A listing inside the Shop App is not your app. Shopify gives you a great web store — it does not give your customers a standalone branded app to install. Shastra does, for $99 once, not $500 a month.
Free Android APK build to start. No card needed. 14-day money-back guarantee.
Shopify is excellent at getting your store online. These are the gaps it leaves once your customers are on a phone.
The Shop App is Shopify's marketplace. Your store lives inside it among thousands of other merchants. Customers use it for Shopify's features — order tracking, Shop Pay — not for yours. There is no branded icon under your store name on their home screen.
E-commerce native apps consistently outperform mobile web on conversion — across every category. Shopify's mobile checkout is good, but it still requires a browser, a URL, and the friction of the web. Your repeat customers especially feel this.
Shopify's own push notification feature requires customers to be inside the Shop App — not your store. To send a push from your brand directly to a customer's lock screen, you need your own app. That is the only way.
Tapcart starts at $250/month. Vajro at $99/month. Plobal Apps at $79/month. Most require annual billing. For a store doing under $1M/year, these tools cost more than many Shopify plans themselves.
The industry benchmark for abandoned cart email open rates is around 18-22%. Push notification open rates average 90%+. For a Shopify merchant, the math of abandonment recovery changes completely with a native app.
Browser bookmarks are invisible. PWA shortcuts are obscure. The only way to put your store icon on someone's home screen permanently — next to Instagram, next to their bank app — is a real native app on the App Store.
Most Shopify merchants are quoted monthly subscriptions that cost more than their Shopify plan. Here is the full picture.
The Shop App gives your customers Shopify's features. Shastra gives them yours.
| Shopify's Shop App | Your Branded App | |
|---|---|---|
| Your store's own icon on the home screen | ✕ | ✓ |
| Listed on Google Play under your store name | ✕ | ✓ |
| Listed on App Store under your store name | ✕ | ✓ |
| Push notifications from your brand directly | ✕ | ✓ |
| Abandoned cart push alerts | ✕ | ✓ |
| Custom navigation (bottom bar / side menu) | ✕ | ✓ |
| Your header, colors, and splash screen | ✕ | ✓ |
| Shopify checkout and payment gateways work | ✓ | ✓ |
| Order tracking | ✓ | ✓ |
| Works with Shopify apps on your storefront | Partial | ✓ |
Your Shopify store stays exactly as it is. Shastra wraps it in a native shell that turns browsers into installed customers.
Send a push notification when a customer adds to cart and disappears. The same message sent via email gets opened by 1 in 5 people. Via push, it lands on the lock screen of almost everyone who has your app installed.
Repeat customers are your highest-value segment. A branded app icon on their home screen means your store is visible every time they unlock their phone — not buried in a browser history. That presence drives repurchase without ad spend.
Time-limited offers require time-sensitive reach. An email sent at noon lands in an inbox that might be checked at 6pm. A push notification appears the moment you send it. Urgency only works when people see it immediately.
Pin your most profitable collections to a bottom tab bar. New arrivals, bestsellers, sale items — each one a single tap from the home screen icon. Shopify mobile web requires several steps to get to any specific collection.
Strip out live chat widgets, exit-intent popups, cookie banners, and other elements that degrade the mobile experience. Inject any CSS from the Shastra dashboard without touching your Shopify theme.
Certificates, metadata, screenshots, and the review process. Android approval in 2-3 days, iOS in 1-2 days. Shopify app builder platforms charge extra for submission handling; it is included here.
No Shopify app to install. No developer. No monthly contract. Just your store URL and 10 minutes.
Enter your store URL — mystore.myshopify.com or your custom domain. No Shopify admin access or Partner account needed.
Upload your app icon and splash, set header colors, create a bottom tab bar with your key collections, and add any CSS cleanup you need.
Click Build. Our pipeline compiles and signs your Android APK, AAB, and iOS IPA — all ready within the hour.
Download and submit yourself, or let us manage the full Google Play and App Store submission process.
Any store with repeat customers or a brand identity is a candidate.
Fashion customers are habitual. They check their favourite brands constantly. A push notification for a new collection or a restock gets opened immediately — and the customer who installed your app is far more likely to buy than one browsing from a Google ad.
Running low on your product is a high-intent moment. An email reminder might arrive too late or sit unread. A push notification from your app arrives in real time, when your customer is standing in the kitchen thinking about reordering.
Beauty customers are among the most brand-loyal in e-commerce. Give them an app that feels like yours — not a generic shopping marketplace. Your reviews app, loyalty program, and product guides all work inside the native shell just as they do on your storefront.
Sports and outdoor customers act fast on time-sensitive deals. A push notification for a 24-hour sale sent to everyone who has your app installed reaches people in the moment, not hours later when an email surfaces. That is the channel advantage.
$99 once. Your branded app on Google Play and the App Store. Push notifications included.
14-day money-back guarantee. Free APK build, no card needed.
Tapcart starts at $250/month ($3,000/year minimum). Vajro and Plobal Apps start at $79-$99/month. Most require annual contracts and charge more for push notifications. Shastra costs $99 once — a lifetime payment with no recurring fees, no feature tiers, and no contracts. You get the same result: a native app on Google Play and the App Store with push notifications included.
The Shop App is Shopify's own consumer-facing marketplace. Your store appears inside it among thousands of other merchants under Shopify's branding. Customers download the Shop App for Shopify features like order tracking and Shop Pay — not specifically for your store. There is no standalone icon under your name on their home screen. Shastra builds an independent app that lives on Google Play and the App Store under your store's name with your icon.
Yes. Shopify checkout is engineered to work across all surfaces and renders correctly inside a native WebView. Cart, saved addresses, Shop Pay, Stripe, PayPal, and all other payment gateways function exactly as they do on Shopify mobile web.
Yes. Once customers install your app, you send push notifications from the Shastra dashboard — a title, body, and optional URL that deep-links into a specific product or collection. Shopify's push feature requires the Shop App, not your branded store. This gives you a direct channel your competitors on mobile web simply do not have.
Yes. Shastra loads your live Shopify storefront, so any third-party app that renders on your frontend — Loox, Yotpo, Judge.me, Smile.io, Bold Upsell — continues to work inside the native shell. You do not need to reconfigure anything.
Yes. Shastra loads your live Shopify store exactly as it renders on mobile web. If your theme is already mobile-optimised (and every modern Shopify theme is), it will look correct in the app. You can also inject custom CSS from the Shastra dashboard to hide elements like live chat widgets or exit-intent popups that degrade the app experience.
Off-the-shelf Shopify app builders range from $1,000 to $12,000 per year with ongoing fees. A custom native Shopify app built by a development agency typically costs $50,000 to $500,000. Shastra costs $99 once.
Setup takes around 10 minutes. Build generation completes within the hour. Google Play review is typically 2-3 business days; App Store review is 1-2 days. Most stores have a live app within a week of starting.
Shastra works with any website platform