Vajro vs Appbrew:
Why Appbrew is the Best Vajro Alternative
Confused between Vajro and Appbrew to build your Shopify mobile app? You’re not alone. Both are big names. But only one truly delivers on what modern eCommerce brands need today.
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For years, Vajro has been the go to solution for Shopify merchants wanting to quickly launch a mobile app for their Shopify Store. With its drag-and-drop builder and promise of easy setup, thousands of brands chose Vajro.
But as these brands grew and mobile shopping evolved, a disconnect began to emerge between the capabilities of these apps and rising customer expectations.
To solve this, these large Shopify merchants were looking for more than just an ecommerce mobile app.
They wanted apps that deliver superior performance, offer true native experiences, enable deeper personalization, and drive higher conversion.
This is where Appbrew outperforms Vajro.
Appbrew is an AI-powered Shopify mobile app builder built exclusively for high-growth DTC brands. Appbrew provides exceptional performance, unlimited customization options, advanced analytics, and one-click personalization that creates personalized experiences for each customer.
In this blog, we're diving deep into the Vajro vs. Appbrew comparison. We'll break down their features and show you why Appbrew is the best Vajro alternative for Shopify brands looking to turn their Shopify store into a mobile app quickly.
We switched to Appbrew for our mobile app and I couldn't be happier with the results. The transition process was seamless and the team at Appbrew made sure that everything was set up properly. The app itself is beautifully designed and user-friendly, making it easy for my customers to browse and shop our collections. We're seeing a significant difference in core business metrics thanks to the solid performance at scale.
Vajro vs Appbrew: Feature Overview
Here's a quick look at the feature and performance you get in these Shopify mobile app builders:
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While both Vajro and Appbrew help you turn your Shopify store into a mobile app, the real difference lies in performance, user experience, and the ability to drive higher conversion rates.
Why Appbrew is the best Vajro Alternative?
A mobile app is the most powerful channel to connect with your customers and the Shopify app builder you choose plays a key role in shaping that experience. .
What your customers experience after installing the app can vary widely. Do they land in a fast, responsive, and personalized environment built for today’s mobile shoppers? Or in a more basic interface with slower performance and limited flexibility?
1. React Native vs Webview Architecture
Vajro uses a templated design with webview architecture for powering the most critical functions within the app like checkout and post-purchase experience.
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While this approach used to work in the early days of mobile commerce, it now poses several challenges and limitations:
- App size exceeds 180MB, reducing download rates significantly
- Performance constrained by web technologies and browser rendering on key pages
- Limited access to native device capabilities (camera, audio, etc.)
- Slower loading times compared to native components
- Native Performance: Components render using native iOS and Android elements, not web views
- App Size: Appbrew apps are 75% small (<45MB), leading to higher download rates.
- Device Integration: Full access to device features like camera for AI Skin Analyzer, Search by Image functionality, and Audio for Voice Search feature.
- Faster Load Times: Pre-compiled native components load instantly without browser overhead
That's the React Native advantage, and it's why leading DTC brands choose Appbrew over webview-based Shopify mobile app builders.
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2. Design & Customization
Both Vajro and Appbrew offer drag-and-drop builders, but the underlying capabilities create vastly different experiences. While Vajro provides a simple drag-and-drop interface with pre-designed templates, Appbrew offers complete design freedom and customization capabilities.
With Appbrew, your app's design looks, feels and tells the unique story of your brand.
- Drag-and-drop native editor: Build custom layouts without coding constraints
- Dynamic UI components: Create personalized interfaces that adapt to user preferences
- Brand-specific themes and designs: Build themes and experiences that go beyond your website's capabilities
- Custom logic on PDPs: Create dynamic product pages that respond to user behavior in real-time
In contrast, Vajro allows you to design homepage layouts and product listing pages with the drag and drop editor, the actual shopping experience, especially checkout, and post purchase experience is constrained by the limitations of web browser rendering, resulting in a clunky and poor user experience.
Beyond design limitations, Vajro presents additional challenges with app management complexity. Many users struggle with Vajro's app interface management, particularly business owners who handle design and app interface responsibilities but have limited time and resources.
3. Product Display & Merchandising
Vajro’s hybrid architecture leads to slow initial load times, especially during app launch, homepage rendering, checkout and post purchase. Because much of the experience is powered by webviews, users often face noticeable delays before they can start browsing or while making a purchase.
While some interactions may feel faster once the app is fully loaded, the lag during the most crucial time creates enough friction for users to drop off. .
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Furthermore, the product detail and cart pages feature only basic product recommendations for upselling and cross-selling, resulting in missed opportunities to increase average order value (AOV).
