How to Build a Shopify App in 2025 a Complete Guide with Code Structure Best Practices

If you’re looking for the fastest way to build a Shopify app from scratch, this approach might also be one of the best ways to start a SaaS business in 2025. Compared to building the next Android or iOS app, Shopify app development is often more practical and profitable—especially for developers who understand the Shopify ecosystem.

The main reason is simple: your target audience is Shopify merchants. These are business owners who already invest money into tools that help them grow. If your Shopify app solves a real problem, you can justify a higher price point much more easily than in consumer-focused app markets.

That said, before jumping into custom Shopify app development, it’s important to understand what you’re getting into. App development is not beginner-friendly and is significantly more advanced than freelancing. To set realistic expectations, let’s break down a clear comparison between freelancing vs Shopify app development.

Freelancing vs Shopify App Development

Getting Started With Shopify Freelancing

Freelancing usually has a lower entry barrier. To begin, you need to learn:

HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (the core web development stack)
Shopify Liquid, Shopify’s backend templating language
A strong understanding of Shopify as a platform

This includes configuring store settings such as taxes and shipping, creating Shopify stores from scratch, building professional front ends, and understanding the best Shopify themes available. You’ll also need hands-on experience with Shopify apps for different use cases and services like:

On top of that, you must understand Shopify theme files, sections, and overall store architecture. Once you’re comfortable with these skills, you’re technically ready to enter the market.

The next challenge is business-related: learning how to find clients, communicate effectively, position yourself, send strong proposals, and price your services correctly. This can feel overwhelming at first, but with commitment, freelancing remains one of the fastest ways to build a sustainable online income.

How Shopify App Development Is Different

Now let’s look at Shopify app development, which follows a very different path.

The first and most important requirement is a strong app idea—or more accurately, a solution to an in-demand problem. Without demand, even the best-built Shopify app will fail. Guessing what merchants want is risky, so data and real-world experience matter.

One of the easiest ways to identify profitable ideas is by working with real Shopify merchants. When you repeatedly see the same problem across multiple clients, that’s usually a strong signal. If many merchants struggle with the same issue, there’s likely a larger market willing to pay for a solution.

Once you have a validated idea, the technical phase begins.

Technical Skills Required to Build a Shopify App

To build a Shopify app or develop a Shopify plugin, you’ll still need:

HTML and CSS
JavaScript, but at a much deeper level than freelancing
A solid understanding of Shopify’s platform and APIs

JavaScript plays a much bigger role in app development, especially depending on the type of Shopify app you’re building. Whether you’re creating a private app, public app, or embedded app, deeper platform knowledge is essential for scalability and performance.

Why Shopify App Development Is Worth It in 2025

Following Shopify app development best practices in 2025, building an app can be one of the most scalable ways to create a SaaS business. Unlike freelancing, where income is tied to time, a successful Shopify app allows you to serve thousands of merchants simultaneously.

If your app clearly solves a problem, merchants are willing to pay recurring fees—making custom Shopify app development one of the most attractive opportunities in the Shopify ecosystem today.

Compared to freelancing, you don’t need to go as deep into theme customization, but you still need a solid understanding of theme files, Shopify features, and different APIs. These are essential to ensure your app integrates smoothly with merchant stores.

Next, you’ll need to learn one back-end technology. The most popular choices in the Shopify ecosystem are:

Technically, you could use other back-end languages like PHP, but Node.js and Ruby on Rails are the most widely used and best supported when you build a Shopify app. Picking one of these will make your development process much smoother.

On the front end, learning a framework like React is highly recommended. React helps you build clean, responsive, and scalable user interfaces for your app dashboard.

You’ll also need GraphQL, which is required to make API calls. This allows your Shopify app to communicate with the Shopify system—to fetch data, update store information, and handle app-related actions.

Databases, Security, and Hosting Considerations

Depending on your app’s functionality, you may also need a database—for example, if you’re storing customer data or app-related settings. Along with this, understanding the basics of security is critical. You must ensure sensitive data is never exposed or leaked publicly.

Another key requirement is hosting. Your Shopify app runs on a dedicated server, meaning you’re responsible for setting up and maintaining your own infrastructure. This is part of the core technical implementation.

