In this article, we'll give you a brief overview of Tapcart, how it works, and the pros and cons. We'll compare it to 5 different Tapcart alternatives including our own platform, MobiLoud, which we believe is the ideal choice for serious businesses to convert web stores to professional eCommerce apps.
What is Tapcart?
Tapcart is a Shopify-focused app builder platform that helps businesses to create and launch their own mobile apps without requiring any coding or technical expertise. Founded in 2017, Tapcart has built a good reputation among small and medium-sized eCommerce businesses looking to up their mobile game.
Tapcart offers a range of features, multiple templates, push notifications, in-app messaging, and integrations with major Shopify plugins. It's known for creating user-friendly apps, and a fast setup process.
Now let's take a look at Tapcart's pricing.
Tapcart Pricing
Tapcart has 3 tiers of pricing:
- Core: $200/mo
- Ultimate: $400/mo
- Enterprise $1K/mo
On top of these, Tapcart charges a performance fee as a percentage of revenue generated from the app. Prospects can get a preview of what the final price could look like based on revenue from Tapcart's pricing page or contact them for an exact quote.
The core tier is quite basic, giving you only 15 blocks and 3 "standard" integrations for simple Shopify apps like Facebook, Firebase, and Recharge. It may be OK if you have a very small and simple store, but will be limited even in that case. Ultimate starts to get more generous with unlimited blocks, 6 standard integrations, and the ability to build product landing pages. If you want premium integrations with tools like Klaviyo and Rebuy, as well as the ability to use custom fonts and blocks - you'll need to be on the $1k monthly Enterprise plan.
Tapcart Pros & Cons
Tapcart has built a good brand with a reputation for creating quality apps. Their apps are well designed, run smoothly and look professional. It's clear a lot of attention has gone not only in the design of the apps but also in creating a solid builder product that gives their customers a lot of flexibility with how the main screens of the apps look and feel.
The biggest drawback with their approach is the same as for all other app builders that rely on an API and integrations to essentially replicate what a customer's ecommerce website already does.
This is limiting. The block-centric system means that you'll always have to make your store & brand fit their templates or live within the limitations of the blocks they've created. Although you can customize the template, the app will never have everything your website has - for some, this will also mean the app will never be as good as your site.
Anything custom you built on your site (from design to functionality) will not be available in your app, unless you replicate that work using a custom block in Tapcart, which is only available on your their Corporate plan.
Tapcart will only be able to somewhat replicate the site features and app functionality that it has a pre-built integration for - while they have many, it's still a drop in the ocean of Shopify's huge ecosystem of apps. That's just the nature of APIs and integrations, which only expose certain data, for certain apps.
Think of all the elements you use to run your site, from reviews, to analytics, to CRO tools. Think of all the apps you rely on to build the user experience you offer your customers on the web. Will you be able to get them all to work in your app?
Assuming you can live with the limitations of this approach and get a result you're happy with, the second drawback is having to maintain site and app separately, with the app always having to catch up with the site for everything from new collections, new promotions.
Now we've had an overview of the tool, its pricing, and its pros and cons. It's time to move on and start looking at some Tapcart alternatives, starting with our own site-to-app platform, MobiLoud.
Tapcart Alternative #1: MobiLoud
MobiLoud powers thousands of top apps, and allows you to convert your site into native eCommerce apps in just days, for a fraction of the cost of custom development.
Our eCommerce app platform integrates with any CMS - whether it's Shopify, WooCommerce, PrestaShop or any other - and let you reuse every plugin, feature and functionality from your main web store.
MobiLoud is the best way to convert your web store into native eCommerce apps for iOS and Android, as well as the best alternative to Tapcart.
There are several key reasons why:
- No templates, no blocks, no APIs - we don't restrict you to our pre-built front-ends, we allow you to convert your web store completely, and to reuse all your existing plugins, themes, and tech stack.
- Keep what works - you already built your ideal site for the web, tweaking it endlessly for conversions and sales. With MobiLoud you can translate that directly into m-commerce native apps, without needing to reinvent the wheel. You already did the hard part, we handle the rest!
- Easy Management - many app builder platforms like Tapcart gives you an extra CMS to manage, adding work for you and your team. Since MobiLoud apps sync with your web store in real time, this work is eliminated, you just need to keep managing and updating your store as usual, and if you want to change something specifically for the apps, use our easy no-code UI.
- Done for you - there's no need for you to fiddle, drag-and-drop, or waste time trying to set the apps up. You just need to tell us any special requirements, add some key information, and our team handle all technical aspects of the app build including submissions to Google Play and the AppStore.
MobiLoud Pricing
We have two standard pricing tiers:
- Professional - For early stage brands: $199/month
- Growth - Perfect for growing brands that need more support and want a full service experience: $549/month
We also have custom, corporate plan for larger companies. Read more about our pricing here.
The difference between MobiLoud and Tapcart is clear.
If you've already built the experience your customers want on mobile on your website, MobiLoud allows you to reuse what you've already built for the web. You can replicate everything from you main ecommerce store, reusing all apps, design elements, and the entire tech stack your site runs on.
The apps will be truly custom, and truly unique - just like your store!
We do not use blocks, templates, or APIs to fetch data and then replicate your store. Rather, MobiLoud is based on native webviews for iOS and Android that take your existing site and serve it up to users within an optimized native UX.
It isn't "just" a wrapper though, over the years and thousands of app builds we've built out the ideal native app UI, and learned to combine the best elements of the web with the best of native mobile tech. On top of that, our team assists you to make small changes to improve the user experience in the apps - think adding pages or experiences that are available just in the apps and removing site elements that don't fit a mobile app.
