Most lists of the best free Shopify apps quietly include apps that only offer a 14-day trial. This one does not. Seven apps here are free with no end date. The one exception is trial-only, and it sits in a separate section that says so.
You are three weeks into a new store. It looks right. But the list of things it cannot do is longer than the list of things it can, and every one of those gaps has an app behind it.
So this is a list of the best free Shopify apps that stay free. Every free plan below was checked against its live App Store listing on 22 October 2026. More importantly, each entry states the exact number where the free plan stops. That means 200 orders, or 250 contacts, or 40 images. Because that number is what decides whether an app is genuinely free for you.
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- Reviews: Judge.me — unlimited reviews, forever, no cap worth naming.
- Email: Omnisend — 250 contacts and 500 emails a month.
- Loyalty: Smile — 200 orders a month.
- Live chat: Tidio — 50 conversations.
- Speed: Plug In Speed — 40 images a month.
- AI content: Plug In AI — 3,000 word tokens a month, 3 products.
- Tracking: Shipment Tracking & Notify — 25 orders a month.
Plug In Speed compresses 40 product images a month on its free plan. It also tracks your average load time before and after. So you find out whether image weight is your problem without paying to ask.
One pointer before the list. You may have come looking for free tools rather than free apps. For Search Console, GA4, PageSpeed Insights and the rest, read our free SEO tools for Shopify starter kit instead. This page is only about apps you install from the App Store.
Why the free tier matters more than the feature list
App spend creeps. Because it rarely arrives as one big decision, it gets away from people.
StoreInspect — State of Shopify
Six apps at $20 each is $120 a month before you have sold anything. So the free tier is not a trial concession here. For a store under $1M in revenue it is the difference between a stack you can afford and one you cannot.
EightX, from Storeleads’ May 2026 panel of 3,593,277 stores
So treat that $175 as a rough shape, not a target. The useful read is simply that app spend is a real line item at small scale. Seven free plans is a meaningful chunk of it.
The seven at a glance
Figures below came off the live App Store listings on 22 October 2026. Ratings and plan limits move, so check them before you install.
| App | Best for | Free plan stops at | First paid tier | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Judge.me | Product reviews | No review cap | $15/mo | 5.0 (48,884) |
| Omnisend | Email and SMS | 250 contacts, 500 emails/mo | $16/mo | 4.7 (3,194) |
| Smile | Loyalty and referrals | 200 orders/mo | $15/mo | 4.9 (4,646) |
| Tidio | Live chat | 50 conversations | $29/mo | 4.8 (1,356) |
| Plug In Speed | Image compression | 40 images/mo | $19/mo | 4.4 (29) |
| Plug In AI | AI SEO content | 3,000 word tokens, 3 products | $9.99/mo | 5.0 (26) |
| Shipment Tracking & Notify | Order tracking | 25 orders/mo | $9/mo | 5.0 (4) |
1. Judge.me — the one with no meaningful ceiling
Judge.me collects product reviews and displays them with star ratings, photos and video. Its free plan is the most generous on this list by a wide margin. In fact it is not close.
The free plan covers unlimited product and store reviews, plus unlimited photo and video reviews. You also get the review widget, the star-rating badge, Google reviews sync with rich snippets, and syncing to the Shop app. Most apps meter the thing you actually came for. But this one does not.
Where it stops: the $15/mo Awesome plan is where the AI features, 130-plus integrations, coupons, referrals and the wider widget set live. You will also notice the free plan’s customisation options are thin, so the widget looks like a Judge.me widget.
Best for: any store with products and no reviews yet. Because review schema feeds rich snippets, this is also the cheapest way to get star ratings into your search results.
The 5.0 rating across 48,884 reviews is the largest review base of anything here, by two orders of magnitude.
2. Omnisend — email that does not meter your list to zero
Omnisend handles email and SMS marketing, with automations for abandoned carts and welcome sequences. The free plan is small but complete, which is an unusual combination.
The free plan covers up to 250 contacts and 500 emails a month. It also includes popup and form builders, abandoned-cart and welcome automations, AI-powered segmentation, 250-plus templates and 24/7 live support. Crucially, the automations are not held back for paying customers. That is the part most free email tiers remove.
