I’m a solo developer preparing to promote a newly published app, and I’d rather plan the spend around confirmed numbers than an assumption.
The Built for Shopify achievement criteria state:
Your app must have a minimum of 50 net installs from active shops on paid plans.
The App Store advertising documentation doesn’t say anything either way about how ad-driven installs are treated, and I can’t find the two topics addressed together anywhere. Since the criteria list no exclusion, my working assumption is that an install is an install regardless of how the merchant arrived - but I don’t want to build a budget on that.
Four things I’d be grateful to have confirmed:
- Do installs that originate from a Shopify App Store ad click count toward the 50 net installs from active shops on paid plans, or are paid-acquisition installs excluded?
- What does “net” mean here - installs minus uninstalls over the app’s lifetime, or installs still active at the moment eligibility is assessed?
- Is the 50 measured cumulatively, or within a rolling window? If there’s a window, how long is it?
- For “active shops on paid plans” - does the shop need to be on a paid Shopify plan at the moment eligibility is assessed, and do shops still inside a Shopify trial count?
I’m not asking for the exact minimum rating threshold, since I understand that isn’t published.
Context for why it matters, in case it’s useful as feedback: for a new app with no installs and no reviews, these criteria are the clearest published route to better distribution, and ads are one of the few levers available from a standing start. Whether paid installs count decides whether an ad budget is buying customers or buying eligibility, and those are very different spending decisions.
Docs referenced:
Thanks very much.