eCommerce Platforms

7+ Best Free Shopify Apps to Install For Your Store

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With the availability of the Shopify App Store, you have thousands of options for adding features to your online retail. On this top eCommerce platform, whether to streamline your selling process or provide shoppers with a better shopping experience, you can always find an app for that. Nevertheless, the struggle lies in determining what app is worth the installation. With so many to choose from, you may find it challenging to find the correct app serving your purpose. Understanding such concern, we’ll be providing you with a list of 8+ best free Shopify apps:

Let’s get right into them!

Before you delve deep into the best Shopify apps, make sure you don’t miss out on any details of our latest updates on the pros and cons of Shopify and Shopify pricing plans!


The Importance of Shopify Apps for Your Store

As your business grows, you’ll need more tailored features that provide the functionality your business and website need. 

While constantly expanding functionality, Shopify – one of the best eCommerce platforms – cannot cover all of its eCommerce retailers’ potential demand for new features. And that’s where Shopify apps come in place. 8000+ Shopify apps provide your business with everything it requires to expand at every stage of your journey.

In addition, with over 1.75 million merchants from 175 countries, sellers will have to offer great online shopping experiences to beat the competition. In that case, essential Shopify apps deliver a plethora of benefits for eCommerce businesses. They enable you to add various features and functions that help enhance customer experiences. Whether it is eye-pleasing visuals, customer service, or customizing your product page, you can get it done by installing cool extended Shopify integrations and beautiful Shopify themes.

Moreover, Shopify integrations also help you better manage every aspect of your eCommerce business. From data tracking and reporting, fulfillment, and marketing to payment, you won’t have to work manually with large trunks of information on Excel anymore. This will save you time and effort, so you can focus on strategically growing your business.

Eventually, you can reach more customers, boost conversions, and increase sales with Shopify integrations. They are quick and easy to install, with many of which offer free plans or trials for businesses. Just remember to implement essential Shopify apps, read the reviews, ensure compatibility, avoid duplicate tools, and consider the cost-benefit trade-off.


What Kinds of Shopify Apps Should be Used?

Your list of best free Shopify apps should include integrations that help you improve user experience, scale your business, and better manage your store.

With a view to enhancing your customer shopping experience on this best selling platform, you might need a set of apps that deal with store interface, inventory, shipping, and customer service management. These apps should assist you in streamlining the buying process and taking care of buyers at each touchpoint of the customer journey.

As you build a store on Shopify, you will need tools that enable the automation of certain features while scaling across channels. For example, your business will need more than a customer service management tool. Rather, it will need a chatbot to answer questions in different languages, recommend products, or offer inventory information in real-time.

Summing up, you might need the following app categories for your Shopify store:

  • Customer support apps;
  • Security apps;
  • Image/video creation apps;
  • Cart abandoned apps;
  • Multichannel selling apps;
  • Affiliate marketing apps.

However, Shopify apps are often costly, and not all paid options have a good return on investment. If you’ve been looking for effective Shopify apps, here comes the list of free app options that work wonders for new sellers and small businesses!


7+ Best Free Shopify Apps to Level Up Your Store

With careful research and thorough review references, here comes our list of 7+ best free Shopify apps that do wonders for your online eCommerce.

#1. LitCommerce – Best for multichannel selling

LitCommerce Shopify app

To begin with, LitCommerce is on the list of Shopify best free apps for multichannel selling, especially for any sellers desiring to grow out of Shopify. With LitCommerce, you won’t have to update and edit listings on each sales channel manually. Once integrated into Shopify, you can import every listing into your other sales channels.

Scaling Made Easy

Scaling is easy with LitCommerce when you can quickly import and sync your listings across channels!

As a multichannel solution, LitCommerce also allows data on multiple selling channels to be centrally managed in one place. That way, you can easily fulfill their orders from multiple marketplaces and ensure the best customer experience. Therefore, it helps you save time and better manage your stock and inventory across different platforms.

Not to mention this app comes with a free plan for you to try out selling a small number of products first – an excellent option for sellers to test out the water when expanding the business.

