The way to grow a Shopify app to $100K MRR is to work three pillars together: traffic, conversion, and monetization. A great product gets you into the game. These three decide whether you pass $100K MRR.
Every day, dozens of new Shopify apps join the thousands already on the app store. There are far more 4.5-star apps than there are $100K-MRR apps.
What are the three pillars of Shopify app growth?
Each pillar has a number you can benchmark. Here is how the average app compares with the top quartile, from our Shopify app benchmarks across 400+ active Shopify apps on Prys.
| Pillar | Benchmark | Average app | Top quartile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Traffic | Monthly app store page visitors | 644 | 1,075 |
| Conversion | Visit to new paying customer | 2.12% | 3.41% |
| Monetization | ARPU | $27.13 | $36.30 |
| The result | MRR growth | 2.96% a month | 5.75% a month |
Apps that nail acquisition, conversion, and monetization grow past $100K MRR. For the top quartile, 5.75% a month adds up to roughly 96% growth a year, against 42% for the average app.
The rest of this guide takes each pillar in turn, with the moves that have worked across the 100+ Shopify apps our team has grown.
How do you grow traffic to your Shopify app?
Start by knowing which keywords and sources actually pay. Volume alone brings merchants who never subscribe. For every keyword, you want two numbers: how many merchants search it, and what those merchants are worth to you once they arrive.
- Volume: Shopify Ads shows impressions and visibility for your exact-match keywords.
- Quality: installs, subscribers, and revenue per keyword. Shopify app keyword tracking in Prys follows every search term from the visit to the paying customer.
Rank your keywords in three tiers of four or five, with high-value, high-volume terms at the top. New apps should start with niche keywords they can actually win, then climb.
App store SEO & AEO: the cheapest installs you’ll get
For most apps, Shopify search is the number one source of revenue, so your listing copy has a strong, immediate effect on position, traffic, and installs. Place your tier-one keywords in the fields with the most weight: the app name (30 characters), the app card subtitle (62 characters), and the app introduction (100 characters), then the details (500 characters) and feature list. Add your top five search terms in the Partner Dashboard, and write a search title and meta description for Google. Check your rankings a day or two after each change, and iterate. Copy optimization alone can double, even triple, Shopify search installs. The full method is in our guide to Shopify app store SEO & AEO.
Shopify Ads
Shopify Ads get more expensive every season, because every app bids on the same short-tail terms. Run exact and broad match together: exact for the terms you know convert, broad to discover new ones, then promote the winners from broad to exact. Review the search terms report weekly, add irrelevant terms as negatives, and bid by the value of a visitor on each keyword: double down on the high-value keywords and lower bids on the weak ones. Every couple of weeks, add newly discovered keywords, including misspellings and variations, to a separate campaign. In one case, this doubled Shopify Ads installs at a lower cost per install.
Google Ads
Google is the opposite of Shopify Ads. Few Shopify apps advertise there, and merchants search Google all day with problems like “how do I stop losing carts.” Keep “Shopify” out of your keywords and ads (add it as a phrase-match negative), target the problem searches, exclude other platforms like Wix and BigCommerce, and send the clicks to your app store listing.
Then let Google’s AI bid, once it has something to learn from. Start on manual CPC until you have around 30 conversions, then move to AI bidding with Performance Max and AI Max. The AI is only as good as the conversions you feed it. Feed it button clicks and it hunts button clickers. Feed it installs, subscriptions, and payments with real values, and it goes looking for merchants who pay. That’s what Google Ads for Shopify apps in Prys sends it. One store optimization app reached 563% ROAS at a $0.07 average CPC.
Beyond search
Cross-promotion with apps outside your category, affiliates, content, cold outreach, and influencers can all work. Different tactics work for different apps. Try the ones that fit yours, and measure each by the revenue it brings, not the traffic.
How do you convert more visitors into paying customers?
Conversion is where most apps leave the most growth on the table. The funnel from app store page to paying customer is a series of steps, and a series multiplies. Improve one step by 50% and the whole funnel improves by 50%. That’s the same as growing every traffic source by 50%, without paying for a single extra click. It also lets you bid higher on ads and stay profitable.
“Most Shopify apps have the potential to at least double their funnel’s conversion rate. And doubling your conversion rate can lead to tripling your new customers.”
