How to Convert WooCommerce to an App in 2026 (Every Method, Compared)

Quick answer

There are four genuine ways to turn a WooCommerce store into a mobile app, and they are not variations on a theme — they produce different products at different prices.

• A no-code native builder reads your catalogue over the WooCommerce REST API and renders it in native screens. Days to launch, around $99/month, and it passes App Store review because it is a real app. This is the right answer for most stores.
• A plugin-based builder installs into WordPress and generates the app from there. Simpler to start, but tied to your WordPress install and often slower, because every screen waits on your own hosting.
• A WebView wrapper loads your existing website inside an app shell. It is the cheapest and the most likely to be rejected by Apple, because it is a website in a frame.
• Custom development gives you anything you can specify, for five figures and several months, and hands you a codebase you now have to maintain against every iOS and Android release.

If you sell ordinary products to ordinary shoppers, a no-code native builder is almost certainly what you want. The rest of this piece is about how to tell them apart.

The four methods, side by side

Why the WebView shortcut usually fails

The tempting option is the cheapest one: point an app shell at your existing site and submit it. It takes an afternoon and it looks like an app in a screenshot.

Apple's App Store Review Guideline 4.2 exists precisely to stop this. An app that only reproduces a website, without offering anything a browser cannot, gets rejected — and ecommerce wrappers are among the most frequently rejected submissions there are. Even when a wrapper gets through, it inherits every weakness of mobile web: it waits on your hosting for each screen, it cannot use the phone's own gestures properly, and push notifications are bolted on rather than native.

You are not saving money by starting here. You are usually spending a month to arrive at the same decision with less time left.

What "native" actually has to mean

Vendors use "native" loosely, so it is worth pinning down. A genuinely native app draws its screens with the platform's own UI components — in practice, via React Native or the platform SDKs — and fetches data over an API. That means the interface responds instantly to a tap because it is not waiting on a page load, and it behaves the way the operating system expects.

The practical test is easy: ask for a preview of your own store before you pay anything. Not a demo of someone else's catalogue, and not a video. Your products, on your phone. If a vendor cannot show you that, you are being asked to buy a description of a product rather than the product.

How the API connection works, and why it matters

Everything else follows from how the app gets your data.

WooCommerce ships a REST API. A builder that uses it authenticates with a consumer key and secret, reads your products, categories, prices, images and stock levels, and keeps reading them. Change a price in WordPress and the app shows the new price — no resubmission, no rebuild, no waiting on Apple.

A builder that instead scrapes your storefront, or renders your theme, is coupled to your website's front end. Change your theme and you may break your app.

Three ways to connect your store

You do not create an account first. Every route below signs you up and connects the store in the same step.

1. From the BrewmyApp homepage. Paste your store URL into the box at the top of brewmyapp.io, approve the install, and you land in the designer with your products already synced.
2. From the Shopify App Store. Install BrewmyApp directly from Shopify. The install itself creates your account and links the store — nothing to fill in afterwards.
3. From the dashboard. Already have a store connected and want to add another? Add it from your stores page.

Whichever you pick, products, collections, variants, and inventory sync automatically. There is no CSV export and no API key to paste.

Doing it, step by step

Once you have chosen an API-based builder, the process is genuinely short.

1. Connect the store. Generate read/write REST API keys under WooCommerce → Settings → Advanced → REST API, or install the connector plugin and authorise it. Paste your store URL. Your catalogue appears.

2. Design the screens. Arrange home, category, product and cart screens from blocks; set colours, fonts and your logo. Your website is untouched — this is a separate presentation of the same data.

3. Preview on a real device. Scan a QR code and open the actual app on your own phone. This is the step people skip and regret. Tap through a real purchase path before you spend anything.

4. Build. Trigger a production build to get a signed .ipa for Apple and an .aab for Google Play.

5. Publish. Submit under your own developer accounts — Apple's Developer Program at $99/year, Google Play at a one-time $25. Owning the listing means owning the reviews and the ratings history, and being able to change vendors later without starting from zero.

Building and publishing the app

Builds run on Expo's EAS infrastructure, so nothing compiles on your machine:

1. Connect an Expo account. Free to create at expo.dev; the dashboard walks you through linking it.
2. Pick your target. Android APK for side-loading and testing, Android AAB for Google Play, iOS IPA for the App Store, or both at once. iPad support is a checkbox.
3. Choose the app language. Eleven locales ship built in — English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Hindi, Arabic, Japanese, and Chinese.
4. Build. You watch the EAS log stream in the dashboard and get the artifact when it finishes.
5. Submit. Turn on auto-submit and the build goes to App Store Connect or Google Play on completion, or download the artifact and upload it yourself.

iOS publishing needs an Apple Developer Program membership ($99/year). After the first build, most changes — layout, colours, banners, product arrangement — ship over the air, so your users get them without a new store review.

What it costs, honestly

BrewmyApp is $99/month or $999/year per store. Designing your app and previewing it on a real device is free — you pay when you build and publish. The app stores charge separately: Apple's Developer Program is $99/year and Google Play is a one-time $25 fee.

Three bills, then, not one: the builder, Apple, and Google. Any comparison that quotes only the first is understating the real number, and that includes ours unless we say so plainly.

Custom development is the outlier. Fifteen thousand dollars is a realistic floor for a competent two-platform build, and the meaningful cost is not the build — it is that you now own a codebase that must be updated for every iOS and Android release, indefinitely. That is the right trade only when your requirements genuinely cannot be met any other way.

How to choose, in three questions

Does your store need anything unusual? A custom booking flow, a regulated checkout, an unusual subscription model? If yes, price custom development. If no — and for most stores the answer is no — a builder will do it in days for a fraction of the cost.

Will you own the app store listings? If the vendor publishes under their account, you are renting your own storefront. Ask before you buy, not after.

Can you see your own store, on your own phone, before paying? If not, keep looking. Everything else on a vendor's page is a claim; this is the only part you can verify yourself.

Where BrewmyApp fits

We build in this category, so treat this section as interested rather than neutral, and check it against the two questions above.

BrewmyApp connects over the WooCommerce REST API, renders screens in React Native, and publishes to the App Store and Google Play under your own developer accounts. Designing your app and previewing it on a real device costs nothing — you pay when you decide to build. There is no revenue share and no per-order fee, which matters more than the headline price if your store grows.

The honest limits: if you need functionality nobody has built a block for, a builder is the wrong tool and you want a development team. And if you are choosing between us and another API-based native builder, the preview is how you decide — not this page.

Related reading

• Best WooCommerce mobile app builders in 2026 — a closer comparison of individual tools
• WooCommerce to mobile app with the REST API — the technical detail behind the sync
• Why mobile apps convert better than mobile web — whether an app is worth building at all