We scanned 3,797 DTC storefronts. Here's what their code shows.

Updated October 10, 2026 with the October 1 export. This edition replaces the previous figures and compares the same 3,797-brand index with our September 8 export, whose main storefront crawl was August 29. The comparison spans those snapshots, not a single week.

Across 3,797 indexed DTC brands, we have at least one detected tool for 3,152, or 83%. There are 17,123 brand–tool detections, and the median detected brand has five tools, including its platform.

The October refresh leaves the broad picture intact: Shopify and Klaviyo appear frequently, and review tools are widely visible. Looking at individual stores, however, 385 brands had a changed set of detections. Stable totals can conceal changes underneath, even before we investigate what caused each one.

The headline numbers

Shares below use the 3,152 brands with at least one detected tool as their denominator. Counts describe signatures in public storefront code; they do not establish active paid subscriptions. A brand can appear in several rows, including more than once within a category.

These are observations within a deliberately assembled index across eleven verticals. They are not estimates of market share across all ecommerce businesses, and frequency alone does not establish which tool fits a particular store.

October: small net changes, more movement underneath

At the individual brand–tool level, 291 detections appeared and 324 disappeared. Twelve previously undetected brands gained a detection; five previously detected brands had none in the new export. In total, 385 brands, about 10% of the index, had a different detected set.

A disappearing signature is not proof of an uninstall. Changed page code, the product page sampled, blocked requests, or a widget that loads only after interaction can affect what we see. A new signature can likewise be a newly visible existing tool. Confirming a migration requires additional evidence for that store.

The leading tools barely moved

Shopify increased from 2,878 detections to 2,885. Klaviyo stayed at 2,474. Gorgias moved from 771 to 770. These results support a narrower conclusion than “the market is changing”: the most frequently detected tools remained much the same across these two exports.

The review layer shows more overlap than a single-vendor ranking implies. We detected at least one review tool on 2,491 brands, while the individual vendor counts overlap. The numbers alone cannot tell us which suite component a brand uses or why it chose that vendor.

Our earlier email analysis and review-app analysis cover previous dated samples. Their historical figures should be read with their own observation dates.

Five tools is the median, not a target

1,546 detected brands, or 49.0%, had six or more tools. The median remained five, including the ecommerce platform. This describes what the scan can observe; it does not measure the total software budget or the quality of the business.

Coverage also varies by category: at least one loyalty or referral tool was detected on 380 brands, a site-search tool on 152, and a translation tool on 61. A low detection count can reflect limited visibility as well as adoption. It is not evidence that the remaining stores lack those capabilities.

Use the Stack Benchmark to explore the published comparison dataset, then check which functions matter to your own store. Its dataset date may differ from this article’s fixed October snapshot. Adding an app simply to match a count is not a useful outcome.

What was actually refreshed

Of the 3,152 detected brands, 3,078 have at least one detection dated October 1. The other 74 retain only older positive evidence. The totals above therefore combine newly observed signatures with previously recorded detections; they are not 3,152 successful fresh observations.

This article makes no new claims about App Store ratings, review sentiment, or advertising-pixel counts. Those evidence streams have separate refresh dates.

Method, limits, and citation

The detector examines public storefront HTML from the homepage and, when available, one linked product page. It matches known tool signatures and records dates, confidence, and evidence. Presence is strong evidence of a signature; absence proves nothing about tools that run server-side, load dynamically, or appear only in checkout.

This comparison uses the same indexed population in both exports. Tool counts and chart values are fixed to the October 1 snapshot. The living report and brand pages show their own published data dates. Read the full methodology for population and detection limits.

Cite as: “DTC Proof, October 1, 2026 export: 3,152 brands with detected tools out of 3,797 indexed brands; includes retained older detections for 74 brands.”