Mobile apps for WooCommerce agencies, no Flutter developer
By Abdalla Kamesh · Published October 19, 2026 · 8 min read
Sooner or later a WooCommerce client asks the question: “Can we have an app?” Most agencies have one of three answers ready, and each of them costs the agency something. This post is about the fourth answer, what it asks of your team, and what it never asks of them.
Written by the company selling that fourth answer, so read the numbers and check them against the pricing page rather than taking our framing on trust.
The three answers agencies give today
“Yes, here is a quote.” You scope a custom build, subcontract the mobile work or hire for it, and own the result for years. The client gets exactly what they asked for. You get a five-figure project with a maintenance tail: two OS releases a year, store policy changes, WooCommerce updates that change the data your app reads. How a client should read that quote is a post we wrote for the other side of the table, and the maintenance line is the one it tells them to look for.
“Yes, we’ll wrap your site.” Cheap and fast: a web view around the mobile site, a splash screen, an icon. Then Apple reviews it. Guideline 4.2 asks whether an app is more than a repackaged website, and a wrapper is close to that line whoever submits it. Why Apple rejects wrapper apps covers the rejection pattern; the agency cost is the week spent arguing with a reviewer, on a fixed-price job.
“No, we don’t do apps.” The safest answer and the most expensive one, because the client who wants an app will find someone who does, and that someone now has a reason to talk to your client every month.
The fourth answer: a configuration-driven native app
StoreToNative apps are built from one native app template, written in Flutter, that is filled in for each store by a configuration from our API. The agency never touches that template. What the agency does is the work it already knows how to do for a web client:
- Connect the store. One click from the client’s WordPress admin approves access; no keys to copy. The catalog syncs and stays in sync through WooCommerce’s own webhooks.
- Design the app. Theme, colors, fonts, the home-screen layout, intro slides, navigation and which add-ons are on, all in a design studio with a live preview. This is the part your designers will enjoy, and it is also the part that keeps paying: every one of those choices ships over the air, so a seasonal refresh for a client is a console change that reaches installed apps within a launch or two, with no rebuild and no store re-review.
- Run the publishing checklist. Both store submissions are turned into guided, numbered steps in the console: the account, the keys, the listing, the screenshots, the data-safety answers computed from what the app actually has enabled, and the submission itself. The full submission path is the order that avoids waiting on a form.
And what the agency never does:
- No Flutter code. Nobody on your team opens an IDE, and nobody has to be hired who can.
- No build machines. Builds run on our side. A signed Android build takes about seven minutes and produces an installable APK as well as the bundle Google Play wants.
- No certificates by hand. For iOS you paste an App Store Connect API key and a push key from the client’s Apple account into the console, and the distribution certificate and the signing of each build are handled from there. On Android the app’s signing key is created on its first build, and you can export it at any time, which matters if the client ever leaves.
On checkout, so you can answer the client’s question before they ask it: the catalog, search, cart and account screens are native, an optional native address and shipping step is available, and the payment itself happens on the store’s own gateway pages, with 0% commission. Why the payment step belongs on the web explains the reasoning, and you should repeat it to the client rather than promising a checkout that is native from cart to card, which almost no store app delivers for physical goods.
The Agency plan, explained honestly
The Agency plan is $249 a month and is built for the team shipping client apps rather than for one store. What it adds over Pro:
- Five client apps included. A sixth is a conversation with us, not a price on the page.
- A console with your logo. Under Settings you rename the console, choose its color and font and upload your logo. Everyone you invite sees your brand, in the console sidebar and tab icon, in the invitation emails you send, and in the client reports. It changes nothing inside any app; shoppers never see it.
- A monthly client report under your brand. One link per app, with a month’s figures beside the previous month and the best sellers, under your name, color and logo, with no mention of us. It is a self-contained page the client can open on any network and print.
- Ten team seats, with a read-only client role. Four roles: Owner, Admin, Editor and Client. A Client sees only the apps you name on their invitation, and only the Dashboard, Push and Analytics pages for them. Read-only is enforced on the server, not hidden in the interface.
- Everything in Pro, for every one of those apps: abandoned-cart recovery, segmented and scheduled campaigns, back-in-stock and price-drop alerts, the weekly store brief, webhooks and the push API.
