For beginners
Practical introductions to setting up a Shopify blog and publishing your first useful articles.
Shopify company account requests vs wholesale approval apps: what is native now, and what still is not
Two claims still dominate US wholesale advice: that Shopify B2B is Plus-only, and that Shopify has no native wholesale signup. Both are out of date. Since the April 2, 2026 changelog, B2B runs on Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus, and the free Shopify Forms app collects company account requests that sit under Customers > Companies > Ordering not approved until a merchant approves them. What is still missing: no way to add a buyer to an existing company, rejection means deleting the company record, and the form cannot run on a gated store. Five apps from $0 to $150/month close different parts of that gap, and they split into two different architectures. Researched September 3, 2026.
Shopify Validates Addresses for Free — and Tells You Not to Run an App Alongside It
Shopify's admin address validation is on by default, free, on every plan, and supports the US. Checkout-time validation is one toggle away. Shopify's own documentation then warns that running a third-party address validation app at the same time can create conflicting suggestions and reduce checkout conversion — you are meant to pick one. That reframes the whole category: apps are not there to duplicate deliverability checking, they are there to enforce policy Shopify's validator does not enforce, like blocking PO boxes or requiring an apartment number. We priced four real apps from the US App Store on September 2, 2026, spanning $4.99/month flat, $0.04 per order, and one that requires a separate subscription billed outside Shopify.
Shopify Carbon Offset Apps: Who Pays Decides Everything, and on Non-Plus Stores the Customer Cannot Pay at Checkout
Every carbon offset app on the Shopify App Store answers one question first: does the merchant pay, does the customer opt in, or both. That answer decides the billing model, the storefront surface, and what you are allowed to say afterwards. We priced six apps in the US App Store on September 2, 2026. Shopify's own help documentation states the Planet checkout extension is Shopify Plus only, so on a non-Plus store the customer contribution lives in a theme badge, not in checkout. The per-unit prices are not comparable either: Ecologi lists $0.28 per kg of carbon removal while Greenspark lists $0.01 per kg CO2e on its paid plans. And CrbonFree's pricing card says merchants retain 40% of what the customer pays for the offset, while Shopify's Planet documentation says Shopify takes no cut at all.
Shopify Has No Donation Feature — and "100% Goes to the Charity" Means Three Different Things
Shopify has no native way to collect a customer donation or a round-up at checkout. The closest built-in feature is Tipping, and Shopify's own help center suggests relabeling it "Donations" — but tipping caps at $1,000, breaks with Shop Pay Installments, isn't supported by the Subscription API, and has no charity, no disbursement, and no receipt. So merchants install an app, and that is where the real decision hides. We read the terms and help centers of five donation apps on September 2, 2026 and found three incompatible answers to one question: who is the donor of record. ShoppingGives issues the donation receipt to the merchant, Pledgeling Foundation emails it to the shopper, and DailyKarma tells shoppers they will not get a charity receipt at all. The fee models differ just as sharply — on $1,000 of monthly donations, the charity receives $1,000, $841, or $870 depending on which app you picked.
A Retailer Just Sent You an EDI 850. Shopify Has Two Apps That Can Answer It — and One of Them Won't Print a Price
Your first big-box purchase order does not arrive as an email. It arrives as an EDI 850, and the buyer expects an 856 ASN before the truck moves and an 810 invoice after it lands. Nothing in the Shopify admin speaks X12. We searched the US Shopify App Store on September 2, 2026 for every app that handles retailer EDI and found exactly two listings: SPS Commerce, whose pricing card says 'Contact SPS Commerce for full pricing details prior to install' and warns that charges are billed separately from your Shopify invoice, and Crstl at $149/month with 'No Document Fees' printed on the plan. Meanwhile TrueCommerce and Logicbroker both integrate with Shopify and neither one is in the App Store at all.