Launched a decade ago, Shopify was born out of an effort by its founders to sell snowboards online. After building their shop, they realized other stores were a need of a hassle-free platform to build a retail business. Today, there are over 400,000 active Shopify stores and a marketplace of free and premium plugins to customize each shop with powerful features and services.
Here is a list of the most popular, free apps on Shopify to extend your store. There are plugins for email marketing, Facebook chat and advertising, drop shipping, rewards, search optimization, coupons, and more. All of these plugins are free, though some also offer premium plans.
Free Shopify Apps
Sales Pop. Sales Pop is a tool to help boost your sales. The app displays purchase activities on your store via real-time notification pop-up so that shoppers know what other people are buying on your store, to motivate them to buy your products.
Sales Pop.
Privy. Privy’s free suite of email-capture tools, including exit-intent website pop-ups and banners, help you grow your email list from your Shopify store, social media channels, mobile, and in-store traffic.
Free Shipping Bar. Use this bar to offer free shipping to your customers. Show progressive messages when customers put more items in their shopping carts. Track performance of each bar, so you know which free shipping offer generates the best return on investment. Use geo-targeting to display different bars to various countries
Quick Facebook Chat. With Quick Facebook Chat, your customers can use their own Facebook account to chat directly with you on your store, without having to create a support ticket. After that, both you and your customer can follow up the conversation anytime and anywhere with Facebook messenger accounts.
Happy Customers. The Happy Customers app is a customizable bar to place at the top or bottom of your website. The bar shows the number of orders your Shopify store has processed, to establish trust with prospective customers.
Happy Customers.
Quick Announcement Bar. Use this bar to keep your customers in the loop about your business updates, promotions, and special events. With auto-scheduling, create as many bars as you want for the next several months; the app automatically schedules them and selects the right one to display. Also features advanced targeting options and performance tracking.
Oberlo. Oberlo is a drop-shipping resource. Import drop-ship products from AliExpress. After you find the product you want to import, click the Oberlo icon and the product is ready to be published to your store. Free plan for up to 50 order per month. Premium plans start at $29.90 per month.
Smile.io. Smile.io allows you to quickly set up and run your own rewards program. Offer shoppers points for the most important thing: making a purchase. Give points, coupons, and more for referring friends, and even give the friend a reward as an extra incentive. Eliminate guest checkouts and gain valuable email addresses by rewarding for registering an account.
Better Coupon Box. Display a coupon pop-up to turn visitors into email subscribers and social followers and convert them into sales. Use customizable pop-up themes to design unique pop-ups.
Better Coupon Box.
AfterShip. Install AfterShip to track all your shipments in one place and give your customers the information they need about their delivery. It supports approximately 380 couriers, including FedEx, DHL, USPS, UPS, China Post and China EMS. AfterShip is free below 100 shipments per month. Premium plans start at $10 per month.
SEO Image Optimizer. Increase traffic from Google Image search by automatically generating ALT tags for your products images. Set once and instantly draw more traffic. Choose the default ALT template or create your own.
Consistent Cart. This app will save all items in a cart when a customer is logged in. When the customer switches to a different computer or logs out and logs in, it adds back the previous items. It can also automate a series of abandoned cart recovery emails to reach back out to them. Basic is free. Premium is $4.99 per month.
Photo Resize. This app automatically resizes and replaces all your product photos with a uniform square format. The first 400 images are free. After that, it’s $0.05 per image or $19.99 per month.
Photo Resize.
Kit. Kit is a marketing app that handles Instagram and Facebook advertising, email marketing, and social posting to help drive sales and grow your business. Create dynamic retargeting ads that remind customers about your products. Dynamically promote relevant products, with personalized content.
Doubly. This app converts your prices to a visitor’s local currency automatically based on her location. Free up to five currencies. Premium version is $9.95 per month.
Bulk Image Edit. This app is a bulk image editor to ensure fast page-load speeds and uniform formatting. Reduce image file sizes by a single click without losing image quality. Mark your images with product titles, vendors, and options, so Google will display them to your potential customers.
Quick View. This extension gives your shoppers quick access to product previews in one click without reloading the whole site. This makes browsing products easier and faster. Products may be added to their cart from the Product Quick View page.
Happy Email. Happy Email sends a thank-you email to your customers automatically, thirty minutes after they make the first purchase or sign up for a new account on your store. It helps to create a personal touch.
Happy Email.
Firepush. This is an app to help recover sales from abandoned carts. Whenever your customers abandon a cart, they will immediately receive a message with a reminder or offer. Reminders are sent 20 minutes, 1 hour, and 24 hours after the cart has been abandoned.
Plug in SEO. Does your store have issues with search engine performance that will be worthwhile to fix? This app checks your site and helps you make fixes. Essential areas of search engine optimization are checked, including page titles, headings, meta descriptions, speed, blog post structure, and content freshness.