Get started with building public applications

Public applications can give our clients additional customization tools or add new integrations to their stores. Any custom app can become public. And any developer can come to us and create a public app. We always welcome new additions to our App Market!

App Market is a place where clients can search and install public apps in their stores. It has a search tool, collections, and categories to make it easier to find specific apps.

We have an automated flow where you start with only an idea of an app and end up with it being published in the App Market. On the journey, you can choose application type and billing depending on your business logic. Work with the dev version of your app in the free dev environment and test it with us before publishing the app.

Submit your app idea

Want to build an app that adds a new feature or a service to Ecwid stores? Send a Request form telling us about the app you want to create: how it will help our merchants, what regions it should work in, does it work on other e-commerce platforms, etc.

Learn more about application types

Public apps can have different business logic or none at all. Depending on what backend and/or website admin you have, we offer two main approaches to handling your users known as application types.

Two types are Native and External apps. With a suitable type, you can make the most user-friendly application.

Read more about Native vs. External applications.

Learn more about monetizing

When you build for Ecwid App Market, you access thousands of potential users for the app. There are many ways to monetize your work: monthly price, pay-per-use payments, one-time premium purchases, and more. Ecwid has everything to set up and handle the flexible billing for you.

Read more about monetizing your app.

Start working on a dev version

Once your Request form is approved, we will give you a free test store on a Premium plan and a dev app. With this setup, you can access all Ecwid features and use the store as a playground.

Email us if your workflow requires an additional staging app or several stores for tests.

Complete app publishing process

Now you have the dev version ready to be released, find the Readiness form link in your dev app email and submit it to start the technical review and publishing process.

Before starting the review, we create a new app (prod version) and add technical settings, marketing texts, and images for the App Market card to this app. Once the review is done, we publish your app in App Market and provide you with the monthly reports document if you use our billing.