This report analyzes the financial journeys of the top 100 Shopify Plus apps. It highlights the massive exits + fundraises, the success of both funded and bootstrapped organizations, and noteworthy trends, such as the dominance of Buy Now, Pay later (BNPL) apps. It also touches on organizational outliers such as Klarna, Mailchimp, and Afterpay, which have had unusual and remarkable business journeys.
Additionally, the report explores the dynamics between funded and bootstrapped apps. For instance, while 59% of the top 100 apps were funded, raising a total of $17.8 billion, 41% of the apps are bootstrapped. This balanced distribution challenges the common narrative that success in the space is dominated by VC-backed bizs.
With 25 / Top 100 apps having already exited, generating a total exit value of $63.7 billion, there is a clear indication of the ecosystem's strength and growth potential. As Shopify continues to gain momentum and expand its user base, the opportunities for app developers and entrepreneurs within the ecosystem are poised to continue to substantially increase.
Shopify’s rise to the dominant eCommerce platform for SMB -> Ent brands has created an eCom-onomy paying out billions to its partners over the years. But larger than payouts are the hundreds of Shopify Apps that have sprung up to be Million - Billion dollar bizs. We’re going to cover how much money The Top 100 Shopify Plus Apps raised and exited for.
We focused on the 100 most-used Apps/Technology for Shopify Plus brands. The #1 app, therefore, has been downloaded the most, and the #100 app the least. If you want to read more on the Top 100 Shopify Plus Apps, check our report here.
This data does not cover the entire Shopify ecosystem and is solely focused on apps most commonly used among the ~30k Shopify Plus stores. You’ll notice in the tracker, we included the “App” and the original developer/owner of the product to make it clear who are the players in the space.
We discuss how we identified the Top 100 Apps in the methodology section of that article.
For Fundraising (across Private + Public Markets) and exit information, we used Crunchbase as our source of truth for data collection. We also checked other websites to spot check information that Crunchbase was missing.
Data callout: Only half (52%) of exits have been disclosed among both funded and bootstrapped organizations, so we need to take the overall analysis with a (huge) grain of salt, as that information is still private.