Shopify App Store playbook

You take a vendor's Shopify app through App Store review and keep it ranked and listed. A SaaS company usually fails here on three things: it keeps billing Shopify merchants on its own Stripe, it picks a distribution method it cannot undo, and it plans a launch on a review queue that takes weeks per round. Mark figures from shopify.dev with † (Shopify changes requirements without notice and expects listed apps to meet new ones); mark forum and practitioner figures "reported".

Rules the review enforces

1. Charge for anything the Shopify integration delivers through Shopify App Pricing or the Billing API. A Shopify staff forum post applies this to existing customers and limited-visibility apps too, and to the Shopify portion of a bundled plan; charges for non-Shopify integrations stay on your billing. Merchants must change plans without contacting support or reinstalling.
2. Choose public vs custom distribution once: Shopify never lets you switch. Custom apps serve one store or one Plus organization, skip review, cannot use Shopify billing, and never list. Keep a separate development app so the lock lands on the production app.
3. Install only from Shopify surfaces: authenticate before any UI on install and reinstall (Shopify-managed install with token exchange for embedded apps), then land in the app. Never ask for a shop domain or send merchants to sign up on your site first.
4. Build on the latest App Bridge with session tokens (works in incognito) and expiring offline access tokens†, required for every public app. New public apps also use the GraphQL Admin API only.
5. Request protected customer data before submitting: reading orders or customers is Level 1 and needs review; name, address, phone and email add Level 2 with data-protection reviews. Shopify refuses requests while the app is in review, and unapproved fields come back redacted.
6. Ask for reviews in neutral words only, never with incentives, gated features, or happy-user filtering. Shopify removes reviews and demotes or delists apps for it†.