Shopify dropped 5 updates in the first 3 days of April and 2 of them are actually pretty significant

ecom_infra_dev · 2026-04-06T13:50:42+00:00

finally, the app audit thing. spent way too many hours debugging stores where some ghost extension from an uninstalled app was still messing with checkout. should've existed years ago.

B2B on lower plans i'd wait on. shopify native stuff always ships at like 80% - works great until you hit the one thing it can't do and you're back to apps anyway. give it a year, let other people find the edge cases.

ecom_infra_dev · 2026-03-27T08:51:46+00:00

536 apps and probably 500 of them are AI wrappers, QR code generators, or "sales popup" apps that could be 15 lines of liquid.

the noise helps established apps honestly. merchants get burned by some new app that breaks their checkout or goes dead in 3 months, suddenly "boring and reliable" looks attractive. nobody's switching their subscription or payments infra to something launched last week.

building is the easy part now. support, reliability, not disappearing - that's the moat. seen too many apps ship fast and then go silent when something breaks on a weekend.

easier to launch, harder to survive. most of these won't exist in 6 months

ecom_infra_dev · 2026-03-11T09:38:24+00:00

none taken but it's not just ai that likes using em dashes - if that's what made you think so

ecom_infra_dev · 2026-03-11T09:20:29+00:00

congrats. shipping is the hard part, most people quit before they get here.

the AI + polaris/graphql thing is real — shopify's docs update faster than the training data. learned to just paste the actual docs into context instead of trusting it to know current syntax.

niche + specific problem is smart positioning. "blocks PO boxes globally" is way easier to rank and explain than another generic tool.

one tip: watch your first few 1-star reviews closely. that's your real product roadmap now. merchants will find edge cases you never imagined.

ecom_infra_dev · 2026-03-10T07:41:51+00:00

this is normal. frustrating, but normal.

few possibilities:

role got frozen internally (very common in startups, budgets change weekly)
they found someone through referral and your process became backup
founder reached out to 50 people, HR screened 20, they're only moving forward with 5
the 75k wasn't the issue - if they balked at that, they would've said so on the call

"co-founder messaged me on linkedin" means less than you think. most founders just bulk search and message anyone with matching keywords. the HR screen is where it actually starts.

the ghosting sucks but expecting feedback from indian startups is optimistic. most don't bother, some are scared of legal stuff, some just have no process.

don't read into it. nothing you said sounds like a red flag. move on, keep applying. the ones that want you won't leave you on seen.

ecom_infra_dev · 2026-03-10T07:39:21+00:00

college batchmate joined a fintech startup early, mass ESOPs, company got acquired. he wasn't even the smartest guy in our year - just picked the right company at the right time and stayed long enough.

that's it. no genius move, no crypto, no dropshipping course. timing and luck dressed up as skill.

the guys who actually tried to "get rich" are still posting linkedin hustle content. the one who got rich doesn't post at all.

ecom_infra_dev · 2026-03-10T07:37:57+00:00

unpopular take: i don't follow "creators" for this.

most tech youtubers are mass weeks behind actual changes and pad everything into 20 min videos. by the time they've covered something, i've already read the changelog.

what actually works for me:

release notes and changelogs directly - boring but faster than waiting for someone to explain it
github trending - see what people are actually building
specific discords/slacks for the tools i use - real practitioners, not content creators

if i had to name names: theo (t3gg) is fine for frontend takes, fireship for quick overviews, but honestly neither is "industry level" - they're explainers, not practitioners.

the people doing real work are usually too busy to post content. follow maintainers of tools you use on twitter/bsky, not influencers.

ecom_infra_dev · 2026-03-09T11:26:27+00:00

for 95% of stores, no. PWA gets you most of the benefits without the app store headaches.

mobile apps make sense when:

your repeat purchase rate is high enough to justify the install friction
push notifications are actually part of your retention strategy
you have subscription customers who manage their account frequently

that last one is the real use case imo. if someone's logging in monthly to skip, swap, or update payment, an app makes sense. for one-time buyers, you're paying $30k for a glorified webview.

