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The Best Shopify Plugins For Dropshipping and Small Businesses (2021)
4.8 (96.67%) 6 votes

Creating a successful dropshipping business or pop-up store is a lot of work. Luckily, the Shopify app store contains plugins that can help you manage your project more easily. These are the best Shopify plugins for dropshipping and startup stores in 2021. 

Every store needs great salespeople. They also need security, marketers and accountants. Instead of hiring an army of staff, you can employ a tireless, 24-hour workforce of Shopify plugins to do all that for you. These plugins will cut your bounce rate, reduce basket abandonment and boost your conversion rate immediately.

The vast majority of online purchases involve browsing for reviews from previous customers. Social Proof is one of the most powerful tools marketers can use to convert uncertain customers. The use of reviews is more effective if your visitors trust they are impartial. To achieve this, product review plugins from the Shopify App Store collect and display customer reviews for you.

Nudgify – Social Proof & FOMO

4.6 ⭐️ – Free plan

nudgify social proof plugin

Nudgify adds engaging notifications, called “Nudges”, to key pages on your website. These Nudges create effects such as Social Proof and FOMO. Using live data from your store, including your stock levels and recently sold items, Nudgify engages your customers with real-time information that brings a quiet store to life.

Unlike sales messages or pop-ups, Nudges have been designed to improve your customer experience. That means you start building long-term value, rather than a short term sales boost.

Pricing:

  • Free – 1000 notifications per month
  • $9/month – 10,000 notifications per month, all themes and animation styles
  • $29/month – 100,000 notifications per month, removable branding
  • $89/month – 1,000,000 notifications per month

Fera Product Reviews App

4.9 ⭐️ – 30-day free trial

social proof urgency plugin

Alongside personalised and persuasive messages, Fera allows store owners to display countdown timers and highly customised messages. The plugin includes an A/B testing feature that allows you to experiment with different kinds of messages. 

Pricing:

  • $9/month – maximum revenue $5000 per month
  • $29/month – maximum revenue $50,000 per month
  • $99/month – maximum revenue $200,000 per month

Product Reviews (by Shopify)

4.5 ⭐️ – Free

product review plugin shopify

Shopify’s own solution for providing product reviews to your customers is simple to install and easy to use. Some types of store might want features that are missing from the package, such as the ability to prompt customer reviews with an automatic follow-up email. However, this is a no-brainer for most of the platform’s users.

Pricing:

  • $0/month – free to use

Loox Product Reviews & Photos

4.9 ⭐️ – 14-day free trial

loox social proof plugin

A more sophisticated approach to user reviews, Loox allows you to display galleries of former customers with HD display images. Reviews can be shared through Social Media or in-store pop-ups, and the platform allows you to auto-send prompts. 

Pricing:

  • $9.99/month – Includes only 100 review request emails
  • $29.99/month – 500 review request emails and all basic features
  • $59.99/month – 1,500 monthly review request emails and advanced features 
  • $99.99/month – 1o,000 monthly review request emails and all Pro features 

Securing your shop will not only keep you safe, it will also increase the trust customers place in you. Security concerns can stop people from making a purchase, even a great one! By showing that your Shopify store is secure, you can offer better value to your visitors.

Shop Protector 

4.4 ⭐️ – 14-day free trial

security plugin shopify Shop Protector

Shop Protector prevents bots from making fake accounts on your Shopify forms. The plugin boasts “best-in-class” security, and does not interfere with your customers’ user experience. However, there have been one or two suggestions of genuine orders being flagged as fraudulent and blocked.

Pricing:

  • $4.99/month – the plan designed for Shopify basic stores
  • $4.99/month + 0.5% total order revenue/month – for Shopify Plus stores

Locksmith

4.8 ⭐️ – 15-day free trial

shopify security plugin locksmith

Locksmith allows you to “lock” content on your Shopify store, restricting access to certain pages. You can then decide who gets to see those page by creating “keys” (for example, when a browser is a registered customer, has a set amount in their basket, or has a passcode). The protection is backed by powerful encryption technology and the support is well-reviewed. However, this Plugin does become expensive when your traffic begins to scale up.

Pricing:

  • $9/month – designed for store owners on the Shopify Basic plan
  • $29/month – for people using a regular Shopify plan
  • $79/month – an Advanced option
  • $199/month – the enterprise option for Shopify Plus stores

Vault Premier – Anti-Theft

4.9 ⭐️  – Free

vault premier shopify plugin

Vault Premier protects every image on your website from site scraping. That means your competitors will be unable to copy and paste your content, claiming it as your own. The plugin disables right-clicks on your protected content and prevents anyone from saving it. 

Pricing:

  • $0 – Free to use

Google Analytics may provide you with all the information you want about your site. However, it comes with a steep learning curve and getting your dashboards right is a complicated process. The advantage of a Shopify analytics plugin is that it can provide you with tailored insights direct to your Shopify workspace.

