Shopify App Dev Story: microapps
This is the fourth feature in a series of Shopify App Dev Stories. To learn more about the series and submission process, please visit this page.
The Basics:
microapps Founder: Alexandre Saiz
App on the Shopify App Store:
- MoonMail Recover Checkouts
- Quantity Breaks
- Wholesaler
- Wholesaler PRO
- MoonMail Autoresponders
- Wishlist PRO
- ShopiMap
How did you originally find out about Shopify & the Shopify Partner program?
We started with our own online store which is still live today: Telepienso.com. We were so amazed by the flexibility and robustness of the platform. We started doing some techy tweaks and some of them turned into private apps. Once we had the apps fully functional, like MoonMail Recover Checkouts or Shopimap, we decided it was time to put them on the App Store for free. The response was so huge that we decided to improve them and give advanced features to Shopify merchants for a small monthly fee.
What was the inspiration behind your first Shopify app?
We were sending manual emails to abandoned checkouts and it was a really time consuming task. We had to automate that. There was no app or option within the platform to automate this process, se we built our own.
What did that day feel like, when you officially became published on the Shopify App Store?
Well, the App Store was really small then. We probably were one of the first three apps to be published by “external” developers.
What was your favourite moment as part of the Shopify Dev Community? (eg. Unite, Meet-up, Helping a merchant, Building something you’re proud off)
There have been many nice moments. Being close friends with Eduardo Castañeda (Shopify Partner Manager — LATAM & Spanish Europe) and hanging around, having fun with other partners in Unite, developing a really complex tool for Nestlé, and having our own Shopify Payment Gateway MONEI approved.
What advice would you give to another Shopify dev?
First: BE A MERCHANT.
Once you’re a merchant, you’ll know what their needs are and how to solve them in the best way.
Otherwise a developer can create a tool which is not needed or interesting for any particular merchant.
Anything else you’d like to share?
We’re the creators and maintainers of the official Node Shopify API’s wrapper: https://github.com/MONEI/Shopify-api-node