Pop ups are one of the most effective ways to capture email addresses, announce a promotion, or nudge a visitor toward a purchase before they leave. The problem is that almost every pop up solution on Shopify comes with a monthly subscription attached. Privy starts at $24/month once you outgrow the free tier. Wisepops charges $39/month and up based on pageviews. OptiMonk, Justuno, Poptin — they all follow the same model. For a store doing $5k–$10k/month in revenue, spending $25–$50/month on an app just to show a pop up is a tough sell, especially when the pop up itself is fairly simple: a heading, some copy, maybe an email field, and a close button. Monthly app costs add up fast across your entire stack.
Section Store offers a different approach. Instead of a subscription-based pop up app, you buy a modal popup Section for a one-time $9 fee. It installs directly into your theme as a native .liquid file, loads without any third-party scripts, and is fully customisable inside the Shopify Theme Editor. No monthly bill, no pageview limits, no app running in the background. Once it is installed, the Section belongs to your theme permanently — even if you uninstall the Section Store app.
WHY MOST SHOPIFY POP UP APPS ARE OVERKILL
The paid pop up apps on the Shopify App Store are built for stores that need advanced targeting, A/B testing, exit-intent triggers, spin-to-win wheels, and integration with marketing automation platforms. That functionality is worth paying for if you are running complex campaigns at scale. But most merchants are not doing that. Most merchants want a clean pop up that appears when someone lands on their store, collects an email address or shows a discount code, and then gets out of the way.
For that use case, a subscription app is overkill. You are paying $25–$50 every month for a feature that, once designed, rarely changes. You are also loading external JavaScript on every page, which can slow down your site and hurt your Core Web Vitals scores. Over a year, a $30/month pop up app costs $360 for something you could have once for $9.
A Section Store modal popup Section fills that gap. Its modal popup Sections are lightweight, native to your theme, and they cost less than a single month of any paid pop up app on the market. You can preview the designs on the modal popup demo page before buying.
WHEN TO USE A POP UP ON YOUR STORE
The most common use case is email capture. A visitor lands on your homepage, a pop up offers 10% off their first order in exchange for an email address, and you have just turned an anonymous browser into a subscriber you can market to for months. If you are running email campaigns through Klaviyo, Mailchimp, or Shopify Email, that subscriber is worth far more than the $9 Section that captured them.
Pop ups also work well for time-sensitive promotions. Running a Black Friday sale? A weekend flash deal? A pop up is the fastest way to make sure visitors see the offer before they start browsing. You can update the text and imagery in the Theme Editor in under a minute, which is significantly easier than rebuilding a campaign inside a separate app dashboard.
Other strong use cases include age verification for stores selling restricted products, cookie consent notices for stores with EU customers, and simple announcement-style messages like shipping delays or new product launches. A clean pop up handles all of these without the complexity of a full marketing suite. If your landing pages are already converting well, a pop up can push that conversion rate even higher.
HOW TO ADD A POP UP WITH SECTION STORE
Follow these steps to get a pop up live on your Shopify store. The whole process takes a few minutes.
Install the Section Store app
Go to the Shopify App Store and install Section Store. The app is free to install — you only pay when you purchase a specific Section.
Find the modal popup Sections
Inside the app, search for "Modal Popup" to see the available designs. You can also preview them on the modal popup demo page before purchasing. Pick the layout that matches what you need — whether that is a simple text announcement, a discount code reveal, or an email capture form.
Purchase and install to your theme
Complete the one-time $9 purchase within the app. Then navigate to My Sections, click the install button next to your popup Section, and choose which theme to install it to. The app adds a .liquid file directly to your theme — no code copying, no file editing, no risk of breaking anything. You can install the same Section to multiple themes within your store at no extra cost.
Add the pop up to your pages
Open the Shopify Theme Editor (Online Store → Themes → Customize). Navigate to the page template where you want the pop up to appear. Click Add Section in the left sidebar and search for "ss - Modal Popup". All Section Store Sections are prefixed with "SS", so they are easy to find among your theme's default sections. If you want the pop up to show on every page, add it to your footer section group or a shared template.
Customise the content and styling
Click on the Section name in the Theme Editor sidebar to access its settings. Update the heading, body text, button labels, colours, and imagery. If the Section includes blocks for individual content areas, click into each block to edit it separately. Everything is done visually in the Theme Editor — no app dashboard, no separate editor.
Save and test
Hit Save in the Theme Editor and then preview your store. Check the pop up on both desktop and mobile — make sure the close button is easy to tap, the text is readable on smaller screens, and the overall design does not feel intrusive. A good pop up should grab attention without blocking the entire experience.
MAKING YOUR POP UP WORK HARDER
The biggest mistake with pop ups is making them annoying. If your pop up fires the instant someone opens your store, covers the entire screen, and is hard to close on mobile, it will hurt more than it helps. Google has also been penalising intrusive mobile interstitials for years, so an aggressive pop up can actually damage your search rankings. Keep it focused: one message, one action, one clean close button. Less is more.
Pair your pop up with other Section Store Sections to build a full conversion strategy without stacking monthly subscriptions. A custom hero section to make a strong first impression, a pop up to capture the email, and a product page upgrade to close the sale — all for a few one-time payments instead of $50+/month in recurring app fees.
One last thing worth noting: because Section Store Sections are native .liquid files, they do not inject external JavaScript into your storefront. That means no impact on page speed, no third-party tracking scripts, and nothing running in the background when the pop up is not visible. Your store loads exactly as fast as it did before the Section was installed. If you have already noticed your theme slowing down under the weight of multiple apps, replacing a subscription pop up tool with a native Section is one of the easiest performance wins you can make.
WRAPPING UP
If you need a pop up with advanced segmentation, exit-intent AI, and deep analytics integration, a dedicated app is still the right choice. But if you just need a clean, professional pop up that captures emails or shows a discount — and you would rather not pay $25–$50/month for the privilege — a $9 Section from Section Store does the job. One payment, no scripts, no ongoing costs. Browse the full library of 730+ Sections to find the right fit for your store.
