In short
- A Shopify site built by an agency generally costs between €5,000 and €30,000 for a standard project. A freelancer is more in the €1,500 to €10,000 range.
- At Stellar Projects, a Shopify redesign costs €10,000 to €30,000 on average, for brands generating between €500,000 and €5M in revenue.
- A Shopify Plus project is not necessarily more expensive: the budget follows the brief. It goes up when you activate exclusive features, such as a dedicated B2B store or a customized checkout.
- The agency quote is not the total cost: the Shopify subscription, apps, payment fees and maintenance come on top. Budget for them from the start.
Updated September 28, 2026 by Volkier Bentinck, co-founder of Stellar Projects.
"How much does a Shopify site cost?" is the question we get asked in almost every first meeting. The honest answer fits in one sentence: it depends less on Shopify than on your project. Two stores that look alike on the surface can vary by a factor of three depending on the design, the catalog, the integrations and the level of support.
At Stellar Projects, a certified Shopify Plus Partner agency based in Paris, we have been pricing Shopify builds, redesigns and migrations since 2018, mainly for lifestyle brands. This page brings together the price ranges we see, what really makes up a quote, the budget for a Shopify Plus project, and the framework we recommend for comparing several quotes, ours included.
Contents
How much does a Shopify site cost with an agency?
Advertised prices for a Shopify site range from a few hundred euros to more than €100,000. The range is wide because it covers projects that have nothing in common. Here are the orders of magnitude we observe, excluding the Shopify subscription and apps.
| Project type | Provider | Service price range |
|---|---|---|
| Shopify site on an off-the-shelf theme, simple scope | Freelancer | €1,500 to €10,000 |
| Standard Shopify site build | Agency | €5,000 to €30,000 |
| Redesign of an existing Shopify store | Stellar Projects | €10,000 to €30,000 on average |
For a redesign, a version focused on a few templates can come in under €10,000, while a custom project with complex integrations goes beyond €30,000. We detail these cases in our guide to Shopify redesigns.
The formula for arriving at the right price for your project stays the same: a complete brief, a provider suited to your level of requirements, and a tailored recommendation. If any of the three is missing, the quote will be either inflated or incomplete.
What makes up the price of a Shopify site
A Shopify agency bills time: the number of days each profile (project manager, designer, developers, SEO lead) devotes to your project. The price therefore depends on five line items, and on the choices you make for each one.
The brief and scoping
Before any serious pricing, you need specifications: number of page templates, languages and currencies, catalog size, ERP connector or not, must-have features and features that can wait for a phase 2. The more precise the brief, the more reliable the quote. There are often several technical solutions for the same need, each with its own cost: it is the scoping phase's job to choose the right one.
Design and theme
Design is often the largest line item in the budget. Its cost depends on the number of mockups, the number of revision rounds included, the level of animation and interaction you want, and the visuals to be produced. There are three approaches to the theme:
- Install an off-the-shelf theme: you pay for the theme as a one-time purchase, plus the setup time.
- Customize an off-the-shelf theme: the price of the theme, plus development to adapt it to your brand. This is often the best compromise between cost and distinctiveness.
- Develop a custom theme: the most expensive approach, justified when the brand experience is at the heart of your differentiation.
Features: app or development
Shopify natively covers most of what a store needs: catalog, orders, customers, payment, discounts, basic marketing tools. For the rest, you have two options: an app from the App Store or custom development.
An app often looks cheaper at first. Before deciding, check four points: is there an app that does exactly what you want, how long does it take to set up, what is its impact on site speed, and how much will its subscription cost over three years. Custom development costs more at launch, but it should be compared over several years, not over the first month.
Setup and integrations
The more apps and connected services a store has, the longer the setup. Setting up email marketing with Klaviyo, an ERP or PIM connector, a review management tool or a loyalty program each add days to the project. A custom ERP integration, with synchronization of inventory, prices and orders, is the line item most often underestimated.
Data migration and SEO
On a migration or a redesign, moving over products, customers and orders, and above all the redirect plan, are part of the budget. Removing them from the quote does not make the project cheaper: it shifts the cost to a loss of traffic after launch.
How a Shopify agency bills: fixed price, time and materials or retainer
An agency bills time: the price of a project is a number of days multiplied by a daily rate. At Stellar Projects, this daily rate is fixed: €800 per day, whatever the project: build, redesign, migration, standard Shopify or Shopify Plus. The budget therefore depends only on the number of days your brief requires.
Three billing models coexist. The right choice depends on how mature your project is and on your ability to manage it in-house.
- Fixed-price project: the agency commits to a scope, a schedule and a firm price. You gain budget visibility, in exchange for some rigidity: anything outside the scope requires a change order. A fixed price therefore assumes serious scoping upfront.
