Top 17 Shopify Plugins Essential for a Growing Shopify Store [2024]
By Sam Nguyen
In this article, we will explore the 15+ best Shopify plugins for 2023 that can enhance your ecommerce store’s functionality, boost sales, and streamline your operations.
Key Takeaways
- HubSpot CRM: This plugin integrates with Shopify to centralize customer data and enhance personalized marketing and customer service efforts.
- Brevo (formerly Sendinblue for Shopify): Brevo is an all-in-one marketing platform that offers comprehensive marketing solutions, including email, SMS, and automation, designed to foster better customer relationships.
- Spocket: Spocket specializes in providing faster shipping options and hassle-free dropshipping from US and European suppliers.
- Userlike: Userlike offers website chat and AI automation, helping businesses get closer to customers, generate leads, and enhance satisfaction through real-time support and messaging.
- Free Shipping Bar: This plugin motivates customers to make additional purchases by displaying progressive messages about how much more they need to spend to qualify for free shipping.
- Plug in SEO: Plug in SEO helps improve your store’s search engine optimization by identifying and resolving site issues and optimizing content.
- Klaviyo: Marketing Automation: Klaviyo offers intelligent marketing automation across various channels to centralize customer data and automate personalized marketing campaigns.
- Email Marketing by CM Commerce: This plugin combines email marketing with user-generated content tools to engage customers, build trust, and increase conversions through personalized branded campaigns.
- Voyager Upsell & Cross-Sell: Voyager is designed to maximize revenue by tracking and targeting upsell opportunities based on customer cart items and devices.
- Wishlist Plus: This plugin simplifies the creation of wishlists for customers, allowing them to save products for later and reduce cart abandonment.
- Outfy: Outfy enables creating of engaging social media content, including videos, collages, and gifs, to promote products on various social platforms.
- Instagram Shop by Snapppt: This plugin enhances the shopping experience by providing shoppable posts, allowing customers to see products before purchase.
- Buy Button Channel: Create buy buttons for products or collections, making it easier for customers to purchase directly from websites, blogs, or emails.
- ReferralCandy: Create customer referral and affiliate programs to attract customers, increase sales, and reward loyal customers for referring friends.
- Social Photos: Showcase user-generated Instagram content on your store, leveraging social proof and testimonials to boost brand credibility and sales.
- Social Login by DevCloud: Enable one-click social login through various social networks, simplifying the login process for users.
- Back In Stock: Send notifications when out-of-stock items are available again, helping customers stay informed and improving sales.
17 Best Shopify Plugins in 2023
1. HubSpot CRM
HubSpot for Shopify integration empowers you to connect your online store data with HubSpot’s top-tier CRM, marketing automation, and customer service software. This integration creates a unified view of your customers by syncing Shopify customer data, product information, and deals directly into HubSpot.
Why should you use this plugin?
- Personalized Marketing: HubSpot CRM empowers you to create customized marketing campaigns by effortlessly creating audience segments, ensuring your messages are tailored to your customers’ needs.
- Automation: Streamline your marketing efforts and save time by leveraging automation tools provided by HubSpot CRM, making repetitive tasks more efficient.
- Data Collection: Collect valuable data from your Shopify store, helping you gain insights into customer behavior, preferences, and trends.
- Insightful Reports: Utilize the collected data to generate insightful reports that can guide your marketing strategies and boost your store’s performance.
- Cost-Free: One of the most attractive features is that HubSpot CRM is 100% free, making it a valuable and budget-friendly addition to your Shopify store in 2023.
2. Brevo (formerly Sendinblue for Shopify)
Brevo is an all-in-one marketing platform designed to foster better relationships. Trusted by over 500,000 businesses worldwide, Brevo offers a comprehensive marketing solution that enables you to engage with your contacts and enhance customer relationships through targeted and relevant communication.
Why should you use this plugin?
- Multi-Channel Marketing: Brevo allows users to create and manage marketing campaigns across various communication channels, including email, SMS, and WhatsApp.
- Flexible Communication: Businesses can reach their audience through their preferred communication methods, ensuring effective and personalized engagement.
- Automation: Brevo supports automation, enabling the automatic sending of transactional emails and SMS messages. This automation enhances customer engagement and efficiency.
- Real-Time Customer Interaction: Brevo enables real-time customer interactions through messaging platforms such as Live Chat, WhatsApp, Instagram Direct, and Facebook Messenger.
- Emphasis on Immediate Support: The platform emphasizes providing immediate support to customers, enhancing their experience, and building trust.
