I think D2C founders (specially Shopify) are looking at their tech-infra the wrong way.

When I was leading performance at MyGlamm | Good Glamm Group (seems like an eternity ago), the company had insane tech-overheads.
I did not understand at the time, but to even think that a startup making less than $200k in monthly revenue was spending upwards of $50k in tech & product salary costs is MIND-BLOWING 🤯. I remember our AWS fees alone was $10k/month types.
But here's what happened after that.

We scaled. Quickly.
We went from $200k in MRR to $1.2M in less than 1 year.
And our tech & salary costs? they remained the same.
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Their investment in their tech infra and talent paid off big time, because if it was not for this infra, we would have never been able to scale that quickly. While I understand that the current funding environment for D2C is not supportive enough to invest this heavily in tech, it's not even required (anymore) tbh. We're in the golden era of Shopify innovation.
D2C founders who do not capitalize on this are going to be left behind.
Marketers that do not recognise this are going to be left behind too.
Today,
- if you want a subscription service, you can get it for <$99.
- if you want a product recommendation engine, you don't have to hire a data scientist who charges 60 lakhs a year.
- if you want a loyalty program, all you need to spend is <$200/m
- if you want a shoppable commerce tool, it's literally pay-per-view.

But inspite this, the current sentiment is, that adding shopify tools massively increases overheads and most founders are reluctant to keep increasing this fixed cost. but can you PLEASE stop looking at these tools as your cost-line but as your profit centre instead?
These same founders who will not invest $100 on a tool that could increase their conversion rates form 0.8% to 1% will increase their ad budgets at the drop of a hat to increase their revenues.
Just because the Gods of tech have smiled upon us and given us Shopify along with it's suite of plugins, does not mean that you can ignore the fact that you do not have a dedicated product & tech team.
These plugins ARE your tech team. And they sure as hell cost a lot less.

TL;DR, the opportunity cost of not investing in the right Shopify tools is much greater than the cost of using them.

Here are my top 5 favourite shopify apps/plugins that i think will add the most ROI to your store.