag customers who spend over a certain amount
- Tag specific types of orders
- Send internal notifications
- Manage inventory-related tasks
- Update metafields
- Connect Shopify actions to other apps
And because Flow is built by Shopify, it integrates with Shopify data without requiring another… yes, subscription.
Pros:
- Free
- Built by Shopify
- Eliminates a surprising amount of manual admin work
- Hundreds of workflow templates are available
- Works with many third-party Shopify apps
- Can handle everything from very simple automations to fairly sophisticated workflows
Cons:
- There's a bit of a learning curve when you first start building workflows
- More complicated workflows can become difficult to troubleshoot
- Certain functionality varies by Shopify plan
- It's very easy to build an automation and then forget that it's running, which can be confusing six months later
Best for: Pretty much everyone!
3. Shopify Forms
Shopify Forms is another native Shopify app that I think gets overlooked.
It lets you create pop-up and inline forms to collect customer information directly through your Shopify store. You can use Forms for email signups, contact forms, wholesale applications, lead generation, and pretty much any use-case you can think of.
You can also tag customers based on submissions, create customer segments, offer form submission folks discounts, and use that information in other parts of Shopify.
For a straightforward form, it’s pretty great!
Pros:
- Free
- Built by Shopify
- Supports both pop-up and inline forms
- Allows file uploads
- Keeps submitted customer data inside the Shopify ecosystem
- Can automatically tag customers
- Works well for email capture, wholesale inquiries, and simple lead-generation forms
- Can connect form submissions to other Shopify automations
Cons:
- Design customization is more limited than dedicated form builders
- Always appears on Shopify pages as smaller (yes, literally smaller, like it’s a tad zoomed out?) than you’d want it to be.
- Doesn't support multi-step forms
- Doesn't currently support conditional logic
- Complex forms may require a more specialized app
Best for: Newsletter signups, wholesale applications, lead capture, simple contact forms, and other straightforward forms where you don't need a ton of advanced logic.
4. MW Bundle Builder
There are quite a few “bundling” apps out there, and, full disclosure, I have not tested all of them. It’s very likely that for your unique brand and functionality needs that a different app might be better for your store.
However, I have used MW Bundle Builder by Mageworx during a client build, and I would recommend it again.
Pros:
- Great for build-your-own-box and mix-and-match functionality
- Supports more complicated bundle configurations
- Can work with existing Shopify products and inventory
- Flexible enough for stores with lots of products or variants
- Mageworx is highly responsive when support is needed
Cons:
- Setup is more involved than Shopify's simplest native bundle options
- Getting the bundle experience to look exactly right with your theme can require some customization, including support from the Mageworx team
- Sometimes the final look and feel doesn’t show up in the “development” view of Shopify. Meaning, you need to “preview site” to see what the app configuration will actually look like.
- More complicated bundle logic means more opportunities for edge cases
- I wouldn't install it if you only need a very basic fixed bundle
5. TinySEO
I’ve found that it can be a little complicated to optimize Shopify stores because SEO tools and features are scattered all around the site. TinySEO helps with that by putting technical tools in one place, such as SEO metadata and image resizing.
The feature I have used the most is image optimization. Huge product images are a common source of unnecessary page weight, and TinySEO compresses them easily.
I also like having SEO metadata tools in one place, especially when you have a lot of pages! I haven’t found a way to easily see page metadata in one place, other than TinySEO.
Pros:
- Bulk image compression and resizing
- Helps reduce unnecessarily large image files
- Alt text and filename optimization tools
- SEO metadata management
- JSON-LD structured data tools
Cons:
- The free level only includes a limited number of image optimizations each month
- Many of the more advanced features require a paid plan
- Automated SEO recommendations still need human review
- It can do a lot, which means it's tempting to turn on features you don't necessarily need
- An SEO app is not a substitute for an actual SEO strategy
Hopefully the above recommendations helped someone (and their credit card statement too, maybe?). With any questions about the apps listed above, don’t hesitate to send me an email or reach out via my contact form. I will also be continuing to update this list as I find more apps I like!