This is the shortest list in the series, deliberately. Most apps in this category add a script in order to manage other scripts, and the net effect is frequently negative.
Do these first, free
Delete apps you do not use. Compress oversized images. Remove duplicate tracking pixels. Turn off theme features you do not use.
That sequence typically recovers more than any app will, and it costs nothing.
The apps that do help
Shopify Web Performance dashboard — first-party, free, reports Core Web Vitals from real users rather than a lab test. Use this to measure rather than PageSpeed alone.
Hyperspeed / similar script managers — these can genuinely help by deferring third-party scripts until after first render. They are the only category here we would install, and only when there are scripts you cannot remove.
Image optimisers — mostly unnecessary. Shopify already serves WebP and resizes. Useful only if you have a large legacy library uploaded at full resolution.
Be sceptical of any app promising a PageSpeed score improvement. Several achieve it by deferring things until after the test finishes measuring, which improves the score and not the experience.
What actually needs a developer
Deferring scripts properly without breaking the apps that depend on them. Reworking render-blocking CSS. Fixing layout shift. Rebuilding sections that were built inefficiently.
These are the changes that move real-user metrics, and none of them are an app.
The honest ceiling
A Liquid theme has a floor it cannot go below, because Shopify renders the page and apps add to it. If you have removed what you can, deferred what remains, and still cannot hit your targets, that is when headless becomes a real conversation — we covered where that line sits in what headless Shopify costs.
Talk it through
Send us your store and a Web Vitals report.
We will tell you what is actually costing the time and how much of it is free to fix before anyone installs anything.
Get a readA real read within one business day — not a sales call.
About the author
Manpreet Singh
Manpreet Singh is the founder of Proscube, an ecommerce growth studio. He leads the studio's Shopify and Shopify Plus engineering, headless builds, CRO, and its work on AI engine optimization, and writes its guidance on how to grow a DTC brand without wasting money. He works directly with founders — no account-manager layers between you and the people doing the work — and would rather tell a client not to build something than sell them work they don't need.
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