BFS Category Requirements Forcing Us to Build Features Our App Doesn’t Need

Hello team! We currently have a Built for Shopify app in the WhatsApp automation space, but it is showing as “at risk” due to category-specific requirements. We’ve been assigned the SMS Marketing category, which is close to what we do, but not an exact fit.

We’d appreciate clarification on a few requirements:

  1. Has made a Visitor API call: We don’t collect email addresses or phone numbers through our app. We rely on Shopify webhooks to receive the data needed for WhatsApp automations. Would we need to build a pop-up feature solely to meet this requirement?

  2. Has used the customerCreate and customerUpdate mutations in the last 30 days: We use customerUpdate to process unsubscribe events, but we don’t have a genuine use case for customerCreate. Are we expected to introduce a customer-capture feature even though it isn’t part of our product roadmap?

  3. 30 subscribed customer events: We have stores with our web pixel connected, and the pixel subscribes to standard customer events. Our logs show several thousand events, but this requirement is still not checked. Could you clarify exactly what is being measured and whether any additional configuration is required?

We’d really appreciate your guidance, particularly where the assigned category requirements don’t fully match our app’s functionality.

Have you attempted to reach out to partner support yet? Especially so they’re able to verify and authorise your app to help in advising on next steps?

Yes, we’ve reached out to Partner Support and are waiting to hear back. My concern is that, if these requirements are mandatory, we may not have enough time to build the features and achieve the required adoption before the deadline.

We just received a reply from Shopify Support at support@shopify.com asking us to work toward these requirements. Is there any other way to get help or someone from Shopify Partner team who can confirm this?

We reached out through the online chat at https://help.shopify.com/en/partners because the previous Help icon no longer appears in our Partner Dashboard.

I would advise replying to the existing partner support correspondance you have.