BeProfit Profit Calc & Reports 

4.9 ⭐️  – 14-day free trial

shopify profit calculator beprofit

BeProfit allows you to track every expense for your store and record each source of revenue. Because the setup is precise, with hundreds of third-party integrations for things like delivery and warehousing, your reports are accurate. With the most expensive plan, you can customise your dashboards and personalise various aspects of your reports. 

Pricing:

  • $0/month – up to 20 monthly orders
  • $25/month – full dashboard for profit and expenses
  • $50/month – Ad insights, advanced filters and customisation

Yandex.Metrica Analytics

4.9 ⭐️ – Free

Yandex plugin shopify

Yandex is a relatively new option from the Shopify App Store. It provides real-time traffic and performance analytics, as well as session replays. That means you find out what is going on in your Shopify store and why it might be happening. For a relatively unknown and free plugin, Yandex is exceptionally well reviewed. 

Pricing:

  • $0 – Free to use

Simply Cost – Profit Tracking

4.8 ⭐️ – 14–day free trial

accounting plugin for shopify

SimplyCost tracks your total business profits automatically. It provides monthly reports that include one-off expenses and advertising costs. That means you can advertise with Facebook or Google without worrying about your bottom line. The plugin also allows you to see which of your products are the most profitable (rather than simply the best-selling).

Pricing:

  • $4.99/month – one plan designed for every type of customer

Order Metrics

4.8 ⭐️ – 14-day free trial

shopify plugin order metrics

Order Metrics provides more detail about your store’s day-to-day performance. One of the advantages of this plugin is that it automatically projects your Customer Lifetime Value by recording customers’ previous purchases. Like Simply Cost, Order Metrics makes it easy to see which of your products is generating the largest profit. However, it also shows you which campaigns and which customer journey paths are generating the most revenue. 

Pricing:

  • $29/month – the Lite plan, without many of the integrations or automated features
  • $59/month – the Pro plan

Search Engine Optimisation has been seen as a cure-all for eCommerce stores. Whilst the true power of SEO marketing may be overestimated by some, improving your search engine presence is a reliable way to secure more visitors to your store. These Shopify plugins allow you to enhance your web presence the white-hat way. 

Smart SEO

4.9 ⭐️  – 7-day free trial

seo plugins for shopify

This plugin automates the meta data and alt tags that make your Shopify store visible to search engines. It is relatively simple to add these elements to your site manually, but this tool will save you that time at a reasonable price.  

Pricing:

  • $4.99/month – one plan for every store

Plug-In SEO

4.7 ⭐️  – 7-day free trial

Rather than automating the SEO tasks that will make your store visible, Plug-in-SEO runs audits and advises you on how to improve your site. It is more labour-intensive than the Smart SEO plugin, but offers more flexibility and customisation as well.

shopify seo plugin

Rather than automating the SEO tasks that will make your store visible, Plug-in-SEO runs audits and advises you on how to improve your site. It is more labour-intensive than the Smart SEO plugin, but offers more flexibility and customisation as well.

Pricing:

  • $0/month – a plan with only recommendations and no support
  • $20/month – instruction videos, premium support and automatic SEO features

Customer support is a neglected feature of eCommerce. However, when it’s done right, the results are impressive. Think about Amazon, the world’s largest online store by some distance. What sets it apart is not the interface or design; it is the service. 

Contact Us Form Builder 

4.8 ⭐️  – 30-day free trial

contact plugin shopify

Employing a customisable contact form might seem unnecessary, but it can have a significant impact on your customer relationships. The things that stick in our minds tend to be experiences that are unusually good (or bad), so making an extra effort to be contactable can make a big difference to how your customers feel. 

Pricing:

  • $9.99/month – Only 3000 website visits per month
  • $19.99/month – 15,000 visits per month and 5 contact forms per website
  • $49.99/month – 10 contact forms per website and 150,000 visits per month

Form Builder and Mailchimp Forms

4.7 ⭐️  – Free plan available

shopify form builder plugin

This is a versatile form-building plugin that works for both customer support and email capture forms. The forms can be embedded easily on your Shopify store, and you will receive notifications when an entry is submitted. The plugin integrates with Google Forms and Mailchimp, so it is a useful addition to your eCommerce strategy.

Pricing:

  • Free – 25 submissions per month, 6 form elements
  • $8.99/month – no branding on forms
  • $15.99/month – 1000 submissions/month, 20 elements, file uploads and custom CSS
  • $79.99/month – unlimited submissions, unlimited discount codes.

Adding helpful plugins to your Shopify store can help you reach more customers, improve security and keep track of your business. However, creating a successful Shopify store takes more than just the right apps. Over time, you need to learn how to write great product descriptions, design powerful landing pages and optimise your Shopify conversion rate. Whilst plugins can’t do all that for you, they can give you more time to develop your eCommerce skills.

by Charlotte Franssen

Charlotte is Customer Success and Product Specialist at Convertize. Our customers love Charlotte so much that she only receives 5-star reviews on Capterra and TrustPilot.