21 Shopify App Business Ideas You Can Start Today [2023]

21 Shopify App Business Ideas You Can Start Today [2023]

Interested in starting a shopify app business in 2023?

We put together 21 of the best shopify app businesses you can start in today.

For each business idea, we’ll show you real-world examples of other shopify app businesses to help you see what it really takes.

Here's the full list:

1. Start an on-demand printing apps business ($390K/year)

How Much Can You Make?
$15,000 — $50,000/month
Skills

Examples of a successful on-demand printing apps business:

Here are some great videos on how to get started with a on-demand printing apps business:

For further info, check out these books and products:

Learn more about starting an on-demand printing apps business ➜

Case Study

Hi, I am Alex Dumitru and I am a co-founder at Designious. Designious is a graphic design library that provides extra tools like an online designer app and an API that helps both graphic designers and print-on-demand entrepreneurs. At the moment we make around $12-13k per month.

My background is in IT and business development, but I’ve worn many hats along the way, from sales to customer support.

generating-15k-month-in-extra-income-with-a-graphic-design-library

2. Start a marketing automation apps business

How Much Can You Make?
$10,000 — $8,333,333/month
Skills

Examples of a successful marketing automation apps business:

Here are some great videos on how to get started with a marketing automation apps business:

For further info, check out these books and products:

Learn more about starting a marketing automation apps business ➜

Case Study

Hi, this is Sajin Rajan, co-founder of Epixel Solutions, LLC. With at most satisfaction, I’m happy to share my story with you. When I launched our flagship product, Epixel MLM Software in the global market back in 2015, our motto was to create a revolution.

After a year of Epixel’s establishment, we managed to make an annual income of $10,000. At present, we’re making a monthly revenue of about $70,000, this value remarks our growth. Our effort never went vein and we’re proud to excel in our business.

how-i-started-a-70k-month-business-selling-software-for-mlms

3. Create a wholesale hub with affordable pricing app

How Much Can You Make?
$10,000/month
Skills

Examples of a successful wholesale hub with affordable pricing app:

Here are some great videos on how to get started with a wholesale hub with affordable pricing app:

Learn more about starting a wholesale hub with affordable pricing app ➜

Case Study

Former Macy's employee Natalie Gomez started selling dresses on Poshmark and soon made $10,000 in one month.

  • Natalie Gomez left her job at Macy’s as a merchandise planner and in a few months, started her side hustle as an online retailer on Poshmark.
  • In Feb 2016, she started her journey. She would buy clothing items at cheap rates from local thrift stores and sell them for a higher price at her Poshmark store.
  • Her business soon took flight and she achieved a sale of $10,000 in just one month.
  • This gave her the boost and motivation to continue this as a full-time career.

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Read the full story on cnbc.com →

4. Start a landing page builder apps business

How Much Can You Make?
$10,000 — $37,000/month
Skills

Examples of a successful landing page builder apps business:

Here are some great videos on how to get started with a landing page builder apps business:

For further info, check out these books and products:

Learn more about starting a landing page builder apps business ➜

Case Study

Some feedback is given to the Unicorn Platform. There are x100 more testimonials lol, but I’m too lazy to sort it and make it public

how-i-launched-a-2-5k-month-landing-page-builder

5. Start an all-in-one social media sharing app business

How Much Can You Make?
$10,000 — $333,333/month
Skills

Examples of a successful all-in-one social media sharing app business:

Here are some great videos on how to get started with a all-in-one social media sharing app business:

For further info, check out these books and products:

Learn more about starting an all-in-one social media sharing app business ➜

Case Study

Hi, I’m Laura Roeder, the CEO and founder of MeetEdgar, a social media automation tool.

Here’s a recent team photo at one of our biannual company retreats. This was taken in Phoenix, Arizona.

how-i-bootstrapped-a-social-media-automation-tool-to-2mm-year

6. Start an image compression app business

Examples of a successful image compression app business:

Here are some great videos on how to get started with a image compression app business:

For further info, check out these books and products:

Learn more about starting an image compression app business ➜

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7. Start an upsell and cross sell apps business

How Much Can You Make?
$96,000/month
Skills

Examples of a successful upsell and cross sell apps business:

Here are some great videos on how to get started with a upsell and cross sell apps business:

For further info, check out these books and products:

Learn more about starting an upsell and cross sell apps business ➜

Case Study

My name is Artyom Rabzonov and I am the CEO and founder of Exto.io. Before organizing this business, I co-owned Aheadworks, one of the most famous extensions development companies for Magento.

Our goal is to help online merchants around the globe sell more, grow faster, and engage customers with effective sales strategies.

i-made-an-ecommerce-app-that-generated-over-50m-of-extra-revenue-for-my-clients

8. Start a product page view count app business

Examples of a successful product page view count app business:

Here are some great videos on how to get started with a product page view count app business:

For further info, check out these books and products:

Learn more about starting a product page view count app business ➜

article

9. Start a shopping cart apps business

Examples of a successful shopping cart apps business:

Here are some great videos on how to get started with a shopping cart apps business:

For further info, check out these books and products:

Learn more about starting a shopping cart apps business ➜

article

10. Start a market research app business

How Much Can You Make?
$550,000/month
Skills

Examples of a successful market research app business:

Here are some great videos on how to get started with a market research app business:

For further info, check out these books and products:

Learn more about starting a market research app business ➜

Case Study

Jeremy King is the CEO and founded Attest in 2015. This consumer market research company is based in London and New York. It’s a fast-scaling SaaS technology business platform that offers top-level accuracy & speed.

