10 Best Ecommerce App Development Companies in 2026 (Ranked on Published Commerce Work)
Ten firms ranked by the commerce work they actually publish, plus real cost bands and the App Store rule that decides your margin before a line of code is written.
Every agency on earth lists ecommerce, because every agency has built a checkout at some point. So we ranked on evidence instead: how much commerce work each firm actually names and publishes, read first-hand on their own sites in September 2026. One thing matters more than the ranking, though. These ten split into two different kinds of firm that look identical on a services page, and hiring the wrong one is more expensive than hiring the wrong price. Read the commission section too, because most people budget an Apple cut that does not apply to them. Appy Pie AI is a no-code app platform, not a development agency, so we have no reason to inflate anyone.
What This Guide Delivers
- 10 firms ranked on published commerce work, not size
- Cost bands, plus the only two firms here that publish rates
- What Apple actually takes, quoted from its own guidelines
- Platform agency or app agency, and how to tell which you need
- The ongoing costs that never appear in a build quote
- 8 FAQs on cost, commission, PCI scope and store review
Company facts are self-reported by each vendor and were read live on their own sites in September 2026. Case-study metrics cannot be independently audited and are labelled as claims throughout. App Store rules are quoted directly from Apple’s App Review Guidelines. Nothing here is legal or tax advice. Appy Pie AI is our own product and is deliberately excluded from the ranked list.
See the No-Code Alternative
The 10 ecommerce app development companies compared in this guide
TL;DR Quick Summary
An app in front of a store you already run costs roughly 15,000 to 40,000 dollars; a custom ecommerce app with its own backend 60,000 to 150,000; a multi-vendor marketplace 150,000 and up. Ranked on published commerce work, Appinventiv leads as the only firm naming five recognisable retail brands with outcomes attached, ScienceSoft is the only one publishing per-feature hours, and Fueled is the only one whose commerce work is infrastructure rather than a storefront. Before any of that, settle two things: whether your difficulty is the platform or the product, since that decides which half of this list to call, and the fact that Apple takes nothing on physical goods.
| Company | Best for | HQ | Commerce evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Appinventiv | Named Retail Brands | Noida, India | 5 named brands |
| ScienceSoft | a Scope Costed Before You Commit | McKinney, Texas, USA | Published rates |
| Fueled | Commerce Infrastructure | New York, USA | Square + WooCommerce |
| Elogic Commerce | the Platform Behind the App | London, UK | 6 platform partners |
| Codal | Shopify and BigCommerce Work | Chicago, Illinois, USA | Shopify Platinum |
| Net Solutions | UK Retail and Headless Builds | Chandigarh, India | 4 UK retailers |
| TekRevol | Gulf-Market Storefronts | USA | 2 named clients |
| Folio3 eCommerce | ERP-Connected Commerce | San Francisco, USA | 4 named clients |
| Emizentech | Breadth of Platform Coverage | Jaipur, India | 6 named apps |
| Suffescom Solutions | Social Commerce Products | New York, USA | 1M+ installs |
| Appy Pie AI | If You Already Have the Store | Noida, India | $16/mo |
Table of Contents
Start with cost, then the App Store rule that decides your margin, then the ten companies ranked on published work, a decision matrix and eight FAQs.
- What Ecommerce App Development Costs in 2026
- What Apple and Google Actually Take From Your Sales
- How We Evaluated These Companies
- Appinventiv
- ScienceSoft
- Fueled
- Elogic Commerce
- Codal
- Net Solutions
- TekRevol
- Folio3 eCommerce
- Emizentech
- Suffescom Solutions
- Appy Pie AI
- Which Ecommerce Development Company Should You Pick?
- Frequently Asked Questions
What Ecommerce App Development Costs in 2026
Cost here tracks one question more than any other: are you putting an app in front of a store that already works, or building commerce from scratch? The bands below are documented industry ranges, and unusually for this category, two firms in this guide publish their own numbers that line up with them.
