By Chris Ledden · Reviewed October 2026
When we moved Daily Bloom to a new theme this year, I made a list of every app installed on the store. There were 42. Three of them were doing overlapping jobs in the cart: a slide cart, a bundles app, and a post-purchase upsell, all things one app could handle. Another $299-a-month app came out entirely. Today we run seven apps that add features, plus the integrations the store can’t work without, like Printify and our messaging and forms tools.
That’s normal, by the way. Brands doing $1M to $5M a year typically spend $1,000 to $3,500 a month on apps, and most of them have a few they’d never miss. Here are the five steps I use, on my own store and in every Stack & Spend Audit.
Step 1: List every app and what it really costs
Start in Settings, then Apps and sales channels, for the list. Then check Billing for what you’re actually charged, because usage-based apps rarely cost what their pricing page says. For each app, write down what it does, who installed it, and when anyone last used it.
Step 2: Ask who would notice
For each app, ask one question: if this disappeared tomorrow, who would notice? If the answer is nobody, or you’re not sure, it goes on the cut list. Check the app’s own dashboard for recent activity before you decide.
Step 3: Swap paid apps for Shopify’s free ones
Shopify now builds free versions of several app categories merchants used to pay for:
The free versions are simpler, so keep the paid app if you rely on what only it does. Check your theme too. Newer themes build in things like slide carts and size charts that used to need an app.
Step 4: Replace small display apps with code you own
Countdown timers, trust badges, announcement bars, size charts, and sticky add-to-cart buttons are a few lines of theme code each. Shopify’s Sidekick can now generate custom theme blocks, and AI coding tools like Claude Code can make these changes through Shopify’s own toolkit.
The catch is maintenance. When I write custom code for Daily Bloom, every file gets a db- prefix, a changelog entry, and a commit to GitHub, so the next developer or the next theme update doesn’t trip over it.
Build and test on a duplicate theme first. And don’t swap out apps that store data or touch checkout: reviews, loyalty, subscriptions, and payments belong in a maintained app.
Step 5: Uninstall in the right order
My one hard rule: never cancel the old app until the new one is proven live. When we switched pop-up tools, the old one stayed on until the new one was confirmed working in the new theme. A gap of even a few days means lost subscribers you never get back.
Then clean up behind it. Uninstalling an app doesn’t always remove its code, and leftover snippets can keep slowing your store long after you stop paying. Check your theme’s app embeds and code for anything left behind.
What I’d never cut
Anything that touches checkout, payments, or tax
Fulfillment apps like Printify or Printful
Reviews and loyalty, unless you’re switching providers on purpose
Email and SMS tools whose advanced features you actually use
Questions
Sources: app spend and app counts from Eightx’s app spend benchmarks and app bloat report (May 2026); free apps from Shopify’s App Store listing of its own apps; Flow plans from Shopify’s Help Center; Rollouts from Glaze Digital’s Winter ’26 Edition summary.