Deploy Your Shopify App to Heroku in Seconds

[MyrinNew]

Deploying a Shopify app to Heroku often turns into a juggling act — managing environment variables, and running separate commands to keep both Shopify and Heroku in sync.


To simplify this process, I built shopify-heroku-cli a lightweight CLI that syncs your Shopify app’s environment variables with Heroku and deploys your app in just a couple of commands.


In this post, I’ll show you step-by-step how to deploy your Shopify app to Heroku using the tool.





1. Prerequisites

Before we start, make sure you have the following installed and configured:

• Node.js >= 16
• Shopify CLI — logged in to your Shopify app
• Heroku CLI — logged in to your Heroku account
• A Shopify app ready to deploy
• A Heroku app created (you can create one with heroku create my-shopify-app)

2. Install the CLI

Install the CLI globally using npm:






npm install -g shopify-heroku-cli








This makes the shopify-heroku command available system-wide.





3. Sync Environment Variables

The first step is to set your Shopify app environment variables on your Heroku app.


You can do this with a single command:






shopify-heroku set-env your-heroku-app-name








This command automatically:

• Reads your Shopify environment variables
• Pushes them to your Heroku app
• Sets SHOPIFY_API_KEY, SHOPIFY_API_SECRET, and SHOPIFY_APP_URL automatically

If you have multiple Shopify config files (like shopify.app.live.toml), you can specify one:






shopify-heroku set-env your-heroku-app-name -c live











4. Create a heroku.yml File

Next, you’ll need a heroku.yml to tell Heroku how to build your app (using Docker):






echo -e "build:\n docker:\n web: Dockerfile" > heroku.yml








Commit the file to your repo:






git add .
git commit -m "feat: add heroku yml file"











5. Deploy to Heroku

Now you’re ready to deploy your Shopify app:






shopify-heroku deploy your-heroku-app-name








This command will:

• Ensure your Heroku app is configured for container deployment
• Set up the correct git remote (if missing)
• Automatically detect your main branch (main or master)
• Push your code to Heroku for deployment

Once complete, you can open your app directly:






heroku open --app your-heroku-app-name











6. Update the Shopify App URL

After deployment, you’ll need to update your app URL in your Shopify configuration file (shopify.app.toml) to point to your Heroku domain.


Example:






application_url = "https://your-heroku-app-name.herokuapp.com"








Then deploy your app to Shopify again to update the URL:






npm run deploy











7. (Optional) Automate Your Deploy Workflow

You can easily wrap this workflow into a script inside your package.json:






"scripts": {
"deploy:heroku": "shopify-heroku set-env your-heroku-app-name && shopify-heroku deploy your-heroku-app-name"
}








Now you can deploy to Heroku with a single command:






npm run deploy:heroku











Why This Tool Helps

Manually deploying a Shopify app to Heroku often means switching between CLIs, copying environment variables, and repeating the same setup steps every time.


With shopify-heroku-cli, that entire process is automated — letting you focus on building features instead of managing deployment details.





Get Started

Install it globally from npm:






npm install -g shopify-heroku-cli







Explore the full documentation and source code:


GitHub: imohamadnashaat/shopify-heroku-cli


npm: shopify-heroku-cli


shopify-heroku-cli makes deploying Shopify apps to Heroku faster and simpler by bringing both workflows into one place.


It’s an open project — feedback, ideas, and contributions are always welcome.


Happy coding!




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