Two firms here publish their own numbers, which is rare enough to be worth using as a check. Appinventiv states 40,000 to 80,000 US dollars for an MVP, 80,000 to 150,000 for a growth build and 150,000 to 300,000 to scale. ScienceSoft publishes under 50,000, 50,000 to 200,000 and over 200,000, then goes further than anyone else in this guide by publishing hours: a mobile store with all key features from 1,800 hours, a secure payment module at 80 hours, loyalty features at 160. Those are the only two rate cards on this page, and both corroborate the bands above rather than undercutting them.
The dominant variable inside every band is hourly rate by region. Offshore teams in India and South Asia commonly bill 25 to 50 dollars an hour, Eastern European firms 40 to 80, and North American agencies 100 to 200. That is why the same specification lands at 60,000 dollars with one firm on this list and 150,000 with another, and the difference is not necessarily quality.
Three commerce costs that never appear in a build quote. Payment processing takes a percentage of every order, so it grows with success instead of amortising. Platform and infrastructure, meaning your Shopify or Adobe Commerce plan, hosting, search and image delivery, scale with catalogue size and traffic. And maintenance, typically 15 to 20 percent of build cost per year, is genuinely not optional on a commerce app, because checkout is the part that breaks: payment SDKs, OS releases and platform API deprecations all force work on somebody else’s schedule.
What Apple and Google Actually Take From Your Sales
This is the section missing from every competing guide, and it changes the business case rather than the build. Most people commissioning an ecommerce app assume Apple takes 30 percent of everything sold inside it. If you sell physical goods, Apple takes nothing at all.
The rule is explicit, and it is the opposite of what most people expect. Apple’s App Review Guidelines cover this at 3.1.3(e), headed “Goods and Services Outside of the App”: “If your app enables people to purchase physical goods or services that will be consumed outside of the app, you must use purchase methods other than in-app purchase to collect those payments, such as Apple Pay or traditional credit card entry.” Read that twice. Using in-app purchase for physical goods is not merely unnecessary, it is against the rules. Your payment cost for a pair of trainers, a sofa or a box of coffee is whatever your gateway charges, and Apple’s commission never enters the calculation.
Where the commission does apply. Guideline 3.1.1 covers unlocking features or functionality inside the app: subscriptions, premium content, in-app currency, unlocking a full version. Those must use in-app purchase, and that is where Apple’s 15 to 30 percent lands. The dividing line is where the thing is consumed, not what it costs or how you describe it in your pitch deck.
The cases worth asking about specifically. Digital gift cards, paid loyalty tiers, subscription boxes that bundle content with goods, and in-app store credit all sit close to that line, and which side they land on moves your margin by up to 30 percent. Put the question to your developer in writing before the payment architecture is fixed, because moving a purchase from one mechanism to the other after launch is not a small change.
One recent change worth knowing. Guideline 3.1.1(a) now states that entitlements to link out to your own site for digital purchases “are not required for developers to include buttons, external links, or other calls to action in their United States storefront apps.” In the US you may link out. In most other storefronts that link-out is still gated behind an entitlement, so one app shipped worldwide does not get uniform treatment, and your developer needs to know which markets you are launching in before they build the paywall.
How We Evaluated These Companies
The criterion is narrow on purpose: how much commerce work each company actually publishes, and how checkable it is. Not headcount, not total project count, not how well they rank for this search. Every agency lists ecommerce, so the list tells you nothing; a named client with a stated outcome, or a partner status a vendor had to award, tells you something. Firms naming recognisable brands rank above firms naming unknown ones, firms publishing prices rank above firms publishing nothing, and we say which is which on every card. We took no payment from any company here and none of them knows they are on this list.
One firm has no screenshot, and it is worth saying why. Emizentech serves a bot-challenge interstitial to every automated browser, so we could not capture its homepage: three attempts with a persistent profile timed out, and its portfolio and about pages behave identically. Its published work is still verifiable, which is where its six named shopping apps came from, so the limitation is in our capture method rather than in the company. Dropping a well-evidenced firm because a screenshotter was blocked would let tooling decide the ranking, so it stays and this note explains the gap.
