The Bottom Line: Cafe24's own mobile app service (Plus App) only works in Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines. If you're selling globally, or if you need more than what Plus App offers, MobiLoud turns your full Cafe24 storefront into a native iOS and Android app. Every integration, every payment method, every custom design element carries over. No rebuilding.
Seventy-five percent of ecommerce transactions in South Korea happen on mobile. If you're running a Cafe24 store, your customers are almost certainly shopping on their phones already.
But there's a difference between a mobile-responsive website and a native app sitting on someone's home screen. The website disappears the moment they close the browser tab. The app stays. It sends push notifications. It loads faster. It's there every time they unlock their phone.
For K-fashion, K-beauty, and K-culture brands selling to a global audience, that difference matters. Your international fans are discovering you through YouTube Shopping, Instagram, and TikTok. A native app turns that discovery into a long-term relationship, with a direct line to their phone that doesn't depend on algorithms or ad spend.
This guide covers how to get your Cafe24 store into the App Store and Google Play, what Cafe24 offers natively, where the gaps are, and the fastest path to launching.
Can You Build a Mobile App With Cafe24?
Plus App: Cafe24's Native Solution (Limited Availability)
Cafe24 does offer a mobile app service called Plus App. It provides push notifications, customizable navigation, app-exclusive coupons, splash pop-ups, social sharing, and integrated analytics. For merchants who qualify, it's a reasonable starting point.
The catch: Plus App is only available in Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines. If your business sells to customers outside those four markets, or if you're building a global DTC brand, Plus App doesn't cover you. And if you're one of the thousands of Cafe24 merchants running cross-border sales to the US, Europe, or Southeast Asia, you're out of luck.
Even within those supported markets, Plus App has constraints. It's a standardized product, so the customization options are limited.
If you've invested heavily in your Cafe24 store's custom design, integrated third-party apps from the Cafe24 Store, or built unique checkout flows, Plus App may not reproduce all of that in the app experience.
No Third-Party App Builders in the Cafe24 Ecosystem
The Cafe24 Store has apps across 13 categories, from marketing to analytics to payment integrations. But unlike Shopify's ecosystem, which has dozens of mobile app builder plugins, Cafe24's marketplace has none. There are no third-party alternatives to Plus App.
This means if Plus App doesn't work for your situation, whether because of geography, feature limitations, or customization needs, there's no off-the-shelf tool in the Cafe24 ecosystem to fill the gap.
What About Building Custom?
Cafe24 does offer a RESTful API (Admin API, Front API, Analytics API) with OAuth 2.0 authentication.
In theory, a development team could build a custom native app powered by these APIs. In practice, that's a major engineering project: $200K+ for a basic ecommerce app, significantly more if you need to support multiple languages, local payment methods, and the various integrations that make your Cafe24 store work.
For most Cafe24 merchants, that math doesn't add up.
Your Options for Launching a Mobile App
Custom Native Development
Hire a development team to build iOS and Android apps from scratch using Cafe24's APIs. They'll recreate your storefront, product pages, checkout flow, and account management in native code.
If you support multiple languages and local payment methods (Naver Pay, KakaoPay, Toss, plus international gateways), each one needs to be integrated separately on the app side.
Expect $200K-$500K for the initial build, depending on how many markets you serve and how complex your store is. Then $75K-$150K annually for maintenance, OS updates, and feature additions.
The app becomes a separate product with its own development cycle, QA process, and release schedule.
The most common outcome: the app falls behind your website within six months because your team can't maintain both at the same pace. It slips into disrepair.
Custom development only makes sense if your app needs to do something fundamentally different from your website. If you just want your store in an app with push notifications, there's a much more efficient path.
Turn Your Cafe24 Store Into a Native App
Your Cafe24 storefront already handles everything: your product catalog in multiple languages, your local and international payment gateways, your custom design, your YouTube Shopping integration, your Cafe24 Store apps. It works on mobile browsers. Customers already shop on it from their phones.
MobiLoud takes that entire experience and delivers it as a native iOS and Android app.
No API integration. No rebuilding your checkout for each market. No recreating your multi-language setup in a separate codebase.
Your web store becomes your app. Every product update, design change, and promotion goes live in the app the moment it goes live on your website. No separate deployment. No version drift between channels.