- Detailed Analytics: Brevo offers comprehensive analytics explicitly tailored for e-commerce businesses. These analytics provide insights into customer behavior, track sales, and aid in optimizing marketing strategies for better results.
- User-Friendly CRM: Brevo’s CRM system is designed for small businesses. It prioritizes user-friendliness and aims to help effectively manage customer relationships without the complexity often associated with CRM systems.
3. Spocket
Sprocket highlights its capability to offer faster shipping options, particularly from suppliers in the United States and Europe, catering to the need for quicker order fulfillment.
Why should you use this plugin?
- No Minimum Orders: Users can access wholesale pricing without the need to place minimum orders, offering financial flexibility to businesses of all sizes.
- White-Labeling: Spocket provides white-labeling options, allowing enterprises to brand products with their labels. This fosters brand recognition and customer loyalty.
- Efficient Dropshipping: Automation is a central feature, streamlining the dropshipping process from AliExpress. This automation enhances efficiency and reduces hassles.
- Continuous Customer Support: Spocket offers ongoing customer support, promptly addressing user inquiries. This commitment to support results in a smooth and positive user experience.
4. Userlike
Userlike is a versatile platform that enhances customer interactions and support through chat and AI technology. With a focus on real-time engagement, lead generation, and personalized messaging,
Why should you use this plugin?
- Multi-Channel Engagement: Userlike enables businesses to connect with their audience through various channels, including website chat and messaging apps like WhatsApp.
- AI Automation: Userlike offers AI automation tools to streamline customer service and engagement, making interactions more efficient.
- Data Privacy: Prioritizes data privacy and GDPR compliance, ensuring customer information is handled securely and under regulations.
- Trusted by Thousands: Userlike is trusted by thousands of companies worldwide, demonstrating its effectiveness and reliability in delivering customer service and engagement solutions.
5. Free Shipping Bar
The Free Shipping Bar shows progressive messages as customers add more items to their cart. It communicates the amount they need to add to their cart to unlock free shipping, creating a sense of achievement and motivation to shop more.
Why should you use this plugin?
- Advanced Targeting Options: The Free Shipping Bar offers advanced targeting options, including geographical location, customer segments and specific pages. This allows for tailored free shipping offers to particular customer groups or regions, increasing their relevance and effectiveness.
- Scheduled Promotions: Planning is made easy with the ability to schedule free shipping promotions in advance. This allows for alignment with holidays, sales events, or promotional campaigns, ensuring timely and strategic offers.
- Customizable Branding: The Free Shipping Bar is customizable to match your store’s branding and style. Activation is simple with a single click, and no coding is required. This ensures a seamless and visually appealing free shipping bar without technical complexities.
- Currency Conversion: Recognizing that customers come from around the world, the Free Shipping Bar can detect visitors’ currencies and convert the shipping amount accordingly. This provides a smooth shopping experience for international customers and eliminates any confusion regarding pricing.
6. Plug in SEO
Plug In SEO enables you to audit your store’s SEO issues comprehensively. It identifies areas that require improvement and provides actionable insights to address them. This includes optimizing meta tags, headings, and other critical on-page elements.
Why should you use this plugin?
- SEO Templates: Plug In SEO offers SEO templates that guide you in optimizing your blog posts and pages for targeted keywords. These templates guide where and how to incorporate keywords, leading to higher rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs) and increased visibility.
- Structured Data Support: Plug In SEO supports structured data, allowing you to mark up your content for enhanced appearances in search results. This can result in rich snippets, knowledge graph entries, and attractive listings that improve click-through rates and drive more organic traffic to your website.
- Broken Link Identification and Repair: Plug In SEO assists in identifying and repairing broken links on your site. Ensuring all links work correctly enhances user satisfaction and signals to search engines that your website is well-maintained and reliable.
7. Klaviyo: Marketing Automation
Klaviyo seamlessly integrates with Shopify and other platforms, allowing you to unify crucial data sources such as web activity, tags, catalogs, and coupons. This holistic view of your data provides valuable insights into your customers’ behavior and preferences, enabling you to craft highly targeted and effective marketing campaigns.
Why should you use this plugin?
- Advanced User Segmentation: Klaviyo enables precise user segmentation based on historical and real-time customer behaviors. This ensures that your marketing messages are delivered to the right audience with the right content at the right time.
- Coupon Code Management: Klaviyo simplifies coupon code creation, making it easy to track the success of your promotions. You can identify which campaigns are driving sales and adjust your marketing strategy accordingly.
