Rob Chinery

@kmichaelhall @matthewsmith Has anyone had any success with reporting these types of blatant ripoffs to Shopify?

If cheap AI copycats continue to be approved in the Shopify App Store, merchants will no longer be able to trust the App Store. Helium has been building Shopify apps for 12 years, but Shopify will approve new apps that are carbon copies of our apps, and what recourse do we have?

@alexanderhupfer I might have to try something like this. It would definitely save me a ton of time dealing with common customer support issues.

Building a MCP server for Crisp is a major unlock. Now I'm running a single MCP server that can access production DB + Crisp conversations + adminAPI which streamlines customer support

@alexanderhupfer I’ve been frustrated by this for a while. I can’t think of any scenario where the user would want to set a different language for one specific app rather than just using their account language setting.

i’m really confused with Shopify’s app review regarding localization - they seem to expect the ability to switch language using an in app setting, shouldn’t it just use the user locale?

@patjakubik This is a real pain for me too. I usually look at the merchant’s history and try to determine whether I think they’ll pay their invoice or not. If I do then I’ll issue app credits, otherwise I tell them to follow up once they’ve been charged.

Shopify devs, what's your workflow when merchants request refunds but the money hasn't shown up in the partner dashboard yet? Like 90% of the time when they ask for a refund, I literally can't process it because the funds aren't there. And it's always a guessing game whether Shopify has actually charged them or not - feels like a coin flip honestly. Dealing with this eats up so much time with all the back-and-forth messages trying to figure out what's going on.

Built my first side project hosted entirely on @Cloudflare workers and using D1 as the database. Anyone can add & track any software product just by submitting its url.

Merchant misread “Ultimate” as “Unlimited” for the plan name so they threatened a negative review unless I compensated them for their mistake. How do other devs handle this?

I’ve had a ton of these coming in lately. It’s one of the new review system changes that I do agree makes sense to cut down on fraud. Just frustrating though knowing it could take 3 months for them to convert to full priced plans (if they do at all).

@yeramianm I often get users who just check off all of the options when uninstalling, even the reasons that aren’t at all applicable to my app or their use of it.

Uninstalling our app and putting 'expensive or unexpected cost' as the reason tells me you did not look at the app at all.

@matthewsmith I’ve always found it shocking that Shopify hasn’t done anything to cut down on this kind of spam sent through their own system. 90% of the messages I get through that are this kind of stuff.

If anyone at Shopify is looking for an easy AI project. I got you.👊

@harleyf @alexanderhupfer I was gonna say this seemed very hard to believe

@alexanderhupfer This is completely false. Not even close to being true.

Shopify's largest merchant is responsible for close to 10% of their total revenue. Do you know who it is?

@TyChapman___ Definitely a great app concept. The only downside I’ve found with set & forget apps is it makes it difficult to collect reviews since the merchant is rarely interacting with the app.

Most genius Shopify app I didn’t build: UPTIME ✅ ZERO competition (3 years old) ✅ Network effect baked in (more stores = stronger product) ✅ “Set & forget” (lowest support overhead possible) Now… all the biggest brands in the world run on it. Sometimes the best apps are the boring ones.

@faridmovsumov Most of the support inquiries I get are because of this. Shopify definitely needs to do a better job of explaining to merchants how the billing cycle works.

We just got our first 1-star review, and of course, it is because the app billing system is confusing to merchants 😰 The merchant used our app for 25 days on the paid plan. Maybe when uninstalling the app, Shopify can show a notification that the charge hasn't been paid yet and will be charged in the next cycle. Merchants are always surprised when they see a charge from an uninstalled app.

@Schwarzenegger Anyone who's been following you for a while should know you've always been remarkably consistent on this. I remember you campaigning for an end to gerrymandering before I even really knew what the word meant.

I know it’s very hard for all of you to imagine someone who has principles that don’t change with a partisan lens, but Google or ask your AI about my history of fighting gerrymandering whether it is by Democrats or by Republicans.

@hustlin_heev @DsMatie Probably depends on a lot of factors. Current market conditions, category, competition, etc. Probably at least $20k in monthly profit.

how much mrr would a shopify app have to be doing to get bought for $1M @DsMatie ?

@kmichaelhall I feel like many of the changes actually favor inauthentic reviews over authentic ones. Archiving reviews that mention support or from shops that have closed while publishing reviews like the one you posted just seems highly counterintuitive.

@RobChinery I was cautiously optimistic, but it really does seem worse now

Shopify: We find this app review from a merchant who used your app for 1 minute to be reliable and worth sharing with everyone. Also Shopify: These reviews from Shopify Plus stores who have used your app for months - those reviews are unreliable and will be archived.

@irek_khasyanov @ShopifyDevs You will, particularly if most of the competitors in your category haven't localized their apps.

I translated app to 6 languages, should I see spike on installs? @ShopifyDevs

@kmichaelhall @ssezerium I see this happen a fair amount. I can't really figure out why anyone would do this, but I guess some people just really enjoy checking boxes.

@ssezerium they just selected all of the available reasons... or copy/pasted them as the response 🤷🏼‍♂️

How did you decide in 10 minutes? :D

@DsMatie @mixpanel @heymantle I use both. Mostly because I setup Mixpanel events before Mantle was around. My only hesitation in moving completely over to Mantle is that Mixpanel provides a pretty generous free tier.

Some Shopify App owners here who used @mixpanel and @heymantle and can tell me which one is the best and why?

@LarsHoldgaard @levelsio It helps but the models still have a tendency to often favor the versions they were trained on even when directly provided with the updated docs.

@RobChinery @levelsio Honestly also skill/tooling issue. Context7 mcp and you solve that problem :)

I hear this from my founder friends a lot too I don't care what all the developer X accounts here say "noooo AI won't do anything to the SWE job market" It's 100% coping, because it already did! It wiped out the low to mid-tier of the SWE job market You don't hire the low to mid-tier SWE because your existing engineers can do the same job by telling AI to do it You do hire the 10x engineers for the more difficult and advanced problems that AI can't handle (yet)