Their tool allows organizations to use ongoing insights to get a market edge in audience knowledge. Attest makes it simple for everyone to do consistent research, achieve clear insight, and regularly identify possibilities with user data by merging exceptional speed and data quality with on-demand research expertise.

Jeremy holds his MBA from Harvard Business School. He trained as a scientist based on genetics, ecology, and animal behavior. He also takes part in improving state primary schools with his charity work. Before Attest, as a consultant, he had 9 years of experience leading global teams across industries at McKinsey & Company.

After leaving McKinsey, Jeremy created a SaaS application facilitating market research for B2C businesses.

He observed that rather than relying on facts from market research, these businesses frequently made guesses about what customers desired. This made him think he could devise a solution to help them reach logical conclusions.

His spouse gave him six months to work on the idea and get the business working. From the onset, he knew he had to validate the idea fast and build a working product.

He interviewed retail store managers on the data they wished they had about the target customers that would help them achieve more sales.

He then interviewed 200+ people and presented the data to retail store managers. His solution intrigued many potential customers, who called investors to invest money in his company.

The founder pitched Series B and C investors, and although they did not invest, he walked away with their feedback. Besides, the series B and C investors would recommend him to seed and pre-seed investors.

He would then ask his potential customers to contact the seed stage and pre-seed stage investors, asking them to invest in Attest.

Attest Ended up raising 650,000 Pounds in 4 months and hit $1M ARR in just 7.5 Months.

Since its inception, several investors have offered more than $100 million of investment capital, including NEA.

Attest currently has over 125 million customers across 58 countries worldwide using this platform to do market research. The company has crossed over $10M ARR

Some of their popular clients include Brew Dr. Kombucha, Unilever, Klarna, and Santander, among many more.

Their tool specializes in:

  • Brand Intelligence
  • Market Intelligence
  • Innovation
  • Data Analytics
  • Consumer Insights

article

11. Start a marketplace integration apps business

How Much Can You Make?
$50,000/month
Skills

Examples of a successful marketplace integration apps business:

Here are some great videos on how to get started with a marketplace integration apps business:

For further info, check out these books and products:

Learn more about starting a marketplace integration apps business ➜

Case Study

Hi, my name is Greg Writer. I'm the CEO and founder of Launch Cart - a new, faster, better, higher converting e-Commerce platform to compete in the e-Commerce space. This allows entrepreneurs, small business owners, and brands worldwide to build and sell online in their e-Commerce stores.

What's unique about us is that we also have a "Source and Sell Marketplace" that allows entrepreneurs to source products to sell on a drop-ship, affiliate marketing basis, what we call On-Demand, as well as offer a distribution channel for people who have products they want other people to sell.

how-we-built-a-600k-year-e-commerce-platform

12. Start a forum app business

How Much Can You Make?
$1,525,000 — $114,200,000/month
Skills

Examples of a successful forum app business:

Here are some great videos on how to get started with a forum app business:

For further info, check out these books and products:

Learn more about starting a forum app business ➜

Case Study

Tripadvisor was founded by co-founders Stephen Kaufer, Langley Steinert, Nick Shanny, and Thomas Palka in February 2000. When they first launched Tripadvisor, they emphasized official words from newspapers, guidebooks, or magazines.

Tripadvisor, now the world’s leading travel advice network, assists hundreds of millions of people in becoming better travelers, from planning to booking to traveling.

Travelers use Tripadvisor to get bargains on lodgings, book activities, reserve tables at wonderful restaurants, and discover excellent locations nearby.

Kaufer co-founded TripAdvisor in 2000 to assist tourists worldwide in planning and having the perfect trip. The business idea came about when Steve was preparing for a vacation, and he searched the internet for a vacation idea, and his experience wasn’t pleasing.

At that moment, he decided to work on a travel search engine that would find those backwater pages, insights, and opinions of what other travelers found.

Their original search engine would search what was already out on the web, find biased information, pull it back into a central database, and then license it as a B2B model to other travel providers.

Their first client came a year after its founding when Lycos, the number 3 web search engine in 2001, allowed TripAdvisor to power the travel sections on Lycos and provide all the travel-related content.

Before co-founding TripAdvisor, Kaufer was an independent software vendor and CenterLine Software’s co-founder and vice president of engineering, where he directed the creation of many award-winning programming environments.

The platform has over 1 billion reviews and recommendations from almost 8 million companies. This travel guide firm works across 43 markets and offers services in over 22 languages, making trip planning simple regardless of the sort of journey.

