Almost four in five marketers say their overall customer journey is at least partially automated, so you’re probably no stranger to the world of Shopify automation.
At the same time, there’s almost certainly room for improvement in your current martech stack.
To help you separate the wheat from the chaff in Shopify’s crowded app store, we’ve rounded up our favorite Shopify marketing automation apps across seven key ecommerce categories:
- Email and onsite marketing
- Live chat
- SMS marketing
- Social and Google ad automation
- Customer experience personalization
- Upselling and cross-selling
- Referral marketing
Let’s get into it…
What Are the Best Shopify Marketing Automation Apps?
| App Name | Best For | Top Features | Pricing/Month |
| Drip | Email and onsite marketing | Segment your whole audience based on real-time store, visitor, and marketing data. | From $39 per month for up to 2,500 contacts and unlimited email sends. |
| Tidio | Live chat | Lets support agents access the customer’s purchase history within the live chat window. | Free for up to 50 live chat conversations and 100 chatbot triggers per month; paid plans start at €29 per month for 100 live chat conversations and 500 chatbot triggers. |
| Postscript | SMS marketing | Build personalized post-purchase SMS sequences to drive repeat orders. | Pay-as-you-go starter plan charges $0.015 per SMS and $0.045 per MMS (plus carrier fees). |
| Adwisely | Social and Google ad automation Customer experience personalization |
Use Adwisely’s pre-built campaign templates to create social and Google ad campaigns in just a few clicks. |
$39 per month for unlimited automated campaigns across Facebook, Instagram, and Google, with a $500 monthly ad spend limit (plus 10 percent extra ad spend fee). |
| LimeSpot | Customer experience personalization | Add product recommendations on any website page, including cart, checkout, and thank you pages. | Free to install. Paid plans start at $15 per month. Monthly invoices equate to two percent of revenue driven by LimeSpot placements (with the first $750 included). |
| Bold Upsell | Upselling and cross-selling | Promote cross-sells and upsells through popups, in-cart messages, and more. | Prices start at $9.99 per month for up to 200 monthly upsell views. |
| InviteReferrals | Referral marketing | Enable customers to refer friends and family via email, social media, WhatsApp, and SMS. | Prices start at $99 per month for 1,000 new referrers per month. |
1. Drip: Best for Email & Onsite Marketing
What Is It?
Drip (that’s us, by the way) is an email and onsite marketing platform built specifically for ecommerce brands—especially DTCs. Our one-click Shopify integration gives retailers the power to run highly personalized, laser-targeted email and onsite campaigns and collect valuable customer insights to transform website visitors into loyal customers.
What Does It Do?
- Run marketing campaigns on autopilot. If you’re looking for a Shopify email marketing automation platform, Drip is the perfect choice. Our simple, visual workflow builder lets you create automated campaigns across email and onsite. Or give yourself a head start by using one of 20+ proven-to-perform workflow templates, from welcome series to post-first purchase and cart abandonment emails.
- Design beautiful emails (fast). Tap into our library of 50+ professionally designed, fully customizable ecommerce email templates, adding your brand styles and store products with our intuitive point-and-click editor. No coding required!
- Expand your list with eye-catching onsite forms. Drip makes it simple to build high-converting onsite popups, sidebars, and slide-ins to capture ecommerce leads—with full control over placement and design.
- Boost performance with revenue-focused insights. Because revenue is the most important metric for ecommerce brands, we display your revenue performance in our easy-to-understand analytics dashboard (including how much revenue you generated through Drip).
- Level up your campaigns with personalized recommendations. We provide strategic insights tailored to your store, helping you understand which future campaigns will have the biggest impact. Should you optimize your welcome emails or build a new abandoned cart sequence? Drip gives you the answers.
- Optimize through A/B testing. With Drip, you can test up to four subject line or content variations at a time, helping you figure out which messaging resonates best with your audience.
How Much Does It Cost?
Drip pricing starts at $39 per month for up to 2,500 contacts and unlimited email sends. Test-drive all our email and onsite marketing tools by signing up for your 14-day free trial.
2. Tidio: Best for Live Chat
What Is It?
Tidio helps Shopify stores guide new website visitors through the path to purchase and deliver more immediate customer support through onsite chatbots and live chat. It’s one of the highest-rated Shopify marketing automation tools, with a rating of 4.7/5 from 1,600+ reviews.
What Does It Do?
- See shopping history within the chat window. Tidio displays the customer’s purchase inside the live chat window, helping your support team understand whether they’re speaking to new, repeating, or VIP customers.
- Preview shopping carts in real time. By seeing what products customers have added-to-cart, you can provide tailored discounts, recommend similar products, and anticipate purchase-related questions.
- Encourage self-service support. Tidio allows customers to check their order status, find out about product availability, and calculate shipping costs in an instant—freeing up your support team to focus on more complex queries.
- Leverage tried-and-trusted templates. Get started fast with Tidio’s 35+ pre-designed sales and support templates, covering everything from product recommendations to dynamic discounts.
How Much Does It Cost?
Tidio is free for up to 50 live chat conversations and 100 chatbot triggers per month. Paid plans start at €29 per month for 100 live chat conversations and 500 chatbot triggers.
3. Postscript: Best for SMS Marketing
What Is It?
Postscript offers SMS marketing automation for Shopify. It’s used by big brands like Brooklinen, Caraway, and Death Wish Coffee, and claims to have generated $3 billion in revenue for Postscript customers.
What Does It Do?
