Shopify apps offer many benefits, from improving your email marketing to helping you double your sales. But with tons of free Shopify apps, it can sometimes feel extremely overwhelming trying to figure out which one is right for you. Just like everything in life, some apps are great, while others not so much. The good thing is that Shopify does a good job of filtering out bad apps with reviews and moderation. We did some research and curated a list of the best free Shopify apps. Hopefully, these free Shopify apps will help make your experience even more enjoyable.
The 10 Best Free Shopify Apps
1. Oberlo
Oberlo tops our list of best Shopify apps. With Oberlo, store owners can easily import dropshipping products in one click, allowing you to have products for your store the day you sign up.
With this Shopify app, you can search a marketplace of products available for direct import into your Shopify store. So when you receive an order, you can use a dropshipping supplier via Oberlo, which will ship the product to your customers for you. That means you don’t need to worry about packaging or delivering/shipping the product yourself.
You no longer need to buy bulk inventory, and you can save money from designing your own products. The Shopify app allows new entrepreneurs to start a low-risk business. You can process your orders through the app, and once you receive an order, you can process it in one click as the whole process is automated. It’s a great free Shopify app for those who may still have a full time 9 to 5 job as it keeps your workload light and allows you to focus on marketing your store, which in turn will help it grow faster.
2. Sales Notification
Sales Notification aims to turn your store around. It gives you the ability to encourage conversion to a great extent through its sales notification. The app is an add on and comes with social proof, which goes further to convince potential customers to take action. The sales notification app allows you to offer private and free products to your highly esteemed customers based on their product of choice.
With the app, you can set cart notifications to add urgency to customers to purchase along with social proof of a product.
3. Offset
Environmental Sustainability and consciousness are key to every organization. Offset allows you to neutralize your shipping emissions that contribute to climate change. It calculates the total emissions generated by your shipped orders, and that number becomes your Offset cost. The cost is typically low- a few cents per order- and your payment goes towards forest protection initiatives. Offset has a dashboard that shows you your environmental impact, and you can see how many trees you have protected. The best part is that you can share these statistics with your customers.
4. Printful
Printful is one of the best Shopify apps for store owners. With this app, you can sell everything from custom t-shirts, pet products, custom mugs, pillows, and so much more. It gives store owners the easiest ways to design a Shopify store, and that’s great for selling custom-designed products. When an order is made in your store, the Printful team prints it and sends it to your customer. It is a great app because you don’t have to worry about warehousing and the best part is that installing it is free.
However, there will be a fee with every new order on your Printful account and the shipping costs are included as well.
5. Facebook Chat
Facebook Chat allows you to have a real-time communication channel with your customers. Facebook is the biggest social media platform, with over 2.8 billions users. The live chat app allows you to connect your eCommerce store with your Facebook page, which means that you can level up your customer service and be a step ahead of your competition. With Facebook chat, you’ll be able to swiftly respond to customer inquiries, solve any queries and always make sure that your customer service is in tip-top shape. This is definitely a must-have Shopify app, especially if a lot of your customers come from Facebook.
6. GetSnappt
Instagram Shop is a must-have if you are on Instagram. You’ll find this free Shopify app pretty amazing. With this app, your customers’ shopping experience will be greatly improved. All they need is their Instagram account to shop for whatever product they want. This completely saves you the stress of having to include links in the bio. Now all they need to do is scroll through your posts and click on the tag posts, and they’ll be able to visit your shop directly.
7. AutoKeting
We live in an age where customers want to feel appreciated. Most people spend so much time trying to get the customer to forget that part of the customer journey is customer satisfaction and appreciation. This is where personalization comes in. With this free Shopify app, you can make your customers feel special and have them keep your brand top of mind. Once a customer makes a purchase, they might not be expecting a thank you email from you, and that’s why it makes it even more special when you surprise them with one. Do try avoiding sending it immediately as that special feeling will be lost since it will feel automated. A few minutes, maybe around 5, will do. You can first introduce yourself as the store’s founder and talk about how happy you are to serve them. The aim is to try and build a relationship with your customers so that they can keep coming back.
8. Product Reviews
Product Reviews is a great Shopify app for store owners. It allows customers to review your products and can help you build social proof on your product page. The app is also SEO friendly hence allowing you to add your product review scores on Google search. Low scores get flagged, so you can be able to resolve issues with your customers easily. The high scores, on the other hand, can be added to your website. Having this app is great as it can also encourage customers to visit your store often because when customers search either via Google or any other search engine, your product score might be what encourages them to click through.
9. Push Owl (Web Push Notifications)
Push Owl is another great free Shopify app that you should definitely consider installing in your Shopify store. Every time you add a new product or make changes to existing ones, the Shopify app will send a notification to all subscribed customers through their notification bars.
With this app, customers can also get notified whenever there is a new promotion or an upcoming sale. Remember, the aim is to make more sales and drive more traffic to your site. One really great feature of this app is about its abandoned cart. You can choose to send notifications to bring them back to their cart. Maybe they had forgotten about it, or they were distracted.
10. Kit
We know that managing a store is not always the easiest thing. Sometimes, you have to do so many things as an entrepreneurial store owner, be it managing your social media or ensuring that your inventory is up to date. It can be really overwhelming sometimes. Kit is a free Shopify app that seeks to remind you to post new content on your social media handles. Think of it as your personal social media assistant. It works like an automated bot and basically contacts you with suggestions for Instagram and Facebook Ads, and the only thing you have to do is decide what needs to run. Another great feature is that you can create unique discounts and promo codes that can help encourage your customers to buy, increasing sales. Kit does so much more like Facebook post updates, personalized thank you email and even retargeting campaigns. With an add on, you can also easily access reports to determine your sales performance.
What To Consider Before Installing A Shopify App
a) Reduced Site Speed
Every time your website loads, so will the apps being used on them. Depending on the number of apps you have installed and how taxing they can be to your website, your site speed can be negatively affected. Before installing an app, ensure to ask yourself if you really need it. The worst thing is to have customers avoiding your site because they find the loading time too slow. You can always delete an old app that you no longer need to make space for a new one.
b) Non- Compatible Apps
You’ll often come across cases where apps are just not compatible. It’s unfortunate, but it does happen. This is where research comes in handy. Find out if other Shopify users have tried the two apps, or you can try reaching out to the app developers before installing so that you don’t run into any problems. Installing apps without checking compatibility can result in a loss in sales, conversions and even traffic, so it’s always worthwhile to look into it.
c) Increased Site Noise
Apps are great, but sometimes we can get a little too inspired and have too many apps on our websites. Next thing you know, you have all these pop-ups on your website, and your website is so busy and messy. Before installing an app, make sure to check that none of your already installed apps can provide the very features you are looking for. Remember, no one likes clutter.
d) Depreciated apps
House cleaning is important. We do it in our homes, and we should also do it on our sites. When apps have served their purpose, let them go. It’s important to do a regular checkup of your apps and make sure they are all up to date and supported.
