The short answer

A Shopify store commonly costs $500 to $1,500 in the first year if you build it yourself, $2,000 to $10,000 with freelancer help, and $10,000 to $50,000 or more for an agency build. The subscription is the smallest part of the story. The numbers that actually shape your budget are apps, payment processing, theme decisions, and how much setup labor you buy.

Shopify's honest advantage is that the DIY floor is genuinely usable: plenty of real stores run on a stock theme with three apps and no outside help. The honest caveat is that costs creep monthly, not upfront, so the store that launched cheap can quietly become expensive.

The subscription

Shopify prices its plans on a monthly subscription that commonly runs from around $30 to $40 per month at the entry level to a few hundred per month for plans aimed at scaling businesses, with meaningful discounts for paying annually. At the top, Shopify Plus serves large merchants at four figures monthly. There is also a stripped-down starter tier at a few dollars a month for selling through links and social rather than a full storefront. Plan names and exact prices shift over time, so check Shopify's pricing page for current figures rather than trusting any blog post, including this one.

Which tier matters less than people think at the start. Most new stores belong on the entry plan; the higher tiers mostly buy lower processing rates and more reports, which only pay for themselves at real volume.

Payment processing: the invisible line item

Every sale costs you a processing fee, commonly in the neighborhood of 2 to 3 percent plus a small fixed amount per transaction, with the exact rate depending on your plan and country. Using a third-party payment provider instead of Shopify's built-in processing typically adds an extra fee on top.

At $2,000 a month in sales, processing costs you roughly $60 to $90 a month, more than the subscription itself. Nothing is wrong with that, it is the cost of selling anywhere, but budget it consciously, because it scales with success while the subscription does not.

Themes: free is a real option

Free themes from Shopify are legitimately good for standard product catalogs. Paid themes commonly cost $100 to $500 one-time, and mostly buy layout flexibility and niche-specific features rather than a conversion miracle.

The trap is not theme price but theme customization. Small tweaks are free in the editor. Custom sections, brand-specific layouts, and design polish are developer work billed at commonly $50 to $150 per hour. A "cheap" $300 theme with $3,000 of modifications is a $3,300 theme. If you find yourself planning heavy customization, price a designer-built store from the start instead.

Apps: where budgets quietly die

The app store is Shopify's greatest strength and the top source of cost creep. Reviews, email capture, subscriptions, bundles, loyalty, shipping rates: each commonly runs free to $50 per month, with some (subscriptions, advanced search, ERP connectors) reaching hundreds.

A typical established store carries somewhere between $50 and $300 per month in apps. Two rules keep this sane:

  • Launch with the minimum: reviews and email, usually. Add apps when a real problem appears, not preemptively.
  • Audit quarterly. Apps that seemed essential in month two are often deadweight by month eight.

Compare the total monthly stack, not just the plan price, against alternatives; the same exercise applies to any platform decision, as our ecommerce website cost guide covers in more depth.

Build help: DIY, freelancer, agency

DIY costs your subscription plus your time, commonly a week or two of evenings for a first store: products, shipping zones, taxes, payment setup, legal pages, and test orders. It is a fine path for small catalogs and for founders who want to understand their own store well enough to manage vendors later. The admin is genuinely learnable; the hard parts are product photography and writing descriptions that sell.

Freelancers commonly charge $1,500 to $8,000 for a store build: theme setup and customization, product migration, app configuration, and launch checklist. Worth it for catalogs over a hundred products, migrations from another platform, or brand-heavy design needs.

Agencies commonly start around $10,000 and run to $50,000 or beyond for custom design, custom functionality, integrations with inventory or fulfillment systems, and conversion work. Rational for established businesses replatforming, not for testing whether anyone wants your product.

If your catalog is tiny and your needs are simple, also sanity-check the simpler builders before committing; our Wix vs Squarespace cost comparison shows what the low end of ecommerce tooling costs.

A realistic first-year budget

For a self-built store on the entry plan: subscription (roughly $360 to $480 per year), a domain ($10 to $25), possibly a paid theme ($100 to $500), and $50 to $150 per month in apps as you grow. Call it $600 to $2,000 all-in before advertising, which is a separate and usually larger budget.

With a freelancer build, add $2,000 to $8,000 upfront. With an agency, add five figures. In every case, the recurring stack is the number to watch: write down every monthly charge and total it quarterly.

Before you commit, run your own numbers: pick the plan you would actually start on, list the three apps you truly need, and decide honestly who is doing the build labor. A Shopify store priced that way rarely surprises you. One priced from a vendor's quote alone almost always does.