- Pre-built Email Templates: Klaviyo offers templates for various marketing purposes, including Welcome emails, Back-in-stock notifications, Browse Abandonment reminders, and Price Drop alerts. These templates are customizable to align with your brand’s unique style and messaging.
- Detailed Performance Insights: Klaviyo provides in-depth insights into the performance of your automation, campaigns, segments, and channels. This transparency lets you make data-driven decisions and optimize your marketing strategy for maximum return on investment (ROI).
19. Email Marketing by CM Commerce
Email Marketing by CM Commerce is a valuable tool designed to address one of the most significant challenges e-commerce businesses face: cart abandonment. This platform equips you with powerful capabilities to combat this issue effectively.
Why should you use this plugin?
- Abandoned Cart Emails: Send compelling messages to customers who abandoned their carts, reducing abandonment rates.
- Detailed Insights: Gain valuable campaign performance insights to optimize content, design, and timing for higher engagement and conversions.
- Effortless List Building: Easily build subscriber lists and send personalized, branded campaigns tailored to individual preferences, enhancing email relevance and conversion rates.
9. Voyager Upsell & Cross‑Sell
In the highly competitive online landscape, success isn’t just about attracting visitors to your ecommerce store; it’s about making every acquisition count. Voyager Upsell & Cross-Sell is your powerful ally in this endeavor, ensuring you maximize every opportunity for growth.
Why should you use this plugin?
- Revenue Amplification: Voyager specializes in upselling and cross-selling, two indispensable strategies for elevating e-commerce revenue. Through strategic offers of complementary products or bundled items, you increase the average order value and enrich the overall shopping experience.
- Enhanced Customer Satisfaction: Delighted customers are likelier to become loyal patrons, driving sustained profitability. Voyager’s strategies aim to cultivate this satisfaction, fostering long-term relationships with your brand.
- Competitive Edge: In the fiercely competitive online arena, Voyager equips you with a competitive edge by ensuring you capitalize on every revenue-generating opportunity.
- Maximized ROI: By optimizing your sales tactics, Voyager helps you extract the highest possible return on your investment, ensuring that each acquired customer contributes significantly to your bottom line.
10. Wishlist Plus
Wishlist Plus, trusted by merchants worldwide, elevates e-commerce sales by simplifying customer bookmarking of preferred products. Its reputation rests on delivering a seamless and user-friendly experience for businesses and customers.
Why should you use this plugin?
- Event-Triggered Email Campaigns: The wishlist feature is highly customizable to cater to specific target audiences, while extensive APIs enable the creation of personalized experiences. This not only enhances customer engagement but also boosts retention rates.
- Customer Retention: Wishlist Plus introduces a guest wishlist feature that requires no login. This frictionless experience encourages users to save their favorite items effortlessly, strengthening the connection between brands and customers.
- Responsive Customer Support: Wishlist Plus is committed to excellence in providing responsive customer support. Whether businesses encounter technical queries, require setup assistance, or seek guidance on optimizing wishlist strategies, the dedicated customer support team is readily available.
- Collaboration Empowerment: The platform offers collaboration features that connect sales and customer service teams seamlessly. This high-touch approach enables effective engagement with shoppers, ensuring they receive the support needed to make informed purchase decisions.
- Effortless Integration: Wishlist Plus seamlessly integrates with Shopify themes, ensuring a setup process that takes less than five minutes. This streamlined integration allows businesses to focus on their primary goal: growth.
- Cart Abandonment Solution: Addressing the significant challenge of cart abandonment, Wishlist Plus enables shoppers to save products for later. This feature provides a valuable alternative to cart abandonment, leading to increased conversions.
11. Outfy
Outfy is your essential companion for seamlessly promoting products across major social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube. With its broad reach, Outfy ensures your brand gains exposure to a diverse and extensive audience.
Why should you use this plugin?
- Diverse Content Creation: Outfy empowers you to diversify your content strategy by effortlessly creating engaging product collages, videos, GIFs, and captivating sale promotions. This variety of content keeps your audience engaged and enthusiastic about your offerings.
- Efficient Workflow: In social media marketing, efficiency is crucial. Outfy streamlines your workflow by automating content creation and publishing. You can curate and schedule your posts in advance, guaranteeing a consistent and well-timed presence on social media.
- Clever Hashtags: Outfy takes your social media strategy further by assisting you in generating smarter product hashtags. These optimized hashtags expand your product’s reach to broader and more relevant audiences, significantly enhancing the chances of discovery and engagement.
