Deploy Your Shopify App to Heroku in Seconds

Mohamad Nashaat — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 19:16:50 +0000

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

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

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!

Forem: Mohamad Nashaat