There seems to be quite a bit of shadiness going on in the Shopify App Store. A cursory review led to apps that give away the sun and the moon for free, which begs the question; how are they actually making money?

For example, this recommendation engine is "100% free", https://apps.shopify.com/orcinus-product-recommendation

Company page: https://autocommerce.io , and there isn't a pricing plan in sight.

How exactly do you pay for the servers and dev costs? ML experts aren't cheap. They seemed to be backed by an app studio, https://www.innonic.com/en/ . Is this a loss leader? Are they harvesting datasets and selling them to PE? Is it part of some master plan? Or, is it simply an influx of cheap capital in the wrong hands?

What's going on here?

This example is one of several I've found that seem to be data harvesting operations. Could someone trick non-technical folks into introducing severe vulnerabilities for all their customers via this? Tracking them across the internet for fraud or scummy marketing?

Edit: More examples,

https://apps.shopify.com/zoorix

https://apps.shopify.com/upsell-funnel-engine-upsells

Further cursory research shows that this isn't the only category with an impossible value : price ratio. What in the name of Baphomet is going on?