The stamp and ink model
Appolar maintains one canonical app codebase — the stamp. Every merchant's app is built from that same stamp. What changes between merchants is the ink: their brand color, font, logo, Shopify store URL, and per-screen layout choices. Each build compiles the stamp with a specific merchant's ink applied and produces a binary in that merchant's name, on their Apple and Google developer accounts, with their branding.
Nobody outside Appolar ever sees the source code. What the merchant sees is a published app that looks and feels like theirs. Updating a merchant's app is changing the ink and re-stamping — not editing a fork. There is no divergence, no bespoke client branch, and no per-merchant maintenance burden. A fix or improvement applied to the stamp ships to every merchant on the next build cycle.
Note. Because there is only one codebase, iOS and Android compatibility updates ship simultaneously to all merchants. You never need to chase down a specific platform version or request an upgrade.
Shopify drives everything
After an app goes live, the merchant never touches Appolar again for day-to-day operations. Products, inventory, pricing, collections, discounts, and orders all live in Shopify and sync to the app in real time through the Shopify Storefront API. There is no second platform to manage and no separate product catalog to keep in sync.
Publishing a new product in Shopify makes it appear in the app immediately. Updating a price means the app shows the new price on next load. Running a flash sale with a percentage-off discount code works in the app without any configuration in Appolar. Processing a refund in Shopify admin causes the customer's order history in the app to reflect it. The app is a real-time read layer over the merchant's existing Shopify store, not a mirror that requires manual pushes.
How data flows to the app
The app connects directly to the merchant's Shopify store via the Storefront API, a public GraphQL API that Shopify exposes on every store. Product queries, collection browsing, full-text search, cart operations, and customer authentication all go through this API. Responses are cursor-paginated, so large catalogs load incrementally without performance degradation.
Customer accounts use Shopify Customer Account tokens. When a customer logs in, the app exchanges their credentials for a session token that authenticates subsequent requests for order history, saved addresses, and wishlist metafield reads. Creating a new customer account in the app creates a Shopify customer record — the same record the merchant sees in their Shopify admin and the customer can access on the web store.
Checkout is a deliberate handoff. When a customer taps Checkout, the app opens Shopify's hosted checkout in an in-app browser (SFSafariViewController on iOS, Chrome Custom Tabs on Android). Shopify handles payment, shipping rate calculation, tax, fraud analysis, and order confirmation. The app never touches card numbers or payment tokens.
# Simplified request flow App → Shopify Storefront API (GraphQL) Products, collections, search, cart, customer Checkout tap → Shopify hosted checkout (in-app browser) Payment, shipping, tax, order confirmation Order confirmed → Shopify order record visible in-app immediately
What Appolar does and doesn't do
Understanding the boundary helps set accurate expectations for what Appolar support can help with and what sits squarely with Shopify.
| Appolar handles | Shopify handles |
|---|---|
| Compiling and submitting the app binary | All product and inventory data |
| Managing the build pipeline and EAS Build orchestration | Payment processing and checkout |
| Maintaining iOS and Android compatibility as OS versions change | Order management, fulfillment, and refunds |
| The visual builder inside Shopify admin | Customer accounts and authentication |
| App behavior questions (crashes, display issues, navigation) | Shopify admin questions (adding products, order workflows) |
Appolar does not host any product data, process payments, handle orders, manage inventory, or access Shopify admin on the merchant's behalf after the app is live. If a customer asks why their order is delayed or a discount code isn't working, that question belongs with the merchant via their normal Shopify admin, not with Appolar support.