11 Ecommerce Plugin Success Stories [2024]
An e-commerce plugin is a piece of software that allows businesses to sell their products online. These plugins typically include features such as a shopping cart, payment gateway, or product catalog.
To build an e-commerce plugin, you need to be familiar with the different types of e-commerce platforms and have a good understanding of how to develop plugins. You may also need to have strong coding skills.
The demand for e-commerce plugins are growing as online stores are looking for ways to improve their processes. Plugins can help businesses add new features and integrations, and they can also help save time and money by automating tasks that would otherwise be done manually.
In this list, you'll find real-world ecommerce plugin success stories and very profitable examples of starting a ecommerce plugin that makes money.
1. Widebundle ($660K/year)
He used Shopify Facebook Groups and communities to read people’s problems and questions, add comments, and start conversations. It’s a long job that only a few people want to do, but it works.
At some point, Matt found 3 people who wanted the same thing but it didn’t exist in the Shopify App Store. They wanted features from a bundled app that didn’t exist. And if 3 people want it, maybe there are more.
How much money it makes: $660K/year
How much did it cost to start: $300
How many people on the team: 6
WideBundle is a Shopify App founded in May 2020, that has grown to making over $40,000 monthly, with 5 people working full-time, and helps Shopify merchants create bundles and offers to increase their average order value.
2. Custimy.io ($600K/year)
Kristoffer and his co-founder, Martin, came up with the idea for Custimy while on vacation in Spain. Martin, who was working in London as a director for a software and technology consultancy, pitched the idea of building a customer data platform for e-commerce stores. Inspired by the potential to revolutionize e-commerce, Kristoffer quit his CEO position at a food-tech company, and together they built Custimy from scratch, eventually raising $1.6 million in pre-seed funding and attracting major media attention.
How much money it makes: $600K/year
How much did it cost to start: $875K
How many people on the team: 30
Custimy.io co-founders Kristoffer and Martin created an e-commerce data platform that uses machine learning to help SMB stores make better decisions based on higher-quality customer data, raising the biggest pre-seed funding round in Denmark at the time and currently having 50K USD in monthly recurring revenue.
3. Bagisto ($600K/year)
Saurav Pathak, the Chief Product Officer of Bagisto, came up with the idea for the open-source e-commerce platform after realizing there was a huge gap between demand and supply for platform-driven e-commerce solutions. With the goal of making it simple for developers to create their own online stores, Bagisto has generated over $1 million in revenue and has a user base of 200,000.
How much money it makes: $600K/year
How much did it cost to start: $10K
How many people on the team: 47
Open-source e-commerce platform Bagisto has generated over $1 million in revenue in the past four years, with $350,000 annual recurring revenue for the past two years, has over 70,000 downloads, 5,000 Github stars, 5,000 community members globally, and over 150 contributors enhancing its features.
4. Kiwi Sizing ($432K/year)
The founder of Kiwi Sizing used to run a dropshipping store that sold dog clothing and pet accessories, but he always struggled with setting up size charts for the pet products.
He faced two main issues when it came to sizing: each product had different sizing, and the vendor only provided sizing in centimeters.
As a result, he had to manually convert each number from centimeters to inches using Google search, which was a time-consuming process. At the time, there were two size chart apps available on the Shopify app store, but neither of them offered unit conversion features.
This meant that he had to waste hours adding up to 20-30 new merchandise each week. The business started because the founder, being an engineer, was highly motivated to create a tool that could help him automate this tedious process.
How much money it makes: $432K/year
How much did it cost to start: $300
How many people on the team: 1
Kiwi Sizing is an e-commerce plugin that simplifies size charts and offers fit recommenders, generating over $36k/month in revenue with a 5% month-over-month growth, and serving over 13,000 active stores worldwide.
5. SuperLemon ($348K/year)
After 2 failed startups, the founders set their sights on working on something people want and are ready to pay for. Their priority even before they had decided on the idea for the product was to find an audience, a group of people who faced a problem, and who currently pay for a software tool to solve their problem. App marketplaces were a way to mitigate some of this risk.
They had some prior experience with building a Shopify store, and also had a friend who built a $20k/mo Shopify app without any employees.