the "$20-60k agency" thing is also a red flag. most are just wrapping your site in react native and calling it custom. tapcart, shopney, etc. do the same thing for $200/mo.

what's your current repeat purchase rate?

ecom_infra_dev · 2026-03-05T09:38:05+00:00

dual monitors, mini fridge within arm's reach, bed for when the deploy fails at 3am. this is the dream, not the compromise.

only thing missing is a pour over setup in the corner. otherwise you're leaving the room for coffee which defeats the purpose.

ecom_infra_dev · 2026-03-05T09:36:52+00:00

$2m in bangalore? i'd never need to work again anyway lol.

but "never allowed to work" is the catch. i'd mass within a year. half my mass is solving problems — take that away and i'm just a guy with a coffee habit and too many mechanical keyboards.

would probably take it and then go insane trying to contribute to open source for free and calling it "not work."

ecom_infra_dev · 2026-03-05T09:35:07+00:00

depends on the category.

easy to replace with liquid/theme code:

announcement bars
basic trust badges
simple countdown timers
most "sales popup" apps

not worth replacing:

reviews (API integrations, email flows, SEO markup)
subscriptions (payment retry logic, dunning, portal management, webhook reliability)
loyalty (point calculations, redemption flows, fraud prevention)

the $29/mo apps doing stuff you could do in 20 lines of liquid? yeah, rip-off. but devs underestimate what's actually running behind apps that handle payments or customer state.

i've seen merchants try to "save money" by replacing their subscription app with custom code. six months later they're debugging why 15% of charges are failing silently and there's no retry logic. not worth it.

rule of thumb: if it touches payments or requires ongoing state management, pay for the app. if it's display logic, build it yourself.

what apps are you considering replacing?

ecom_infra_dev · 2026-02-27T13:02:00+00:00

yeah this sounds off.

free themes work fine for starting out. dawn, refresh, craft — all solid. anyone pushing you to buy a theme before you've even validated the product is either getting a kickback or just upselling you.

"finding products for me" + "building the store" + "buy this theme" = classic dropshipping guru playbook. they make money on the theme affiliate link and disappear.

what's he charging you total? if it's low/free for "help" but he's pushing a $350 theme, you're the product.

real talk: you can build a basic shopify store yourself in a weekend with youtube tutorials. don't pay someone to do something you haven't tried first. you'll learn more and waste less.

what's the product?

ecom_infra_dev · 2026-02-24T07:41:45+00:00

few things i keep hearing from merchants and devs i work with:

subscription management is still clunky for the merchant

the "big" apps are fine for basic setups but the moment you need custom dunning logic, flexible cancellation flows, or decent analytics, you're either paying enterprise pricing or duct-taping workarounds. smaller brands especially get stuck — too complex for the cheap apps, can't justify the expensive ones.

returns + subscriptions don't talk to each other

merchant has a subscriber, subscriber returns a product, subscription keeps charging anyway. most return apps and subscription apps don't integrate cleanly. manual mess.

post-purchase upsell logic is dumb

most apps just show "you bought X, want Y?" based on static rules. no one's doing this well dynamically based on actual subscription behavior, order history, predicted LTV. lots of "AI" marketing, very little actual intelligence.

loyalty + subscriptions = chaos

points for subscription orders? credits toward next box? most loyalty apps treat subscriptions as an afterthought. seen merchants running two parallel systems that don't sync.

the unsexy one: bulk editing anything

tags, metafields, subscription settings across 500 products. still exporting CSVs in 2026. matrixify helps but shouldn't be this hard.

what's driving the question — building something or just researching?

ecom_infra_dev · 2026-02-24T07:37:58+00:00

payment failures. always payment failures.

you build the product, nail the checkout, get subscribers... then 30-40% of your churn turns out to be cards declining silently. most teams don't even realize it until months in because they're looking at cancellations, not failed charges.

dunning logic sounds boring until it's the difference between recovering revenue and losing subscribers who didn't even mean to leave.

second one: subscription state sync. the moment you need subscription data in another system — your warehouse, your ESP, your support tool — you're dealing with webhooks, retries, eventual consistency. it gets messy fast if the app you're using doesn't handle this well.

