Chapter 5. App Billing and Publication

We covered a lot of ground in the last two chapters. Our vanilla Rails application went through several sprints and grew to be a multitenant, API-consuming, contest-creating beast!

In this chapter, we'll complete the final steps towards the first public release of the application. We will be adding free and paid plans and setting up billing via the Shopify API.

At this point a private beta might be in order, where a few shops are invited to try the app for free and provide feedback before we make it available to all Shopify users. A beta release is a great way to create awareness of the application and get people excited about its official release. However, equally valuable (or more so) is the helpful feedback from users that understand that the app may have bugs/rough edges rather than complaints from users expecting a polished and production-ready experience.

Tip

Users are more than happy to be included in the creation/refinement of a service that they...