Billing for Shopify APP

Retired Boards Appdev Tools
1

Hello team

We are few days away before launching our first app on shopify . but our dev team has some challenges as we currently have one payment gateway ( Stripe) and that is not Shopify Billing API

We understood that , we need shopify billing API in order to get successful submission , but ther are few scenarios which we couldn’t able to find a way to it

Please go through our scenarios listed below , so you can give us a better solution

  1. Our app is a video based popup tool , it can be added to any website . It is universal and works with any landing page / website builder . So if a user who bought our tool directly from us, the billing will be handled by us and later the same user tries to integrate with Shopify store as we have a feature to integrate the widget on shopify store , how the billing will be handled ? Since he is already a paid user. and subscriptions are managed by us . For example: A merchant, might have bought our tool from our website and paid it for one- full year , now he wants to add the tool for his new shopify store , now how we should able to take forward , since merchant already bought subscription from us , so who will be handling the billing and if merchant renews , should we take care of billing or we need Shopify to take care of it
  • Second scenario is vice versa of 1st point , if our app is in marketplace and a shopify merchant installs it , Shopify billing will manage the subscriptions , but since our app is universal and can be added to non-shopify site , shopify merchant uses the tool to add video popups on other non-shopify website , Later if the same shopify merchants decide to uninstall / delete it , but still the widget that merchant added on other non-shopify site , what happens to it and how billing will be added if the merchant wants to continue using our app
    These two scenario gives our team a challenge, please provide us a better solution on how we can tackle these challenges and overcome this

Any tip would be greatly appreciated

2

Hi @sobankousik In my opinion you should charge only at your store and provide an API to use on Shopify.

So basically, merchants can install your app on their store for free but to make it work, they will need to provide an API. This API can be generated only from your store which is paid.

For example: I have used apps which are dependent on Google Maps API. And I need to generate and provide these API’s myself.

If you also want to provide paid versions on Shopify, then you should only sell Shopify versions on Shopify. So, selling a license to merchants exclusive for Shopify and for all the other platforms, they can purchase directly from your store.

I hope this helps!

3

Hey @prpwebs

Thanks for the suggestion

So you are suggesting to have two billing system

one for shopify and other one is for outside shopify

Since our app is not just for shopify merchants , it can be used universally

So how can we overcome this billing system as it confuses our dev team a lot

Can you give some tips for my dev team ?