Can't install the Shopify app on a development store

Hi everyone,

I’m setting up the ShapeDiver Shopify app on a Partner development store before going live, and I’ve hit a wall I can’t get past.

When I get to the subscription step in the app setup, Shopify won’t let me approve it. It shows the plans ($199/mo or $1,990/yr) and then a red banner:

“Development stores cannot approve paid managed pricing subscriptions or subscriptions with usage charges.”

The help docs say Partners can use the app for free on development stores, but I think this stopped working once the app moved to Shopify managed pricing — Shopify now seems to block the approval on dev stores entirely instead of setting the charge to $0. There’s also no payment method on file, which makes sense for a dev store.

Has anyone managed to install and test the app on a development store recently? A few things I’m wondering:

  • Is there a workaround to complete the setup on a dev store, or did the free-on-dev-store path get removed?
  • Did anyone get a manual exemption from the ShapeDiver team for this?
  • Is the recommended approach now to test on a paid/trial store instead, or to embed App Builder directly via the SDK and skip the app for dev work?

For context, I’m building a jewelry configurator (several product types) and plan to roll this out across multiple brands if it works well, so I’d love to get a clean dev workflow sorted from the start.

Thanks in advance for any pointers!

Hi Manuel! It seems Shopify recently changed how they handle subscriptions of paid apps for development stores. We will update the ShapeDiver app accordingly and let you know once the update has been deployed.

Thanks!

The issue should be resolved, please review and let me know.