Guide to Shopify AMP Apps

Editor’s Note: the following post was published in April of 2019 and its content may be out of date.

Shopify is a leading e-commerce platform, allowing merchants to easily set up and run online stores. Apps for Shopify provide additional features or functionality, similar to extensions or plugins on other platforms. The number of Shopify AMP apps is growing quickly, helping merchants convert their Shopify stores into the fast-loading AMP format.

The goal of this guide is to evaluate five apps that help merchants easily AMP-ify their Shopify stores:

AMP by Shop Sheriff
AMP by Ampify Me
FireAMP
G AMP
RocketAmp

When evaluating Shopify AMP apps, we used a broad set of criteria so that, as a merchant, you can choose the app that best meets your needs. These criteria fall into the following categories:

Ease of Use: We evaluate the features of each app that make it easy to use, including intuitive workflows, good online-help documentation, quick and accurate site previews, labeling, and multiple visual choices and themes. We also note whether the app offers customization options to change the appearance of a Shopify store without overwhelming a non-technical user.

Third-Party Integrations: Shopify’s app marketplace has 2,500+ useful apps that offer a broad range of features. For each AMP app we review, we mention if they integrate with other popular apps.

Pricing, Support, and Reviews: We provide details about the pricing and support options offered by each app, along with customer reviews.

Validation and Google Integration: AMP validation tests whether a site is using proper AMP HTML. Valid AMP pages get indexed and cached by Google, which helps with SEO, discoverability, and a fast user experience. Below, we say which apps offer validation and how to test your site if an app doesn’t.

AMP Page Quality: High-quality AMP pages lead to great user experiences. Shopify AMP apps must produce valid AMP pages, follow best practices and guidelines, use the latest versions of the AMP framework libraries, use correct AMP components, and keep pages lightweight. Pages should also have high-quality visual design.

AMP by Shop Sheriff

AMP by Shop Sheriff is a full-featured Shopify app that offers retailers and developers plenty of customization options through its dashboard. The app nudges you toward general AMP best practices, guiding you along the way and warning you of potential pitfalls before you select a feature.

1. Ease of Use

Customization Options

With AMP by Shop Sheriff, you can customize your logo, navbar, side menu, body, and footer, as well as each product’s title, price (including sale and “compare at” price), description, and product card. You can also customize the blog list, blog post, and Shopify pages templates. More fine-grained customizations include customizing your payment & trust icons, recommended products, and the style of your social share buttons. AMP by Shop Sheriff also enables some conversion-optimization enhancements including a “Buy it now” feature, a currency converter, and a “sticky” add to cart button on mobile devices.

You can choose how many products to display under “Collections,” and whether to show or hide the collection image and toolbar, as well as elements such as vendor, variants, quantity, add to cart, related products, product reviews, social share buttons, and announcement bars. The ability to hide “Link to Full Site” by default makes AMP by Shop Sheriff a first-rate app.

This app offers fine-grained control to publish and unpublish individual items, and allows you to tag items to enable or disable AMP.

There are three ways to configure the AMP domain: the /a/s format, the amp.shopsheriff.com hosted format (not recommended), and the subdomain amp.domain.com.

Dynamic Previews

The app offers dynamic previews when you’re configuring various templates, including the choice to “View in browser,” allowing you to quickly experiment with multiple options.

2. Validation and Google Integration

AMP by Shop Sheriff continuously validates your published AMP pages. This ensures that the AMP pages are always valid during Google’s indexing/re-indexing process.

3. Third-Party Integrations

AMP by Shop Sheriff integrates with AMP, Loox Reviews, Yotpo Reviews, Judge.me Product Reviews, Stamped.io, Shopify Product Reviews, Conversio Reviews, Okendo Reviews, Ali Reviews, Ryviu Reviews, Bazaar Voice Reviews, Google Tag Manager, AMP Analytics, PWA, and Amped pages. You can also embed Google Analytics code and add the Facebook Pixel to your site.

4. Pricing, Support & Reviews

Pricing

AMP by Shop Sheriff offers three pricing options: Basic (free), Hobbyist ($9/month), and Company ($29/month). The Basic tier is fully functional, so that you can AMP-ify your site and explore the app at no cost. The Hobbyist and Company tiers provide more support and customization.

Support

The online chat support is responsive and helpful. The team also offers in-depth blog posts and AMP-related resources to help shops get up to speed in minutes and make the most out of their AMP pages.

Reviews

AMP by Shop Sheriff has great ratings in the Shopify app store (see above for a February 2019 snapshot).

5. AMP Page Quality

AMP by Shop Sheriff Live Site Examples

Conclusion

Google recommends AMP by Shop Sheriff. We like its Basic option where users can get a feel for how easy it is to AMP-ify their retail store for free. Shop Sheriff has demonstrated a deep understanding of AMP and provides updates to its app on a regular basis. We are confident that they will continue to provide upgrades and new AMP features.

AMP by Ampify Me

AMP by Ampify Me is a full-featured Shopify app with a variety of useful options. It offers the merchant or developer plenty of customizations through its easy-to-use dashboard.

1. Ease of Use

Customization options

With AMP by Ampify Me, you can customize elements like your logo, announcement bar, and message, body, and footer. Under “Products,” you can customize the “Add to Cart” button and price (including sale price and “compare at” price). There are minor configurations for the blog post and Shopify pages templates.

Under “Collections,” you can customize the number of products you display, and whether to show or hide quantity, related products, and product reviews. The ability to hide “Link to Full Site” by default is another useful feature of this app.

You can tag items to enable or disable AMP.

There are three ways to configure the AMP domain: the /a/amp format, the amp.ampifyme.com hosted format (not recommended), and the subdomain amp.domain.com.