Appbrew takes product display and merchandising to the next level by delivering lightning-fast, conversion-focused product discovery experiences:
- Instant image galleries: Native photo browsing that loads immediately without web delays
- Shoppable video feeds: Instagram-style product video feeds that convert browsers into buyers
- Native size guides & fit finders: Built-in fit guides that reduce returns and boost confidence.
- One-tap variant selection: Seamless color, size, and style switching without page reloads
- Social proof integration: Reviews, ratings, and user-generated content that builds trust
- Advanced bundling & upsells: Smart product bundles and suggestions that increase order value
Appbrew turns product discovery into highly engaging an Instagram-like experience where every tap, swipe, and interaction feels instant and intuitive.
“ Appbrew has been phenomenal in giving top-notch app experience to our mobile-first customers. It is the best Shopify mobile app builder we have used. The team understands the unique challenges of fashion brands like ours such as size charts, PDP customizations, post-purchase experience, etc, and helps us achieve a 3-4X conversion rate on the App wrt to web. They keep building new features to improve customer experience and the marketing team's ease of using the product.”
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4. Integrations & Extensibility
When it comes to integrations, both Vajro and Appbrew offer extensive integration capabilities, but their implementation methods create different user experiences.
Vajro provides around 70 integrations with popular Shopify Apps. However, the majority of these integrations load through webview rather than native implementation.
This means when customers interact with integrated features (Shopify Apps), they're essentially accessing the web version within the app. While this ensures consistency with your website, it results in slower loading times and less smooth interactions compared to native implementations on the mobile app.
In contrast to webview-based integrations, Appbrew takes a fundamentally different approach by implementing integrations natively within the app architecture. This means faster performance and smoother user experiences across all integrated features.
Appbrew offers 120+ integrations natively across key categories:
- Advanced mobile attribution with AppsFlyer, Branch, and Adjust for precise user journey tracking
- Deep integrations with advanced search, loyalty, review, subscriptions and 120+ more apps
- Custom event tracking for platforms like Meta Ads and Klaviyo
- Precision retargeting and personalized email flows based on real app behavior
Appbrew is built to scale. With Shopify Markets support, multi-currency pricing, and 120+ native integrations (Meta Ads, Klaviyo, AppsFlyer, etc.), Appbrew helps you grow without platform limitations.
5. AI Powered Personalization
Vajro provides solid basic personalization through push notifications and standard app customization features. You can tailor your app's look and feel to match your brand, set up targeted push campaigns, and create basic experiences for your customers.
However, when it comes to dynamic, behavior-driven personalization during the shopping experience, there are some gaps.
Product pages and cart experiences tend to be more static, without AI-powered recommendations or real-time personalization based on customer behavior and preferences.
- One-click personalization – Create tailored experiences using simple dashboard commands
- High-value customer targeting – Show special content to customers who spent over $500 in 6 months
- Cart-based upsell triggers – Unlock discounts when customers reach specific cart thresholds.
- Dynamic homepage personalization – Your homepage changes based on location and purchase history
- Behavioral learning – Your app learns from every customer interaction - what they browse, buy, and how they navigate
6. App Exclusive Promotions
Vajro offers basic promotional capabilities and discount functionality within their platform. You can create app-exclusive offers and run promotional campaigns through their system.
The challenge comes with promotion visibility and optimization. During checkout, customers can apply discount codes, but available promotions aren't always prominently displayed, which means customers might miss out on savings they're eligible for.
- Visible discount display – All available discounts are clearly shown oon the product, cart, and the checkout page.
- Advanced promotion types – Fixed Percentage Off, Buy X Get Y offers, bundle discounts, free gifts, and time-limited deals
- Smart targeting – Precisely target promotions to different customer segments based on behavior
- VIP-exclusive deals – Create special discount promotions for loyal customers.
7. User Experience & Engagement
Appbrew takes the user experience to next level by offering:
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- React App Architecture: Under 45MB app size for faster downloads and happier phone storage
- Instant Response Time: Every tap, swipe, and scroll responds immediately without lag or loading delays
- Social Login & OTP Sign in: Customers can sign in with one tap using their existing google and apple accounts as well as with their mobile number
- AI Concierge: Intelligent shopping assistant that instantly finds the right products and finds the best available discount coupons.
- Lightning Fast Checkout: Complete your transactions in under one second with no web-view page loading.
- Smart Deep Linking: Customers arriving from ads land exactly where they intended, even if they need to download the app first
Vajro, on the other hand, breaks that flow. While browsing starts off natively, key moments like checkout and post-purchase shift into clunky webviews. This abrupt switch disrupts the experience, forcing users to wait as a browser-like screen loads at the point where every second counts. The result is friction, hesitation, low conversion rate and lost sales.
