What you are setting up
An AppDeck account is how you read Shopify Partner revenue for each app you publish. The metrics are not scraped from the App Store. After you confirm your email, you connect a Partner organization id and an API token, and AppDeck checks both with Shopify before anything is stored.
The organization id is the number in the partners.shopify.com address, not the id shown in the Dev Dashboard. The token is a Partner API client with View financials and Manage apps. An app API key cannot take its place. You add one set of credentials per app.
The AppDeck trial is 3 days. It starts when you add a card, not when you create the account. Monthly is €5 and yearly is €50, for every app under that Partner organization. You are charged when the trial ends unless you cancel.
Once an app is connected you get MRR and ARR, and ARR is MRR times 12. Annual subscription prices count as one twelfth of the price. Installs include reinstalls. Trial shops and paying shops stay separate, so a launch does not look like collected revenue.
A shop is counted as a trial when the plan has a price, AppDeck has not seen an AppSubscriptionSale since that charge was activated, and the activation is still inside a 7-day window. That window is AppDeck's reading of Partner events. It is not the trial length you set on the Shopify listing.
After the first sync, the portfolio lists every app you connected. Open one to see its MRR trend, install count, and the shops behind those numbers. Open a shop to see the plan that was activated, whether it is still in that trial window, and the charges Partner has recorded. Refresh asks Shopify for a new pull. Leaving the page and coming back reads the snapshot you already stored, so the screen is not waiting on a full crawl every time.
Nothing in the signup step installs code on a merchant store. There is no theme app embed, no script tag, and no webhook for you to host. Merchants do not see AppDeck. The only Shopify access is the Partner API, limited to the scopes on the token you created. If you later rotate that token, update it on the app inside the dashboard. The account email and the billing card stay separate from that credential.
Use the account for the apps you publish under one Partner organization. If you work with a second organization, it needs its own credentials on the apps you add. The price does not change with the number of apps, installs, or paying shops. Cancel from the billing section if you stop using it. Historical snapshots already saved remain on the account until you remove the apps.
A practical first session is short. Confirm the email, open billing and add a card if you want the 3-day trial to start, then add the first app. Paste the organization id and the token. Wait for the Shopify check. If it fails, the usual miss is the Dev Dashboard id in place of the partners.shopify.com number, or a token that can manage apps but cannot view financials. Fix that in Shopify, paste the new token, and run the check again. Do not create a second AppDeck account to retry.
When the check passes, give the first sync a moment and open the app. You should see installs, the trial column, and paying MRR if any subscription sale has already happened. An app that launched this week may show a large trial number and a small paying number. That is the correct reading. Compare them again after the 7-day window, when shops that never produced a sale drop out of trial MRR instead of quietly becoming revenue.
From then on, the account is the place you look before you change price, extend a trial in Shopify, or decide which app gets the next month of engineering. The payout screen remains the place you look for cash that Shopify has transferred. Use both. They answer different questions, and AppDeck does not try to replace the payout. If a teammate needs access, they need their own login. Sharing the Partner token is a Shopify concern. Sharing the AppDeck password is not required, and it is not how billing is managed.
Keep the token in a password manager after Shopify shows it once. AppDeck stores the copy you paste, but you cannot read it back out of the dashboard later. If you lose both, create a new Partner API client, revoke the old one, and paste the replacement onto the app. Revenue history already synced stays. Only the next pull needs the new token. Do this before you rotate a token in Shopify, or the next refresh will fail until the new value is saved. Revoke the old client in the Dev Dashboard once the new one has passed the check, so a leaked copy cannot keep reading financials.
Signup itself does not start the paid plan. You can create the account, confirm the email, and look around before you add a card. The 3-day clock starts at the card, and the charge is €5 a month or €50 a year after that clock ends. If you are not ready to connect Shopify today, the account can wait. The Partner id and the token are only required when you add the first app.