Published commerce work
The primary criterion. Named clients with stated outcomes outrank a services page with nothing behind it.
Which lane they are in
Every card says whether the firm is strongest on the commerce platform or on the product, because that mismatch costs more than price does.
Verified operating
Live site and active business confirmed directly in September 2026, not carried over from an older list.
Attributed claims
Team sizes, project counts and case-study metrics are what each company states about itself, labelled as self-reported rather than presented as fact.
Location and cost
Headquarters and delivery location are listed for every firm because regional rate differences drive project cost more than any other factor.
Real trade-offs
Every company gets a genuine limitation. A list where all ten options are excellent is not a list, it is an advertisement.
No paid placement
No company paid for inclusion or position. Ranking reflects published commerce evidence, not commercial relationships.
Our own disclosure
Appy Pie AI is our product. We excluded it from the ranked list entirely because we are not an ecommerce development company and ranking ourselves against these firms would be misleading.
Appinventiv
Appinventiv names more recognisable retail brands than anyone else here, and attaches outcomes to each. It reports building for Adidas with over 2 million app downloads and 500,000 new users acquired, for the Middle Eastern fashion retailer 6th Street with 3 million iOS and 1 million Android downloads, and for The Body Shop India with 10 million users onboarded inside twelve months and 498 million rupees of digital revenue. It also states an ERP platform running across seven IKEA stores. It is one of only two firms in this guide that publish cost bands rather than a contact form: 40,000 to 80,000 US dollars for an MVP, 80,000 to 150,000 for a growth build and 150,000 to 300,000 to scale.
Strengths
- Names five recognisable retail brands publicly, with outcome figures against each
- Publishes its own cost bands, which almost no agency in this category does
- Reports 400+ ecommerce platforms delivered, so commerce is a practice rather than a side line
- Covers the storefront app and the ERP and back-office work behind it
Trade-offs
- Enterprise pricing: its entry band starts roughly where several firms here finish
- Brand names are self-reported and the scope behind each engagement is not published
- A broad agency rather than a platform-certified commerce specialist
ScienceSoft
Most agencies answer the cost question with a contact form. ScienceSoft publishes bands, then goes further than anyone else here by publishing hours: a mobile store with all key features from 1,800 hours, a secure payment module at 80 hours, loyalty features at 160. It states 23 years in ecommerce IT, 21 in mobile implementation, and more than 750 IT experts, working from McKinney in the Dallas area. Its named consumer work includes GlamRush2U, a beauty delivery app it says launched in six months, and a mobile store for a multi-business company it reports tripled conversions in its first month.
Strengths
- Publishes hour-level estimates per feature, the most checkable pricing in this guide
- 23 years in ecommerce IT and 750+ staff, so capacity is not the constraint
- US contracting entity in Texas with offshore delivery capacity behind it
- Costs out the unglamorous parts explicitly: payment modules, loyalty, catalogue at scale
Trade-offs
- Its published ceiling of “over 200,000 dollars” is a band with no upper edge
- Named ecommerce app clients are thinner than the overall project count implies
- A very broad IT services firm; commerce is one practice among many
Fueled
Fueled is the only firm here whose commerce work is infrastructure rather than a storefront. It states it partnered with WooCommerce and Square to strengthen Square for WooCommerce, covering reliability, onboarding, payments, sync and multi-channel features for merchants selling online and in person. It also names the New York Times, where it says it unlocked an affiliate revenue stream on Wirecutter. Founded in 2007, it is a design-led product studio rather than an offshore delivery shop, and the logos on its own homepage include Google, Compass, Clear and Eater.