LitCommerce’s main features include:

  • Multichannel Connect: Effortlessly connect with multiple sales channels and manage inventory, prices, and orders within a single dashboard. No technical skill is required;
  • LitCommerce QuickGrid: This is a spreadsheet-style interface that lets you view, edit and manage all listings on a single screen. You can edit products individually or in filtered groups and create rules to bulk-update products with Templates and Recipes;
  • LitCommerce LiveSync: establishes a near-instant sync of product listing, orders, pricing, and inventory between your store and your sale channels;
  • Integrated Order Flow: Import your sales channel orders directly into your eCommerce platform’s orders page. You can manage and process orders effectively in one place.

We have a detailed multichannel selling guide updated on our Retailer Blog. Come and check it out now!

Pros & Cons

Pros

Cons

  • Capable of integrating various sales channels on the market (eBay, Etsy, Amazon, Walmart, etc.)

  • Custom integration available on request.

  • Great communication and service with support chat within 24 hours (24/7 support for paid users).

  • Minor syncing issues sometimes.

  • Initial setup may cost you some time as a beginner.

#2. Printful – Best for POD dropshipping

Shopify app Printful

Dropshipping has been a trending business model for the last two years and is projected to grow exponentially in the future. As an eCommerce dropshipper, you can miss out on Printful – a popular web-to-print must-have app for Shopify.

More specifically, this is a free dropshipping app for Shopify that helps businesses print customer products, streamline order fulfillment, and handle shipping processes. POD merchants can create personalized designs, print them on various items, set product details, and track sales.

Additionally, the software brings you a handful of tools that assist you in your POD selling process. You can use its built-in mockup generator to produce print-ready files, mock images, and customizable digital storefronts for marketing purposes. It also allows you to personalize the POD items using custom logos and packing slips. Sellers can always view and manage customer feedback and ratings on their products.

Prominent features include:

  • Order management;
  • Inventory tracking;
  • Search engine optimization (SEO);
  • Pricing and discount management;
  • Reporting;
  • Dropshipping;
  • Payment processing.

Pros & Cons

Pros

Cons

  • Easy to use

  • Quick to sync across platforms

  • Precise mockups for every item

  • Difficult to reach customer services sometimes

  • Postponed shipping

#3. UpPromote – Best for affiliate marketing & referral

Shopify app UpPromote

UpPromote is one of the necessary business integrations for your store. This is the top recommended affiliate marketing/referral app on Shopify App Store. With this all-in-one solution, you can build and manage your marketing campaign with ease. UpPromote is serving more than 80 thousand users globally with over 375M revenue generated.

With powerful functions, UpPromote allows business owners to build growth strategies, optimize the sales funnel, and eventually increase revenue around affiliate partners, influencers, brand ambassadors, and current customers.

In-app features include:

  • Easy to use with automated processes and functions.
  • Build your affiliate team with simple steps.
  • Manage your affiliate campaign through a real-time tracking process.
  • Fraud protection by reducing the risks of affiliate fraud, and referral scams
  • Support to recruit affiliates by free listing on UpPromote Marketplace
  • The customer referral feature allows your customers to refer your products without joining your affiliate program.

Pros & Cons

Pros

Cons

  • Quick and easy setup

  • Simple navigation

  • UpPromote Marketplace supports to recruit affiliates.

  • Get more referral sales with the customer referral feature.

  • Integrating with PayPal.

  • Limited approval (or deny) of referral orders/month in the FREE plan.

#4. SEO: Image Optimizer Page Speed – Best for Store’s SEO Optimization

Looking for an app to leverage customer experience and optimize your store SEO? Definitely, you should take a closer look at Avada SEO Suite, one of the most necessary apps to build your Store and boost SEO.

SEO : Image Optimizer Page Speed

Thanks to the image optimization function, your Blog image weight is reduced significantly while the image quality stays unchanged. Furthermore, the app also supports you in creating an HTML page, where you can display all blog links in one place to help your readers find them within a few seconds. Faster loading speed and easy navigation are critical elements to enhance customers’ experience on your site. Together with meta description, which creates attention-grabbing titles for your Blog pages on search engines, other useful functions like Google Structure Data, Site Verification, Instant Page, etc., boost your site ranking and Blog page particularly.

