Payment system for listed shopify app

Partner Discussions
1

Hi Shopify Team,

I’m planning to develop a Shopify app aimed at helping merchants better manage their marketing activities. The app will not be embedded in the Shopify Admin. Once a merchant installs the app, they will be redirected to our external website, where all services and interactions will take place outside the Shopify platform.

With the merchant’s consent, we intend to access their Shopify store data—specifically orders, customers, and products—via API to support our service.

We are considering implementing our own billing system directly on our website. Before proceeding, I would like to confirm:

  • Would this payment approach be acceptable for an app listed on the Shopify App Store?
  • If not, what billing approach would you recommend for our use case?

I appreciate your guidance in ensuring we comply with Shopify’s app requirements.

1 Like
2

Hey @Tianyu_Chen!

For public apps it is required to use managed billing or the billing API to charge merchants. This is outlined in the requirements here.

For the best billing approach, can you share a little more about your pricing model? This guide here covers the options available: About billing for your app

Typically, if you just charge a monthly fee, using the managed billing will be easiest, however if you bill based on usage, then combined subscription + usage charges would be best: Combine time and usage-based subscriptions

3

Hi Kyle,

Thanks for getting back.

We’d like to implement usage-based billing, where each customer is charged differently based on their actual usage. I noticed that some apps in the Shopify App Store are non-embedded—when you click the install button, you’re redirected to the app’s own website, and the billing is handled there.

We’re aiming to build a similar setup. Could you please advise on how to configure payment and billing in this case?

Thanks!
Tianyu

4

The documentation I shared above on combining time and usage would still apply here. You could direct to an external page to show your plans, but you would still need to redirect the merchant to the URL returned when you create the subscription so the merchant can accept the charges on Shopify.

1 Like
5

Thank you for providing us with the information. We’ve decided to proceed with a time-based subscription model for our initial release, as it offers a simpler setup.

In the future, if we choose to adjust our pricing tiers as our user base grows (hopefully!), would we need to submit all changes for approval? If so, could you let us know how complex that process is?