You can keep everything from your Shopify store, and get apps published in just weeks. Our team handle all technical aspects of the build, including publishing to the App Store and Google Play, including graphic design and CSS adjustments - and we also take care of all ongoing updates and maintenance.
Want to skip the rest and get your questions answered by one of our team?
Book a demo!
Now we've blown our own trumpet, here are a few other Tapcart alternatives that you're likely to see around the web.
Tapcart Alternative #2: Shop2App
Shop2App is another app builder designed specifically for Shopify stores. It comes with a variety of features and integrations, and has a reputation for building decent apps. However, as a drag-and-drop, block-based builder, it does have the usual limitations. It won't be able to fully replicate your web store with all its existing features and functionality. It's also worth noting that Shop2App is on the pricier side considering what it offers.
Shop2App Pricing
Shop2App has three plans:
- Basic - basic features - $299/mo
- Growth - enhanced features with 2 integrations - $699/mo
- Enterprise - premium features and 4 integrations - starts at $1299/mo
The more costly the plan is, the more customizability and benefits you get.
Tapcart Alternative #3: Plobal Apps
Plobal is another Shopify focused app-builder, giving you a drag-and-drop interface to design apps. Even though it's a good system with many integrations, it has restrictions. The main one, as usual - you can't reuse your web store's features, themes, and plugins. You will be able to use whatever they have a pre-built integration for.
Plobal Apps Pricing
Plobal Apps has three plans:
- Growth - basic features with 4 standard integrations - $199/mo
- Essential - enhanced features with 7 standard integrations - $499/mo
- Enterprise - premium features and unlimited advanced integrations - starts at $1199/mo
The more costly the plan is, the more customizability and benefits you get.
Tapcart Alternative #4: Mowico
Mowico is another no-code app builder specifically targeting eCommerce brands. It integrates with Shopify and WooCommerce - and soon PrestaShop, BigCommerce & Wix. Mowico also offers some good integrations like Smile, Langify, and Judge.me, and has useful pre-built features like push notifications and AR shopping. While Mowico can be a good choice for small stores - it has its constraints. As a template-based app builder - it can generate a simple eCommerce app featuring your products and logo, as well as covering some of you major needs with integrations. But - it can't fully duplicate your web store's complex features, design, and plugins. You're restricted to their pre-built integrations, which will limit you significantly relative to both the web and MobiLoud.
Mowico Pricing
Mowico has three plans for each eCommerce platform. For Shopify, they have:
- Startup - basic features - $79/mo
- Growth - everything from Gold plus enhanced features - $399/mo
- Enterprise - premium features, custom feature integrations, and tailor made development - custom
The pricing may vary for each eCommerce platform but keep in mind that, the more costly the plan is, the greater benefits you get.
Let's Build Your eCommerce Apps
As we've seen, many of these tools share the same flaws. On the one hand - their reliance on blocks, themes, templates, and pre-built integrations does allow you to build and launch an eCommerce app fast, affordably and easily compared to custom app development. On the other, this same reliance limits you to their prebuilt themes and components and forces you to maintain site and app separately, doubling your workload for new launches, promotions and site changes.
It means that you will only ever approximate your web store, and you'll be forever at the mercy of whatever pre-built features they have as well as whatever data they can fetch via Shopify's API (which has its own limitations).
While this is OK for simple stores with small product ranges and simple site features, this will often be a deal breaker for serious retail or ecom brands. You probably have a finely-tuned tech stack, along with all the plugins, third-party integrations, and custom features you need to drive sales and revenue optimally. To discard all this hard work for cookie-cutter apps with your logo on will rarely make strategic sense.
That's why, although we're biased of course, we believe MobiLoud is not only the best Tapcart alternative but a superior alternative to every ecommerce mobile app builder on the market.
It's not for everyone, but if what you've built on the web is already, mostly, the mobile experience you want your customers to have, then this is the best way to go. If you've built anything custom on your site, and rely on a complex tech stack and a number of third party tools to run your business, then you'll also prefer this approach vs rebuilding with a builder and living with the limitations.
The first key reason: we allow you to reuse everything from your site in the apps.
If it already works well on the mobile web, it'll be even better as iOS and Android apps. It makes no sense to ditch that winning formula and those painstakingly chosen tools just to compromise with restrictive templates. That's too much of downgrade from what you've already built, and with MobiLoud - unnecessary. Keep what already works.
The second core reason: it's so simple to manage MobiLoud apps.
App builders will often add hours per week to your workflow with effectively a new CMS to manage. In contrast - MobiLoud apps sync in real time with your site. There's no need to manually add new product lines, promotions, or worry about keeping the apps up to date. The apps will reflect changes and updates to your site instantly.
This goes for any core changes you make to your site too. You can switch out apps, pull off a major rebrand, or build whatever custom functionality you choose. It doesn't matter what it is - it'll work straight out of the box in the apps, which can grow with your brand into the future.
On top of this, our team will handle any ongoing updates and maintenance needed as part of our service, along with all fiddly aspects of the app build and bringing them live to Google Play and the AppStore. We work with you to ensure your apps are a success, and we're only ever an email or phone call away.
MobiLoud allows you to combine the best of the web with the best of native apps. It's a winning formula, check out the success these eCommerce brands have had:
Over 2,000 other businesses have used MobiLoud to build winning apps - and you can too.
There's no risk with our 60 days money back guarantee. We don't do long-term contracts and we'll refund you if for any reason you don't love the apps we've built for you. If you're like most of our ecommerce customers - the apps will pay for themselves almost immediately.
It all starts with a call with one of our app experts, where we go over your exact requirements for the apps and answer your questions.