Strengths
- Named work with WooCommerce and Square themselves, not merely a merchant on those platforms
- Payments, sync and onboarding experience, which is exactly where commerce apps break
- Founded 2007, with a client roster displayed and checkable on its own site
- A product-studio approach suits a differentiated app rather than a catalogue clone
Trade-offs
- Priced as a New York product studio; the cheapest firm here is a fraction of it
- No published ecommerce cost bands or hour estimates of any kind
- Commerce is one strand of a broad portfolio rather than a declared specialism
Elogic Commerce
Elogic does one thing. It states it specialises exclusively in ecommerce across Adobe Commerce, Shopify Plus, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, BigCommerce, commercetools and SAP Commerce Cloud, and holds a named partner status on each, which is awarded by the vendor rather than claimed. It reports founding in 2009, more than 500 projects, more than 200 ecommerce specialists and an NPS of 70 drawn from post-launch surveys. Its published work is weighted to replatforming and ERP integration: Armacell at five times faster order approvals and 40 percent fewer manual orders, though it does name a React Native rebuild for the grocery chain HiperDino.
Strengths
- Six platform partnerships, each verifiable in the vendor’s own partner directory
- Exclusively ecommerce since 2009, which almost nobody else in this guide can say
- ERP, PIM and CRM integration work, which is where mid-market commerce projects fail
- Publishes an NPS from post-launch surveys rather than a satisfaction percentage
Trade-offs
- Weighted to web replatforming: one named mobile app across a large case-study library
- The wrong lane if you want a consumer app rather than a commerce platform
- Delivery is European, so US clients should confirm timezone overlap up front
Codal
Codal is a Shopify Platinum Partner and a BigCommerce Elite Partner, the top tier of each programme, and it names its retail clients rather than anonymising them: Thermos, Origin USA, trueCABLE and cpap.com. It reports 3.31 million dollars of additional sales for Origin USA alongside organic search gains, and publishes attributed quotes from named marketing directors at two of the four. It operates from Chicago with offices in Lincoln, Ahmedabad and Toronto, which puts a US contracting entity and offshore delivery inside the same firm.
Strengths
- Top-tier partner status on both Shopify and BigCommerce, which is awarded rather than self-declared
- Names four retail clients with quotes attributed to named individuals
- Chicago HQ with offshore delivery, so US contracting without full US rates throughout
- Reports a revenue figure rather than only a percentage improvement
Trade-offs
- Its published retail work is storefront and platform, not native mobile apps
- Design and UX led, so heavy custom backend engineering is not the declared strength
- No published cost bands
Net Solutions
Net Solutions names the kind of clients that are difficult to invent: GSF Car Parts, Euro Car Parts, American Golf and World of Sweets, all UK retailers with real catalogues behind them. Its published commerce work is headless and platform architecture rather than storefront apps. Its clearest app case is EdPlace, where it reports a million users and describes shipping the parent app first while the core was rewritten underneath it, with ten thousand families live throughout. That sequencing detail tells you more about how the firm delivers than any percentage would.
Strengths
- Recognisable UK retail names that can be checked independently of the agency
- Headless commerce architecture rather than theme customisation
- The EdPlace case describes how delivery was sequenced under live load, not just the result
- Chandigarh delivery with UK and US presence
Trade-offs
- Its retail case studies are web and platform; the named app work sits outside ecommerce
- No published pricing at all
- Strongest references are UK, so US retail proof is thinner
TekRevol
TekRevol names two ecommerce clients with numbers attached: Al Hussaini Trading, whose ecommerce it reports growing fivefold, and Mdrouz, where it says local payment integration drove 40 percent more sales. That second one matters more than it reads. In Gulf and emerging markets the gap between a storefront that converts and one that does not is usually the local payment method rather than the design. It also documents a price-comparison app built on a custom scraper after the retailers’ product APIs turned out to be closed, which is the sort of constraint most case studies quietly omit.
