Hi there! I have a couple quick questions regarding Shopify custom and public (unpublished) app testing. I have created a couple test apps through the Shopify CLI which have been developed locally and successfully installed into our development test store. When using the ‘shopify app serve’ command which starts the ngrok tunnel, I can access the app. However, I would like to have other users access the test app when I am not running the local ngrok tunnel. Is there a way to do this? Does the app have to be hosted through another service such as Heroku, or is there a way to have Shopify host an app, or? Any info you can provide is appreciated.
Shopify does not host the apps. You need to use an external service such Heroku. See this answer by Shopify staff for more detailed answer: https://community.shopify.com/c/shopify-apps/app-hosting/td-p/452538 Here is a synopsis from their answer “when building a private app, you will not need to host on your local machine - though you will need to secure your own hosting for this.”