Every day, Skool community owners request new features to improve their experience and grow their revenue.
Some of these requests would benefit many owners, but others wouldn’t.
It’s understandable why Skool avoids adding too many features—it could overwhelm the platform and compromise its simplicity.
Shopify faced a similar challenge in 2009.
They needed to balance keeping their platform simple while allowing merchants to grow.
Their solution?
The Shopify App Store.
This allowed merchants to add features they needed without complicating the platform for everyone else.
Shopify kept their core platform simple, while apps followed strict UI/UX guidelines and were approved by Shopify.
The App Store launch fueled Shopify's growth, turning them into a global e-commerce giant.
Now, Skool seems to be heading in the same direction with Plugins.
The next step would be opening a Plugin store, allowing third-party developers to create plugins via the Skool API.
Everyone wins:
- Community owners get extra functionality that’s not core but critical for some (e.g., language translation, different pricing models).
- Skool stays simple, as plugins must follow UI/UX guidelines and be approved by the Skool team.
- The Plugin store becomes a testing ground for future core features, just like Shopify apps.
Would love to hear your thoughts on this.
(all credit goes to - just simplified his post to the essence)