Hi I’m building a Platform as a Service App, which gives merchant an AI agent to help them build and deploy their own Custom Apps. It’s like Heroku for Custom Apps.
Today merchants are already doing this, they are vibe coding custom apps with Sidekick or even asking Claude or any coding agent to do something for them and then deploy to Vercel/Cloudflare with a Database in Supabase or any other provider. Often probably without knowing most of the stuff the agent is doing, yet, they create the app and start using it in their store.
My app gives a harness specifically for Shopify so it guides the merchant to build the app following the best practices but also it host the backend for them, gives them a database, analytics engine, version control, plus a bunch of other built-in security features. Again, think of Heroku to vibe code custom apps.
For example if you say “build me an app that allows me to show a survey in my PDP, I want to store the results in a DB or put them as line item properties” .. it will help you create the custom app, generate an app block, provision a backend with a database, create the db with the right shape for the data you are collecting, and finally deploy the backend and shopify custom app for you.
Because the app requires people to create a custom app, my application has been paused and there is no way to appeal or explain to the App Store review team (I left comments explaining this).
Can we get some guidance or Shopify’s policy on this type of apps. Technically my platform does not require a Shopify App since we only provide the infrastructure (similar to Heroku/Vercel/Gadget/Replit/etc) but we want to offer an integrated experience for merchants.
Hey @abuiles, that’s an interesting concept. To meet the requirements of the app store your app would need to be an app merchants can install without having to create their own app so all functionality would have to live inside that app surface. I would imagine something like Shopify flow where merchants can build their own unique automations, but it’s within the guardrails of the app itself.
If merchants are creating standalone apps, then you would have to build that off platform similar to those other services you mentioned and then guide merchants to setting up a custom app in their own dev dashboard for any api connections.
@KyleG-Shopify, what if the merchant installs my public Shopify app. Inside the embedded app UI, they can create “apps”, for example, a PDP survey, a quiz, a custom form, a small product recommendation widget, etc. My platform would generate and deploy the backend/database/runtime for that project.
On the Shopify side, my app would expose a single theme app extension/app block. The merchant would add that app block in the theme editor and select which generated project/widget they want to mount in that location.
Would that satisfy the requirement that all core functionality lives inside the installed app surface?
Separately, I’m still trying to understand the boundary around advanced/developer workflows.
If the core App Store flow above works fully without a custom app, is it acceptable to offer optional export/self-hosted path for merchants or developers who intentionally want to connect their own existing custom apps or create their own custom apps?
Again think about this as Vercel/Railway/Cloudflare.. People are already deploying custom apps there, they’d have the option to deploy their custom app to our platform.
Hey @abuiles, what you describe does sound possible as long as it meets the app store requirements and API terms of service. Where you’re likely to run in to issue is around access scopes. The app review team is going to review all of the scopes your app needs to make sure only the minimal access is used, whereas an app like you’re planning would need really broad access scopes.
I do think the best path for this is the custom app path where merchants configure the custom app in their own dev dashboard and your platform is the builder/host for that app. Merchant’s already have the sidekick app builder which is really good for the simple apps. Your app would be good for those more advanced use cases where a custom app would give the merchant more flexibility to build what they need, outside of the more narrow scopes of the app store requirements.
@KyleG-Shopify thanks Kyle, I think this give me the guidance I’ve been looking for.
You brought a really good point about scopes and what we are trying to do.
Since the universe of apps is (almost) infinite it wouldn’t make sense for my app to request all scopes. In fact today my app scopes are scopes = "" this is intentional.
With the new model we can make sure we have just enough to publish App Blocks that don’t really require further scopes (quizzes, pop ups, basic widgets in the PDP).
For more advance scenarios merchants will go with the custom app route and we become the builder/host.
@KyleG-Shopify my application was put on Pause until July 14th and I think it was due to the fact that multiple reviews went through since we are navigating new waters, this is a new type of app. Can I request the ban to be lifted so I can resubmit earlier? My platform is already live, we are not a Shopify first app platform. I’d like to make sure that all my customers that are Shopify specific get billed through Shopify billing instead of our Stripe integration (which we have for non Shopify stores)
Glad I was able to help with some clarity. Regarding the suspension, it’s unlikely to be lifted. You can reach out to our support team directly in the help center and they can take a look at your specific review to see if anything can be done.