You asked three agencies what a Shopify store costs and got three numbers that are not even close. Now you have to set a budget, and you cannot tell which quote left something out.
Who this is for, and who it is not for. This is for the founder or operator setting a budget for a new Shopify store or a move onto Shopify. It is not for hobby sellers testing one product, who need a Basic plan and a free theme and nothing else here.
A Shopify store costs a platform fee, a one-time build, and ongoing support. The three are priced separately. Shopify charges from $25 USD a month on Basic to $2,300 a month on Plus. North American agency build ranges run about $3,000 to $10,000 for a theme-based store, and $10,000 to $60,000 for a custom build or a move from another platform.
Get the three layers wrong and you pay for the same store twice, usually within 12 months. Autonomous Technologies builds and runs the systems behind Shopify stores, for founders and operators who own the store after launch. Our Shopify development work sets out what each engagement covers. Platform prices and plan facts were read from Shopify’s own pages in September 2026.
The three layers of Shopify store cost
Most budgets go wrong because someone prices one layer and assumes it covers the other two. Price three lines, on three billing rhythms.
Layer one is the platform fee. Recurring, published, and the smallest number in the project. A third-party payment provider is any card processor other than Shopify Payments. Shopify charges a fee on top when you use one.
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed annually | Fee on third-party payment providers | Additional staff accounts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $25 a month | $19 a month | 2% | None |
| Grow | $65 a month | $49 a month | 1% | 5 |
| Advanced | $399 a month | $299 a month | 0.6% | 15 |
| Plus | From $2,300 a month | Not published | 0.2% | Unlimited |
Figures are Shopify list prices in USD, read from Shopify’s pricing page in September 2026.
Shopify also runs a starter offer, “Try 3 days free, then $1/month for 3 months”. That is a trial price, not a budget number.
Layer two is the build. One-time, quoted per project. It usually runs 10 to 100 times the yearly platform fee. Nobody publishes a fixed price, because the work is not fixed.
Layer three is ongoing. Apps, email, support, fixes and the next round of changes. People leave this out of the first budget. It arrives every month anyway.
Budget the layers separately. A $2,300 monthly Plus fee and a $60,000 rebuild are not the same kind of number. Never add them into one “Shopify cost” figure.
What the platform actually charges on Plus
Plus pricing turns on how long you sign for. The gap is worth $2,400 a year. Shopify says it plainly: “The Shopify Plus plan starts at $2,300 USD a month for standard setups and integrations on a 3-year term, or $2,500 USD per month for a 1-year term” (Shopify Plus pricing).
| Plus line item | Published figure | Cost over 12 months |
|---|---|---|
| 1-year term | $2,500 a month | $30,000 |
| 3-year term | $2,300 a month | $27,600 |
| Main store plus 9 expansion stores | Included in the fee | $0 extra |
| Each store past the tenth | $300 a month | $3,600 per store |
Above a certain size the flat fee stops being the deal. Shopify says “More complex, higher volume businesses switch to a variable platform fee based on their revenue and business model” (Shopify Plus pricing). It does not publish the percentage or the sales level where that starts. Get both in writing before you model anything. Our honest review of Shopify Plus covers what is negotiable.
Selling in several countries? Read the store allowance rather than assume it. “Your main store and 9 expansion stores are included as part of your monthly platform fee. For additional stores, it costs an extra $300 USD per month per store, or a revenue share across all stores” (Shopify Plus pricing). Ten storefronts inside the fee is generous. The eleventh is a line item.
