How to hire from the Shopify Partner Directory (and what the badges mean)

The Shopify Partner Directory is Shopify's free, official list of agencies and freelancers, and it replaced the old Experts Marketplace in late 2023. To hire from it, filter by the service you need, your budget and location, check each partner's tier, reviews and live work, then send two or three requests through the Contact form. Shopify vets who gets listed, but you still vet the person, the scope and the payment terms yourself.

The directory is a better starting point than a cold DM or a random search result. It also gets misread. People assume a tier badge means "Shopify-approved for my project", or that a partner with no reviews must be bad. Neither is true. Below I explain what the directory checks, what the badges mean, and how I'd use it to hire.

One disclosure first: I'm in the directory myself. My listing is new and has no reviews yet, so I have no tier badge or rating to protect here.

What is the Shopify Partner Directory?

It's a public directory at shopify.com/partners/directory where you can find service partners: agencies and freelancers who build, fix and grow Shopify stores. It's free to browse, and you contact partners directly through it.

The directory replaced two older things. Shopify's Partner Program page says the Shopify Experts brand was sunset in December 2023, and the Plus Partner program in December 2024. In November 2023, Shopify Support told partners in its community forum that it had "fully sunset Experts Marketplace" and was sending merchant traffic to the new directory. So if you search for "Shopify Experts marketplace" today, this is where you end up.

The directory lists more than 30 services, grouped into areas such as store setup and management, development and troubleshooting, marketing and sales, visual content and branding, content writing and expert guidance. Typical services include store build or redesign, theme customisation, custom app integrations, troubleshooting, and website audit and optimisation strategy.

What do the Shopify partner tiers and badges mean?

Tiers measure how much business a partner brings to Shopify and how many Shopify credentials their team holds. They're useful, and they're not a quality score for your project.

Every partner starts on the Registered tier. From there, Shopify's help page says partners can progress to Select, Plus, Premier and Platinum based on performance, and qualified partners can use tier badges in their own marketing.

The Plus tier has published entry criteria. As of October 2026, Shopify's eligibility page lists one revenue route (for example, at least $500k USD a year in revenue to Shopify from merchants the partner acquired in the last 5 years), deal minimums, at least 10 Shopify Verified Skills across the team, and at least 3 people holding a Verified Skill. Verified Skills are Shopify Academy badges earned by passing proctored exams.

Read that list again and you'll notice what it measures: volume, revenue and certifications. A Platinum agency is very good at large projects. That doesn't make it the right hire for a ₹1 lakh theme fix, and Shopify itself frames Select as the tier small and medium businesses usually pick.

Two labels to treat with care. "Certified Shopify Expert" refers to a brand Shopify retired in 2023. "Shopify Plus Partner" refers to a program Shopify ended in December 2024. Neither is a red flag on its own, since older profiles still use them, but neither is a current credential either.

How does Shopify vet who gets listed?

Shopify checks eligibility for the directory, not your project. The vetting is real but narrow.

Here's what Shopify does check:

• Tier status. Plus is the minimum for guaranteed eligibility, and Shopify says a limited number of Registered partners are also listed.
• Good standing with the Partner Program Agreement and the Tiering Guide.
• Reviews. Only merchants on a paid plan who gave the partner collaborator access for at least 1 week can leave a review, and Shopify's review policy bans fake and incentivised reviews.

And here's what it doesn't do:

• It doesn't handle payment. Shopify's hiring guide says the partner bills you directly and the charges don't appear on your Shopify bill.
• It doesn't set or check scope, timelines or ownership. That's between you and the partner.
• It doesn't take responsibility for the outcome. Shopify's collaborator help page says it isn't directly responsible for freelancer or agency issues, though you can report a partner who breaks the Partner Program Agreement.

So the directory filters out a lot of noise. It doesn't replace your own checks. If you've had unsolicited messages from people claiming to be partners, my guide to Shopify developer scams and red flags covers how to spot the fakes.

How do you hire from the Shopify Partner Directory, step by step?

Filter hard, shortlist three, and contact all three with the same brief. Here is the process I'd follow.