Strengths
- Names a specific commerce problem, local payment integration, and what solving it produced
- Documents a build around closed APIs, which shows how it handles a real constraint
- Offices across the US, Dubai and the UK, so Gulf-market work is served locally
- Case studies report sales movement rather than download counts
Trade-offs
- Two named ecommerce clients, so this is not a category specialism
- No published team size, founding year or cost bands
- Neither named client is recognisable outside its own market
Folio3 eCommerce
Folio3 runs commerce as its own business unit on its own site, and its case studies are consistently about connecting a store to the systems behind it rather than restyling a theme. It reports 2.3 times sales value and 57 percent more closed deals for ColDesi through a custom Shopify app, a BigCommerce migration for EcoProducts at half the cost of ownership and three times faster order completion, a headless build for MetroShoes across more than 150,000 SKUs, and a unified B2B and B2C platform for Easilocks with 20 percent conversion growth.
Strengths
- Four named clients, each carrying two reported outcomes rather than one vague claim
- Works across Shopify, Adobe Commerce and BigCommerce instead of pushing a single platform
- 150,000-SKU headless work, so catalogue scale is demonstrated rather than asserted
- Offshore rates behind a US entity
Trade-offs
- The published work is storefront and platform; native app case studies are not on this page
- Metrics are self-reported and no client reference is offered
- Commerce sits inside a much larger group, so confirm which team you actually get
Emizentech
Emizentech names more individual shopping apps than any other firm here: Dr. Babak, Goods Fulfill, Proship, Buitanda, Rebellious and EGO, plus marketplace and auction products including Bidlyt and Mazadi, a platform for pre-owned goods. It states it has operated since 2013 with more than 100 developers and 1,200 projects, and lists certification across eight commerce platforms including Shopify Plus, Adobe Commerce, Shopware, BigCommerce and PrestaShop. None of the named apps is a brand a general reader will recognise, which is the honest counterweight to the volume.
Strengths
- Six named shopping apps, the most individual commerce products named by any firm here
- Certified across eight commerce platforms rather than committed to one
- Operating since 2013 with 100+ developers, so it is not a two-person shop
- Marketplace and auction products as well as conventional storefronts
Trade-offs
- No screenshot in this guide: its site blocks automated browsers entirely, explained under how we evaluated
- None of the named apps is a recognisable consumer brand
- No outcome metrics published against the individual app case studies
Suffescom Solutions
Suffescom’s clearest commerce case is F-i-n-g-o, a social commerce platform established in 2015 that it says it redesigned with multiple payment gateways and a points-based rewards system, and which it reports at more than a million installs with a quote from the client attached. The social commerce model, where customers earn by sharing products rather than simply buying them, is a genuinely different product from a catalogue app and is the reason this entry is here. The firm reports more than 250 employees, over 500 million downloads across its portfolio, and operations spanning the US, Dubai and India.
Strengths
- A named social commerce product with a seven-figure install count and an attributed client quote
- Rewards and referral mechanics built in, which storefront shops usually treat as an afterthought
- 250+ employees across three regions, so capacity and timezone coverage are wide
- Offshore pricing
Trade-offs
- One named ecommerce product against a very broad AI and blockchain services catalogue
- The install figure is self-reported with no revenue or retention figure beside it
- Positioning has shifted heavily toward AI, so confirm commerce is still a live practice
Appy Pie AI ★
Full disclosure: this is our product, and we have kept it out of the ranked list because Appy Pie AI is not an ecommerce development company and ranking ourselves against firms that build headless platforms would be dishonest. It belongs here for one specific reason. A large share of the people searching for an ecommerce app developer already have a working store on Shopify, WooCommerce or something similar, and what they actually need is a branded app in front of it rather than new commerce engineering. That is a solved category: add your catalogue, cart, checkout, push notifications and order tracking, then publish to both stores. If you need headless architecture, an ERP integration or a marketplace with vendor payouts, hire one of the ten firms above.