Boaz Lantsman, Co-Founder & CEO, Prys
Here’s where the average app stands at each step, and what the top quartile reaches:
| Funnel step | Average app | Top quartile |
|---|---|---|
| App store page visit to install | 19.34% | 30.67% |
| Install to subscribe or start trial | 29.89% | 49.96% |
| Visit to new paying customer | 2.12% | 3.41% |
On the app store page, four things decide the install: review count and score, visuals that convey your value proposition and key features, persuasive copy, and pricing that’s easy to read. The field-by-field method is in our guide to Shopify app store listing optimization.
From install to subscribe, the biggest lever is order. Send merchants to subscribe right after they install, and onboard them after. Every step between install and subscribe loses merchants. Apps that go straight from install to subscription, or through a single pricing page, reach install-to-subscribe rates of 50% and more.
From trial to paying, keep onboarding short and take the merchant to the point where your app delivers value, then end onboarding in a dashboard that shows that value. Embed your app in the Shopify admin, keep support one click away, and use triggered emails to bring trialists back to their data.
Most apps can double their conversion rate. To find your weakest step first, see Shopify app conversion rate optimization.
Why is monetization the most overlooked growth lever?
Bessemer Venture Partners calls pricing “the most common untapped growth lever”. Pricing quietly shapes conversion in two places: on your app store page, where merchants weigh the cost before they click “add app,” and at the end of the trial, where they ask whether the value justifies the price.
It also moves revenue directly. Sometimes you can raise a price with only a small dip in conversion. Sometimes you move a key feature up a plan and a chunk of customers moves up with it. Top-quartile ARPU is about a third higher than the average, which means the same customer base brings a third more revenue. Prys tracks ARPU against the benchmark on your Shopify app KPIs page, so you can see what each pricing change actually did.
Should your Shopify app offer a free plan?
Usually not. A free plan earns a small bump in Shopify search, but free users aren’t free to you, and converting them to paid is hard. The stronger model is opt-out: there is no real free plan, and merchants subscribe to a paid plan to start the trial. When the trial ends, they convert unless they cancel, instead of having to decide to pay.
The difference is large. Across 86 SaaS companies from 2022 to 2025, First Page Sage found that 48.8% of opt-out trialists become paying customers, against 18.2% for opt-in trials. Opt-out brings fewer trial starts, but far more of them pay.
| Opt-in trial | Opt-out trial | |
|---|---|---|
| How it starts | Free plan, upgrade later | Subscribe to a paid plan to start the trial |
| Visitor to trial | 8.5% | 2.5% |
| Trial to paid | 18.2% | 48.8% |
For a Shopify app, opt-out usually takes one of three shapes: a free plan that includes a usage-based charge with a maximum, a free plan only for development stores with the pricing page shown right after install, or straight to a paid subscription with a high maximum fee.
If you do keep a free plan, engineer the upgrade: set low usage limits, show them in the app, reserve advanced features for paid plans, and keep the free plan low-profile on your pricing page.
How should you optimize tier-based pricing for a Shopify app?
Tiers are the default for Shopify apps, and they work best when each plan maps to a real customer segment. Analyze your current customers first: which shops use what, and how much. Then:
- Price on one metric, two at most, and keep the copy simple, so merchants clearly understand what they’ll pay.
- Align your key pricing metric with your competitors’.
- Show only the lower tiers on your app store page, with a link to “see all pricing options.”
- Move a key feature or limit up a plan, or raise the price of one tier.
- Add or remove a tier.
- If you have no free plan, keep it free for development stores.
Small changes here often move revenue more than a month of new traffic.
When should you try usage-based or hybrid pricing?
If your app delivers measurable value, such as revenues, conversions, or profits, usage-based pricing can lift both conversion and revenue per customer. It ties the fee to a metric the merchant values, which lowers their risk (less value, less payment) while your revenue grows with the value you deliver. Few Shopify apps are purely usage-based. Hybrid pricing, a low recurring fee plus a usage component, is usually the best of both: the recurring fee secures a revenue floor and stays low enough to reduce friction, while the usage component, which merchants are less sensitive to, grows your average revenue per customer.
If your pricing is usage-based, put the maximum fee in the subscription.