1. Write a short brief first: what you sell, your store URL, what you need done, your budget range and your deadline. Shopify's contact form asks for exactly this, so you'll need it anyway.
2. Open the directory and filter. Shopify's hiring guide lists filters for availability for new clients, price range in USD, services, location, industry, languages and partner tier. You can sort by average rating or by service price.
3. Shortlist three to five profiles. Each listing shows services, a price range for selected services (or "Contact for pricing"), locations, languages, industries, featured work and reviews.
4. Check the featured work properly. Open the live stores, browse on your phone, add something to cart. Featured work is the partner's choice, so ask which parts they personally built.
5. Read the reviews for substance. Note which service each review is for. A partner with 40 reviews for app setup may have no reviews for migrations.
6. Contact through the Contact button. You need to be logged in to your Shopify account. Shopify emails your request to the partner, and contacting doesn't commit you to anything.
7. Compare proposals on scope, not just price. The cheapest quote often leaves out QA, redirects or training.
8. Give access the safe way. When you choose someone, they send a collaborator request with your 4-digit code, and you approve only the permissions the job needs. I've written that process up in how to give a Shopify developer access.

One nuance on the price filter: it's in USD. If you're an Indian brand, convert your budget before filtering, or you'll filter out partners who'd quote you in rupees. For what Shopify work typically costs here, see my Shopify developer rates in India.

Directory partner vs Upwork vs agency vs referral: which is safer?

Each route checks something different. None of them checks everything.

My view: a referral from a founder whose store you admire beats everything else, provided their project looked like yours. After that, the directory is a strong second because its reviews are tied to real collaborator access. Marketplaces work for small fixes, as I explain in freelance developer vs agency vs marketplace.

Whichever route you take, the same rules apply: a written scope, milestone payments, collaborator access and ownership of the code and store.

What should you ask a Shopify partner on the first call?

Ask questions that make them describe real work, not their process slides. These are the ones I'd use.

1. Which stores in your featured work did you personally build, and which parts?
2. Can I speak to one client whose project was like mine?
3. What exactly is in scope, and what counts as a change request?
4. Who will actually do the work: you, a team member or a subcontractor?
5. What are the payment milestones, and what do I get to review before each one?
6. Will the store and code be in my account from day one, or transferred at launch?
7. Which permissions will you request, and why?
8. Which apps will you install, and what will they cost me each month?
9. What happens after launch: how long is support included, and what does it cost after that?

Good partners answer these quickly and in writing. If someone gets vague on questions 4, 6 or 7, keep looking. For more on what to look for when hiring locally, see how to hire a Shopify developer in Delhi.

Should you hire a partner with no reviews?

You can, if you check their work another way. Reviews require a merchant on a paid plan who gave the partner collaborator access for at least a week, so a partner new to the directory can have years of client work and zero directory reviews.

When you're looking at a profile with no reviews, put more weight on live stores you can open, client references you can call, and how specific their answers are on the first call. That's the honest position I'm in. My listing shows the label "New to the directory" and no reviews yet. What I can show you instead is live work: Mum & You's Magento to Shopify Plus migration with zero data loss, Mahina's +28% AOV and 95+ speed score, and Bloom Bodysuits' +22% month-on-month revenue after the work I did there.

What I'd do

I'd use the directory to build a shortlist, never to make the final decision. Filter by service and budget, open the live stores, and contact three partners with the same written brief. Then I'd choose based on how well each one understood the brief and how clear their scope and milestones were.

I'd also ignore tier as a sign of fit. A Select freelancer who has done three migrations like yours is a better hire for that migration than a Platinum agency that mostly runs enterprise builds.

If you want a fourth quote to compare against, send me your brief. I'll reply with a scope, a timeline and a fixed price, and you can check my directory listing and live stores before deciding. If you're hiring from outside India, the offshore Shopify developer page explains how I work across time zones.

Related reads

• Shopify developer scams: 10 red flags before you hire
• How to hire a Shopify developer in Delhi without getting burned
• How to give a Shopify developer access to your store (safely)
• Freelance Shopify developer vs agency vs marketplace

Sources

• Shopify Partner Directory
• Shopify Help Center: Hiring and working with Shopify Partners
• Shopify Help Center: About the Shopify Partner Program tiers
• Shopify Help Center: Eligibility for the Shopify Partner Directory
• Shopify Help Center: Shopify review policies
• Shopify Help Center: Collaborator accounts
• Shopify Academy: Verified Skills badges
• Shopify Community: Changes to the Shopify Partners Marketplace (November 2023)
• Tanuj Rajput's Shopify Partner Directory listing