I’ve never created a custom Shopify app before but I have developer experience so I’d like to give it a go! I just want to create an app for our single store, which will manage upsells (eg. customer has individual product, app creates a popup that offers a bundle product where if accepted, will remove the individual product from cart, add the bundle product and potentially apply a discount). I may want to track analytics like conversion rates of upsells, etc. but this is not imperative.
So my question is, Do I need to set up my own server for hosting the app and/or my own database for storing the necessary data (upsell/downsell products, analytics, etc.)? Or will Shopify be able to handle this for me?
Yes, you need your own server… Unless you’re building an extension-only app.
For example, you could build an app that only has checkout UI extensions, theme app extensions, and maybe Shopify Functions, in your case.
But all the logic would need to be in code, instead of configured in an admin panel.
You don’t need a database if you store everything in app-data metafields:
https://shopify.dev/docs/apps/build/custom-data/metafields/use-app-data-metafields
However, I strongly recommend against this approach, for all except the most simple of apps.
I recommend using a PostgreSQL database.
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Its depends what kind of app you are making
Android or IOS then you can use APIs and firebase kind or baas in order to
do authentication and create sessions in shopify
If doing web app then directly use hydrogen