Search how much a Shopify website costs and page one gives you ranges, plan comparisons and calculators. It does not give you an agency's own price with the lines added up. Most guides also blur two different bills: the build, paid once, and the running costs, paid every month for as long as the store trades.
The short version. Our Shopify build is $5,900, one time: $3,400 for the store build, $1,100 for product page conversion, $700 for a checkout audit and $700 for payments, shipping and tax setup, with multi-currency included. Shopify's own subscription is separate and paid directly by you, at cost. On Shopify's pricing page it starts at $25 a month for Basic, billed monthly. A large catalogue, a migration, custom integrations, a second language and photography move the build price.
- A Shopify website has two bills: the build, paid once, and Shopify's plan, apps and card fees, paid every month the store trades.
- Our build is $5,900: $3,400 store build, $1,100 product page conversion, $700 checkout audit, $700 payments, shipping and tax, with multi-currency included.
- Shopify's pricing page lists Basic at $25 a month billed monthly, Grow at $65, Advanced at $399 and Plus from $2,300, paid directly to Shopify.
- What moves the build price is catalogue size, migration, custom integrations, a second language and photography; urgency does not.
- If your store exists and loses orders at checkout, work through the settings first, because a rebuild is the expensive answer.
Why nobody gives you a real number
Shopify publishes its plan prices, so every guide repeats them and stops there. The build is the larger cost, and the agencies writing those guides keep that number behind a form. In our study of 50 top-listed web design agencies, 78.6% published no prices at all.
The honest part of the vagueness is that stores differ more than brochure sites do. Twenty products and two thousand products are different jobs. The fix is a floor with its scope written next to it, which is what follows.
What $5,900 buys, line by line
A store is a website plus the four jobs that take the money. Here is where each dollar goes.
Add the four priced lines and you get $5,900. The store is live in thirty days or the build month is free. Catalogue and scope take days one to three, design and build run to day twenty-two with review gates at days ten and twenty-two, and test transactions in every currency come before launch. The 30-day launch page sets out the guarantee. You own the store, the code and every account on full payment, and we take no share of your revenue.
What Shopify charges you every month
These are not our fees. They go to Shopify and to app developers, and you pay them whoever builds the store. The plan prices below are from Shopify's pricing page in US dollars, checked on 15 September 2026. Check the page for your own country before you budget.
Three more costs sit around the plan.
- Card fees. Shopify charges a fee for accepting major credit cards, and states that it varies with the plan you choose. The third-party fee in the table may apply only when you take payment through a provider other than Shopify Payments.
- Apps. Each app carries its own price. According to Shopify's billing help, subscription and usage charges appear on your regular Shopify bill, and one-time app purchases are billed separately. List every installed app once a quarter and remove what nobody uses.
- A paid theme, if you build it yourself. Paid themes from the Shopify Theme Store are a one-time purchase, and Shopify's help centre states that third-party theme purchases are final sale. Preview one with your own products before you buy.
Keep the two bills apart when you compare quotes. The build is paid once. The plan, apps and card fees are paid every month the store trades, and none of that money should go to the agency.
Ask whose account the Shopify subscription is billed to. With us, it is yours, at cost.Why a store costs more than a brochure site
Our custom website build is $4,900 for up to eight pages, itemised in what a website actually costs. More pages or integrations move that number too. The store is one thousand dollars more, and the difference is the work a brochure site never has to do.
A brochure site has to be found and trusted, and then it hands the visitor to a phone call or a form. A store has to finish the sale on its own, at any hour, on a phone. That means product pages that answer the questions a salesperson would, a checkout with no surprises, and payments, shipping and tax that are correct in every market. Get one of those wrong and the store loses orders quietly. That is why the checkout audit is a line of its own.
What moves the price
$5,900 is the floor for a straightforward catalogue in one language. Five things push it higher, and each is scope.
- Catalogue size and complexity. Hundreds of products, deep variants, bundles or made-to-order options mean more structure, more filters and more product page work.
- Migration. Moving products, customers and order history from an existing store is scoped separately, because the effort depends on the state of the current data. Years of product URLs also need redirecting, or the rankings stay with the old store.
- Custom integrations. Connecting stock control, accounting software, a warehouse or an internal system is its own job.
- A second language or market. Multi-currency, VAT and hreflang are included. Translated product pages are not. Ongoing work in a second market is the second-market localisation line in Scale, $1,400 a month.
- Photography. We brief and coordinate a product shoot, and its cost is not absorbed into the build price.
What does not move the price: how urgently you need to launch, how large your business looks, or anything discovered after the scope is agreed. The scope is written down on day one. Every line is on the pricing page before you sign.
The $5,900 e-commerce build is our published price, listed on the pricing page and the e-commerce service page. Its four priced lines are $3,400 build, $1,100 product page conversion, $700 checkout audit, and $700 payments, shipping and tax setup. The $4,900 website build and the $1,400 a month second-market localisation line are also our published prices. Shopify's plan prices are from its US pricing page in USD, read on 15 September 2026. They are Basic $25 monthly or $19 billed yearly, Grow $65 or $49, Advanced $399 or $299, and Plus from $2,300 a month. The third-party payment provider fees (2%, 1%, 0.6%, 0.2%) and the statement that card fees vary by plan are from the same page. How app charges are billed is from Shopify's Help Center page on app charges, read on 15 September 2026. That paid theme purchases are one-time and final sale is from its page on adding and buying themes, read the same day. The 78.6% no-published-price figure is from our August 2026 study of 50 top-listed web design agencies. What moves the price, why a store costs more than a brochure site, and when a $5,900 store is not needed are our editorial position.
When you do not need a $5,900 store
You sell a handful of products and are still testing demand. A Basic plan, a well-chosen theme and a weekend of your own time will tell you whether anyone buys. Spend on a build once they do.
You already run WordPress and want to keep it. WooCommerce avoids a Shopify plan and suits a business that wants more control. We build both, and we will tell you which fits rather than defaulting to one.
Your store exists and orders drop at checkout. A rebuild is the expensive answer. Most of the fixes are settings, and why your Shopify store loses orders at checkout walks through them in order. Work through that list first, and rebuild only if the store itself turns out to be the problem.