One of the best things about Shopify is that there are many free apps to help you succeed. These include apps for marketing, analytics, customer support, and more. In this post, we’ll be discussing the top 9 free apps for Shopify that will take your business to a whole new level.
We’ll break it down to the best duo (sometimes trio) for each category and function listed below:
- Marketing and promotion
- Inventory management
- Shipping apps
- Customer service apps
Note: Each app on our list offers a forever free plan, and most offer more features and functionality through paid subscriptions. We will discuss features that are included with the free options.
Let’s jump right in!
Best Free Shopify Apps for Marketing and Promotion
Perhaps the most important event prior to seeing success on your Shopify store is getting discovered by your customers. Utilize these tools for Shopify search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing.
Plug in SEO
Not every customer will hear about you from word of mouth or social media. Search engines like Google are your best friends when it comes to funneling new traffic to your Shopify store. This happens best when your store is optimized for search engines, and Plug in SEO thrives at helping store owners with this.
Once you get through the free installation process, here’s what you can do immediately with Plug in SEO:
SEO Audits for Shopify – Discover weaknesses in your website’s SEO efforts with actionable advice. Instantly fix and optimize content elements from blog posts to product images.
Technical SEO fixes – Use Plug in SEO’s site optimization tools to patch broken links and optimize pages you may have neglected during development.
In addition to these clearly handy features, Plug in SEO opens up a community of experts and learning material to keep you on the cutting edge of everything Shopify-SEO related.
The Free plan includes:
- Free install
- Unlimited SEO & Speed problems checks
- Fix instructions & code
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Broken link checker
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Automatic email alerts
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Email help & support
Cross Sell
Your customers are more likely to add additional products to their cart when you actively suggest them. Cross Sell for Shopify helps you leverage product association each time your customers are about to checkout.
Research shows stores can experience a 20% increase in sales performance from cross-selling, making this free app a game-changer for your store’s average order value. Once you install Cross Sell, you can set up:
Cherrypick Cross Sells – Starting with your best-selling products (best practice), assign cross-selling opportunities for customers to see each time popular products are bought.
Cross Sells for all Products – Strategically place cross-selling hooks for customers to peruse as they look through your product catalog.
Cross Sells for Checkout – Make sure to maximize every cross-selling opportunity with a set of products that appear globally on checkouts.
Cross Sell’s Free Plan includes:
- Visible only on product page
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100 recommendation clicks a month
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Cross Sell branding
Storemapper
Even when they’ve discovered your website, some customers want to experience the product before buying. Storemapper is a store locator app for Shopify that makes it extremely easy to direct online traffic to your physical locations.
Storemapper complements your promotion efforts across all your store locations. However, this free app only makes sense if you actually have physical stores in the first place. Pick-up locations count just as much. With the Shopify app in action, you’re able to analyze the most visited locations and route your stock accordingly. Uploading your locations is as easy as uploading a CSV. The result of which is an instant location display on your Shopify store. You can then customize designs to match your theme.
Storemapper’s Free Plan includes:
- Customize colors & buttons
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Bulk Uploading & Data Export
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Unlimited Traffic
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Up to 1 location
Inventory Management
Nothing hurts your Shopify store more than not having enough inventory to sell once traffic starts pouring in. This makes inventory management an activity worth investing a lot of time in. Lucky for you, there are plenty of inventory management apps available to make sure your customers find what they want when they visit.
Back in Stock
No matter how much you try, popular products can go out of stock. This is why Back in Stock is a key Shopify app to have. Simply put, it allows customers to sign up for Shopify back in stock notifications, so if a product they are interested in is out of stock, they will receive a text or email as soon as it is available again.
While it may look like a regular inventory notifications app, Back in Stock goes far and beyond most user expectations. Under the hood is a comprehensive sales engine with the power to skyrocket your sales.
Back in Stock features include the following:
- Retargeting integration – Get a second chance for a good impression. Let your past visitors know when your inventory includes products they tried buying through strategically placed banners across social media networks.
- Email marketing templates – Target your mail list with relevant and custom content around product items they already love. Quick email sending and reporting tools make this module as strong as any other notable email-only app for Shopify.
- Quantity-specific SMS notifications – Send out SMS notifications to let your customers know when you have enough of the products they missed.
