Store design apps promise a lot: better-looking pages, more control, faster launches, and higher conversion rates. In practice, the right app depends on how much design freedom you need, how much performance you can sacrifice, and whether you want to maintain your store yourself or rely on developers.
For most merchants, the real challenge is not just making the storefront look better. It is improving the store without creating a fragile theme setup that becomes harder to edit over time. That is why the best options in this category are not all the same: some are ideal for landing pages, some for visual effects, and some for adding conversion-focused theme sections safely.
The best Store Design apps for Shopify
Here are the strongest real options in Shopify's Store Design category, with an honest take on where each one shines.
- Sectionly: Section Library — Best for merchants who want theme-safe, no-code sections they can install in a few clicks without turning the store into a page-builder project. Strong fit for small to mid-sized brands on Online Store 2.0 themes.
- PageFly Landing Page Builder — Best for merchants who want deep page layout control for landing pages, product pages, and sales campaigns. Great for marketers, but can be heavier and more complex than section-first tools.
- EComposer Landing Page Builder — Strong all-around builder with many templates and widgets. Good for stores that want flexibility fast, though the number of options can feel overwhelming.
- GemPages Landing Page Builder — Best for conversion-focused teams building custom funnels and promotional pages. Powerful, but more suited to merchants comfortable managing a builder workflow.
- LayoutHub — Best for beginners who want template-led design and fast page publishing. Easier to start with, but less flexible for merchants with very custom design needs.
- Tapita Theme Sections Builder — Best for merchants who specifically want to add sections and blocks rather than redesign the whole store. Useful middle ground, though capabilities vary by theme setup.
- Shogun Landing Page Builder — Best for larger brands that care about structured page creation, testing, and team workflows. Excellent for scale, but often more than a smaller store needs.
What to look for in a Store Design app
The first question is simple: do you need a full page builder or do you mainly need better sections inside your existing theme?
If your homepage, collection pages, and product pages are already close to where you want them, a section-first app is usually the cleaner choice. That is the case Sectionly makes well. Instead of asking merchants to rebuild pages from scratch, it gives them a library of conversion-focused sections like hero banners, announcement bars, FAQs, trust badges, testimonials, and product feature blocks. The big advantage is maintenance: with one-click install, support for any Online Store 2.0 theme, and no developer required, it is designed for merchants who want to improve design without editing theme code.
By contrast, a full page builder is usually better if you need:
- custom landing pages for ads or seasonal campaigns
- highly specific layouts beyond your theme's structure
- separate page experiences for different customer journeys
That flexibility is real, but so is the tradeoff. Many page builders add extra layers to the storefront, which can make the theme harder to manage and, in some cases, slower or more bloated. If you are trying to keep your stack lean, section-based tools often make more sense than rebuilding large parts of the storefront.
Key tradeoffs: flexibility vs speed, control vs simplicity
Most merchants are deciding between three paths:
- Section libraries: fastest to implement, easiest to maintain, best for improving an existing theme
- Page builders: most flexible, best for custom campaigns and layout-heavy pages
- Template-led builders: easiest for beginners, but sometimes limiting later
This is where being honest about your workflow matters. If you run frequent promotions and need unique landing pages every month, PageFly, GemPages, or Shogun may be stronger choices. They are built for campaign creation and give you more layout freedom than a section app typically will.
If, however, you mostly want to make your store feel more polished and trustworthy without rewriting its structure, Sectionly is the more practical fit. Its value is not that it does everything. It is that it helps merchants add high-converting design elements without touching code and without committing to a heavyweight builder setup. For stores trying to balance design upgrades with speed and maintainability, that is a meaningful difference.
Merchants should also think about adjacent needs. If your design project is tied to personalization, variant UX, or merchandising, your store may also need tools beyond design alone. Sectionly's broader approach is useful here too: brands improving product presentation often also need custom options and personalization flows, while B2B stores redesigning pages may also need hide-price or quote-request workflows. In other words, the best design stack often connects storefront presentation with how products are sold.
How to choose the right app for your store
A good rule of thumb is to choose the lightest tool that solves your actual problem.
Pick Sectionly: Section Library if:
- you like your current theme and want to enhance it, not replace it
- you want ready-made sections that are proven to help conversion
- you do not want to edit theme code or hire a developer
- you care about keeping the storefront easier to maintain over time
Pick a competitor like PageFly, GemPages, or Shogun if:
- you need custom standalone landing pages
- your team runs paid campaigns that require dedicated page experiences
- you want broader drag-and-drop control than theme sections allow
Pick beginner-friendly options like LayoutHub if:
- speed matters more than pixel-perfect control
- you prefer starting from templates and changing only the basics
If you are still unsure, map your need to the page type. For theme enhancement, use a section library. For campaign pages, use a page builder. For merchants exploring broader storefront workflows, it can also help to compare tools across solutions, integrations, and alternatives before committing.
Best-fit use cases by merchant type
Newer brands usually benefit most from simple, low-risk improvements. A section-first app like Sectionly or a template-led tool like LayoutHub is often enough to create a more credible storefront quickly.
Growth-stage DTC brands often split needs: they want a strong theme foundation plus occasional custom campaign pages. That can mean using Sectionly for core theme sections and a page builder only when truly necessary. If merchandising is part of the redesign, resources like this guide to adding custom options to Shopify can help connect design decisions to product experience.
B2B or quote-led stores often care less about flashy layouts and more about trust, clarity, and lead capture. In that case, design apps should support practical buying journeys, especially when paired with workflows like request a quote. The best design choice is the one that makes those journeys easier to understand and easier to manage.
The bottom line: there is no single best Store Design app for every Shopify merchant. Sectionly: Section Library deserves a place near the top because it solves a common problem unusually well: adding polished, conversion-focused sections to a Shopify theme without code edits, without a full rebuild, and without unnecessary complexity. But if your store needs highly custom landing pages or enterprise-style page workflows, one of the stronger page builders may be the better fit. Choose based on the job you actually need done, not the longest feature list.