Worldwide, Shopify empowers 5,650,000 (5.6 million) stores in 175 countries and is the most prominent choice when it comes to setting up an online store. With the global eCommerce market worth 1.3 trillion in 2014, it has exploded to $4.891 trillion in 2024, and Shopify was at the center of this eCommerce boom.

Shopify is amongst the top choices when you think of developing an eCommerce store. However, the development of an eCommerce website is quite different from an informational website. An eCommerce website has a lot more moving parts and aspects to consider when planning for it. The cost of a typical Shopify Website Design project may start from $5000 and may exceed $50,000 depending on the project requirements.

If you are looking to develop a custom Shopify website, the price of such a project can be quite different. There are many factors to consider- continued investment for improving the site functionality, refining the website user interface to enhance user experience, improving website security, marketing, and regular content creation for content marketing and promotion.

With this blog post, we will break down the Shopify website design cost and include various other costs associated that you should account for when planning a new Shopify web design project.

Factors That Affect Shopify Website Design Cost

The overall cost of a Shopify web design and development project is a combination of factors and can be broken down into the following broad categories:

Platform cost
Design
Development
Domain and website hosting
Payment & Point of Sale (POS)
Content creation
Maintenance
Marketing

Let’s explore Shopify website design cost factors in detail:

1. Platform

Shopify is a hosted online store platform where the shopping cart software and the hosting infrastructure are managed by Shopify. As a Shopify customer, you just need to pay a monthly fee to use its platform.

When it comes to monthly costs, Shopify offers 3 plans to choose from- Basic Shopify, Shopify, and Advanced Shopify with prices of $39, $105, and $399 per month respectively.

Source- https://www.shopify.com/pricing. * All prices are in USD.

Most new online store owners start with the Basic Shopify plan and go up to Shopify or Advanced Shopify as their business grows.

All Shopify plans offer options to sell unlimited products, but plan prices vary based on:

number of staff accounts
no. of inventory locations
shipping costs
online credit card payment fee
transaction fee (if not using Shopify Payments)

2. Design

The platform offers a variety of free and paid themes that can be used for your project. With the in-built tools, you can customize the design, color, and behavior of your store.

Officially, Shopify offers 12 free and 170 paid themes to choose from. You can browse the available themes based on industry, catalog size, layout style, and design style.

However, if you can’t find a theme to your liking on the official Shopify theme repository; you can explore more theme options on third-party marketplaces such as Themeforest, TemplateMonster.com, Creativemarket.com, etc.

The cost of a Shopify theme vary from $0- $400 on the official marketplace. Whereas on third-party marketplaces, you can find Shopify themes from $49 and go up to $350 or more.

Once you have selected your theme, you may hire a Shopify website designer to customize your Shopify theme as per your branding and preferences. Most web designers can work on a fixed cost for such a project, and the price may vary from $1000 – $5000 or more depending on the design customization you require. The price will vary based on the Shopify web design agency’s location, experience, and market positioning.

Looking for a custom design? You can hire a Shopify web designer to create a custom Shopify design based on your design preferences and business goals. The overall cost of the custom Shopify web design creation may range between $5,00 to $30,000 or more, depending on the features and custom design options you require.

Summary of costs for Shopify Web design

Themes from Official Shopify marketplace- $0- $400.
Themes from third party marketplaces- $49 – $350 or more.
Customizing theme – $1000 – $5000 or more depending on the design customization you require.
Custom theme – $5,00 to $30,000 or more, depending on the features and custom design options you may require.

3. Development

Most stores would be fine with the “out of the box” checkout process offered by Shopify. However, if your business needs a custom checkout process or other custom features, it can be fulfilled by custom Shopify development by experienced Shopify developers.

The Shopify marketplace has free and paid apps that can be utilized to extend or customize the features of your store. So, before you decide on custom development, check out 100’s of apps available on the marketplace and see if a matching app (full or partial features match) is available.

If available, you can hire a Shopify web development company to integrate the app or customize it to meet your business needs. Most developers will offer services on an hourly basis for such a project. The hourly rate for Shopify web developers varies from $50 – $300 or more based on the developer’s location and skills.

Can’t find the app that meets your custom requirements? You can hire experienced Shopify Developers for custom development. The cost of such a project will depend on the features and complexity involved. We suggest selecting the right team based on their experience with such development projects and references or examples of past work. Never choose solely based on the cost. Most developers will approach such a project on an hourly basis or can provide a quote. However, the final price will vary widely based on the project requirements.

4. Website hosting infrastructure

In general, to go live with an online store, you require a domain, a hosting plan, and an SSL certificate. Luckily, with Shopify, you just need a domain and leave all other infrastructure worries to Shopify. The Shopify plan includes hosting, SSL certificate, and upkeep of the shopping cart and server software.

You can use your existing domain, purchase a new domain with Shopify or any other domain registrar such as GoDaddy, Google, etc. the Cost of the domain name will range from $15- $25 per year or more depending on the domain extension selected.