Additional Themes

AMP by Ampify Me offers additional custom-built themes that can be tailored to your branding. If you don’t want to adjust individual fields, Ampify Me provides customizable themes that give you a consistent visual design across your pages.

Dynamic Previews

When configuring templates, you get prompt feedback with dynamic previews, including the option to “View in browser.” This makes designing your AMP pages easier and allows you to quickly play around with various options.

2. Validation and Google Integration

AMP by Ampify Me continuously validates your published AMP pages. This ensures that your pages are always valid during Google’s indexing/re-indexing process.

3. App Integration

Ampify Me integrates with Shopify Product reviews, Yotpo, Judge.me, Loox, Stamped.io, Shopper Approved, and Progressify Me PWA. You can also embed Google Analytics code and add the Facebook Pixel to your site.

Progressive Web Apps (PWA) are a complementary way to develop for mobile. Ampify Me has their own Shopify app for PWA that works well with their AMP app.

4. Pricing, Support & Reviews

Pricing

AMP by Ampify Me offers four price tiers, ranging from free to $99.99 per month. The Free option is a great way to try the app and explore its benefits, while the Enterprise option offers full support, including customized development.

Support

The online chat support is responsive and helpful. With the Enterprise pricing option, you can get additional assistance when needed.

Reviews

AMP by Ampify Me has great ratings in the Shopify app store from a large number of users. The high 5-star ratings are from recent reviews.

5. AMP Page Quality

Ampify Me Live Site Examples

Conclusion

Google recommends AMP by Ampify Me for its strong understanding of AMP, and its ability to continually provide upgrades and new features. We like the option of four price tiers, each offering plenty of useful features for users, with progressively more support and customization.

FireAMP

FireAMP’s philosophy is to make the AMP-ification of your retail site very simple, which is reflected in its dashboard design and features.

1. Ease of Use

Customization

In keeping with the simple theme, FireAMP provides customization options for ‘header’, ‘menu icon’, ‘cart icon’ , ‘footer background’, ‘Description’, ‘Pricing’, ‘Add To Cart Button’. However, there are multiple theme options that you can choose from to match your company’s brand and style. FireAMP has additional support for videos and product search.

Dynamic Previews

When you choose different themes, the app offers dynamic previews, including the option to “View in browser.” The response to changes was a little slower than in other apps.

2. Validation and Google Integration

FireAMP doesn’t give you a visual indication of AMP validation. However, you can check the Google Search Console for any validation errors.

3. Third-Party Integrations

FireAMP integrates with Products Reviews By Shopify . If you need individual app integration, contact support.

4. Pricing, Support, and Reviews

Pricing

FireAMP has a simple, one-tier price of $7.99 per month, with a free 15-day trial for you to explore and evaluate the app.

Support

Support is offered via online chat, and the company usually responds to your questions within 24 hours.

Reviews

Due to recent product updates, FireAMP has been getting better reviews.

5. AMP Page Quality

FireAMP Live Site Examples

Conclusion

Google recommends FireAMP for its simplicity, popular Shopify themes, and straightforward pricing structure.

G AMP

G AMP is a newer Shopify AMP app that demonstrates its philosophy of simplicity by giving you minimal configuration options, focusing solely on the AMP-ification of your site.

1. Ease of Use

Customization

G AMP automatically AMP-ifies your page as soon as you install it, and requires no configuration. It uses the default theme of your regular Shopify store.

Dynamic Previews

G AMP provides a static preview URL that you can view in the browser. Since there are no configurations to be made, this static preview serves as a visualization of your web page.

2. Validation and Google Integration

G AMP currently provides validation of AMP collection pages by directing you to the Google Search Console. If you want to check whether the AMP pages are valid, you have to use the AMP Validator and enter URLs manually.

3. Third-Party Integrations

G AMP doesn’t explicitly list app integrations. If you need individual app integration, contact support.

4. Pricing, Support, and Reviews

Pricing

G AMP has simple, flat-fee pricing of $9 per month, with a free 3-day trial for you to explore and evaluate the app.

Support

Support is offered through email and by phone.

Reviews

Being a relative newcomer, G AMP has fewer reviews than some of the other apps we reviewed.

5. AMP Page Quality

G AMP Live Site Examples

Conclusion

If you want a quick, no-frills AMP deployment, give G AMP a try to see if it fits your needs.

RocketAmp

RocketAmp was one of the first Shopify AMP apps created to easily AMP-ify Shopify stores.

1. Ease of Use

Customization

With the Basic Plan (see more on pricing below), you can configure the appearance of your text, background, header and footer font, logo, background, and where your logo is located on the page.

With premium settings, you can configure domains to use the subdomain amp.domain.com format, add menu links and footer text, and enable blogs, a top banner, and linked product reviews.

Domain Configuration

The Basic Plan runs on RocketAmp’s own custom domain. This may cause some cross-origin issues if you link your main Shopify site with the AMP site.

Dynamic Previews

RocketAmp provides a live AMP preview of your page as you are customizing or selecting themes, which helps you to quickly test multiple options and see how they look.

2. Validation and Google Integration

RocketAmp tells you if your AMP pages are available; however, it doesn’t tell you if your AMP pages are valid. Use the AMP Validator or Google Search Console to manually check if they’re valid.

3. Third-Party Integrations

RocketAmp doesn’t explicitly list app integrations. If you need individual app integration, contact support.

4. Pricing, Support, and Reviews

Pricing

RocketAmp’s pricing model is aligned with the growth of your business. As your site gets more traffic, the price for RocketAmp increases and includes more support options and integrations. A free 14-day trial allows you to explore the app.