Strengths
- Publish a branded shopping app without custom code, for a monthly fee
- Cart, checkout, push notifications and order tracking without commissioning a build
- Guided submission to both stores, which is where most first-timers stall
- Live in days, so you learn whether your customers want an app before paying to find out
Trade-offs
- Not a substitute for headless commerce, ERP integration or a custom marketplace
- No source-code export
- Feature set is what the platform offers, so unusual checkout logic is out of reach
- Does not solve traffic: an app is a retention channel, not an acquisition one
Which Ecommerce Development Company Should You Pick?
Match your situation to a row. The first question in every case is the same: is your difficulty the commerce platform, or is it the product?
| If you are… | Pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A recognised retail brand | Appinventiv | Five named brands with outcome figures attached to each |
| Wanting a scope costed before you commit | ScienceSoft | Publishes bands and per-feature hours, not a contact form |
| Building commerce infrastructure, not a store | Fueled | Named work with WooCommerce and Square themselves |
| Replatforming or integrating with an ERP | Elogic Commerce | Exclusively ecommerce since 2009, six platform partnerships |
| On Shopify or BigCommerce already | Codal | Top-tier partner on both, with four named retail references |
| A UK or European retailer going headless | Net Solutions | Four recognisable UK retail names and headless architecture work |
| Selling into Gulf or emerging markets | TekRevol | Local payment integration with a sales result attached |
| Connecting a store to a PIM or B2B workflow | Folio3 eCommerce | Four named clients and 150,000-SKU headless work |
| Buying on breadth of platform coverage | Emizentech | Six named shopping apps across eight commerce platforms |
| Building a social or rewards-driven product | Suffescom Solutions | A named social commerce product at a million-plus installs |
| Already running a store that converts | No agency needed | An app in front of a working store is a solved category |
Already Have a Store That Works?
If you already run a store on Shopify, WooCommerce or something similar and your customers come back, the app in front of it is a solved problem. You can publish a branded one to both stores for a monthly fee instead of a five-figure build.
Try the Ecommerce App BuilderFrequently Asked Questions
How much does it cost to build an ecommerce app?
It depends far more on whether you are wrapping a store you already run than on how many features you list. An app in front of an existing Shopify, WooCommerce or BigCommerce store, using that platform’s own APIs for catalogue, cart and checkout, runs roughly 15,000 to 40,000 US dollars. A custom ecommerce app with its own backend, admin panel, payments and order management runs roughly 60,000 to 150,000. A multi-vendor marketplace with split payouts and its own logistics starts around 150,000 and climbs quickly. Two firms in this guide publish bands of their own and they corroborate those figures: Appinventiv states 40,000 to 80,000 for an MVP, 80,000 to 150,000 for a growth build and 150,000 to 300,000 to scale, while ScienceSoft publishes under 50,000, 50,000 to 200,000, and over 200,000. Region drives the number inside every band, with offshore teams commonly billing 25 to 50 dollars an hour against 100 to 200 in North America.
Does Apple really take 30 percent of my ecommerce sales?
If you sell physical goods, no, and this is the most expensive misconception in the category. Apple’s App Review Guidelines are explicit at 3.1.3(e): if your app enables people to purchase physical goods or services that will be consumed outside of the app, you must use purchase methods other than in-app purchase to collect those payments, such as Apple Pay or traditional credit card entry. So Apple’s commission is not merely absent on physical goods, using in-app purchase for them actually breaks the rules. Your real payment cost is your gateway’s rate. The 15 to 30 percent commission lives under guideline 3.1.1, which covers unlocking features or content inside the app: subscriptions, premium content, in-app currency. The test is where the thing is consumed, not what it costs. Model your margin on that distinction before you model anything else.
Do I need an app at all if I already have a Shopify store?
Often not, and no agency on this list will open the conversation that way. A responsive store or a well-built progressive web app covers most of what a first-time shopper needs, and an app you have to persuade someone to install is a retention channel rather than an acquisition one. An app earns its cost when you have genuine repeat customers, when push notifications will actually be opened rather than dismissed, or when the shopping experience benefits from something the mobile web does badly. If your store converts poorly on mobile today, an app will not fix that, it will reproduce the same problem behind an install prompt. Look at your repeat-purchase rate before you commission anything.
