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Comment by wooque | Hacker News Reader

You have to use Shopify Billing for shops that installed your app through app store, but you can have Stripe for apps that installed your app directly through your site for example, that's how business I'm working for is doing.

Basically if you want Shopify App Store customers, you have to give 20% to Shopify, but you still have option of acquiring users yourself through your site without app store.

Is it fair? Maybe not, but that's a deal. Apple users on the other hand don't have option of installing apps without app store, so comparison is not valid.

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The Shopify terms state that if your application accesses the Shopify API and is used by two or more merchants, then you have to give 20% to Shopify.

Do you have any references on there being an exception for apps not installed through the store ? I would be very interested.

It could be they got special permission for that, I'm not the owner

You make a private app for each customer.

This has been _specifically_ called out in Shopify's recent emails to partners. If the private apps are essentially all the same, it's considered abusing private apps and they may come down on you at some point. Private apps, in Shopify's eyes, are for something like a consultant whom is building one-off apps for clients, not as a way to avoid the store.

This seems pretty reasonable to me. If you don't like the deal you can still target these customers. 20% cut for advertising, billing and other features sounds like a deal that many people would (and do) take.

I would be much more bothered by the 20% cut if there was no other way to target these customers.

Why compare users who may or may not use Shopify’s app store with people who definitely use apple? People don’t have the choice to use the apple App Store without paying the 30% cut, but they have the choice to not use apple. People don’t have the choice to use the Shopify App Store without paying the 20% cut, but they have the choice to not use Shopify.

Also, I just bought an audiobook last night on my iphone through the browser, and presumably apple didn’t get a cut. I think Shopify’s cut and apple’s cut are fair analogies here.

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