To find problems worth solving, they browsed the entire Shopify app store, which at the time had 3,000+ apps. Going through every single app, jotting down interesting ones, especially ones that had poor reviews indicating that they could do a better job at solving the same problem, and picked 5 out of the 100s of those ideas they identified, based on their goals and constraints:
- An existing problem that people were already paying for
- Existing apps weren’t doing the best possible job at solving customer’s needs
- The app had the potential to grow to at least $3k in MRR, which after costs would allow the founders to live comfortably in Bengaluru
How much money it makes: $348K/year
How much did it cost to start: $0
How many people on the team: 0
SuperLemon, a WhatsApp plugin for Shopify eCommerce stores, crossed $29,000 in MRR as of July 2020, with 20,000 users from 50+ countries and 1700+ paying customers, all acquired through organic marketing strategies and a relentless focus on customer service and satisfaction.
6. Studio Wombat ($180K/year)
Maarten had started building plugins, mainly to learn more about how WooCommerce worked, and to his surprise, people were interested. That's when he had decided to sell them on Studio Wombat.
How much money it makes: $180K/year
How much did it cost to start: $0
How many people on the team: 0
This case study follows the journey of a web application developer to founding a profitable business selling WooCommerce plugins, with five different plugins selling at around $49 per year each, making well over $15,000/month.
7. Analyzify ($144K/year)
DataPack, the founder's productized offer for data-analytics-related projects, had received too many requests from Shopify stores. So they decided to create a standalone product for the Shopify market.
How much money it makes: $144K/year
How much did it cost to start: $6K
How many people on the team: 3
Analyzify.app is a Shopify app that helps enable accurate and reliable data tracking and generates $12K+/month with over 350 stores empowered, thanks to a freemium version on YouTube and exceptional customer support.
8. Ecomtent ($96K/year)
Max Sinclair met his co-founder at a founder speed dating program in Toronto. Seeing the potential of Stable Diffusion's AI for e-commerce, they launched Ecomtent, which now boasts a 25% MoM growth rate and $100K ARR.
How much money it makes: $96K/year
How many people on the team: 4
This case study is about Ecomtent, a company that enables e-commerce sellers to generate optimized product listings with AI, and highlights their growth at 25% MoM with $100K ARR and their plans to expand their product offerings.
9. CartFox.io ($18K/year)
Simon, the founder, started his eCommerce business with a 5K EUR investment inherited from his grandmother. After successfully creating several brands and generating over 150M+ EUR in revenue, he identified the need for a SaaS solution for SMS marketing and cart abandonment recovery in the competitive EU eCommerce market. This led to the birth of CartFox.io, which aims to become their flagship product within a year or two.
How much money it makes: $18K/year
How much did it cost to start: $120K
How many people on the team: 7
Slovenian eCommerce business owner turns internal solution into SaaS product CartFox, with over 150M EUR revenue generated through several brands, but still breaking even $1.5K/month with salaries included from CartFox.
10. Wheely Sales ($7.2K/year)
After conducting some thorough research, the founder noticed that the lucky wheel popup format had started appearing and was proving to be highly effective in converting traffic.
Spin-a-sale and Wheelio, two popular apps available on the Shopify app store, had received hundreds of excellent reviews.
However, the founder realized that these apps were only compatible with Shopify, leaving other major platforms like WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and Squarespace unprovided.
This was enough validation to inspire them to build Wheely Sales - a solution that is compatible with any website or platform and fills this gap in the market.
How much money it makes: $7.2K/year
How many people on the team: 0
Wheely Sales CEO Josh created a lucky wheel popup that has grown revenue from $0 to $600/month in just 4 months since getting started and has attracted over 1.1 million users to his customers’ websites, all while proving that when it comes to creating a product, competition is validation.
11. SuperJack ($1.4K/year)
The founder discovered that many merchants using Squarespace forums and Facebook groups were requesting to receive orders directly to a Google Sheet without the need for manual exporting every day or week. After conducting some research, he came across a no-code tool that allows users to connect and automate repetitive tasks using different APIs. He recommended the tool and realized the high demand for it, which led him to create his own tool.
How much money it makes: $1.4K/year
How much did it cost to start: $2K
How many people on the team: 1
SuperJack, a Squarespace extension for eCommerce owners, was launched 30 days ago, and is currently at $117 MRR with 14 users, and the founder shares his process of building the business from identifying the problem to developing and launching the product.
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Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
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