How long does an ecommerce app take to build?
An app in front of an existing platform is realistically 8 to 14 weeks. A custom build with its own backend, admin panel, payments and order management is 4 to 7 months. A multi-vendor marketplace with payouts and dispute handling runs longer and should be scoped in phases rather than as a single delivery. Add time for store review on every release, and add considerably more for integrations: connecting to an ERP, a PIM or a warehouse system is the step that slips most often, because it depends on a system and a team you do not control.
Should I hire a platform agency or an app agency?
This choice decides whether the project goes well, and the two look identical on a services page. A platform agency, which in this guide means Elogic, Codal, Net Solutions or Folio3, is certified on Shopify, Adobe Commerce or BigCommerce and is strongest when the difficulty is the commerce platform itself: the catalogue, the integrations, a replatform, a B2B workflow. An app agency, meaning Appinventiv, ScienceSoft, Fueled, TekRevol, Emizentech or Suffescom here, is strongest when the difficulty is the product: a differentiated experience, unusual mechanics, or a marketplace that does not fit an off-the-shelf platform. Hiring a platform agency for a differentiated product, or an app agency for a complex replatform, is the commonest and costliest mismatch in this category.
Who handles PCI compliance and payment security?
You do, and how much work that is depends entirely on how payments are built. If your app uses a hosted, tokenised gateway such as Stripe, Adyen, Braintree or your platform’s own payments product, card data never touches your servers and your compliance burden sits in the lightest self-assessment tier. If anyone proposes capturing and storing card numbers in your own backend, your scope and your liability both expand enormously. Make this an explicit question in the proposal: which gateway, does card data ever touch our infrastructure, and who signs the self-assessment. No agency in this guide takes on your compliance obligations for you.
What are the ongoing costs after launch?
Three that a build quote will not include. Payment processing is a percentage of every order, so it scales with success rather than amortising away. Platform and infrastructure costs, meaning your Shopify or Adobe Commerce plan, hosting, search and image delivery, scale with catalogue size and traffic. And maintenance, typically 15 to 20 percent of build cost per year, is not optional on a commerce app because checkout is the part that breaks: payment SDKs, OS releases and platform API deprecations all force changes on somebody else’s schedule. Budget for a live checkout, not for a finished project.
Will Apple and Google approve an ecommerce app?
Shopping apps do not face the specific saturation obstacle that dating apps do. Apple’s guideline 4.3(b) names eight categories it will not accept without a meaningfully different experience, and shopping is not among them. What both stores scrutinise instead is payments: physical goods must go through a normal payment method rather than in-app purchase, and digital goods must go through in-app purchase, and getting that backwards is a common rejection. Both stores also require in-app account deletion if you offer account creation. Apple added language in June 2026 allowing removal of apps that are not updated, improved, or do not attract customers, which applies across every category.
Choosing Well
Any of the ten firms here can build a competent shopping app, and the best of them can build genuinely hard commerce systems. But this category punishes a particular kind of optimism: it is the one where a beautifully executed app sits on top of a store that was never going to convert, and the app gets blamed. An app is a retention channel. It rewards businesses that already have customers coming back, and it does very little for businesses that do not. That is the uncomfortable part no agency raises during a sales call, because it is the question that ends the sales call.
Whichever route you take, three habits prevent most of the ways a commerce project goes wrong:
Decide which lane you are hiring
Platform difficulty or product difficulty. They look identical on a services page and the mismatch costs more than the wrong price.
Model payments before scope
Physical goods pay your gateway, not Apple. Getting that backwards has sunk more business cases here than any technical decision.
Name who owns each integration
Payment, ERP, PIM, shipping, tax. One line each in the proposal. Cheap to ask, expensive to discover in month three.
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