Mirakle Research · Sep 2026
Three ways to make a Shopify app cheaper, and one way to take the cheapest of them back.
Take away an app’s free plan
×0.68
the reviews of look-alike apps that changed nothing.
288 apps, five weeks after.
Lengthen its free trial instead
×1.19
and we cannot tell that from nothing.
Interval ×0.87 to ×1.64 · 305 apps.
First suspect · our log
14,080 rows in 144 days. 6,557 changes.
And “a price change” is twelve things
1,699 moved the cheapest price by adding or dropping whole plans.
So: the part written in plain words
46.9% of 22,779 listed apps offer a plan, 61.9% a trial, 15.9% neither.
How much there is of each
36,050 reviews in the windows, and 23,558 at the controls.
How to read the next slides
Log axis: parallel lines mean the change made no difference.
Second suspect · our own estimate
×1.37. Without the ten largest apps, ×0.97.
Every lever, both estimates
Hollow: every app. Solid: without the ten largest.
After a free plan was removed
288 apps. The fall starts the week before we read it.
After a plan’s price was cut
636 apps. Interval ×1.04–×1.64.
After a plan’s price was raised
×0.98 across 567 apps.
Six levers, read together
Cheaper up, dearer down, 6 times out of 6, on both estimates. If they were coins: one arrangement in 64.
What the trial result is not
With 305 and 207 apps, the trial intervals hold an effect the size of the free plan’s as easily as they hold none.
1–2★ share, points against controls
Even removing a free plan: −0.7 points, interval −3.9 to +3.3.
What it can’t say
We never see a merchant decide against an app whose free tier has gone. The six directions are the form that decision takes from outside.
The full study
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