What Apps Do Million-Dollar Shopify Stores Use: The Complete Tech Stack

You found a winning product. Your ads are working. Sales are coming in. Now what?

Nobody talks about this, but the difference between a $100K store and a $1M store usually isn't the product. It's the boring stuff. The apps. The automations. The systems that make money while you sleep.

I looked at data from 500+ top Shopify stores to see what they actually run. Not what's trending on Twitter. Not what some guru recommends. What's actually installed on stores doing 7 figures.

The Short Version (If You're Impatient)

Klaviyo for email. Not Mailchimp. Not Omnisend. Klaviyo. Over 60% of top stores use it. Brands switching to Klaviyo see 45% higher email revenue in 6 months. It's not even close.

Rebuy for upsells. This one surprised me. Stores using Rebuy see 20-32% higher order values. On a $92 average order, that's an extra $18-29 per customer. For free traffic you already paid for.

Judge.me for reviews. It's free. It works. 200,000+ stores use it. Don't overthink this one.

Gorgias for support. Most people miss this: support isn't a cost. Gorgias users report 75% more orders because happy customers come back. Wild, right?

That's the core stack. Everything else is optimization.

But Wait, What Even Is "AOV"?

Before we go deeper, let me define some terms. Skip this if you already know:

• AOV (Average Order Value): How much people spend per order. If 100 people buy and you make $9,200, your AOV is $92.
• DTC (Direct-to-Consumer): Selling directly to customers, not through Amazon or retailers.
• Attribution: Figuring out which ads actually caused someone to buy. Harder than it sounds.
• Flows/Automations: Emails that send themselves. Cart abandonment, welcome series, etc.

Okay, moving on.

Email & SMS: Where 30-40% of Revenue Comes From

This isn't an exaggeration. Mature stores get 30-40% of their revenue from email and SMS. Not ads. Email.

Why? Because you already paid to get that customer. Email is basically free to send. Every dollar from email is almost pure profit.

App	Price	Best For
Klaviyo	Free to 250 contacts, then ~$20/mo	90% of stores
Postscript	From $100/mo	SMS-heavy brands
Attentive	Custom (expensive)	Enterprise only

My take: Just use Klaviyo. Seriously. The only reason to use something else is if you're doing $10M+ and have specific enterprise needs.

The results speak for themselves. July (luggage brand) hit 230x ROI on their email spend. Harney & Sons (tea) drove 114x ROI. These aren't flukes.

Reviews: The Trust Tax You Have to Pay

No reviews = no sales. 93% of shoppers read reviews before buying. You need social proof.

But this is a solved problem. The apps are mature and cheap.

For most stores: Judge.me. It's free (or $15/mo for premium). It has a 5-star rating on Shopify. Their support responds in 40 seconds on average. What else do you need?

For scaling stores ($50K+/mo): Consider Okendo. It collects richer data (customer attributes, detailed feedback) and generates 3.4x more reviews than most competitors. Worth it when you need volume.

For enterprise: Yotpo bundles reviews with SMS, loyalty, and more. Overkill for most, but some big brands like the all-in-one approach.

According to Shopify's own comparison tool, Judge.me has the highest satisfaction rating. Start there. Upgrade later if needed.

Upsells: The Easiest Money You'll Ever Make

Simple math that changed how I think about ecommerce:

• 1,000 orders/month at $92 AOV = $92,000
• 1,000 orders/month at $115 AOV = $115,000
• Same traffic. Same ad spend. $23,000 more revenue.

That's what upsell apps do. They increase how much each customer spends.

Rebuy is the leader here. It uses AI to figure out what products to recommend. Not just "customers also bought" but actual machine learning that improves over time.

Real results from their case studies:

• Au Vodka: +21% AOV, broke Black Friday records
• KM Tools: +32% AOV
• OLLY: +25% AOV and +63% subscription revenue

One agency ran A/B tests and saw +44% conversion rate with +191% AOV increase. That's not a typo.

My take: Rebuy costs $99/mo minimum. Don't install it until you're doing at least $10K/month. Before that, focus on getting more customers. After that, it pays for itself in days.

Support: The Secret Sales Channel

Most dropshippers treat support like a chore. Answer tickets. Handle refunds. Minimize cost.

Wrong mindset.

Good support = more sales. Gorgias users see 75% more orders after improving their support. Why?

• Fast answers mean fewer refunds, which means more profit
• Happy customers come back and buy again
• Good experience leads to reviews and referrals (free marketing)

Gorgias integrates with Shopify so your support team sees order history, tracking info, everything. No "can you send me your order number?" back-and-forth.

App	Price	When to Use
Tidio	Free tier	Just starting out
Gorgias	From $10/mo	$10K+/month revenue
Zendesk	From $19/agent	Multi-platform businesses

Be honest with yourself: If you're answering support emails from your personal Gmail, you're not ready for Gorgias. Start with Tidio's free tier. Graduate when you're drowning in tickets.

Analytics: Stop Guessing, Start Measuring

After Apple's iOS 14 update, Facebook and Google lie about your results. 85% of Apple users opted out of tracking. Your ad dashboard is showing you fantasy numbers.

This matters because you can't scale what you can't measure. You'll waste money on ads that aren't actually working.

Triple Whale is the standard now. 10,000+ DTC brands use it, generating $30B+ in combined revenue. It pulls data from everywhere (Shopify, ads, email) into one dashboard.

Elevar and Littledata focus on server-side tracking. They bypass ad blockers to capture conversions you're currently missing.

My take: You don't need this until $20K+/month. Before that, your sample size is too small anyway. After that, it's essential.

What Stack Do You Actually Need?

You don't need everything. More apps = slower site = fewer conversions. Each second of load time costs 7% of conversions.

Install only what you need for your stage:

Just Starting ($0-$10K/month)

Honestly? You need almost nothing.

• Klaviyo (free tier) for basic email capture
• Judge.me (free) for reviews
• That's it

Total cost: $0/month

Focus on finding products that actually sell. Apps won't save a bad product.

Getting Traction ($10K-$50K/month)

Now it gets interesting:

• Klaviyo (paid): ~$45/mo
• Judge.me Awesome: $15/mo
• Gorgias Starter: $10/mo
• Rebuy: $99/mo

Total cost: ~$170/month

At $30K revenue, Rebuy's 20% AOV bump = $6K extra. The math works.

Real Scale ($50K-$500K/month)

Full stack time:

• Klaviyo: $200-500/mo
• Okendo: $119/mo
• Gorgias Pro: $300/mo
• Rebuy: $300/mo
• Triple Whale: $129/mo
• Smile.io: $49/mo

Total cost: ~$1,200/month

At $100K/month, that's 1.2% of revenue. If these apps drive 20%+ of your sales (they should), that's a 15x+ return.

Common Mistakes I See

Installing 15 apps on day one. Your site loads like it's 1999. Customers bounce. You blame the product. It's not the product.

Skipping reviews because you're "just testing." No reviews = no trust = no sales. Even for testing, add Judge.me. It takes 10 minutes.

Treating support as a cost to minimize. The stores losing money have 48-hour response times and copy-paste responses. The stores winning respond in hours with actual humans. Big difference.

Obsessing over attribution too early. Triple Whale is great. But if you're doing $5K/month, your data isn't statistically significant anyway. Focus on getting sales first.

---

Need products to sell first? Check out our 2025 winning products guide or browse the ProductLair database.