Justas

Co-founder of ● Co-founder of @OberloApp ●
Founder of

[Justas @IconUtopia]

Essential Upsell app was cooking last quarter! 🔥

If you're a @Shopify app developer, don't sleep on @letsmetrix - you can find some great insights there.

[Justas @IconUtopia]

@elygiux LET'S GO!

[Justas @IconUtopia]

This is how you know you’ve nailed usability. 😀

[Justas @IconUtopia]

@andrei_monti Really appreciate the kind words. It was great meeting you too. Hopefully we’ll catch up again soon!

[Justas @IconUtopia]

@malisauskasLT Huuge! Congrats!

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@malisauskasLT LOVED THE VIDEO SO F MUCH! Can’t wait for more!

[Justas @IconUtopia]

The @GetEssentialApp team is off to Toronto for @Shopify Dot Dev! 🇨🇦

If you’re around and want to meet or catch up, send me a message. Looking forward to seeing everyone!

[Justas @IconUtopia]

@faridmovsumov Well done!

[Justas @IconUtopia]

@malisauskasLT @KachingAppz @judgeme Crazy! Congrats! 🙌

[Justas @IconUtopia]

@t3l3health @Shopify @GetEssentialApp Good ol’ times

[Justas @IconUtopia]

Launching a new @Shopify app under @GetEssentialApp be like… WHOOSH! 🚀
Distribution & Trust compounds.

[Justas @IconUtopia]

@Bonthoux @Shopify @GetEssentialApp Thanks! Yeah

[Justas @IconUtopia]

@celispj @judgeme Congrats! Should start preparing for 1M celebration 😀

[Justas @IconUtopia]

@TheAwesomeTuvia Congrats! I just gotta see the best cold email ever, you sparked my curiosity 😀

[Justas @IconUtopia]

@patjakubik Love hearing stories like this

[Justas @IconUtopia]

@blairbeckwith Thanks so much for everything!

[Justas @IconUtopia]

@heymantle was THE BEST product for @Shopify partners, and probably no other product will come close.

My last post might have come across more negative than I intended. That wasn’t my intention.

We used Mantle ourselves.
In fact, Mantle was so good that even with all the concerns I had, it would have been silly not to use them. I pushed back for a while internally. But once we committed to the decision and accepted the risks, I was actually annoyed that we weren’t integrating Mantle faster.

And the funny thing is that the same things that made me concerned are the things that made Mantle so good. Why?

→ Ambitious goal of connecting the whole operating system. It's incredibly convenient and makes a lot of sense. (my concern: single point of failure)
→ A lot of capital was required to achieve such ambitious goals. A bootstrapped product can't achieve something like this. (my concern: pressure from VC-backed math.)

But that’s the trade-off.
Without those things, Mantle wouldn’t have been Mantle.

Apart from that:
- The problem was real.
- Team and product - world-class.
- Execution speed was crazy.
- Support unmatched - thanks, Mals and others, for answering all of our dumb questions. :)
- Bringing the community together. (sad to miss the Techtonic event this year)
- I could go on and on..

Yesterday's post was simply my perspective as an app developer on the trade-offs of relying heavily on any single platform. I thought it might be useful both for other Shopify app developers thinking about their toolkit and for the builders who will inevitably try to fill the massive gap Mantle is leaving behind.

Nothing but respect for the team and what they built. ❤️

[Justas @IconUtopia]

@nickselman @heymantle @Shopify Actually, thank you for pointing that out. Looking back, I realize my previous post didn’t fully reflect how much respect I have for what the Mantle team built.

I shared some additional context here:

[Justas @IconUtopia]

@heymantle was THE BEST product for @Shopify partners, and probably no other product will come close.

My last post might have come across more negative than I intended. That wasn’t my intention.

We used Mantle ourselves.
In fact, Mantle was so good that even with all the concerns I had, it would have been silly not to use them. I pushed back for a while internally. But once we committed to the decision and accepted the risks, I was actually annoyed that we weren’t integrating Mantle faster.

And the funny thing is that the same things that made me concerned are the things that made Mantle so good. Why?

→ Ambitious goal of connecting the whole operating system. It's incredibly convenient and makes a lot of sense. (my concern: single point of failure)
→ A lot of capital was required to achieve such ambitious goals. A bootstrapped product can't achieve something like this. (my concern: pressure from VC-backed math.)

But that’s the trade-off.
Without those things, Mantle wouldn’t have been Mantle.

Apart from that:
- The problem was real.
- Team and product - world-class.
- Execution speed was crazy.
- Support unmatched - thanks, Mals and others, for answering all of our dumb questions. :)
- Bringing the community together. (sad to miss the Techtonic event this year)
- I could go on and on..

Yesterday's post was simply my perspective as an app developer on the trade-offs of relying heavily on any single platform. I thought it might be useful both for other Shopify app developers thinking about their toolkit and for the builders who will inevitably try to fill the massive gap Mantle is leaving behind.

Nothing but respect for the team and what they built. ❤️

[Justas @IconUtopia]

I loved @heymantle. I just didn’t like depending on it. Why? Continue reading..

Sad to see Mantle shutting down. Their team & product were great, and they were solving a real problem @Shopify partners were facing.

When our team first pushed to integrate Mantle, I had two main concerns:

→ Single point of failure. Having payments, affiliate program, support, CRM, emails, and reporting in one tool sounds very convenient. But it also creates a huge risk if it breaks.

→ VC-backed math. The fact that they had raised money was a concern for me. Imho, this space is too small for a VC-scale outcome. Increasing the risk of defaulting.

Apart from that:

- Reporting is useful and addictive, but Mantle pricing was hard to justify on its own for bigger partners.

- To make the pricing work, you need to use more of their products.

- But the more you use, the more critical workflows depend on one tool.

- Competitors focused on one feature will usually be better than one team trying to build everything.

- Convincing partners to switch existing tools and workflows is a hell of a challenge.

I’m curious who steps into Mantle’s place.
Shopify app developers have a lot of knowledge in this space, but I think it would create trust issues for other partners to share their data with another app developer.

What Mantle features will you miss the most?

[Justas @IconUtopia]

I definitely didn’t want it to come across that way.

As I mentioned in one of the first lines, I loved Mantle. The product and team are both world-class, and we’re genuinely sad to see it shutting down.

We actually used Mantle quite a bit ourselves. The post wasn’t meant as a victory lap or criticism of Mantle or its customers. It was simply my perspective as an app developer on the trade-offs of relying heavily on any single platform.

I thought it might be useful both for other Shopify app developers thinking about their toolkit and for the builders who will inevitably try to fill the gap Mantle is leaving behind.

Nothing but respect for the team and what they built.