With AVADA SEO Suite, you can speed up your store on all devices and optimize your google search console and SEO manager performance via multiple tools. The app is an all-in-one SEO doctor for fresher-to-advanced SEO users.

Highlight Features:

  • Image optimization by Optimize ALT Tag and Image size and quality
  • Auto-add Google structure data (rich snippets) only via a few clicks
  • Meta tags optimization with Ready-to-use formats and freely set up meta tag rules
  • SEO Analysis gives out all SEO problems, improvements, and good results per product
  • Google Search Console integration to follow and manage all your web search traffic and performance
  • Weekly Email Report automatically sent to admins every week allows them to control important issues on your site proactively

Pros & Cons

Pros

Cons

✧ Website loading speed improvement
✧ Feature-rich free plan
✧ Broken link redirects
✧ Instant technical support or customer service;
✧ Improve rankings on Google search analytics;

✧ Slightly affect the sitemap sometimes
✧ Slow down of website on uninstallation;
✧ Decrease the quality of the image after compression.

#5. HeyDay – Best for customer service & sales

Shopify app HeyDay

HeyDay is artificial intelligence (AI) powered, all-in-one customer service solution for eCommerce, support, and marketing teams. This app helps merchants deliver exceptional customer shopping experiences throughout their purchase journey – from acquisition and engagement to support.

By using HeyDay, businesses can automate mundane tasks and leverage conversational user experience with rich messaging features. Unquestionably, this app enables human teams to work more effectively with a focus on delivering high-value interactions.

Outstanding features include:

  • FAQ automation;
  • Lead capture via conversational triggers;
  • Click-to-Messenger campaigns (including campaign analytics);
  • CSAT scores;
  • Multichannel support (including Messenger and email);
  • Dynamic cart creation.

Pros & Cons

Pros

Cons

  • Responsive and user-friendly that requires no prior training.

  • Capable of switching conversations to various platforms without disruption.

  • Great for keeping track of orders and managing the stock and delivery dates.

  • Not effective as an inbound email supporting tool.

  • Not fast enough when loading pages

  • Minor issues with bots understanding clients' questions

#6. Easyship – Best for shipping management

Shopify app Easyship

Easyship is among the top apps for Shopify shipping management. It is a cloud-based solution that enables merchants to streamline the entire shipping process. From shipping calculations to fulfilling orders across multiple carriers, the app can handle everything for you. It also helps import duties, taxes, and other documents using a centralized repository.

You can easily create shipping/packaging labels, print pre-filled address slips, and customize or automate shipping preferences. Furthermore, this app lets business owners schedule pickups, send shipment tracking notifications to buyers via emails, monitor activities, and manage product catalogs. With Easyship, your customers can view and compare quotes or rates in real time during the checkout process using data from 250 shipping solutions.

The app comes with the following features:

  • 3PL management;
  • Order, shipment, delivery, and inventory tracking;
  • Invoice & Tax document management;
  • Shipment price calculation (with data generated from 250 shipping solutions);
  • Shipping labels and label printing.

and more.

Pros & Cons

Pros

Cons

  • Great use for easily pulling custom reports, importing data, canonizing data, etc.

  • Easy Shopify integration for non-technical users.

  • Real-time helpdesk with real human support service for any technical issues.

  • Complicated manual order delivery process

  • Unable to filter out delivery companies that are not able to fulfill within a given time frame
     

#7. Promo.com – Best for product video creation

Shopify app store – Promo.com app

Promo.com is among the best business integrations on Shopify for video creation. The app helps you create visual content and unlimited videos to promote your products effectively. In other words, you can utilize its tools and content to create and customize premium video clips for various purposes.

In addition to its pack of tools, the app comes with a library of over 12 million video clips and templates, licensed music, custom text, and logos. Thanks to such resources, video creation is no longer a challenge to merchants.