- Customizable Templates: Outfy offers customizable and themed templates that simplify the creation of visually striking promotional content. These templates ensure your posts are engaging and align seamlessly with your brand’s aesthetic.
12. Instagram shop by Snapppt
Instagram Shop by Snapppt elevates your shopping experience by seamlessly integrating with Instagram, your web store, product detail pages (PDPs), and email. This extensive reach ensures customers can engage with your products across multiple touchpoints, enriching their shopping journey.
Why should you use this plugin?
- UGC Integration: Leverage User-Generated Content (UGC) for an authentic shopping experience. Capture customer and influencer posts, tag products, and showcase them on product detail pages (PDPs), fostering trust and boosting conversions.
- UGC Marketing Automation: Transform loyal customers into brand advocates with UGC marketing automation. Amplify your brand through customer voices, crafting a compelling narrative that resonates deeply with your audience.
- Influencer Collaboration: Effortlessly discover and collaborate with influencers. Access a database of 69 million influencers, run campaigns, and paid collaborations to expand product exposure and enhance brand credibility.
- Influencer Impact Tracking: Gain insights into influencer collaboration impact. Instagram Shop by Snapppt lets you track influencer media and associated sales, allowing data-driven decisions and optimized influencer marketing for higher returns.
13. Buy Button Channel
Buy Button Channel provides a straightforward solution for businesses to enhance their online sales process. Its primary feature is enabling direct purchases on any website or blog, simplifying the buying process for customers, and reducing potential friction associated with traditional e-commerce platforms.
Why should you use this plugin?
- Effortless Direct Purchases: The Buy Button Channel streamlines the buying process by enabling direct purchases on any website or blog. This simplifies transactions for customers and eliminates the complexities often associated with traditional e-commerce platforms.
- Effective Product Highlighting: One of its critical functions is effectively highlighting products to regular website or blog visitors. Maximizing product visibility to an engaged audience significantly increases the likelihood of conversions and boosts sales.
- Customization for Brand Consistency: Buy Button Channel empowers businesses to customize fonts, colors, and layouts, ensuring seamless integration with the website or blog’s style and branding. This level of customization fosters consistency and reinforces brand identity, ultimately building customer trust.
- Effortless Product Updates: Keeping product information up-to-date is crucial. Buy Button Channel simplifies this task by providing an easy way to update product listings directly from Shopify without the need to modify the website’s code. .
- Data-Driven Insights: By monitoring sales performance, businesses can make informed decisions, identify top-selling products, uncover market trends, and optimize their offerings and marketing strategies. This data-driven approach is essential for sustainable growth and success.
14. ReferralCandy
ReferralCandy ensures that setting up a referral or affiliate program is a breeze. You can expect to see the first sales within 30 minutes of implementation, saving you time and effort.
Why should you use this plugin?
- Easy Setup: ReferralCandy simplifies the setup of referral and affiliate programs, with the potential to see initial sales within 30 minutes, saving you time and effort.
- Customer Advocacy: Harness the power of referral and affiliate programs to acquire new customers and retain existing ones. Customers become brand advocates by sharing referral links organically promoting your brand.
- Flexible Rewards: Motivate customers to participate with rewards – ReferralCandy offers cash and coupon rewards for one-off and subscription sales, accommodating various business models.
- Custom Branding: Customize your referral program with your brand’s logo, images, and colors, ensuring a seamless brand experience for your customers.
- Seamless Integration: Easily integrate ReferralCandy with essential e-commerce tools and platforms like Klaviyo, ReCharge, Skio, Awtomic, Bold, Loop, Appstle, Stay, and Seal, streamlining its inclusion in your existing tech stack.
15. Social Photos
Social Photos seamlessly integrates with Instagram, offering a versatile range of UGC elements. These include your Instagram Feed, which auto-syncs to mirror your live Instagram posts, and UGC Page Galleries, allowing you to handpick and showcase user-generated content on any page easily.
Why should you use this plugin?
- UGC Product Gallery: Enhance your product pages with genuine user experiences, allowing customers to view real-life interactions with your products, fostering trust, and improving conversion rates.
- Shoppable Galleries: Accelerate sales by presenting products alongside user-generated content, offering an immersive shopping experience that adds authenticity to customers’ purchasing decisions.
- Simplified UGC Sourcing: Easily source UGC by enabling direct uploads from your website, Instagram, and existing user-generated content, ensuring a consistent stream of authentic content for display.
