Apps overview
Before you start planning and developing your app, it’s important to understand what Shopify apps do and how they fit into Shopify.
What's a Shopify app?
Anchor link to section titled "What's a Shopify app?"A Shopify app extends the existing functionality of Shopify. Most Shopify apps are built by third-party developers, not by Shopify.
You can build an app to add features to Shopify stores and extend the merchant experience, or to create unique buying experiences for customers. You can also pull Shopify store data into your app, platform, or integration.
To tailor experiences to their specific needs, merchants use Shopify apps to help build their business, integrate with external services, and add features to their Shopify admin.
The following video describes what a Shopify app is and how it can be used to solve merchant and customer needs:
How apps fit into Shopify
Anchor link to section titled "How apps fit into Shopify"Apps integrate with Shopify in the following ways:
- connecting with Shopify APIs to read and write store data, in response to either user input or webhook event notifications
- extending new features inside existing parts of the Shopify admin or POS
- enhancing the way that stores display information to customers
There are three key areas where apps interact with the Shopify platform: Shopify admin, online store, and checkout.
Shopify admin
Anchor link to section titled "Shopify admin"After logging in to Shopify, merchants set up their store, configure settings, and manage their business using the Shopify admin.
The Shopify admin includes core aspects of the merchant's Shopify business, including orders, products, and customers. Merchants also install apps in the Shopify admin.
Online store
Anchor link to section titled "Online store"The online store is an online home for a merchant's business. Merchants use the online store to create webpages, publish a blog, and sell their products.
As an app developer, you can build integrations in all the places where merchants want to sell, and where their customers want to buy.
Merchants use the secure Shopify checkout to accept orders and take payments wherever they sell online. After a customer adds products to a cart, they use Shopify checkout to enter their shipping information and payment details before placing the order.
Apps can integrate with Shopify checkout to offer additional functionality to merchants and customers. For example, merchants can use apps that support post-purchase offers to show a cross-sell or upsell offer to customers at checkout.
How your app accesses Shopify
Anchor link to section titled "How your app accesses Shopify"Shopify has many APIs that let developers extend the platform’s built-in features. These APIs let you read and write merchant data, work with other systems and platforms, and add new functionality to Shopify. Some APIs require apps to authenticate and other APIs are unauthenticated.
| API name | Description | Authenticated? | API format |
|---|---|---|---|
| Admin API | The primary way that apps interact with Shopify. The Admin API provides extensive access to data about individual Shopify stores, and lets you add your own features to the Shopify user experience. | Yes | GraphQL or REST |
| Storefront API | Lets you add Shopify buying experiences anywhere your customers are, including websites, mobile apps, and video games. Data access is controlled by the permissions that you choose when you create a storefront access token. | No | GraphQL |
| Partner API | Lets you access the data found in the Partner Dashboard, including transactions that impact your earnings, app events, and Experts Marketplace jobs. | Yes | GraphQL |
| Payments Apps API | Lets you programmatically access data related to a payments app configuration. | Yes | GraphQL |
| Messaging API | Lets your app send messages to the Shopify Inbox app. | Yes | REST |
| Ajax API | Provides lightweight endpoints for development of Shopify themes. | No | REST |
| Section Rendering API | Lets you request the HTML markup of a single theme section through an AJAX request. | No | Ajax |
| Customer Privacy API | Allows you to read and write cookies related to a customer's consent to be tracked. | No | JavaScript |
Benefits of building Shopify apps
Anchor link to section titled "Benefits of building Shopify apps"Get familiar with the benefits of building apps on Shopify:
- Use Shopify CLI to create an app, quickly set up your development environment, and generate starting code.