Internal or external saas app!
Hello Indiehacker community,
As we know there are some app on different platforms example Shopify that works internally from inside the Shopify dashboard,
But what is the reason developers don't make it a separate App and link to Shopify stores via API, There is a reasonably good number of Apps working in such a way, but why there are some using the first way?
as in the second way you have the option to link to multi-platforms like WordPress for example in an easier way.
What you describe is called an "embedded app" in Shopify. Here's my take based on having worked as a PM at Shopify for 4.5 years.
-- Why build an embedded app? --
Most merchants prefer to manage as much as possible of their business inside Shopify. They don't want another service with different login/password, another tab to keep open, to click back/forth between that and Shopify. Embedded apps usually make their experience so much easier as they go about running their day to day business.
Shopify has recently updated their app listing ranking algorithms to favor apps that are embedded over those that aren't. So if you don't have an embedded app, you're less likely to rank high, and less likely to be discovered by new merchants.
-- Why not build an embedded app? --
You touched on it. Building multi-platform service and having an embedded app may lead to 'overhead'. But choosing not to would come at the tradeoffs mentioned above. Less likely to be discovered, and relatively poorer merchant experience. Another common non-embedded app use-case is businesses that already have an existing service that they want to build a Shopify app for. Again, replicating existing UI/functionality into an embedded Shopify is considered overhead, and they don't invest in it.
If you're building from scratch, I'd highly recommend doing it as an embedded app.
Thank you so much for sharing your point of view, I totally agree with what you have mentioned, Although In my case I have already the App built for another platform in ME and work as non-embedded because the platform in ME doesn't support now the embedded App, so for me if I decided to enter Shopify marketplace It is less cost and work to make it external, But I will find a way to make as much as I can of the features embedded in the platform so that the user Is able to manage the most important features directly from the App.