Templated, custom and Plus: cost by stage
The table pairs the plan at each stage with the one-time build range. The build figures come from two published North American agency price lists. They are not quotes.
| Stage | Shopify plan and monthly fee | Typical one-time build range | What decides the number |
|---|---|---|---|
| Testing an idea | Basic, $25 or $19 annually | $0 to $3,000, mostly your own time | Paid themes run $160 to $500 |
| First real store | Basic or Grow, $25 to $65 | $3,000 to $10,000 | Catalogue size, content, photography |
| Custom front end | Grow or Advanced, $65 to $399 | $10,000 to $35,000 | Page types, design system, apps |
| Replatforming | Advanced or Plus | $15,000 to $60,000 | Data model, redirects, old orders |
| Plus, one storefront | Plus, from $2,300 on a 3-year term | $50,000 to $250,000 and up | Checkout logic, ERP, B2B rules |
| Headless front end | Usually Plus | $40,000 to $150,000 | A second codebase to own |
OuterBox, a US agency, puts theme work at “roughly $2,000 to $10,000+” and custom design at “often $5,000 to $20,000+”. It puts advanced or Plus work at “often $25,000 to $100,000+”, and says most of its projects land in the “$10,000 to $20,000 range” (OuterBox Shopify website design pricing, 15 September 2026). The Shopify Agency Directory, reviewed June 2026, is the source for the replatform, headless and enterprise bands. Headless means the shopper-facing site is built apart from Shopify.
Neither shows its method, so treat both as a market signal. A quote well outside both is a question to ask, not proof of a problem.
The five things that actually move a Shopify quote
Design is rarely the expensive part. These five are, in the order they blow up budgets.
System links, and the ERP above all. An ERP runs stock, orders and finance. Linking Shopify to one is a project in itself, priced as a line item when it is a workstream. Three jobs need a named owner after launch. Who owns each record. Who clears the errors. Who checks the two systems agree. Our Shopify ERP integration guide has that map.
Trade selling. B2B means selling to shops, dealers and distributors rather than the public. It no longer forces a Plus upgrade, which is the most out-of-date assumption in Shopify budgeting. Basic, Grow and Advanced now carry companies, company locations, net payment terms, ACH bank transfer in the United States, saved cards, purchase order numbers and draft orders. The cap is “up to 3 active catalogs across all your B2B markets”. Plus adds unlimited catalogues and “Deposit requirements, partial payments, and payment requests per fulfillment” (Shopify B2B plan features). The plan question changed. The build cost did not. Shopify B2B and wholesale work is where “we also do wholesale” turns a $20,000 build into a $60,000 one, on any plan.
Moving from another platform. That adds data mapping, a redirect map, old orders and a rehearsed switch-over. None of it shows up in a design mock-up, and it is the biggest gap between a cheap quote and an accurate one. Our Shopify migration checklist lists the work.
Changing the checkout. Only half of this forces Plus. Shopify keeps “Eligible apps that customize the information, shipping, and payments pages” and “Access to the Checkout Branding API” for Plus. The checkout editor and apps that restyle the thank you and order status pages work “on the Basic plan or higher” (Shopify checkout extensibility). Custom discount, delivery, payment or validation rules run on Shopify Functions, small pieces of code that run on Shopify’s servers. “Stores on any plan can use public apps that are distributed through the Shopify App Store and contain functions”. But “Only stores on a Shopify Plus plan can use custom apps that contain Shopify Function APIs” (Shopify Functions documentation). An app off the shelf delivers the rule on Advanced. A rule written for you alone is priced at Plus.
Theme or custom front end. A paid theme is a one-time $160 to $500 from the Shopify Theme Store, read September 2026. Free themes exist. A custom front end costs thousands and carries an upkeep bill. Most brands under about $5M a year do better with a well set-up theme, and the difference spent on merchandising.
The recurring costs that are not on the pricing page
Four of these you can predict. One you cannot. Price all five before you sign.
Outside gateway fees. A payment gateway is the service that takes the card payment, such as Stripe or PayPal. Skip Shopify Payments and Shopify adds a fee on top of what your gateway charges. It is 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus (Shopify pricing). Shopify adds that “If you use Shopify Payments alongside a third-party provider, then transaction fees apply” (Shopify Payments fees). At $200,000 a month, the gap between 2% and 0.2% is $3,600 a month.
Card processing. Separate from the above, and set by plan and country. Read the rate for your own country on Shopify’s pricing page rather than copying a blog.
