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Mohamad Nashaat
Mohamad Nashaat

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Deploy Your Shopify App to Heroku in Seconds

#shopify #heroku #cli #cicd

Deploying a Shopify app to Heroku can quickly turn into repetitive work — managing environment variables and running multiple commands to keep 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
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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
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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
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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
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Commit the file to your repo:

git add .
git commit -m "feat: add heroku yml file"
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5. Deploy to Heroku

Now you’re ready to deploy your Shopify app:

shopify-heroku deploy your-heroku-app-name
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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
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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"
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Then deploy your app to Shopify again to update the URL:

npm run deploy
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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"
}
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Now you can deploy to Heroku with a single command:

npm run deploy:heroku
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Wrapping Up

Deploying a Shopify app to Heroku doesn’t have to be complicated.
With shopify-heroku-cli, you can handle environment syncing and deployment in just one command — no more manual setup or juggling multiple CLIs.

Check out the full documentation and source code here:

GitHub: imohamadnashaat/shopify-heroku-cli

npm: shopify-heroku-cli

If you find it useful, please share feedback to help make it even better.

Happy deploying!

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