16. Social Login by DevCloud
Social Login by DevCloud offers a simplified user access solution, allowing individuals to log in effortlessly with just a single click, utilizing their preferred social network credentials. This streamlined approach significantly enhances the user experience and encourages higher sign-in rates.
Why should you use this plugin?
- Password-Free Access: Eliminate the complexities of password management. Social Login by DevCloud allows users to bypass the need for passwords entirely, offering a more convenient and secure login process.
- Easy Installation: The installation process is user-friendly and straightforward. You can opt for automatic installation, ensuring that social login buttons seamlessly integrate with your login and signup forms, providing a hassle-free experience for your users.
17. Back In Stock
Back In Stock offers a seamless solution for automating product availability notifications. It proactively alerts customers through push notifications, email, or SMS when a previously unavailable product becomes accessible again, ensuring customers stay informed and engaged.
Why should you use this plugin?
- Customized Notifications: Tailor your email notifications and themes to match your brand’s identity, providing a consistent and personalized customer experience.
- Create Notification Buttons: Craft your unique notification button for a bespoke approach to informing customers about product restocks.
- Email Marketing Integration: Back In Stock integrates with email marketing platforms, enabling highly personalized customer communication. This integration enhances your capacity to reach interested customers and drive conversions effectively.
Shopify Plugins: FAQs
Plugins in Shopify are additional software that can be integrated into your store to extend its functionality. These plugins, also known as apps, enable you to add new features, improve store performance, and enhance the overall customer experience.
Yes, you can use plugins with Shopify. Shopify provides a user-friendly platform that supports the integration of various plugins or apps. These plugins are designed to help you customize and optimize your online store to meet your specific business needs.
- Access Your Shopify Admin: Log in to your Shopify admin panel using your credentials.
- Navigate to the App Store: From your Shopify admin, go to the “Apps” section. You can find this on the left-hand menu.
- Browse and Search for the Plugin: In the Apps section, click the “Visit Shopify App Store” button. Here, you can browse and search for the plugin (app) you want to add.
- Select and Install the Plugin: Once you find the desired plugin, click on it to view more details. Then, click the “Add app” button to initiate the installation process.
- Follow Installation Instructions: Each plugin may have specific installation instructions. Follow the on-screen prompts and provide any necessary information as instructed to configure the plugin.
- Activate the Plugin: After installation, navigate back to your Shopify admin. In the “Apps” section, you’ll see a list of installed apps. Click on the plugin you installed, and then click the “Activate” button to make it active.
- Add Plugin Action to Your Main Menu: If the plugin requires user interaction from the main menu, you must add a menu item. Go to your Shopify main menu settings, click “Menu,” and then “Add new.” Enter the plugin’s name in the “Title” field and specify the plugin’s action in the “Action” field. For example, if it’s for adding products, you might use “add product” as the action.
- Save Changes: Remember to save your changes in the menu settings
The benefits of using Shopify plugins include:
- Enhanced functionality: Plugins extend your store’s capabilities, allowing you to add features like reviews, social media integration, SEO optimization, and more.
- Improved customer experience: Plugins can enhance the shopping experience, making it easier for customers to navigate your store and purchase.
- Time and cost savings: Plugins save time and money by providing pre-built solutions for common e-commerce challenges.
- Flexibility: You can choose various plugins to tailor your store to your business needs.
Shopify does not formally differentiate between “apps” and “plugins” in the way some other platforms might (e.g., WordPress, which uses “plugins”). Instead, Shopify primarily refers to third-party integrations as “apps.” Here’s a bit more detail:
Shopify Apps:- These are third-party tools or software that integrate with Shopify to provide additional functionality not natively available within the platform.
- They can be found in the Shopify App Store, and they often require API integration.
- They can range from tools that help with inventory management, SEO, marketing, customer reviews, and more.
- Developers can create and submit their own apps to the Shopify App Store for merchants to download and use, sometimes for a fee.
- Technically, Shopify doesn’t have a product category called “plugins.” When someone refers to a Shopify plugin, they likely mean a Shopify app.
- However, in some contexts, a “plugin” might refer to a smaller piece of code or a snippet that can be added directly to a Shopify store’s theme to achieve a specific function. Still, this usage is less formal and less common.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Shopify offers a diverse range of plugins that can significantly enhance the functionality and features of your e-commerce store.
Sam Nguyen is the CEO and founder of Avada Commerce, an e-commerce solution provider headquartered in Singapore. He is an expert on the Shopify e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. Sam loves talking about e-commerce and he aims to help over a million online businesses grow and thrive.