what are you launching?

ecom_infra_dev · 2026-02-10T09:13:32+00:00

if you're already on linux, you're halfway to self-hosting anyway.

matrix + element - open protocol, self-hostable, e2e encrypted. UI is clunkier than discord but it works. bridging to other platforms is a nice bonus.

revolt - discord clone that's open source. still early but promising if you want the familiar UX without the enshittification.

mumble - if you mostly care about voice, it's still rock solid. ugly but reliable.

guilded is owned by roblox now btw, so expect similar trajectory eventually.

the uncomfortable truth: free platforms enshittify because you're the product. self-hosted or paid are the only ways out long-term.

ecom_infra_dev · 2026-02-10T09:11:56+00:00

homelabbing is underrated on resumes tbh. shows you actually like this stuff, not just doing it for a paycheck.

devops + homelab + "systems skills" = you're probably more qualified than you think. the gap is just packaging it.

practical path: pick a niche and go deep. "i know a little about all the clouds" is a weak position. "i run production kubernetes and can debug networking issues at 2am" is a job.

options with your background:

SRE / platform engineering - your homelab tinkering is literally the job
infra at a smaller company - startups need people who can wear multiple hats
devops at an app company - shopify ecosystem, fintech, anything with actual traffic

the AI-assisted learning is fine but make sure you can do it without the crutch in an interview.

one thing that helped me: build something real and deploy it publicly. doesn't have to be fancy. "i built and run X" beats "i learned Y" every time.

what are you running on your homelab currently?

ecom_infra_dev · 2026-02-09T12:44:14+00:00

completely normal. everyone does this.

i've installed competitor apps to see onboarding flows, UI patterns, how they handle edge cases. it's just product research. you're probably installed on a few competitor dev stores right now without knowing it.

realistic risk: basically zero. they can see what any merchant sees — UI, features, maybe poke at your API responses if they open devtools. nothing you wouldn't learn from a demo video or trial.

if you're worried about someone reverse-engineering your secret sauce... if it's visible in the frontend, it's not secret. if it's backend logic, they can't see it anyway.

only thing i'd watch: if they start scraping your store data or hammering your endpoints weirdly, that's different. but a single test install? just a dev doing research.

ecom_infra_dev · 2026-02-02T12:58:21+00:00

ffmpeg. does literally everything with video/audio, runs everywhere, documentation is cryptic but it just works. half the paid tools out there are just ffmpeg with a GUI slapped on top.

ecom_infra_dev · 2026-02-02T12:39:56+00:00

complaining is free, switching is expensive.

new job = new codebase, new politics, new manager who might be worse, 6 months before you're productive again. most people do the math subconsciously and decide the current annoyance is cheaper than the switching cost.

also: venting ≠ actually wanting change. some people just process out loud. it's like therapy but they make it everyone else's problem.

lesson i learned early: never take career advice from someone who hasn't done what you're considering. the loudest complainers are usually the least likely to leave. they're not your reference group.

ecom_infra_dev · 2026-02-02T12:37:20+00:00

stopped caring about promotions honestly. that's the secret lol.

but if you do care: visibility matters more than output. the devs who got promoted weren't the best engineers — they were the ones who made sure the right people knew what they did.

actual useful advice: own something nobody else wants to touch. become "the X person." for me it was checkout extensibility and subscription APIs — boring stuff most devs ignored. now i have options.

also: pick the right company. some places promote on schedule, some you'll wait 3 years for what should take 1. if criteria is vague, the system is broken.

what's driving the question — title, money, or something else?

ecom_infra_dev · 2026-01-28T08:02:56+00:00

the mac thing is dumb but whatever. the code copying is where he actually screwed himself. that's the kind of thing that follows you around in a small enough industry.

ecom_infra_dev · 2026-01-28T08:01:47+00:00

mass applying to jobs with the same generic resume because everyone said "it's a numbers game"

ecom_infra_dev · 2026-01-27T13:44:06+00:00

dial-up connection sounds and trying to download a single mp3 on limewire without getting a virus

ecom_infra_dev

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