And what stays ours, on purpose: the sign-in page, which has nothing to brand it with before a workspace is known, and the console’s address, app.storetonative.com. A custom console domain per agency is infrastructure work we have chosen not to build, and the same goes for sending emails from your own domain. If a client asks whether the platform is “yours”, the honest answer is that the console they log in to carries your brand and lives at our address.
The margin question
When does Agency beat one Pro plan per client? Here is the arithmetic from the pricing page. The client fees you charge on top are your business, so none of this is a promise of what you will earn.
| Clients with an app | One Pro plan each ($79) | One Agency plan ($249) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | $79 | $249 |
| 2 | $158 | $249 |
| 3 | $237 | $249 |
| 4 | $316 | $249 |
| 5 | $395 | $249 |
At three clients the two are close, and from four clients up, Agency is cheaper per month. Divided across five apps, Agency works out to about $50 an app in platform cost.
Two things the table leaves out, and both push toward Agency earlier than the row where the numbers cross. A Pro plan covers one app in one workspace, so “one Pro per client” means a separate workspace and a separate login per client, and none of them has the white-label console, the branded report or the client role. The seats and the client role are what let you hand a client a login you are comfortable with.
Both plans start with a 14-day trial that needs a card up front, and nothing is charged until the trial ends. On the trial you can connect a store, design its app and install it on an Android phone from the direct APK link; publishing to the stores unlocks on any paid plan. The trial app carries a small “Made with StoreToNative” badge, which disappears on a paid plan without a rebuild.
The partner alternative: refer, don’t operate
Some agencies do not want to run the app at all. They want to recommend a good answer and move on. The partner program is for them, and for the agency that runs some clients’ apps and refers the rest.
You apply, and you choose one of two ways to earn when you apply (once approved, you get your link and your code): 20% of each payment a referred store makes for its first 12 months, or 10% for as long as the store stays a paying customer. The store gets 10% off its first 3 months. Each commission waits 60 days before it is ready to pay, payouts go out once a month when you have $100 or more ready, and a visitor who opens your link has 90 days to sign up. A free trial pays nothing, because the store has paid nothing.
A partner account is separate from a console account, so you do not need to be on any plan to refer. Stores you set up for your clients count. Your own store does not. The full rules are on the partner terms page, and the console side is in Refer a client.
The accounts question agencies always ask
“Can we publish under our agency’s Apple and Google accounts?”
The answer is no, and it protects you. Apple’s App Store Review Guideline 4.2.6 rejects apps made from a template or app-generation service unless they are submitted by the provider of the app’s content. The content provider is your client’s store. So each app is published under the client’s own Apple Developer and Google Play accounts, with the client’s business as the seller, and the console walks you through both submissions as the client’s team. Guideline 4.2.6 in full is short and worth reading before the client meeting. We cannot promise any reviewer’s decision, and neither can anyone else; what this structure removes is one named reason for a rejection.
The practical shape of it: the client enrolls, and you sit beside them for the parts that take time. An organization enrollment at Apple needs a D-U-N-S number that matches the legal name exactly, and getting that right is where launches stall. The client’s accounts also mean the client keeps the listing and its reviews if your relationship ends. The Android signing key lives in the console workspace that built the app, which on the Agency plan is yours, so hand it over by exporting it when a client leaves. Written into the proposal, that is a selling point, not a weakness: you are offering an app the client owns, run by an agency they chose.
What to put in the proposal
A short list you can adapt:
- Scope. Native iOS and Android app for the WooCommerce store, designed by us, published under your developer accounts with our guidance.
- What changes without a release. Theme, layout, banners, intro slides and feature toggles, from the console, within a launch or two.
- What needs a new build. The app’s name, icon and bundle id, and the native shell itself.
- Checkout. Native cart and account, payment on your existing gateway, no commission on sales.
- Ongoing. Push campaigns, order-status notifications and a monthly report under our brand.
- Platform costs. Our fee, plus Apple’s and Google’s developer fees paid directly to them, which this post explains for merchants.
Then try it on a client’s store before you quote. The trial costs nothing until the 14 days end, the design studio shows the client’s catalog in the live preview, and the Android APK can be on a phone in an afternoon. A proposal with the client’s own products on a screen beats one with a mockup every time.
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