Once all of this is in place, you’re technically ready to enter the market.

Marketing, Support, and Ongoing Maintenance

After launch, your focus shifts from development to marketing. You need to get your Shopify app in front of as many relevant merchants as possible.

As soon as you receive your first installs, customer support becomes part of your daily workflow. Apps that operate purely on the back end usually require less support. Apps that interact with the front end require more effort because they must work seamlessly across many different Shopify themes

Over time, you can outsource or automate support by building a team or setting up first-level and second-level support systems. In the beginning, however, you’ll likely handle everything yourself.

Maintenance is also ongoing—fixing small bugs, improving performance, and deploying new features as your app evolves.

Why Shopify App Development Is More Complex (But Powerful)

As you can see, Shopify app development is complex. That’s exactly why predictable results take time. This complexity is also the reason many programs focus on foundational and proven paths first—because they deliver more consistent and measurable outcomes.

With a proper structure, guarantees, and feedback loops in place, the risk is reduced significantly. There’s no incentive to push solutions that don’t work—if something feels off, backing out is always an option.

Yes, this may feel like the longest introduction ever—but it’s an important one.

Understanding Shopify App Infrastructure

Now let’s get into the actual structure of what we’re building.

At a high level, a Shopify app consists of three main parts:

The Shopify side
Your local development environment (PC)
A dedicated server where the app runs

For example, your app could live at something like yourApp.com. From a technical standpoint, this is just a regular website. The key difference is that only Shopify stores can log in.

Once logged in, merchants access a dashboard that contains all the app’s features, data, and controls. Even though this dashboard may look similar to the Shopify admin panel, it’s important to understand that it’s not part of Shopify. It’s a completely separate website that’s styled to create a seamless user experience.

When a merchant opens your app from their Shopify admin (Apps → Your App), Shopify handles authentication and then embeds your website inside Shopify using an iframe. This allows users to interact with both systems smoothly.

We’ll go deeper into the technical details later—but this overview is more than enough to get started.

Required Setup Before You Start Building

Before development begins, you need a few things ready:

A Shopify Partner account (free to sign up)
A development store to test your app
This is a sandbox environment where you can install and debug your app safely.
The Shopify App CLI

The Shopify App CLI is an additional tool that helps you prototype and build Shopify apps efficiently. During installation, you’ll see some requirements—for example, having Ruby installed on your system. Don’t get confused here; this is part of the tooling, even if you plan to use Node.js later.

To be clear, we are not building a Ruby on Rails app. We are building a Node.js and React Shopify app. However, the Shopify App CLI is built on Ruby, which means Ruby must be installed on your system in order to use the CLI—even if your app itself runs on Node.js.

You can simply follow the official installation steps for your operating system. Like any development setup, you may run into warnings or error messages during installation. That’s normal. Every real-world project involves a certain amount of research and troubleshooting, and developing the right problem-solving, engineering mindset is not optional—it’s a minimum requirement for Shopify app development.

Choosing a Code Editor

Next, you’ll need a local code editor. You can use almost anything—just not Windows Notepad.
A popular and industry-standard choice is Visual Studio Code (VS Code), which offers excellent support for JavaScript, React, Node.js, and Shopify workflows.

Creating Your First Shopify App Using the App CLI

Once everything is installed, create a new folder on your system and open it with Visual Studio Code. One major advantage of this approach is that when you open the integrated terminal, your working directory is automatically set to that folder.

Open the Integrated Terminal

You can open the terminal in VS Code by:

Pressing Ctrl + Shift + P (Command Palette), or
Clicking the gear icon and selecting View → Terminal

You should now see your terminal pointing to something like:

Initializing a Shopify App

Now we’re ready to create the app. Run the following command:

You’ll be prompted to choose the app type. Select Node.js when asked.

Next, enter an app name—for example:

Then choose the app type:

Select Public App

The CLI will generate a URL for authenticating with your Shopify Partner account. Open the link, log in, and approve access. Once authentication is successful, you can close the browser tab.

If you have multiple Partner accounts, select the correct one. Then choose the development store where you want to install the app—for example:

The setup process may take a few seconds or even a couple of minutes.

