How much does a Shopify website cost?
Every cost of a Shopify website in its first year, with where each figure comes from, and what it adds up to on four common paths. Prices as of October 2026, in US dollars.
The short answer
A Shopify website costs from about $1,000 in its first year, done yourself on a free theme, to $25,000 or more with a theme designed and built for you, and much more on Shopify Plus. Card fees come on top of every path, since they grow with your sales.
| Path | First year | What’s in it |
|---|---|---|
| Yourself, on a free theme | About $1,000–$4,100 | Basic plan, free theme, a few apps, a domain |
| A premium theme, set up by a freelancer | About $1,600–$7,400 | Basic or Grow, a paid theme, a freelancer’s setup, apps |
| A theme designed and built for you | About $3,000–$25,000 | Basic or Grow, a custom build, apps |
| Shopify Plus with an agency | About $50,000–$120,000 | Plus, an agency build, the app stack of a larger store |
Each line is the sum of the sourced figures below. Your own catalog, design and apps decide where in a range you land.
What Shopify charges
| Plan | Monthly | Paid yearly, a month | Online card rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $39 | $29 | 2.9% + 30¢ |
| Grow | $105 | $79–$89 | 2.7% + 30¢ |
| Advanced | $399 | $299–$359 | 2.5% + 30¢ |
| Plus | From $2,300 | On a one- or three-year term | 2.25% + 30¢ |
From Shopify’s pricing page, October 2026. Shopify changed its yearly prices for Grow and Advanced in mid-October and changed them back a day later (Pulse Index), so check the page for today’s. If you take payments through a provider other than Shopify Payments, Shopify adds a fee of 2% on Basic down to 0.2% on Plus.
The theme
Of the 1,349 themes in Shopify’s Theme Store when we counted in October 2026, 24 were free. The rest cost $100 to $500, most often $320 or $380, paid once (Shopify Theme Store). A paid theme buys a better starting point, not a design of your own: setting it up for your brand is still work, yours or someone else’s.
Apps
Apps are where a store’s monthly bill grows quietly. Eightx estimates stores under $1 million a year spend $50 to $300 a month on three to five apps, and stores at $1–5 million spend $1,000 to $3,500 (Eightx). It’s modelled from the apps’ public prices, so read it as a range, not a survey. A theme that has reviews, bundles or a size chart built in replaces apps you’d otherwise pay for every month.
The domain
$10 to $30 a year (Shopify).
Who builds it
- You. No fee, just your time, on a free or paid theme.
- A freelancer. On Upwork, Shopify developers charge about $15 to $95 an hour by experience, and Upwork estimates $500 to $2,000 to customize a theme (Upwork).
- A studio or agency. Shopify puts a custom-built site at $2,000 to $20,000 or more (Shopify). Most ecommerce builds reviewed on Clutch cost under $10,000, a mid-complexity one $10,000 to $50,000, and most US firms charge $100 to $149 an hour (Clutch).
Hiring a Shopify expert compares the four ways to hire and what each one leaves you with after launch.
How the totals add up
- Yourself: Basic for a year ($348–$468), a free theme, apps at $50–$300 a month ($600–$3,600), a domain ($10–$30).
- Premium theme and a freelancer: Basic or Grow ($348–$1,260), a theme ($100–$500), the freelancer’s setup ($500–$2,000), apps and a domain as above.
- Designed and built for you: Basic or Grow, a custom build ($2,000–$20,000), apps and a domain.
- Plus with an agency: Plus from $27,600 a year, a mid-complexity build ($10,000–$50,000), apps at $1,000–$3,500 a month ($12,000–$42,000).
What pushes the price up
- Design: a theme designed for your brand, with sections built for how you sell, costs more than a premium theme set up.
- Your catalog: products, variants and their photos all need setting up, and a large one takes longer.
- Moving from another platform: products, customers, orders and a redirect for every old URL. See WooCommerce to Shopify.
- Connections: an ERP, a warehouse or a wholesale system adds integration work.
- Custom features: a product quiz, a bundle builder, a configurator.
After launch
There’s no good independent figure for what keeping a Shopify store up costs. Agencies quote anything from about $100 a month for small fixes to thousands for a team on call, and Shopify itself only says it depends on the support you need. What to ask any builder: what happens when something breaks, how fast, and what a month of improvements costs.
Reading a quote
- It names the theme it starts from, or says it’s built from scratch, and who owns the code.
- It lists the apps you’ll still need, and their monthly cost.
- It promises a date, and says what happens if it’s missed.
- It says how speed is measured, before and after.
- It says what happens after launch, and what that costs.
FAQ. Straight answers.
Can I build a Shopify store for free?
Not quite. The themes can be free (24 of them in the Theme Store), but the plan isn’t: Basic is $39 a month, or $29 a month paid yearly. Add a domain and the apps you need.
Why do quotes for the same store differ so much?
Who builds it and where they are: Upwork’s Shopify developers run from about $15 to $95 an hour, and US firms on Clutch mostly charge $100 to $149. Then scope: a premium theme set up is a different job from a theme designed and coded for you.
Do you publish your prices?
No. We set the price on the call, from your catalog and what the theme needs to do, and before the call you see your own store on our theme.
Does moving from WooCommerce cost more?
Yes: moving products, customers, orders and every old URL is its own work, priced by catalog size. Our WooCommerce to Shopify page covers what moves.