Where it stops: 250 contacts arrives faster than you expect. Standard then starts at $16/mo and scales with list size, so your bill grows as the list does.
Best for: a store in its first few months that wants abandoned-cart recovery running before it has a list worth paying for.
3. Smile — loyalty with a 200-order ceiling
Smile runs points, rewards and referral programmes. Its free plan is unusually functional, though the ceiling is firm.
The free plan covers points, rewards and referrals, with 15-plus ways to earn and redeem. You also get full branding customisation and multi-language support across 20-plus languages, up to 200 monthly orders.
Where it stops: order 201. Essential is $15/mo for 500 orders, Standard is $79/mo for 1,000, and Growth is $199/mo. That is a steep ladder. So work out where your order volume is heading first, because customers expect a loyalty programme to stay.
Best for: stores under about 200 orders a month that want repeat purchases without a subscription. At 200 orders a month you are a real business, so the free tier here goes further than most.
4. Tidio — live chat, 50 conversations at a time
Tidio puts live chat and a chatbot on your storefront. Importantly, the free plan is a genuine working tier rather than a demo.
The free plan covers live chat conversations with 50 users, plus automated Flows reaching up to 100 visitors a month. Ticketing, the mobile app and social media integrations are included too. So you can answer customers from your phone without paying anything.
Where it stops: 50 conversations is the hard edge, and the Lyro AI chatbot is a separate $39/mo product. Customer Service and Flows plans both start at $29/mo.
Best for: stores where pre-purchase questions are killing conversion — sizing, shipping times, compatibility. Fifty conversations tells you quickly whether chat is worth paying for.
5. Plug In Speed — 40 images a month, which is enough to diagnose
Plug In Speed is ours, so here is the honest framing: 40 images a month will not optimise your catalogue. It will tell you whether your catalogue is the problem.
The free plan covers up to 40 images a month, with both lossless and lossy compression. You also get the speed dashboard that tracks average load time before and after. So compress one collection, re-run PageSpeed Insights, and read the difference.
Where it stops: Lite is $19/mo for 1,000 images. Standard is $29/mo for 4,000, and adds CSS and JavaScript minification. Premium is $39/mo for 10,000. But the free tier has no minification, so it addresses image weight only.
Best for: anyone who has seen a red PageSpeed score and does not yet know why. If compressing 40 images moves nothing, your bottleneck is render-blocking code, and our guide to Shopify speed optimization covers what to do instead.
Its 4.4 rating sits across 29 reviews — a much smaller base than Judge.me or Smile, and worth weighing accordingly. For a direct comparison with a paid-only rival, see Plug In Speed vs Hyperspeed, or read the Plug In Speed page.
6. Plug In AI — 3,000 word tokens and three products
Plug In AI is also ours. It generates product descriptions, meta tags and alt text, and its free plan is explicitly a sampler rather than a working tier.
The free plan covers 3,000 word tokens a month, SEO content optimisation for three products, and email support. Three products is enough to judge whether the output sounds like your brand, which is the only question worth answering before you pay.
Where it stops: fast. Lite is $9.99/mo for 50,000 tokens and 20 products. Standard at $17.99/mo adds image alt text and unlimited single-page optimisation. But bulk generation across a whole catalogue only arrives on Premium, at $34.99/mo.
Best for: testing AI copy on your three worst product pages before committing. Read the Plug In AI page for the full feature set.
7. Shipment Tracking & Notify — 25 orders a month, tracked
Built by PluginHive, this app sends real-time tracking notifications and gives customers a branded tracking page. It auto-detects carriers including DHL, FedEx, USPS, UPS, DPD and PostNord.
The free plan covers up to 25 orders a month with real-time tracking notifications. That is a small number. But “where is my order” is the most common support email in ecommerce, so even 25 orders of coverage removes a chunk of it.
Where it stops: Starter is $9/mo for 200 orders, Popular $29/mo for 1,000, Premium $49/mo for 2,000.