- Build stronger customer relationships. Postscript helps Shopify stores share personalized, one-to-one SMS messages at scale. Deliver targeted communications with powerful segmentation, tagging, and filtering.
- Share the right message at the right time. Behavior-based message branching helps you tailor responses and offers within campaign and automation flows, helping you generate more revenue from customer conversations.
- Upgrade your post-purchase experience. Build tailored post-purchase SMS sequences to keep existing customers engaged and drive repeat orders.
- Optimize campaigns with ecommerce-friendly analytics. Postscript makes it easy to understand the revenue and ROI of individual campaigns, giving you the insights to optimize conversion rates.
How Much Does It Cost?
All Postscript plans require you to pay for each message sent (plus carrier fees). The pay-as-you-go starter plan charges $0.015 per SMS and $0.045 per MMS. Paid plans start at $100 per month, with rates of $0.01 per SMS and $0.03 per MMS.
4. Adwisely: Best for Social and Google Ad Automation
What Is It?
Adwisely is an online ad automation platform for Google and social media ads, targeted at ecommerce brands with at least $1,500 in monthly ad budget. It gives customers the tools to create and manage automated ad campaigns for Facebook, Instagram, Google, and TikTok in just a few clicks.
What Does It Do?
- Build social campaigns in a few clicks. With Adwisely’s pre-built campaign templates, you can get started in minutes—just review the ad copy, connect the relevant assets, and set your daily budget.
- Boost earnings with automated optimization. Adwisely automatically creates ads for you. Once your ads pass the learning phase, the platform works to optimize performance and boost your return on ad spend through A/B testing.
- Leverage multiple campaign types. Use the platform to grow your audience through Facebook and Instagram prospecting, re-engage visitors and cart abandoners with retargeting campaigns, and promote flash sales and limited-time discounts through Special Offer campaigns on Facebook.
- Get monthly ad reviews from real humans. Adwisely’s top-tier plan includes 30-day performance reviews from the platform’s in-house ad experts, who’ll recommend changes to improve your ads.
How Much Does It Cost?
Adwisely charges $39 per month for unlimited automated campaigns across Facebook, Instagram, and Google, with a $500 monthly ad spend limit (plus 10 percent extra ad spend fee).
5. LimeSpot: Best for Customer Experience Personalization
What Is It?
LimeSpot helps ecommerce brands create shopping experiences personalized to the behaviors and preferences of individual customers. The platform is trusted by thousands of independent retailers and has a 4.8-star rating on Shopify from 1,500+ reviews.
What Does It Do?
- Deliver personalized onsite product recommendations. LimeSpot makes it easy to add product recommendations on any website page, including cart, checkout, and thank you pages.
- Personalize everything. With LimeSpot, you can personalize images, video, copy, calls to action, and more across your website and emails.
- Segment your audience. Create segments based on browsing behavior, purchase patterns, location, referrals, and more—helping you deliver super-personalized onsite offers and recommendations.
- Access multiple merchandising options. Use different layouts and algorithms to create a wealth of merchandising layouts, including you-may-like recommendations, upsells and cross-sells, and post-purchase offers.
How Much Does It Cost?
The LimeSpot app is free to install. Paid plans start at $15 per month, with monthly invoices equating to two percent of revenue driven by LimeSpot placements (with the first $750 included).
6. Bold Upsell: Best for Upselling and Cross-Selling
What Is It?
Upselling and cross-selling campaigns help online retailers increase their average basket size and order value. That’s where Bold Upsell comes in, giving you the tools to set up cross-sell, upsell, and post-purchase offers in just a few clicks.
What Does It Do?
- Boost sales through multiple tactics. Bold lets you promote cross-sells and upsells through various onsite locations, including popups and in-cart offers.
- Build smart upsell funnels. Bold displays additional promotions based on whether your first offer was accepted or declined.
- Drive more repeat orders. Add post-purchase offers to your thank you pages to generate more sales and revenue from customers who are already in the buying mood.
How Much Does It Cost?
Bold Upsell’s prices start at $9.99 per month for up to 200 monthly upsell views.
7. InviteReferrals: Best for Referral Marketing
What Is It?
InviteReferrals is a simple-yet-powerful solution for growing your audience through referral marketing. It’s a valuable tool, with research showing that referred customers generate higher profit margins, are more loyal, and show a higher lifetime value. More than 20,000 customers use InviteReferrals.
What Does It Do?
- Offer multiple referral options. Your customers can refer their friends and family via email, social media, WhatsApp, and SMS through fully customizable invitation messages.
- Build campaigns with no coding skills. The platform’s intuitive WYSIWYG editor makes it easy to create refer-a-friend widgets and emails without support from a designer or coder.
- Add referral widgets across multiple channels. InviteReferrals’ widgets automatically adapt to various channels and platforms, including Android and iOS apps, websites, emails, and Facebook feeds.
- Access detailed referral campaign insights. Use the platform’s analytics tools to identify your most influential referrers, filter invites by referral channel, and track data to the individual customer level.
How Much Does It Cost?
Prices for InviteReferrals start at $99 per month for 1,000 new referrers per month.
Conclusion
As you can see, there’s no shortage of options when it comes to marketing automation for Shopify.
If you’ve got the budget, we’d happily recommend buying every tool in this article. But if your resources are a little more limited, you need to pick the solution with the highest possible potential.
Drip is an obvious choice in a world where email marketing delivers an average return of $36 for every $1 spent. Coupled with our advanced onsite marketing features and advanced insights, we give you all the tools to understand your best customers (and reach more of them).
See what all the fuss is about by signing up for your 14-day free trial today.
