The honest answer is that it depends, but that answer is useless on its own. So here is what actually sits behind the number, and roughly what each route costs in days of work rather than a made-up total.
At one end, you can sign up to Shopify, pick a stock theme and be live in a weekend for the price of the subscription. At the other, a fully custom build with data migration and a stack of integrations can run to several weeks of specialist work. Both are “a Shopify store”. The gap between them is all in the detail below.
What actually drives the cost
Four things move the price more than anything else.
Theme approach. This is the biggest single lever.
- A stock theme, lightly configured, is the cheapest path. Shopify’s free themes are genuinely good now, and for a small catalogue they are often enough.
- A customised premium theme is the sweet spot for most growing stores. You buy a well-built theme, then we shape it to your brand, add the sections you need and tidy the bits that let it down. Most of the cost is in that shaping.
- A fully custom or headless build is a different order of work. You get exactly what you draw, with no theme constraints, but you are paying for design and front-end engineering from scratch.
Catalogue size. Ten products is an afternoon. Ten thousand products with variants, metafields and filtering rules is a project in itself. It affects the build, the data import and how the store performs.
Integrations. Every system you want Shopify to talk to adds work: your accounting in Xero, a warehouse or 3PL, a subscriptions app, a loyalty programme, Klaviyo for email, a product feed into Merchant Center. One or two are quick. A tightly coupled operation with live stock sync is not.
Migrations. Moving from WooCommerce, Magento or a legacy platform means bringing across products, customers, orders and, crucially, your URLs so you keep your Google rankings. A clean migration with proper redirects takes real care. Skipping that care is how stores lose traffic overnight.
Rough ranges, in days
We quote in days because it is honest. A day of work is a day of work whatever the total comes to.
- Stock theme, configured properly: a handful of days. Good for a first store or a tight budget.
- Customised premium theme: commonly two to four weeks of work, depending on how many custom sections, integrations and migration steps are involved. This is where most of our Shopify projects land.
- Fully custom or headless: six weeks and up. Right for larger catalogues, unusual buying journeys or brands where the storefront is the product.
Those are ranges, not quotes. Yours depends on the four drivers above.
The costs people forget
The build is a one-off. Running the store is not, and the ongoing numbers catch people out.
- The Shopify subscription. Basic starts at around £25 a month, the middle plan sits higher, and Advanced runs to a few hundred a month. Prices change, so check current rates, but budget for it from day one.
- Paid apps. That subscriptions tool, review widget, bundle builder or advanced search is often £10 to £50 a month each. Three or four apps quietly become a real monthly line. Fewer, better-chosen apps is the wiser path.
- Payment fees. Card processing takes a percentage plus a few pence per order. If you use a gateway other than Shopify Payments, Shopify adds a small transaction fee on top. On real volume this matters, so factor it into your margins.
- A care plan. Themes and apps update, things break, and you will want changes. Some owners handle this themselves; others keep a few hours a month with an agency so there is someone to call. Either is fine, but decide rather than drift.
How agencies price
Two common models, and they suit different jobs.
A day rate works when the scope is fluid: ongoing improvements, a backlog of changes, a “let’s see how it goes” arrangement. You buy time and direct it.
A fixed project quote works when the scope is clear: this build, these features, this migration, for this price. You get certainty, and the agency carries the risk of it taking longer than planned.
Neither is a trick. The right one depends on how well defined the work is. Be wary of anyone who quotes a firm price before understanding your catalogue, your integrations and where your data is coming from. That number is a guess wearing a suit.
How we do it
Our day rate starts from £350 for longer projects, and every job gets a fixed quote first so you know the number before we start. If your requirements are still taking shape, we will say so and suggest the model that costs you less. Send an enquiry and you will hear back within the hour, any time from 6am to midnight.
The real cost of a Shopify store is less about the platform and more about the choices: how much custom work, how many integrations, how clean the migration. Get those clear and the price stops being a mystery.
If you would like a straight answer for your own store, get in touch and we will talk it through.