Running the App Locally

At this point, your app is registered in the Shopify Partner Dashboard, but it’s not running yet.

First, navigate into the app directory:

Now start the development server:

This command launches your app locally. Since you don’t yet have a live domain like myapp.com, Shopify will ask you to create a secure tunnel to your local machine.

When prompted, choose Yes.

Behind the scenes, Shopify uses a tunneling service (such as ngrok) to expose your local server to the internet. This temporary URL acts as your app’s public domain during development.

Installing the App in Your Development Store

Once the server is running, the CLI will display a URL. Click it to begin installation.

You’ll be redirected to your Shopify development store, where you can approve and install the app. After installation, Shopify embeds your app inside the admin panel using an iframe.

And just like that—you’ve created your first Shopify app using Node.js and React.

Understanding What Just Happened

Your app is running on your local PC
Shopify communicates with it via a secure tunnel
The app UI is embedded inside the Shopify admin
The backend is powered by Node.js
The frontend interface is built with React

Once you’re ready to go live, you’ll deploy the app to a hosting provider such as Heroku, AWS, or another cloud platform, replacing the temporary tunnel with a real domain.

To better understand how a Shopify app works inside the admin panel, let’s quickly inspect what’s happening behind the scenes.

If you right-click inside the app and choose Inspect, you’ll see an iframe pointing to your local machine through the ngrok tunnel. This iframe is how Shopify embeds your app UI directly into the admin dashboard.

Now, try opening that same ngrok URL in a new incognito window, outside of a Shopify store. You’ll immediately notice that the app fails to load, often showing something like “Shop undefined” or an access error.

This happens because Shopify apps rely on contextual parameters—such as the shop query parameter and OAuth authentication. Without being launched from within a Shopify store, the app can’t identify which store is trying to access it. This is an important security feature and a core part of Shopify app development best practices in 2025.

What Comes Next After Your First Shopify App?

At this point, a very natural question is: “What should I learn next?”
The answer depends entirely on your background and your goals.

If you’re new to Node.js, it’s highly recommended to start by understanding how Node, npm, and basic package management work. Getting comfortable here will make everything else much easier.

From there, there are several important directions you can explore:

Shopify App Bridge: Communication Inside iFrames

Because iframes cannot easily communicate with their parent window, Shopify provides Shopify App Bridge. This library enables secure communication between your embedded app and the Shopify admin.

For example, App Bridge allows you to:

Control navigation
Display modals and toast messages
Sync app state with the Shopify admin

Basic App Bridge Initialization Example

This setup ensures your app behaves correctly when embedded inside Shopify.

Making GraphQL Calls with Apollo Client

Most modern custom Shopify app development relies on GraphQL for data exchange. Shopify’s APIs are GraphQL-first, making it essential to understand how queries and mutations work.

Example GraphQL Query (Products)

This is how your app fetches real store data securely from Shopify.

Routing, UI, and the React Ecosystem

You can also dive deeper into:

Routing with Next.js
React component updates
Modifying UI content dynamically

For example, adding a simple React component change will instantly reflect inside the embedded app.

Building Shopify-Style Interfaces with Polaris

To make your app feel native, Shopify provides Polaris, a React-based design system. It includes pre-built components that match the Shopify admin UI perfectly.

Polaris Button Example

Using Polaris ensures consistency, accessibility, and a professional look—key factors when you build a Shopify app for real merchants.

Server-Side Development, APIs, and Webhooks

On the backend, there’s still a lot to explore:

Creating custom API routes
Handling Shopify webhooks
Processing background jobs
Managing authentication and sessions

Webhooks, in particular, are essential for responding to store events such as app installs, uninstalls, and order creation.

Wrapping Up: A Strong Starting Point

There are countless paths you can take from here—React, GraphQL, App Bridge, Polaris, webhooks, or backend APIs. That’s the reality of Shopify app development: it’s powerful, flexible, and deep.

This setup is already a solid foundation. If you’re aiming to become a freelancer, a more guided and structured learning path can help you get consistent results faster. And if your goal is to build scalable Shopify apps or SaaS products, you’re already on the right track.

This was a strong start—and hopefully a helpful one.