Shopify's Half-Billion Dollar App Economy

Yesterday Shopify released Q4 2020 earnings. Once again, the numbers were eye-wateringly good. 99% year on year GMV growth, $120billion worth of GMV in 2020, and almost $1billion revenue in the quarter. Impressive numbers, and sign the “new normal” of online retail is now normal.

The numbers I care about most, though, relate to the growth of Shopify’s App Partner Ecosystem. Or, in real terms, Shopify’s growing App Partner Economy.

At end Q4 2020, Shopify had exceeded 6,000 apps in their ecosystem. Three months earlier that number stood at 5,300. Shopify added a whopping 700 apps in one single quarter. Phenomenal.

Shopify announced another major milestone for their ecosystem - app partner earnings for 2020 reached a record high of $233.7M - more than 2018 and 2019 combined.

So far, since Shopify added provisioning and billing in 2014, developers earned more than $543million through Shopify’s App Store. Really impressive.

Shopify COO Harley Finkelstein shared some great developer stories in this thread, including one story of a Branch Manager at Wells Fargo who left her job to build apps for Shopify. The company she co-founded - venntov - is one of Shopify’s top App Partners.

As someone who works every day to help developers build and scale businesses atop HubSpot’s Platform, this is unbelievably inspirational. The broader App Economy is creating new entrepreneurs every day. There’s never been a better time to start building.