Shopify app vs Chrome extension vs standalone web app — it looks like a technology choice, but it's really a distribution choice. All three can be built by one person in weeks. What differs is who brings you customers, who owns the customer relationship, and how much of your revenue and roadmap a platform can take away with one policy update. This guide compares the three models honestly — marketplace discoverability against platform risk — and ends with a decision framework so you can pick where to build with eyes open.
The real question: who brings you customers?
Every product needs a distribution answer. A Shopify app gets discovered inside the App Store, where merchants are already searching with a credit card in hand. A Chrome extension gets found in the Web Store by users trying to fix a workflow annoyance right now. A standalone web app gets discovered… nowhere, by default — you bring every single visitor through SEO, content, communities, ads, or outreach. The product is the easy part; distribution is the business. Choose the model whose built-in distribution matches your skills and your buyer.
The three models at a glance
- Shopify app — distribution: app-store search, category rankings, merchant ads · pricing norms: $9–$99/mo subscriptions · platform cut: revenue share per current Shopify terms (historically 0% on your first $1M annually — check the latest) · risk: policy changes, competing native features, approval gates.
- Chrome extension — distribution: Web Store search, keyword rankings · pricing norms: users expect free or $2–$10 one-time; subscriptions are a hard sell · platform cut: none, but no native payments either · risk: one policy strike can delist you; Manifest V3 constrains what code can do.
- Standalone web app — distribution: 100% on you (SEO, content, communities, outreach) · pricing norms: whatever the market bears, $19–$299/mo · platform cut: just payment processing · risk: no gatekeeper — and no safety net.
Shopify apps: buyers with wallets open
The Shopify App Store is the closest thing in software to a farmers' market where every visitor came to buy. Merchants search it with a specific problem ('upsell', 'size chart', 'pre-orders'), and the review-driven ranking system means a genuinely better product can climb past incumbents. Billing is built in — Shopify charges the merchant, you get paid, no payment integration to build. Pricing tolerance is real: merchants who make money from your $29/mo app don't churn over $29.
The risks are equally real. Shopify controls approval, can change revenue-share terms, and — the one every app developer fears — can ship your core feature natively. Apps also live and die by reviews, and a merchant having a bad day can torch your ranking. The smart play: build something adjacent to Shopify's core, not something Shopify obviously should ship itself, and collect your merchants' emails from day one so the relationship survives the platform.
Chrome extensions: cheap to build, hard to monetize
Extensions are the fastest path from idea to users: a weekend of JavaScript, a Web Store listing, and you're discoverable by millions of people searching for exactly the annoyance you fix. There's no revenue share and review-driven rankings reward quality quickly. If your idea is a workflow add-on — scrapers, formatters, autofillers, tab managers — this is the lowest-friction launch in software.
The catch is monetization culture. Extension users expect free. There's no built-in billing, so subscriptions mean wiring your own checkout and account system — which is really a standalone web app wearing an extension costume. And the platform risk is stark: a single policy strike or automated review flag can delist you overnight, and Manifest V3 tightened what extension code is allowed to do. The mature pattern is to treat the extension as the top of the funnel or the companion client to a web app — capture users in the store, build the business on your own domain.
Standalone web apps: everything is yours, including the silence
A standalone SaaS owns the whole stack: your pricing page, your brand, your customer emails, your roadmap. No approval queue, no revenue share beyond payment processing, no platform that can Sherlock you — and the pricing ceiling is set by value, not by store norms. This is why the biggest outcomes in indie software are standalone products.
The price of that freedom is distribution. Nobody wakes up inside your website. Every visitor arrives because you ranked an article, posted in a community, ran an ad, or sent a cold email. That means the first 6–12 months are a marketing job with a software side quest — which is exactly why picking a niche with provable demand matters more here than on any platform. It's also why we built the demand and competition scores into [TrendGap's idea board](/): when you bring your own traffic, you can't afford to guess which niche wants you.
Every marketplace eventually changes its algorithm, fees, or rules — and every platform eventually ships features that overlap with its best third-party apps. The counter-move isn't avoiding platforms; it's never letting the platform be your only asset. Collect customer emails, build a content footprint on your own domain, and treat marketplace revenue as fuel, not the engine.
The decision framework: five questions
- 1Does your buyer already live on a platform? E-commerce merchants live in Shopify; knowledge workers with browser-based pain live in the Web Store. Fish where the fish are.
- 2Is discoverability or margin more important right now? Pre-traction, built-in discovery beats better margins on zero users.
- 3Could the platform plausibly ship your feature? If yes, you're a free roadmap item — pick a niche too niche-y for them.
- 4Do you need billing flexibility (trials, seats, usage tiers) beyond what the store supports? Shopify billing is generous; extension billing is DIY.
- 5What's your distribution skill set? If you're strong at SEO or community marketing, standalone's ceiling wins. If you're not, rent a marketplace's audience while you learn.
The hybrid path most successful founders actually take
The either/or framing is false. A common winning sequence: launch a Shopify app or extension where buyers already search, use marketplace revenue and reviews as validation and cash flow, then expand into a standalone web app that serves the same audience beyond the platform's walls — with the extension or app remaining as an acquisition channel. You get the marketplace's distribution and the web app's ownership, sequenced instead of chosen.
Find live opportunities in each model
Whatever you build, start from a niche with evidence — pain complaints, beatable competitors, pricing tolerance. On [TrendGap's idea board](/) you can filter opportunities by type — SaaS, Chrome extensions, Shopify apps, APIs, mobile — and each comes with demand and competition scores plus a ready-to-build playbook, so you can compare real opportunities across all three models instead of debating them in the abstract. Have a specific idea already? Run it through the free Idea Evaluator first, and pair it with our validation checklist, pricing guide, and the latest micro-SaaS ideas and indie hacker ideas roundups.