How do you keep Shopify costs under control?

Watch the app bill rather than the plan. The subscription is fixed and visible; the apps accumulate quietly and are the line that grows without a decision.

In more detail

A quarterly review with one question per app — what would break if this were removed — usually recovers a meaningful amount. Anything nobody can answer for is a monthly charge for a problem that has gone away.

What to do about it

The apps in the Shopify store are where the cost quietly grows. Six at twenty dollars a month is more than the plan.

Most Shopify performance problems are the theme and the images, not Shopify.

Shopify handles the parts that are genuinely hard and genuinely regulated: payments, taxes, order records. That is what the subscription is for.

The mobile app angle

A mobile app sits on top of Shopify rather than replacing it — the catalogue syncs, and checkout stays Shopify’s.