Pick the wrong apps and you will spend more time installing and uninstalling than actually selling. The Shopify App Store has thousands of options, but most of the genuinely useful ones have a free plan that covers everything a small store needs to get started.
If you are not on Shopify yet, you can start for £1 a month for your first three months, which gives you enough time to properly test everything on this list.
The five apps below cover email marketing, product recommendations, subscriptions, loyalty, and conversion optimisation. We tested all of them on real stores using only the free tiers.
These five apps are not a stack you install all at once. They solve different problems at different stages. Klaviyo and OptiMonk earn their place from day one. Wiser and Smile make more sense once you have consistent traffic and repeat buyers. Recharge is only worth setting up if your product model actually suits subscriptions. Read through all five and pick based on where your store is right now, not where you hope it will be.
Klaviyo is the email marketing app most serious Shopify stores end up on eventually. The free plan covers up to 500 contacts and 500 email sends per month, which is enough to build abandoned cart sequences, welcome emails, and basic segmentation before you pay a penny.
It connects directly to Shopify and triggers emails based on purchase history, browsing behaviour, and cart activity. Setup takes a couple of hours from scratch if you follow their onboarding flow.
Best for stores that are actively building a customer list and want automation from day one. If you are just starting out without a list yet, install it now so you are collecting subscribers properly before you need them.
The abandoned cart sequence is the one to set up first. Klaviyo's default template sends three emails: one an hour after the cart is abandoned, one 24 hours later, and one three days out. In our experience, the first email alone recovers 3 to 8 percent of abandoned carts depending on the product type and the offer in the email. That compounds quickly once you have real traffic. Set this up before you worry about anything else.
Wiser, Recharge, and Smile each solve a specific problem. Whether any of them belong on your store depends on what stage you are at.
Wiser adds product recommendation widgets to your store: customers also bought, frequently bought together, recently viewed. The free plan covers up to 500 monthly orders. Setup takes about ten minutes because the app generates recommendations automatically based on purchase history. You do not need to configure anything manually to get started. The widgets appear on product pages and in the cart. If your average order value is low and you want to increase it without running ads, this is one of the lowest-friction ways to do it.
Recharge manages subscriptions: customers choose a product and receive it on a set schedule. The free plan limits you to a single subscription plan per product and does not include cancellation flows or customer portal customisation. Both of those matter if you want a real retention strategy. It is enough to test whether subscriptions convert at all before you commit to a paid tier. Worth installing if you sell consumables where repeat purchases are part of the model (coffee, skincare, supplements). If subscriptions are not core to your product, skip it for now.
Smile handles loyalty and rewards. The free plan gives you a points-on-purchase programme: customers earn points and redeem them against future orders. You can set the earn rate (say, 5 points per £1) and the redemption value (100 points = £1 off). The referral programme is not available on the free tier. For stores with strong repeat purchase rates (subscription boxes, beauty, supplements), this works well. For one-off or seasonal purchases, the friction of a points programme outweighs the benefit.
OptiMonk creates popup campaigns: exit-intent offers, email capture, discount reveals, and cart abandonment messages. The free plan covers up to 15,000 pageviews per month and includes all the main campaign types.
It integrates with Klaviyo, so emails captured by OptiMonk feed directly into your sequences. The combination of OptiMonk for capture and Klaviyo for nurture is a solid, fully free setup for stores under 500 contacts.
Be realistic about popup design. A popup that fires on every homepage visit will hurt conversions more than help them. Use exit-intent triggers and test different offers before rolling anything out site-wide.
When you first install it, start with one campaign only: an exit-intent popup on the product page offering a small discount (5 to 10 percent) in exchange for an email. Set the trigger to fire after the cursor moves toward the browser tab, not on a timer. Connect it to Klaviyo and make sure captured emails land in your welcome sequence rather than a dead list. Once you have data on what converts, you can build out cart abandonment and post-purchase flows from there.
All five are worth having, but if we had to prioritise: install Klaviyo first. Email is the highest-return channel for most ecommerce stores and the one tool you will regret not setting up earlier.
Add OptiMonk once you have a welcome sequence ready to feed captured leads into. Wiser and Smile make sense once you have regular traffic and repeat customers. Recharge only if subscriptions fit your product model.