Apps. The one you cannot predict. Two stores on the same plan can differ by $1,000 a month. List the apps you need, look up each price, and add the total. Do that before you compare platforms, including Shopify versus WooCommerce, where the hosting line sits on the other side.
Email and messaging. Priced by list size, not store size, so it grows as you succeed. Klaviyo’s free tier stops at “Up to 250 profiles” and “500 emails/month”. Budget the list size you expect in 18 months.
Support after launch. Published agency retainers cluster between $1,500 and $10,000 a month (Shopify Agency Directory). Whether you need one turns on how often your store changes. A fixed catalogue does not. A brand shipping launches does.
A build scoped properly can go quiet for long stretches. One platform we built needed no backend work for 18 months, then for 10 more, between October 2023 and July 2026, while the site stayed live (The Republic, bilingual publishing platform). That is the cheapest support line there is, and it is decided at build time.
| Plan | Plan fee a month | Third-party fee on $200,000 of monthly sales | Combined |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $25 | $4,000 | $4,025 |
| Grow | $65 | $2,000 | $2,065 |
| Advanced | $399 | $1,200 | $1,599 |
| Plus, 3-year term | $2,300 | $400 | $2,700 |
Those are the published plan fees and third-party percentages applied to one sales figure. They are arithmetic, not a quote, and they exclude card processing, apps and email.
The gateway fee beats the plan fee. At $200,000 a month in sales, Basic to Advanced costs $374 more a month in plan fees and saves $2,800 a month in gateway fees. Run that sum before you pick a plan.
How to avoid paying for the same build twice
The most expensive pattern we see is a store designed before anyone decided how the data works. The theme ships. Then the ERP link needs product fields nobody built. The second build is not a change request. It is the first build again, with the design budget spent.
Settle these four before a theme is chosen:
- The data model. Products, variants, collections and metafields, the extra fields you add to a record. Include the codes that must carry through downstream.
- Record ownership. Which system writes each field after launch, written as a rule.
- The integration list. Every system that sends or receives data, with records and directions named.
- Trade selling, or several markets. In from the start, or out of scope. Never “phase two” without a decision.
The Magento traps are in our Magento to Shopify migration guide.
A vendor who quotes without asking about these four is quoting on the design. That quote will be lower and it will not hold.
The four answers that move a quote more than any design preference
We publish our engagements rather than quoting from a call. The figures sit on our pricing page, and the Shopify Plus page covers the larger ones. Scoping a replatform before anyone has seen the data model is guesswork dressed as a quote.
We would ask four things first. What you are on now. Which systems must stay connected. Whether you sell to trade buyers. What has to keep working on launch day.
Start by finding out what the current store already loses. That number changes what the build is worth.
Shopify store cost questions
How much does a Shopify store cost per month?
Between $25 and $399 a month on Shopify’s standard plans, or from $2,300 a month on Plus, in USD. Yearly billing cuts that to $19, $49 or $299. Then add apps, email and any outside gateway fee. On a growing store those three often cost more than the plan.
Is Shopify Plus worth the cost?
It is worth it when you need something only Plus gives you, and that list is short. Changing the checkout information, shipping and payments pages. Custom apps containing Shopify Functions. Unlimited B2B catalogues with deposits. The 9 included expansion stores. Trade selling now runs on Basic, Grow and Advanced, so wholesale alone no longer forces the upgrade. See our honest review of Shopify Plus.
How much does a Shopify developer cost per hour?
The Shopify Agency Directory puts senior work at $120 to $250 an hour in North America, the UK and Australia. Western Europe is $90 to $180. South and Southeast Asia is $30 to $80. Our guide to hiring a Shopify Plus developer covers what each band buys.
What does a Shopify store cost to run for a year?
A small store on Basic, with a free theme and a few apps, runs roughly $1,000 to $3,000 a year. A growing brand on Advanced runs $8,000 to $25,000. On Plus the platform fee alone is $27,600 a year on a 3-year term.