Best for: new stores shipping a handful of orders a week who want to stop answering tracking questions by hand.
One caveat worth stating plainly: this app holds a 5.0 rating, but across only 4 reviews. That is far too small a sample to mean much, so judge it on the free plan rather than the score.
Bonus: free to try, not free forever
This one earns a mention without qualifying for the list above. It has no free plan. But the trial window is long enough to answer the question properly, and then it starts charging. So it is worth knowing about, as long as you know which kind of free you are getting.
PH MultiCarrier Shipping Label runs a 14-day free trial with plans from $9/mo. So it is free to try, and then it is not.
It connects Shopify to carriers including UPS, USPS, FedEx, DHL Express, Amazon Shipping, Canada Post, Australia Post, Aramex and Blue Dart. So you get live shipping rates at checkout, one-click and bulk label printing, and automatic tracking updates. Return labels are covered too, and estimated delivery dates at checkout for supported carriers.
Read the pricing carefully, because the headline number is misleading. Basic at $9/mo connects one carrier. Starter at $19/mo connects two. Multi-carrier access — comparing rates across carriers, which is the entire point of the app — starts at Popular, $29/mo. So “from $9” and “multi-carrier” are not true at the same time, and the plan you actually want is the $29 one.
It holds 4.9 stars across 650 reviews, the deepest review base of any shipping app mentioned on this page.
How to choose without installing all seven
Installing seven apps at once is how stores end up slow and unmanageable. So pick by your current bottleneck instead.
- No social proof on your product pages → Judge.me. Unlimited free reviews makes this the easiest decision on the list.
- Traffic arrives but nobody buys → Tidio for the questions, then Omnisend for the carts people abandon anyway.
- Customers buy once and vanish → Smile, while you are still under 200 orders a month.
- Pages load slowly and you do not know why → Plug In Speed, to find out before you pay anyone.
- Support inbox is all tracking questions → Shipment Tracking & Notify at 25 orders, or MultiCarrier’s trial if you also need labels and live rates.
Then add the second app only after the first one has visibly done something. Two apps that earn their place beat six that sit there adding script weight.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best free Shopify apps for a brand new store?
Judge.me and Omnisend, in that order. Judge.me gives you unlimited product reviews at no cost, which builds the social proof a new store has none of. Omnisend’s free tier runs abandoned-cart and welcome automations for up to 250 contacts, so recovery emails are live before your list is worth paying for.
Is a free Shopify app plan really free, or is it a trial?
They are different things, and the App Store labels them differently. A free plan has no end date and simply caps usage — 200 orders, 250 contacts, 40 images. A free trial expires, usually after 7 or 14 days, and then charges you. All seven apps in the numbered list above have genuine free plans. The bonus entry has a 14-day trial only, which is why it is kept separate.
How many apps should a Shopify store install?
The average Shopify store runs 5.6 apps, according to StoreInspect’s analysis of 1.8 million stores in October 2026. That is a useful benchmark rather than a goal. Every app adds JavaScript to your storefront, so install one, confirm it does something measurable, then consider the next.
Do free Shopify apps slow down your store?
Some do, and free versus paid has nothing to do with it. What matters is whether the app injects a script into your storefront theme. Review widgets, chat bubbles and popups all render on the page and add weight. Apps that work in the admin — bulk editors, image compressors — generally do not.
Is Plug In SEO free?
No. Plug In SEO has a 7-day free trial and then starts at $29.99/mo, so it is not on this list — the same rule we applied to every other app here. But two of our apps do have genuine free plans. Plug In Speed covers 40 images a month, and Plug In AI covers 3,000 word tokens across three products.
What happens when you outgrow a free plan?
Behaviour varies by app, so check before you depend on one. Most pause the capped feature rather than deleting your data — Smile stops awarding points past 200 orders, Omnisend stops sending past 500 emails. The risk is a loyalty programme or email flow going quiet without you noticing, so set a reminder at roughly 80% of your cap.
Writing product descriptions one at a time is the slowest job in a catalogue. Plug In AI generates titles, descriptions, meta fields and alt text from what is already on the page.