Shopify can now show what your apps actually did. Use it before the next renewal

Why this small changelog entry matters

On October 28, 2026, Shopify posted a short changelog entry: you can now see events from supported apps directly in Shopify Analytics. Its examples are marketing emails sent and loyalty rewards redeemed. You can track that activity over time, compare the same metric across apps, such as emails sent by each marketing app, and filter or group by details each app provides, like campaign or message type. Open a report, pick from the new App Events category, or query it with ShopifyQL.

Shopify is careful to add that what you see depends on which installed apps support app events and what they choose to send.

That sounds like a reporting tweak. For anyone who pays for a stack of apps, it's more than that. Until now, the main way to judge an app was the app's own dashboard, and a vendor's dashboard is built to show the vendor in a good light. A vendor's dashboard is a sales tool. Your own reports are where an app has to earn its fee.

To make this concrete, let's follow one app through one month. This is an illustrative composite, not a real store.

November 1: set the questions before you look

Picture a small store selling coffee gear and beans. It pays monthly for a loyalty app, an email app and a reviews app. The loyalty app renews in December, and the owner has a vague feeling that it's doing something but can't say what.

Before opening any report, she writes down three questions for the loyalty app:

1. Are customers actually redeeming rewards, or just collecting points?
2. Do redemptions happen on orders that would have happened anyway, like subscription renewals, or on extra orders?
3. Are the rewards concentrated in a handful of customers who would buy regardless?

Writing the questions first matters. If you open a report and look for something interesting, you'll find something. If you decide what would make the app worth keeping before you look, the report has a job to do.

She also checks whether the loyalty app sends app events at all. If it doesn't, that's information too. It's worth asking the vendor whether they plan to, and noting the answer for the renewal conversation.

Mid-November: put it next to the sales

Two weeks in, she opens a Shopify report and adds the loyalty app's events next to orders. The question isn't "how many rewards were redeemed?" It's "what happened around those redemptions?"

This is where having the events inside Shopify pays off. In the vendor's dashboard, a redemption is a success by definition. In Shopify, it sits next to everything else: the order it was attached to, whether that customer usually orders monthly anyway, whether the discount pushed the order over the free-shipping threshold or just cut the margin on a purchase that was already happening.

The comparison feature helps with the email app, too. If two apps both send messages, say the email app and the loyalty app's own reward reminders, she can see the same metric for each in one report and spot whether customers are getting two messages about the same thing.

Shopify's ability to filter by details the app sends, such as campaign or message type, is where the most useful answers usually hide. "Rewards redeemed" is a single number. "Rewards redeemed from the birthday campaign versus the points-expiry reminder" tells you which part of the program is doing the work.

End of November: what the month shows

By November 30, the owner can answer her three questions with her own reports rather than the vendor's summary. The answers could go either way:

• If redemptions cluster on orders that were already scheduled, the program is mostly a discount on loyal customers. Worth knowing, and worth redesigning before paying for another year.
• If redemptions bring extra orders from customers who otherwise drift away, the app is doing its job, and she has the evidence to say so.
• If one campaign drives most of the useful activity, she may be paying for a large program when one feature matters.

None of these outcomes require a data analyst. They require questions set in advance, a report that puts the app next to your sales, and a month.

One honest limit: this shows activity and timing, not cause. A redemption on an extra order doesn't prove the reward caused the order. It does give you a much better conversation with the vendor than "it feels like it's working."

If you want to get closer to cause, you can test it: switch off one campaign for a few weeks, or offer the reward to only some customers, and watch whether the extra orders move. Most small stores won't bother, and that's fine. Even without a test, a month of your own reports beats a year of guessing.

The renewal conversation

In December, she has three things she didn't have before: her own numbers, specific questions for the vendor, and a clear sense of which feature matters. That changes the renewal from a yes-or-no into a negotiation: a cheaper plan, a different campaign setup, or, if the evidence is weak, a cancellation she can make without second-guessing.

Here's the routine we'd suggest for any store with more than a couple of paid apps:

• List your apps and their renewal dates. Most stores have at least one app nobody remembers installing.
• Write two or three questions per app before the month starts.
• Check which apps send app events. For the ones that don't, ask the vendor.
• Build one report per app in Shopify Analytics, next to orders.
• Decide at renewal with your numbers, not the vendor's.

We've written before about when to build a custom app versus buying a public one. App events don't change that decision on their own, but they make the buying side more honest: you can finally see whether what you bought is doing what you bought it for.

If your store runs on a stack of apps and you'd like help deciding which ones earn their fee, or replacing three of them with one thing that fits, our ecommerce team does that work. Get in touch and tell us which app you're least sure about.

Related work: Spin Market.