The global revenue of Tripdavisor, Inc. increased by approximately 49 percent in 2021 over the previous fiscal year after dropping sharply in 2020 due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Overall, the company’s revenue worldwide amounted to 902 million U.S. dollars in 2021, rising from 604 million U.S. dollars in 2020.

article

13. Start a guest author apps business

How Much Can You Make?
Skills

Examples of a successful guest author apps business:

Here are some great videos on how to get started with a guest author apps business:

For further info, check out these books and products:

Learn more about starting a guest author apps business ➜

Case Study

Hello! My name is Gaurav and I am the founder of Vizitor. We have launched a smart visitor management solution that secures the check-in and check-out process at your workplace. We started working on Vizitor 1 year ago because I felt from my experience the manual entries I do everytime I visit an office is really a hectic process. I wanted to make the entire process of check-in and check-out digital.

We are currently growing at 40% month on month on our MMR and have expanded a lot after the launch of our Free Plan for small organizations.

how-we-launched-a-2-500-month-visitor-management-system

14. Start a cash on delivery with OTP app business

Examples of a successful cash on delivery with OTP app business:

Here are some great videos on how to get started with a cash on delivery with OTP app business:

For further info, check out these books and products:

Learn more about starting a cash on delivery with OTP app business ➜

article

15. Start a double discount app business

Examples of a successful double discount app business:

Here are some great videos on how to get started with a double discount app business:

For further info, check out these books and products:

Learn more about starting a double discount app business ➜

article

16. Start a social media live chat app business

How Much Can You Make?
$2,535 — $41,400,000/month
Skills

Examples of a successful social media live chat app business:

Here are some great videos on how to get started with a social media live chat app business:

For further info, check out these books and products:

Learn more about starting a social media live chat app business ➜

Case Study

Hello, my name is Dmitry Alentyev and I am the founder and CEO of Scrile, a software development company that focuses on B2B IT products for business. At Scrile we help our clients to create new IT startups 10 times faster than people usually can do traditionally.

Our market is quite narrow but we are accelerating and expanding into new markets and niches where our products can be used. The total earnings were quite stable annually, and in 2021 we did $1.5M in sales, while the margin is quite good, on average 40-50%.

reflecting-on-20-years-of-developing-video-streaming-solutions-1-2m-year

17. Start a visual countdown timer app business

How Much Can You Make?
Skills

Examples of a successful visual countdown timer app business:

Here are some great videos on how to get started with a visual countdown timer app business:

Learn more about starting a visual countdown timer app business ➜

Case Study

Hi there, my name is Liz and I’m the co-founder of Stagetimer together with my husband Lukas Hermann. Stagetimer is an online countdown timer you can share with other people via a link or QR code. That means you can create multiple timers to keep a meeting or presentation on time and share it with anyone around the world.

how-we-built-an-8k-month-niche-online-tool-business-idea-validated-on-reddit

18. Build a warehouse management app

Examples of a successful warehouse management app :

Here are some great videos on how to get started with a warehouse management app :

For further info, check out these books and products:

Learn more about starting a warehouse management app ➜

article

19. Start a refer a friend app business

How Much Can You Make?
$100,000/month
Skills

Examples of a successful refer a friend app business:

Here are some great videos on how to get started with a refer a friend app business:

For further info, check out these books and products:

Learn more about starting a refer a friend app business ➜

Case Study

Hi, my name is Kevin Yun. I’m one of the co-founders of GrowSurf, a referral software for tech startups.

We are currently around $25k MRR. All of our metrics are openly available here.

how-we-developed-a-25k-month-referral-software-for-tech-startups

20. Create an automatic one-click order fulfillment app

How Much Can You Make?
$25,000,000/month
Skills

Examples of a successful automatic one-click order fulfillment app:

Here are some great videos on how to get started with a automatic one-click order fulfillment app:

Learn more about starting an automatic one-click order fulfillment app ➜

Case Study

Hi! My name is Jan Bednar and I’m the CEO and founder of ShipMonk, a technology-driven fulfillment center based in South Florida.

Last year, we were named America’s Fastest Growing Fulfillment Center and scored a spot at #29 on Inc. 5000’s list of fastest growing companies. We made the list again this year at #154. With projected revenue of $60M for 2019, we absolutely can’t wait to see what else is in store for us!

how-this-immigrant-entrepreneur-built-a-60m-year-fulfillment-business

21. Start a product sharing app business

How Much Can You Make?
$10,000/month
Skills

Examples of a successful product sharing app business:

Here are some great videos on how to get started with a product sharing app business:

For further info, check out these books and products:

Learn more about starting a product sharing app business ➜

Case Study

Greetings! I am Asad Ali founder and CEO of Agiled, an all-in-one business management software where you can manage everything related to your business like Clients, Finances, Projects, Appointments, Support, Proposals, Contracts, and much more in one place.

Our software is making $10k/month and serving 5000+ companies. We launched in early 2020 and we are so proud to have come this far within two years.

i-bootstrapped-a-120k-year-business-management-saas-from-pakistan

Pat Walls,  Founder of Starter Story
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Pat Walls

I'm Pat Walls and I created Starter Story - a website dedicated to helping people start businesses. We interview entrepreneurs from around the world about how they started and grew their businesses.

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