Promo.com’s outstanding features include the following:

  • Video creation;
  • Content management;
  • Advertising management;
  • Automated publishing across different social media channels;
  • Multimedia support.

Pros & Cons

Pros

Cons

  • Simple and easy to use with great quality results

  • Great open-sourced content for multiple purposes

  • Insightful data on trending templates for different platforms

  • Costly paid plans

  • Unclear payment policy

#8. ReConvert – Best for upselling & cross-selling

Shopify app ReConvert

ReConvert can integrate with Shopify and allow you to increase sales by recovering abandoned carts. By combining email marketing and on-site retargeting, it entices customers to return to your website and finish their transactions.

More specifically, you can customize thank-you pages and build landing pages that are optimized for a higher conversion rate with ReConvert. The app also helps you collect data such as birthdays and surveys for post-purchase upsell funnel & cross-sell purposes. You can try out how it can help with its 30-day trial policy.

The top features of ReConvert include the following:

  • Thank-you page widgets with built-in templates;
  • Key thank-you page capabilities & one-click-upsell features;
  • Trigger designs for thank-you pages;
  • Data analytics for the thank-you page & each widget (i.e CVR, CTR, traffic, etc.).

Pros & Cons

Pros

Cons

  • Easy to use with effective post-purchase sequences.

  • Various options for upsells/pop-ups compared to other plugins

  • Amazing and instant customer service.

  • Complicated & unclear pricing policy

  • Minor issues for conversions tracking

#9. Better Replay – Best for tracking customer behaviors

Shopify app Better Replay

Better Replay is one of the top Shopify apps for gaining more customer insights and selling your products more effectively. It allows you to see the browser, session length, location, and timestamp for each user session with the session recording. As a result, you can analyze and identify what is working and what’s not for your eCommerce website.

In addition, Better Replay provides you with survey tools to collect opinions and learn directly from your customers. You can ask short questions that integrate seamlessly into your checkout page and drive up performance with collected answers.

This app comes with features as follows:

  • Full session recordings;
  • Centralized & Post-purchase surveys;
  • eCommerce-specific segmentation.

Pros & Cons

Pros

Cons

  • Easy setup

  • Useful app for monitoring user behaviors on websites

  • Helpful and quick customer support

  • Minor heatmap issues

  • Unstable during peak traffic periods


Best Free Shopify Apps: FAQs

  • Are apps in Shopify free?

    The Shopify platform provides users with access to 8000+ software on the Shopify App Store, of which more than half are free. These free apps don’t require you to make any payment to install and integrate them into your Shopify store.

  • What apps are a must for Shopify?

    7+ best free Shopify apps to grow your business include:

    • HeyDay – Best for customer service & sales
    • Easyship – Best for shipping calculator
    • litCommerce – Best for multichannel selling
    • Printful – Best for POD dropshipping
    • Promo.com – Best for product video creation
    • ReConvert – Best for upselling & cross-sell
    • BetterReplay – Best for tracking customer behaviors
    • UpPromote – Best for affiliate marketing
  • How many apps should I have on Shopify?

    Depending on your business size and needs, you’ll need a certain number of apps that provide the functionality your business and website need. Whilst every business has different needs and requirements, installing around 25 apps is sensible for any comprehensively-functioning Shopify store.


Conclusion

By utilizing Shopify apps, you can unlock new functionalities that assist you in optimizing websites for a better customer experience. Nevertheless, it’s essential only to integrate apps that really work and helps you grow the business.

With the 8+ best free Shopify apps above, we hope you have more options to leverage for your unique business while keeping the website operation costs low. In the end, it all boils down to finding the best app and price plan that meet your business needs.

If you are looking for the best app that helps you scale, don’t hesitate to drop us a message. LitCommerce is an excellent solution for multichannel selling! You can also join our active eCommerce community to keep up with all the news and helpful tips!

Enjoy reading with LitCommerce Retailer Blog! See you!

This post was last modified on Aug 2024 3:00 am

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