The cost is a fraction of custom development. The timeline is weeks, not quarters. And it works everywhere your website works, not just in four countries.
Why MobiLoud Is the Best Way for Cafe24 Stores to Launch an App
It's 100x more efficient than building a custom native app, yet the end result is the same experience your customers get from any major retail app.
Works Globally, Not Just Four Countries
This is the most immediate advantage over Plus App.
MobiLoud delivers your Cafe24 storefront as a native app regardless of where your customers are. Selling to fans in the US, Europe, and Australia from your Korea-based store? The app works everywhere your website works.
For K-fashion and K-beauty brands with international followings, this is the difference between an app that serves your home market and an app that serves your actual customer base.
Every Integration Carries Over
Your Cafe24 store likely uses a mix of Korean payment gateways (Naver Pay, KakaoPay, Toss), international payment methods (PayPal, Stripe), shipping integrations, and apps from the Cafe24 Store.
With MobiLoud, all of these carry over because the app runs your live website. There's nothing to re-integrate.
This is especially important for cross-border sellers. If your store already handles multi-currency pricing, international shipping calculations, and localized checkout in multiple languages, the app does too. Automatically.
Push Notifications for a Global Fan Base
K-culture brands have something most ecommerce businesses don't: passionate, loyal fan communities. When SM Entertainment drops new NCT merchandise on the SMTOWN store, or when a K-beauty brand launches a limited edition set, fans want to know immediately.
Push notifications are the most direct way to reach those fans. New product drops. Restocks. Exclusive promotions. Loyalty rewards. These are the triggers that drive repeat purchases, and they hit with far higher engagement than email or social posts.
For brands already investing in YouTube Shopping and social commerce to drive discovery, a native app with push notifications closes the loop.
Discovery happens on social. Retention happens in the app.
Your Custom Design, Preserved
Cafe24 merchants, especially in fashion and beauty, invest heavily in storefront design. Your brand identity, your lookbook layouts, your product photography, your editorial content. These aren't generic templates. They're what differentiate your brand from every other store.
MobiLoud delivers your exact design as the app experience. No stripping it down to fit a template. No rebuilding your visual identity in a separate app builder. What your customers see on the web is what they see in the app.
Fully Managed Service
MobiLoud handles the entire process: app build, Apple App Store and Google Play submission (including all compliance requirements for both stores), ongoing maintenance, OS update compatibility, and support.
Your team keeps managing your Cafe24 store exactly as they have been. If you're on Cafe24 PRO with a managed service team handling your operations, MobiLoud fits naturally alongside that model.
You're already paying professionals to manage your ecommerce. MobiLoud extends that to your mobile app.
How It Works
- Get a free preview. Book a free consultation and share your Cafe24 store URL with us. We'll build an interactive preview so you can see exactly how your store looks as a native app on your own device. No commitment.
- App build. The MobiLoud team builds your native iOS and Android apps with push notifications, native navigation, your app icon, splash screen, deep linking, and any customizations needed for your store.
- Testing and QA. We test across iOS and Android devices. You test on your own devices and provide feedback. We iterate until everything works perfectly.
- App Store submission. MobiLoud handles Apple App Store and Google Play submission, including compliance requirements, metadata, and screenshots.
- Launch and ongoing support. Your app goes live. MobiLoud handles OS updates, App Store policy changes, and ongoing maintenance. You keep running your Cafe24 store. Every update you make on the web shows up in the app automatically.
From first call to live apps, the typical timeline is about four weeks.
Next Steps
MobiLoud is the best way for Cafe24 merchants to launch a native mobile app - especially if you're selling beyond Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines.
Your store already works. It handles the product catalog, the checkout, the payment gateways, the multi-language setup, the custom design. Seventy-five percent of your Korean customers are already shopping on mobile. Your international fans are finding you through YouTube and social media.
A native app turns all of that into a retention channel you own.
The cost is less than 1% of what custom native development would run. The timeline is weeks. And every change you make to your Cafe24 store shows up in the app automatically.
Your fans are already on their phones. Give them a reason to keep coming back.
Book a free strategy call to see how your Cafe24 store looks as a native app. No commitment, and we'll have a working preview ready for you to try on your own device.