5. Payment & Point of Sale (POS)

This is not directly linked to the cost of the Shopify web design project but it indirectly adds to the cost of operations. To accept payments on your Shopify store, you can use Shopify Payments or integrate with a third-party payment processor. Most new store owners choose Shopify Payments owing to at-par rates and seamless integration.

Cost of Shopify Payments

The cost for the Shopify payments varies based on your Shopify plan. Based on the type of Shopify plan you have, you need to pay:

Basic Shopify – 2.9% + 30c per transaction
Shopify – 2.6% +30c per transaction
Advanced Shopify – 2.4% +30c per transaction

Third-party payment processor

Shopify comes pre-integrated with 100’s of payment processors worldwide. However, if you decide to use your existing third payment processor, Shopify will charge you 2% for the “Shopify” plan, and it reduces to 0.5% when you upgrade to the “Advanced Shopify” plan. However, it is important to note that your third-party payment processor will also charge you per transaction fee, and the exact amount will depend on the payment gateway used and your plan with them.

Cost of the third-party payment processor

Transaction fee if not using Shopify Payments

Basic Shopify – 2% per transaction
Shopify – 1% per transaction
Advanced Shopify – 0.5% per transaction

6. Content creation

Content is king- I am more than sure that you came across this phrase if you have been scouring the internet for content creation tips. You put in a lot of effort in planning every aspect of the design and features for your eCommerce store. But to create a winning online store, you need original copy that reflects your brand personality and engages the audience. An attractive and engaging copy will not only help you attract customers but also please search engine bots alike.

Do you have a plan in place to create that exceptional copy for your online store?

Here are some tips when writing yourself or hiring a professional to do it for you:

Take the copy from your supplier’s website and re-write it to add your personality to it.
Make the copy fun to read rather than a boring spec list.
Sprinkle the keywords in the headings and body of the copy but don’t overdo it.
Lastly, keep it concise and crisp. Write short sentences and divide them into paragraphs or bulleted lists rather than big, long paragraphs. And don’t forget to add sub-headings, where needed.

Enough of the tips. Let’s talk execution. You can write the content yourself or hire a content writer. To hire a content writer, you can find 100’s of qualified content writers on freelance marketplaces, such as Guru, Upwork, Freelancer, etc. Most content writers base their price on a per-word basis or a project basis, and the cost will range from $0.05 to $0.50 per word or more depending on the research involved.

7. Maintenance

It’s crucial to chalk out a maintenance plan for your Shopify store and budget for it while planning the overall cost of the project. Though you don’t need to worry about keeping your website software updated or other server upkeep activities, you surely need to make regular updates to your store to ensure it is updated and relevant at all times.

Shopify is a simple-to-use yet complex shopping cart platform under the hood. You may be able to make most of the day-to-day management of your website yourself, but you may need a professional Shopify maintenance team to perform any design updates, enhancements, or addition of new features, as needed.

So, choose a Shopify maintenance plan for your online store to ensure you have timely support available, should you need it. Most Shopify developers can maintain your online store too. Some developers work on an hourly basis; others can offer a fixed monthly plan fee with a set number of hours. Generally, the maintenance plans can cost from $50- $200 per hour or more.

8. Marketing

Probably, you found this blog post while searching on a search engine. Likewise, 60% of all online shoppers start their online buying journey with an internet search. So, if your website is not found online for the right search queries, your potential customers will never be able to find you.

So, you can utilize different Shopify digital marketing strategies to promote your online store. Here is the list of digital marketing strategies available:

Search engine optimization – SEO is a long-term strategy. You can work with an SEO company to enhance your technical and off-page SEO to improve your website’s organic visibility and boost qualified traffic. As a result of this ROI-effective strategy, you will reap long-term benefits with consistent traffic and stable revenue streams.
Pay-per-click advertising (Google PPC) – Employ a Google PPC strategy to drive qualified traffic instantly and grow your sales.
Social media marketing – Enhance brand image, build a fan base, and drive qualified visitors to your website for experiencing your products and buying when they are ready.
Content marketing – Employ a content marketing strategy by producing regular blogs posts on topics that will interest your users, offering more avenues to find your online store and eventually buy from you.

Cost of Shopify Marketing

The cost for different digital marketing strategies can vary based on the strategy and goals. Most SEO and social media campaigns will cost you a fixed monthly fee. However, the cost for the Google PPC campaign will depend on your monthly budget and marketing goals. SEO and social media campaigns will cost based on the number of keywords and the number of social media channels to focus on respectively. The cost for such a project will range from $500- $5000 per month or more.

For Google PPC campaigns, the cost will include two components – the ad spend budget (the money to be paid for the clicks) and the campaign management fee. You can choose your desired monthly ad spend budget based on your marketing goals. Most Shopify marketing companies charge the campaign management fee as a percentage of your monthly ad spend and it ranges from 15% to 25% of the monthly budget.

Wrapping up

We hope this blog post helps you find the answers to your questions about your eCommerce development project and the various cost associated with the Shopify web design project that you are planning. Want to know how much it will cost for your Shopify web design project, contact Shopify Development Pros team today.