What are the best free Shopify apps for a new store?
Short answer
Five tools launch a store and four are free: the DSers free plan, the Dawn theme, the Meta pixel with Conversions API, and CapCut for editing. The fifth is Shopify itself at $39/mo. Add Judge.me and Klaviyo on their free tiers at your first sale. Every other app is a solution to a problem you cannot yet measure, and app creep reaches $220/mo in three months.
| App | Free tier | Install it | When it stops being free |
|---|---|---|---|
| DSers | 3,000 products | Before launch | Only if you need bulk editing or several stores. |
| Dawn theme | Free forever | Before launch | Never. Premium themes are a post-validation purchase. |
| Meta Conversions API | Free | Before launch | Never. Not optional either — attribution collapses without it. |
| GA4 | Free | Before launch | Never. Check the checkout funnel weekly and ignore the rest. |
| Judge.me | Usable from order one | First sale | $15/mo when you want the paid layouts and imports. |
| Klaviyo | 250 contacts | First sale | At 250 contacts, which arrives faster than you expect. |
| Shopify Email | 10,000 emails/mo | Optional | Fine for campaigns, too weak for flows. Klaviyo does both. |
| ReConvert | Free tier | 50 orders | Paid tiers from about $79/mo. Not before you have orders. |
The free tiers worth installing, and the point at which each one stops being free. Checked August 2026.
Four free tools and one $39 subscription
The whole launch stack:
- Shopify Basic — $39/mo, or $1/mo on the promo for three months
- DSers free plan — 3,000 products and unlimited orders
- The Dawn theme — free, fast, converts
- Meta pixel with Conversions API — free, and a 15-minute setup in the Shopify sales channel
- CapCut — free, and what most winning ads in this niche are edited in
That is a store that can take an order, fulfil it, track a conversion and produce creative. Everything past it is optional until something measurable is broken.
The three free tiers that are genuinely good
Judge.me. Reviews with photo imports, usable from your first order on the free tier. Best value app on Shopify, and social proof is the cheapest conversion lift available to a store nobody has heard of.
Klaviyo, free to 250 contacts. Set up abandoned checkout and post-purchase flows in week one. Those two flows typically add 8-15% to revenue and then run without you.
GA4. Free, and 90% of the value is one screen: the checkout funnel, checked weekly. Where sessions drop between add-to-cart and purchase tells you more than any dashboard you can buy.
Conversions API is not optional
Worth separating from the rest, because people treat it as advanced.
iOS attribution collapses without server-side events, which means Meta cannot see most of your conversions, which means the algorithm optimises on partial data and your cost per purchase rises for no reason you can see in the store.
It is free and it is fifteen minutes inside the Shopify sales channel. Do it before your first campaign, not after your first confusing week.
What to skip, and until when
- Upsell apps — until 50 orders. Vitals at $29.99/mo replaces about four $15 apps.
- Premium themes — $180-$400, after 100 orders on one product.
- Spy tools — $30-$99/mo, and the free stack is 3-7 days behind, which does not matter under 20 orders a day. The case is in do I need a spy tool.
- Attribution suites — above $50k/mo. Below that they tell you what the ads manager already says.
- SMS — not before 300 orders a month.
What a free stack cannot do
Worth knowing before you assume free is permanent:
Klaviyo caps at 250 contacts, which a working store passes in a few weeks. That is the first paid app most people genuinely need, and it is the one worth paying for because the flows earn their fee.
Review imports are limited on the Judge.me free tier, so a new store with no reviews stays that way longer.
Attribution stops at the Conversions API. You will not get channel-level truth on a free stack, and below $50k/mo you do not need it.
None of that blocks a launch. All of it arrives around your first hundred orders, which is the right time to start paying for software.
App creep is a real cost
A store that installs one more app a week reaches $220/mo of subscriptions within three months. At $35.20 of gross profit per order, that is six orders a month spent before you buy a single ad.
Two habits prevent it: open your Shopify billing page on the first of every month and uninstall anything you have not looked at in 30 days, and remember that every app injects script into your theme — five apps commonly add 0.5-1.5 seconds to mobile load time, and each second costs conversion rate.
The full monthly picture, including the card fees and refunds that dwarf the app bill, is in hidden costs of dropshipping.
The order to install them
- Before launch: Dawn, DSers, Meta pixel with CAPI, GA4. Connecting DSers takes about ten minutes — step by step here.
- First sale: Judge.me free, Klaviyo free, abandoned checkout and post-purchase flows.
- 50 orders: one upsell app, and only one.
- 300+ orders: attribution, SMS, a sourcing agent.
Every tool on the site with a verdict on when to skip it is on the tool stack guide.
Related questions
Do I need a paid theme?
Which two flows should I set up first?
When should I install an upsell app?
This is one question out of a much longer guide. The full breakdown lives onthe tool stack guide, and you can run your own numbers in thebreak-even calculator.