From sign-up to engagement to checkout, Appbrew removes every roadblock. It’s not just fast, it’s intelligently optimized to convert at every step. Tailored sign-up flow designed to achieve over 45% sign-up rates.
8. Post Purchase Experience
- Instant Order Tracking: See shipment progress immediately without waiting for pages to load
- Smart Contextual Push Notifications: Get automatic updates when orders ship, deliver, or need attention
- Native Subscription Management: Pause, modify, or cancel subscriptions through clean mobile interfaces
- Complete Post-Purchase Flow: Everything from order confirmation to returns handled within the app
In contrast, Vajro handles order management by loading your website's order pages within the app, which creates a clunky experience. Customers get stuck waiting for web pages to load every time they want to check their orders.
Appbrew keeps your customers informed and confident with real-time tracking and alerts directly in the app.
🛍️ Fewer support queries, happier customers, and higher retention
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9. Advanced Analytics
Appbrew delivers comprehensive behavioral insights that reveal exactly how customers interact with your app and where you can improve conversions:
- Real-Time Performance Tracking: Active users, conversion funnels, and revenue attribution across every touchpoint
- Event-Level Analytics: Automatic tracking of Add to Cart, Purchase, and Push Notification performance with Google Analytics integration
- Advanced Retention Intelligence: Cohort analysis and customer lifetime value modeling to understand long-term user behavior
- Cross-Platform Attribution: Native integrations with Klaviyo, AppsFlyer, MoEngage, and MS Clarity for complete user journey mapping
Appbrew's analytics help you make decisions based on real user behavior rather than guesswork. You can optimize every step of the shopping journey using data that shows what's actually working.
A customer who recently migrated from Vajro reported analytics as a key pain point where they 'gave up that fight almost a year ago' suggesting Vajro either couldn't or wouldn't provide proper analytics capabilities.
10. Customer Success
For us at Appbrew, we believe your app's success is our success and being your mobile growth partner means more than answering your tickets. It's about truly understanding your vision and challenges.
From day one, you're paired with customer success experts who've worked with one of the biggest DTC brands in your category. We bring that collective knowledge to your specific challenges, whether it's optimizing onboarding flows, designing push campaigns that actually convert, or building promotional strategies that drive sales. When you win, we win.
With Appbrew, you get:
- 24/7 Slack support
- Email Support
- Priority help during sales, product launches, or emergencies
- Best practices from hundreds of successful DTC mobile apps
- Regular performance reviews focused on your growth
Unlike Appbrew, Vajro provides basic support during onboarding and claims to make technical changes on your behalf, customers say otherwise. A Vajro customer who recently migrated from Vajro to Appbrew shared their frustration about Vajro’s broken support with frequent app glitches, poor technical support, delayed responses, and lack of follow-up.
“ Switching to Appbrew enhanced our app's performance with a notable increase in conversion rate and customer LTV. Their configurability and exceptional support have been pivotal in our success, offering custom solutions and smooth transition.”
Vajro vs Appbrew: Which one is right for you?
At the end of the day, the Shopify mobile app builder you choose will shape the kind of experience your users get and the kind of results your brand sees.
Vajro is a great choice for smaller brands wanting to quickly convert their Shopify store into a mobile app with minimal effort. However, its limitations become apparent when your brand grows and needs advanced performance, personalization, and conversion optimization.
- You are a small brand looking for basic mobile app presence.
- You're comfortable with webview-based checkout and basic functionality
- You don't need AI-powered features, advanced personalization, or advanced promotion
- You’re satisfied with basic analytics and standard promotional capabilities
- Standard customer support through tickets is sufficient
However, if you're a fast-growing DTC brand, Vajro's hybrid architecture, performance limitations, lack of AI features, basic analytics, and poor support can significantly hold you back.
- You want native app performance that matches the speed of the world's best ecommerce apps
- You're looking for complete design freedom and the ability to create a fully customized, on-brand mobile experience that reflects your identity
- You care about AI-powered personalization, from dynamic homepage experiences to intelligent product recommendations and AI concierge-like shopping assistants.
- You want real-time performance insights, event-level tracking, and advanced analytics to continuously optimize your app experience
- You prefer intuitive, low-effort app management that doesn’t require developer support
- You want to run app-exclusive promotions that actually get seen, applied, and convert
- You expect fast, expert-led customer support with real-time Slack access and app success guidance
Book a Demo today with Appbrew!
Last updated on: 25/07/25
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