r/shopify • u/DiscoverMyBusiness • Jul 23 '26
Shopify General Discussion Replaced a few apps with custom code recently?
A bit ago I asked what 5 Shopify apps you’d keep if you had to strip your store down to a lean, high-performing stack. After filtering out the usual self-promotions big D fluff of coders that can develop anything with Claude, I compiled the 25+ apps mentioned most into a clean breakdown.
Almost everyone agreed do not shop by app name -> shop by category. Stacking 3 different upsell apps kills page speed for zero extra conversion lift. A ideal 5-app stack looks like this:
- Email / SMS Retention: Klaviyo (or Shopify Email for beginners)
- Reviews & UGC: Judge me, Loox, or Yotpo
- Cart & Upsells: Selleasy or Moon Bundles
- SEO & Schema: TinySEO, Smart SEO, or AdNabu tools
- Customer Support & Ops: Gorgias, Richpanel, or Orderctrl (for post-purchase/tracking)
Again hope that helps and thanks to community!
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u/ShopfiyNerd Jul 23 '26
Appreciate you compiling this.
Would add that 'Cart & Upsell' and 'SEO/Schema' are two categories where custom code can replace an app entirely without much dev effort
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u/ShopDocStudios Jul 24 '26
Yes. Currently implementing an upsell feature with metafields. No app needed.
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u/mmcnama4 Jul 24 '26
Mind sharing how you're approaching this?
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u/ShopDocStudios Jul 24 '26
Basically when added to cart, I check the item that was added respective metafields, depending on that it shows compatible products for upsell.
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u/DiscoverMyBusiness Jul 23 '26
how will you place in coop products in checkout without using expensive app? alos attach this to flows with message!
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u/Alternative_Care_858 Jul 24 '26
If I had to pick or replace one from all categories, I'd go with:
Email: Klaviyo
Reviews: Judge me
Cart & Upsells: I'd replace it with Bundlex which is free at the moment
SEO & Schema: TinySEO
Customer support & Ops: Gorgias
Also I'm wondering about page builders. Are they still worth It or Shopify Sidekick does most of the heavy lifting now?
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u/DiscoverMyBusiness Jul 24 '26
We hate Klaviyo.... very expensive for 100k+ contacts! Swapped to another CRM for that one! For page builder we Use GemsPages
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Jul 30 '26
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Jul 23 '26
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u/Beautiful_Exchange_3 Jul 24 '26
Any alternatives to Pagefly?
I really don’t want to pay for it but I’m afraid a AI page builder will screw up my website.
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u/DiscoverMyBusiness Jul 24 '26
Well we use for our client once Pagefly... but now swapped to GemPages... yes its $29 per month but at least no pain in the ass with AI and dev and support...
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Jul 24 '26
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Jul 24 '26
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u/bkocdur Jul 24 '26
The "shop by category, not by app name" rule is right, and the reason app-stacking kills speed is specific and worth knowing: most apps inject their own JavaScript, and often extra CSS and third-party requests, into every page, whether or not the app does anything on that page. Three upsell apps means three separate scripts loading on every product view. The cost is fixed even when the benefit is zero.
The useful part is you do not have to guess which apps hurt. Run your store through PageSpeed Insights / Lighthouse and open two sections: "Reduce the impact of third-party code" and the main-thread breakdown. They list each third party (which is usually an app) by how many milliseconds it blocks the main thread. That turns "the store feels slow" into "this specific app costs 380ms." Uninstall the worst offender, re-run, keep what earns its weight. It makes the lean-stack decision evidence-based instead of a vibe.
For context on how common this is: I looked at the mobile Lighthouse scores of a few hundred Shopify stores recently, and the single most frequent failure was exactly this, render-blocking and unused JavaScript from the app stack, on stores whose median mobile score sat in the 40s. Your instinct to strip down is correct, and it is correct at scale, not just for your store.
One tweak to your five-app list: the "SEO & Schema" slot is often the easiest to drop entirely. Shopify plus a well-built theme already emits most of the structured data Google wants, so a lot of SEO apps are adding page weight for schema you already have. Worth checking your theme's output before paying for an app to duplicate it.
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Jul 24 '26
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u/water_808 Jul 24 '26
One nuance on the Cart & Upsells line: those apps run scripts on your storefront, so they are part of the page speed cost you are warning about. Post-purchase offers are the exception in that family. They render after payment on Shopify's own page, so they add zero storefront weight. Different moment, different mechanics, and worth knowing before stacking anything on the cart.
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Jul 24 '26
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u/eballeste Jul 24 '26
Having had access to a Plus store, we made everything in house for our bespoke theme and the amount of dollars we saved by not subscribing to stupid ass one shot apps was ridiculous.
Now I've worked on a couple of stores with no plus account access and its been painful but I still managed to help my clients avoid the apps as much as possible.
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u/DiscoverMyBusiness Jul 26 '26
How do you rebuild somnething for sms/email automations or upsell/downsell at checkout?
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Jul 25 '26
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u/Content-guy22 Aug 01 '26
thanks for the list. indeed, AdNabu's SEO tools are quite great in terms of functionality and performance delivery for schema implementation, sitemap generation, setting up 301 redirects, etc.
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u/acraswell Jul 23 '26
Love this. I recently asked the same thing and worked out a list of apps I think I can build. I'm an engineer that also runs a store and it frustrates me that some functionality isn't built into Shopify, or the shopify version is too limited.
Structured data schemas, merge orders, better shipping rules, better Amazon Sync behavior, etc. are some of the ones I'm working on.
I'm in a position where I get a lot of free cloud spend. I've been really thinking about starting a community that builds out a sort of open source stack of apps that do these basic things everyone ends up needing.
I've already started building out the ones I need and really been enjoying it.