SparkLayer is now Built for Shopify, Shopify's highest app accreditation

SparkLayer is now Built for Shopify, the highest level of recognition Shopify gives apps. It's awarded to apps that meet Shopify's standards for performance, design, integration and merchant experience, and you'll now see the badge on our Shopify App Store listing.

We've been working towards this for a while, and not because we wanted another badge for the website. If you're running a big part of your wholesale operation through an app, you should expect it to meet a high bar, and Built for Shopify gives merchants an independent signal that it does.

What Built for Shopify means

Shopify describes Built for Shopify as its highest level of recognition and achievement for apps, and it isn't something an app can simply add to its own listing. There's a formal process behind it:

1. The app has to meet Shopify's prerequisite quality criteria. Shopify evaluates these regularly, and an app can only apply once the required standards are met.
2. Shopify then reviews the app. Its app review team checks the experience against the Built for Shopify requirements and raises anything that needs fixing before approval.
3. The standards are ongoing. Built for Shopify apps are reviewed every year, and Shopify can remove the status if an app no longer meets the criteria.

Those standards are built around what merchants care about when they install an app: a fast store, an app that's easy to use, a clean fit with Shopify, and an experience that's safe and reliable. In practice, SparkLayer has had to show that it behaves like a first-class part of Shopify rather than something bolted onto the side.

Why it matters for B2B

Choosing a B2B app is a much bigger decision than adding a storefront widget, because it can sit at the centre of how your wholesale business runs. With SparkLayer, trade customers sign in and order with their own pricing, products and payment terms, and your sales reps work with the same accounts to place orders on their behalf. Those orders flow back into Shopify, and SparkLayer connects with the wider systems behind your operation, so performance, ease of use and a clean integration matter more than they would for most apps.

That's why SparkLayer is designed around the Shopify store you already run. You keep your theme, products, apps and Shopify order flow, and SparkLayer adds the B2B buying, sales and account workflows around them, so there's no second wholesale site or separate commerce operation to maintain.

It's also managed from inside the Shopify admin. Your SparkLayer dashboard sits alongside the rest of Shopify, with wholesale sales, orders and buyers at a glance, and Ask Sparkie on hand to answer questions or help with setup.

What this commits us to

Built for Shopify doesn't change what SparkLayer can do overnight. It's the same product our customers were using yesterday, with the same team and the same support behind it. What has changed is that Shopify has independently reviewed SparkLayer against its own quality standards and recognised it with the highest status it gives apps.

Importantly, that status isn't permanent. Built for Shopify apps are reviewed every year, and if an app falls short, Shopify expects the issues to be fixed or the status can be removed. For us, that makes it a standard we have to keep meeting as SparkLayer evolves, rather than a box we've ticked once.

That matters more as the product grows. SparkLayer now covers far more than customer ordering, with sales rep workflows, SparkLayer Pulse, Companies & Teams, Counter mode, quoting, AI and deeper integrations all built around the same Shopify operation. The broader the product becomes, the more important it is that its foundations stay fast, well designed and tightly integrated with Shopify.

Companies is a good example: each trade account's pricing, people, locations and pay-later balance sit in one view, inside the same Shopify admin your team already uses.

Built for Shopify, built for B2B

The badge sits alongside what our customers already tell us. SparkLayer is rated 4.9 out of 5 from hundreds of reviews on the Shopify App Store and is used by more than 3,500 brands, manufacturers and distributors. Built for Shopify doesn't replace that customer proof, but it adds Shopify's own validation to it.

We're proud to have got here, and grateful to the team who put in the work to make it happen. As ever, thank you to the customers and partners who keep telling us what could be better, because a lot of the work that got SparkLayer to this point started with your feedback.

FAQs

See SparkLayer on Shopify

If you're looking at B2B on Shopify, you can install SparkLayer from the Shopify App Store and start on the free plan, or see how SparkLayer works alongside Shopify B2B.

Chris Mattingly

Co-Founder & CEO, SparkLayer

Chris is an experience eCommerce specialist, co-founding UK eCommerce agency blubolt in 2006. For over a decade, Chris helped build and oversee their proprietary platform and worked with some of the UK's fastest growing retailers. At SparkLayer, Chris oversees the product strategy and - when he's not playing peekaboo with his daughter - enjoys staying active with golf, tennis, climbing, and hiking to name a few!