With high open rates associated with SMS marketing, Back in Stock sets your Shopify store up for success.
The app’s Free Plan includes:
- Send 5 Email Campaign Notifications
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Unlimited Customer Lists
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Analytics & Reports
Sellbrite
You may have noticed how selling on Shopify alone limits your product’s exposure. This is where Sellbrite steps in. You can expand your storefront to other marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and Etsy. The same inventory becomes available from multiple sources of customer attention.
After the free installation process, you get to choose the marketplaces to list your inventory. Simple checkboxes allow you to allow and revoke access. You just need to have an existing account and storefront on the target platforms.
The Forever Free Plan includes:
- Up to 30 Orders Monthly
- 2-hr Inventory Quantity Sync
- 2-hr Multi-Channel Price Sync
- Unlimited Channels
- Unlimited SKUs
- Unlimited Users
Synchronized inventory count and pricing eliminates the issue of overselling. As if this was not enough, you also get to print different labels to match the storefront your customers bought it off. All this happens with your Shopify admin as the hub/bridge.
Best Shopify Shipping Apps
In addition to marketing and inventory management apps, there are a ton of shipping apps you can use to streamline and even automate your processes. Let’s review some of the best free Shopify apps for shipping below.
Pirate Ship
Trusted by small Shopify stores and high-volume movers alike, Pirate Ship makes the process of creating and printing labels a breeze.
Pirate Ship is free to use and install. Although the shipping isn’t free (reasonably), Shopify store owners get to save money with access to USPS commercial pricing (all the discounts big companies get from USPS!) at no extra cost from the app itself.
The free plan allows you to:
- Get access to discounted USPS rates
- Create shipping labels & SCAN forms
- Streamline batch shipments/subscription shipments
Easyship
If you ship products internationally, you’ll love the 250+ courier options that Easyship connects with. Let customers choose their preferred shipping method and provider, along with associated charges for every purchase. All this with no code written on your end.
Add that professional fulfillment touch to your Shopify store and give more options to your customers. Easyship makes it possible for customers in over 25 countries to get the cheapest, best, and fastest shipping of your merchandise to their doorsteps. Tax and shipping duty handling won’t be an issue since the app calculates them for any destination your customers choose.
Easyship is free to install – all you have to do is pay for shipping. The free plan includes:
- Discounted shipping prices
- Opportunities to improve conversion rates
- 24/7 Support
- Ability to automate shipping workflow
Customer Service Apps
With the apps we’ve discussed so far, you should be on your way to running a Shopify store with ease. However, having tools to help with customer support and assistance is super important, too. This brings us to the Shopify customer service apps section.
Shopify Chat
Sometimes it takes a customer service specialist to help a buyer make a final purchase decision. This is where Shopify Chat comes in handy. Communicate to your Shopify store visitors as they browse your products.
The opportunity to discuss issues with a customer in real time opens your business up for success. You can share coupon codes, suggest best selling products, and even get contact information for later use. Add the human element into your sales process and gain trust with Shopify Chat app.
Shopify Chat’s free plan allows you to:
- Customize chat buttons added to your store
- Use chat to share products, order statuses, and more
- Build your email list
ParcelPanel Order Tracking
Even after sales, you’ll need to keep your customers confident in your delivery process. This is best done through an automated system that allows customers to track their orders in real time.
Instead of sending emails and or making angry calls, your customers have the option to look up delivery progress through the Self-FAQ portal. You can make this a separate system from the shop itself. This kind of support brings convenience to your business. All that, and a confirmed list of loyal customers for targeting at a later stage.
The Free plan includes:
- Up to 20 orders per month
- Branded tracking page under your domain
- Custom order status
- Estimated delivery date
- Product recommendation
At this point you should be busy trying these free Shopify apps on your store. You may have also noticed how we discussed them in order from creation to after sales support functionality.
How To Get The Most From Free Shopify Apps
If you want to grow your Shopify store, there are a number of free apps that can help you manage and increase customer conversion rates. Plug in SEO is one such app that provides an easy way for people to find your products online by using keyword optimization on the product title, description, and tagline, as well as other relevant information. Try out these apps today and see what they do for your business!
