Real numbers by scope and stage. What an MVP store really costs. What a Plus rebuild really costs. And the four invisible drivers that swing your bill 3x either way.
A working Shopify store can cost as little as $5,000. That price assumes a paid theme, standard apps, and the platform's defaults. At the other end, a Shopify Plus rebuild for a $5M DTC brand routinely runs $80,000 to $150,000.
The gap is not agency markup. It's scope: custom theme work, checkout extensibility, B2B catalogs, multi-region setup, and ERP or warehouse integrations. Each of those decisions buys engineering hours. We have built across that whole range, and the cost moves with scope, not with the agency.
The numbers below are market ranges across US, UK, and India agencies, not Digital Heroes quotes. Our scoped quotes land inside these ranges. On a 30-minute call, we will tell you which tier fits your store.
| tier | scope | timeline | market range |
|---|---|---|---|
| MVP launch | Paid theme, 5-15 products, Klaviyo basic, 2 payment gateways | 2-4 weeks | $5K-$15K |
| Custom DTC | Custom theme, subscriptions, reviews, multi-app stack | 6-10 weeks | $15K-$50K |
| Plus rebuild | Plus migration, checkout extensibility, B2B, multi-region | 12-20 weeks | $50K-$150K |
| Headless / Hydrogen | Hydrogen storefront, headless CMS, ERP integration | 16-26 weeks | $80K-$250K+ |
Source: combined market data from Shopify Partner directory rate cards, Clutch hourly-rate surveys, and our 2024-2026 scoped engagements.
A Shopify Theme Store theme costs $200-$400 once, plus 8-20 hours of setup. A custom theme costs 80-160 hours of design, Liquid, and section building. For most stores under $1M/yr, the paid theme is the right call. Above that floor, custom work pays back when brand differentiation drives conversion.
Standard app installs are the cheap part. Klaviyo, Recharge, Judge.me, and Loox take 2-8 hours each, plus the app subscription. ERP integration is not. NetSuite, SAP, or Microsoft Dynamics takes 80-300 hours and is usually the single biggest line item on a Plus rebuild.
Where you migrate from sets the bill. A WooCommerce move with 500 products and clean data takes 40-80 hours via Matrixify. A Magento move with 50,000 SKUs, custom attributes, and 300+ category pages takes 200-600 hours, plus 90 days of redirect QA. Until we audit, source platform and data quality stay the biggest unknowns.
These are Plus-only features: Checkout Extensions, Shopify Functions, and B2B company accounts. Each adds 60-200 hours of engineering, depending on the rules. For stores that had heavy checkout customization, the post-checkout.liquid migration alone is 40-120 hours.
A $300K brand should not buy a $100K Plus rebuild. A $5M brand should not patch a free theme. Match the build cost to the store stage. A reasonable rebuild ceiling is 3-5% of annual revenue.
10 SKUs with one variant each is a different problem from 5,000 SKUs with size, color, and material options. Configurable products, B2B catalog pricing, and per-customer rules each multiply the data-modeling work.
List them upfront: ERP sync, fulfillment 3PL, custom CRM hooks, financial reporting. Adding integrations after launch costs 2-3x what they would have cost in the original build.
A working basic Shopify store costs $5,000 to $15,000 from a competent agency. That budget covers a paid theme ($200-$400), light customization, 5-15 products, a Klaviyo welcome flow, payment gateway setup, and shipping zones. It is enough to launch and sell.
Cheaper builds skip the parts that actually earn money: the conversion flow, the email automation, the SEO basics. We see the result often. We have rebuilt many $1,500 stores at the $8,000 price point a year later, because the original cut every corner that drove revenue.
Two numbers matter here. The Plus subscription is $2,300/mo or 0.25-0.4% of revenue, whichever is higher. The Plus build itself runs $50,000-$150,000 for a typical $2M-$10M DTC brand migrating from Basic or another platform. Add checkout extensibility, B2B accounts, and one ERP integration, and you land at the upper end.
Plus is not for everyone. Stores under $1M/yr almost never recoup the subscription difference. We recommend Plus when monthly Shopify Payments revenue clears $80K and Plus-only features like B2B, Functions, and checkout extensibility are on your roadmap.
A fully custom Shopify theme runs $15,000 to $45,000. The price moves with section count, animation complexity, and how much rides on Online Store 2.0 section primitives versus hand-rolled Liquid.
You may not need the full build. Lighter custom work, like reskinning a paid theme such as Dawn or Horizon with brand-specific sections, runs $6,000 to $15,000. That is the right scope for most $500K-$2M brands. Above $2M, a brand-specific theme usually pays for itself in conversion lift inside 12 months.
It depends heavily on your source platform. Magento to Shopify Plus typically runs $40,000 to $120,000 for a mid-market store with 5,000-50,000 SKUs. WooCommerce to Shopify is usually $15,000 to $50,000, because WooCommerce data extraction is cleaner. Both numbers assume a real 301-redirect plan, attribute mapping, and 90 days of post-launch SEO monitoring.
Watch the bargain quotes. The cheapest Magento migrations ($5K-$10K) almost always skip redirects entirely and lose 30-60% of organic traffic. Our Shopify migration page walks through the full methodology.
A reasonable Shopify retainer is $1,000-$3,000/mo for a DTC store. That buys monthly feature work, app updates, and CRO experiments. Plus stores typically run $5,000-$15,000/mo, since Plus partner agencies handle theme work, app integrations, B2B configuration, and quarterly performance reviews.
Pick the shape that fits. Our Shopify maintenance and block-of-hours retainer options cover both: preventive maintenance or project hours.
Three reasons. First, scope: a $3K quote often skips checkout customization, email flows, real product photography, and post-launch support. Second, ownership: cheaper builds frequently leave the store on a developer's account or inside a closed page builder, so you cannot cleanly migrate later.
Third, the engineering market: senior Shopify developers in the US bill $120-$250/hr, while offshore agencies bill $25-$70/hr but vary widely on quality. We bill at competitive global rates with US senior leads on every project. The cheapest quote is rarely the lowest total cost.
One 30-minute discovery call. Within two business days, you get a written scope and a real fixed-fee quote. No retainer commitment to scope.
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