Shopify Store more predatory than the App Store with its developer cut | Hacker News Reader

Shopify Store more predatory than the App Store with its developer cut

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41 pointsplehoux8 comments

Shopify is looking to force more developers into their 20% cut to squeeze more revenue out of their existing partners since the business isn't growing fast enough on the seller side. On top of the obvious issues with the 20% cut, other platforms like BigCommerce have copied Shopify's model. So now I need to pay out 40% to support both? This falls apart quickly if you support more than 1 shopping cart platform.

I suspect that the major players negotiate exceptions. I don't for a second believe that the large companies you see on the Shopify App Store pay their 20% cut. They would never agree to that.

I do agree that this will lead to a regression and force app developers into using Private/Custom apps, making for a worse and less secure experience for Shopify customers.

Not to dismiss your concerns, but you're not really paying 40% since presumable a seller is only buying one of those plugins since they're either running on Shopify or BigCommerce (not both).

So if I have a BigCommerce store and you only support Shopify you just wouldn't get my sale, right? By supporting multiple platforms you're increasing the pool pf potential customers, not increasing the percent you pay.

Or am I misunderstanding how you arrived at 40%?

I'm not familiar with either of these platforms from a seller perspective. How does the math work out to paying double (40%)?

If you make a sale on BigCommerce then they take their 20%, but a separate sale on Shopify should only be 20%. The only way that you'd end up paying 40% total is if both platforms take their cut for the same sale. Is this how each sale is structured?

The 20% take is not per sale. It is per whatever your monthly charge is for selling your app.

For example, if I make an app that manages your product data on Shopify and BigCommerce for $100 per month. Shopify forces me to pay them $20, and BigCommerce forces me to pay them $20. I am only making $60 now.

If I want to support 6 platforms that have this pricing model, I now have to pay them a combined 120% of whatever I charge for my app!? Workarounds to this are using private apps so that to Shopify it looks like the Shopify Storefront owner built their own custom integration, or potentially breaking your software into a bunch of tiny separately billed components, both of which are a bad experience and a waste of resources (These options are also probably against the Shopify ToS).

I post this thread on HN. I honestly can't understand why they would deprecate the Unpublished App option. Was a win win for everyone. Using their Billing API makes sense when you building a business on top of theirs... but it's not our case.

Any other people affected by this here?

+1 - we're going through the exact same thing.

We offer an integration with Shopify for a subset of our users (~5%) and while they love the integration, it's not relevant to the other 95% of users... which means it would make no sense maintaining separate Billing code for a small subset of our users that see the integration with Shopify as one feature of our SaaS.

It seems like we're only left with the option to deprecate. Which is a lose-lose-lose: We lose customers. Shopify loses an integration. And the customers lose this utility.

Agreed, we are doing the same and building a private app with custom auth.

Atlassian takes 15-30% https://developer.atlassian.com/platform/marketplace/knowled...

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