In Rotation – SS26

There are over 20,000 apps in the Shopify App Store right now.

Every month, we're flooded with dozens of DMs, cold emails, LinkedIn messages, and demo requests, all promising to be the app that changes everything. We actually look at most of them. A lot don't survive first contact with a real store.

We build plenty of custom, from-scratch solutions when that's what a brand actually needs. But sometimes the right answer is already built, and knowing which apps have actually earned a spot in a client's stack, versus which ones are just well-marketed, is its own kind of craft. The good ones solve one problem well instead of chasing five. That's rarer than it sounds in an app store this size.

On deck: six tools – bundling, onsite engagement, accessibility, returns, subscriptions, and giving back at checkout.

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FoxSell

Discounts move inventory. Persuasion moves AOV.

Shopify's bundle app is free, which is usually enough for most stores. But the second a merchant wants infinite mix-and-match and a checkout that skips discount codes, free runs out of road.

We built Félix & Norton a fully custom bundle builder on FoxSell, mapping the entire flow from browsing to box-building to checkout. Customers can now mix and match their favourite cookies, add bonus items right into the bundle, and check out without ever touching a discount code.

• Good fit for: large or complex catalogues, real cross-sell opportunity, F&B brands juggling fast-moving stock, teams who'll actually use the merchandising controls.

• Pricing: free to start, plans from $49/month for growing catalogues.

Check it out

GoodAPI

Every order becomes a tree, a bottle of plastic pulled from the ocean, or a donation. Automatically.

Hooks into orders and subscriptions, converts them into verified environmental action, and hands the brand a badge and an impact dashboard. Set it up once, and it runs on its own from there.

We've planted nearly 4,000 trees since integrating this with our own newsletter signup. Free to install, usage-based from there, no contract, no "let's revisit this in a year." If sustainability's already part of the brand's story, this is where it becomes visible instead of theoretical.

• Good fit for: apparel, outdoor, beauty, coffee, pet, and home goods brands leaning into cause marketing, plus anyone off Shopify entirely, since it also runs as a standalone API.

• Pricing: usage-based, from $0.05/bottle to $1.50/tree, with volume pricing for high-output stores.

Check it out

accessiBe

Accessibility lawsuits have turned into a cottage industry. Firms scan thousands of sites a month looking for an easy settlement, and most brands don't find out they're a target until the demand letter shows up.

accessiBe is one layer we recommend as part of getting ahead of that, not a fix on its own. AI-powered widget, lets shoppers adjust contrast, text size, and navigation on the fly, backed by daily scans catching new issues as pages change. It's not a substitute for real remediation, manual fixes to the underlying code still matter, and no widget can promise full compliance. But it's a visible, fast-to-deploy first step, and a signal a brand's taking this seriously while the bigger work gets scoped.

• Good fit for: stores with a broad or vulnerable customer base, anyone in a regulated or litigation-aware space, brands that want a first layer in place while planning real remediation.

• Pricing: starts around $41/month (billed annually), 7-day free trial.

Check it out

Loop Returns

A bad return experience is the last thing a customer remembers. A good one is the reason they buy again.

Most stores treat returns like a cost centre to minimize, a clunky form, a slow refund, a support ticket. Loop turns it into a branded, self-serve flow that customers barely notice and CS barely touches.

We built Kamik an entire returns program on Loop: a branded EN/FR portal across CA and US, with a direct ERP sync so refund data lands clean without anyone re-keying it. What used to be a 10-20 minute manual process per return for their CS team now runs on its own.

• Good fit for: stores with real return volume, teams drowning in manual CS return handling, multi-region or bilingual stores, anyone whose returns data needs to land cleanly in an ERP.

• Pricing: free tier (Checkout+), Essential from $155/month, Advanced from $340/month, per store.

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Skio

Subscription mechanics are easy. Getting people to actually want to build their own box is hard.

Skio's out-of-the-box build-a-box gets you the mechanics: pick your items, choose a cadence, done. But most brands need more than that, tiered discounts that actually make sense, categories that guide people toward what they'll love, minimum-quantity logic that protects margin without frustrating the customer.

We built NutJar their own build-a-box program on Skio, from scratch: categorized flavours, tiered discounts baked into the build, a subscription-only checkout with no one-time-purchase option to distract from it.

• Good fit for: subscription-first brands ready to move past the default build-a-box, teams who want tiered discounting and merchandising logic that actually reflects how they sell, brands scaling subscription volume seriously.

• Pricing: Scale at $499/month (billed annually) or $599/month, plus a small per-order transaction fee on subscription orders. Enterprise available for high-volume or custom needs. Referred through us? $100 off the platform fee, for life.

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Alia

Klaviyo popups convert at 3-5% on average. Brands see a 2-3x lift after switching to Alia.

Most popups are an afterthought bolted onto an email platform. Alia does the one thing well, AI-optimized timing, offer, and copy, tuned in real time instead of set once and forgotten. It also asks shoppers quick, low-friction questions and turns the answers into zero-party data Klaviyo's own metrics never capture.

For bilingual stores, run separate English and French campaigns rather than one blended one, that's what actually performs.

• Good fit for: paid-traffic-heavy Shopify brands with sub-10% opt-in rates, anyone who wants sharper first-party data without more dev work.

• Pricing: starts at $100/month based on traffic, 30-day free trial through us.

Check it out

“

Anyone can install an app. Knowing which ones actually earn a spot in a client's stack, and building real relationships with the partners shaping this ecosystem, that's the job.

- Brandon Harrar
Founder + Creative Director, HRVST

If any of these sound like something your store could use, let's talk it through. No pitch, no pressure – just an honest read on whether it's the right fit for where you're at.

Click here to schedule a call for 15 or 30 minutes.

More soon,

B.