- Time and materials: the agency bills the days used, with no commitment to a fixed scope. This model suits brands with an in-house team able to set priorities. Without firm decision-making, consumption quickly drifts.
- Monthly retainer: a volume of days reserved each month to keep improving the store after launch. This is the model we recommend for the months following a go-live, the period when adjustment needs are greatest.
The costs that are not in the agency quote
An agency quote covers human work. Several items are billed directly by Shopify or by third-party vendors, and must be included in your overall budget:
- The Shopify subscription, from Basic to Plus, and the fees charged on each payment. We detail all the plans and fees on our page about Shopify plan pricing.
- Paid apps, each billed as a monthly subscription.
- The premium theme, if bought on the Theme Store.
- The domain name and professional email.
- Maintenance and enhancements after launch, which people too often forget to budget for.
We always separate these two lines in our proposals, with a twelve-month projection that adds up services, subscription and apps. It is the best way to avoid the unpleasant surprise of an "all-inclusive" budget that was not.
Agency or freelancer: how to compare prices
A freelancer is often cheaper at the outset: their overhead is lower. Yet the comparison should not stop at the advertised price.
- The scope covered: an agency brings a team (project manager, designer, front-end and back-end developers, SEO). A senior freelancer can be excellent, but covers every topic alone.
- Continuity: at an agency, several people know your store. With a freelancer, vacations and future availability weigh directly on your timelines and on maintenance.
- The total cost: add to the advertised price the management time on your side, the rework and the risk of depending on a single person. Over 12 to 24 months, the gap often narrows.
For a limited scope, with a flexible timeline and real in-house management capacity, a freelancer can be the right choice. We detail the decision criteria in our article Shopify agency or freelancer.
Budget for a Shopify Plus project
A persistent misconception holds that a Shopify Plus project is necessarily more expensive. That is not the case: for an equivalent brief, a store on Plus does not require more work than a store on Grow or Advanced. The engine is the same, the theme is developed the same way, and our daily rate stays identical.
What changes is the scope of what Plus lets you do natively. The functional foundation is broader, so the brief can go further. And every exclusive feature you decide to activate represents a workstream, and therefore a cost, to include in the quote.
What can change the budget on Shopify Plus
- A dedicated B2B store: Plus lets you create a separate store for selling to businesses, with its own catalogs, prices and payment terms. It is a project in its own right, which requires modeling your price lists and commercial rules. Our largest Shopify Plus project, the MINI electric bikes developed for BMW, relied precisely on a dedicated B2B instance.
- Checkout customization: Plus opens every step of checkout to customization. Specific fields, conditional rules, different journeys depending on the customer profile: each rule has to be designed, developed and tested.
- Custom apps: with Shopify Functions, Plus lets you develop your own discount, shipping or payment logic. The more specific the logic, the bigger the development effort.
- Additional stores: Plus includes several stores. Opening one per brand or per use multiplies the themes, catalogs and settings to manage.
- Integrations: brands moving to Plus often have an ERP, a PIM or a logistics tool to connect. This item depends on the platform being connected, not on Shopify: it would also exist on a standard plan.
In other words, the cost of a Shopify Plus project follows your brief, not the name of the plan. A brand that moves to Plus without activating these features has no reason to pay more for its services. A brand launching a full wholesale channel with a custom checkout invests in these workstreams, whatever the provider.
What the service covers, and what it does not
The agency service covers scoping, design, development, setup of the selected Plus features, integrations, data migration, acceptance testing and go-live. It does not cover the Shopify Plus license, which starts at €2,100 per month on the French price list, nor payment fees and apps, which are billed directly by Shopify and the vendors.
Before talking budget, ask yourself the right question: do you need Plus? For the brands between €500,000 and €5M in revenue that we work with, Advanced is enough in the vast majority of cases. Our Shopify Plus guide helps you decide, and our guide to B2B on Shopify details what the native B2B channel covers and what needs to be built.
Do you need a certified Shopify Plus agency?
Shopify Plus Partner certification does not mean higher rates. It becomes useful when your project relies on Plus's exclusive features: B2B, checkout customization, Shopify Functions, migration from an enterprise platform. For a standard B2C site, what matters most is the agency's track record on projects comparable to yours. What the badge really guarantees is detailed in our article Shopify Plus agency vs Shopify agency.
How to read and compare three quotes
A brand that consults us generally has two other quotes on the table. Here is the evaluation framework we recommend, including for assessing ours.
- Convert everything into person-days. Two quotes at the same price describing 90 days and 130 days are not offering the same thing. Ask for the breakdown by phase and by profile.
- Check the items nobody likes to price: acceptance testing, data migration, team training and post-launch support. A quote that leaves them out is not cheaper, it is incomplete.
- Hunt down elastic wording: "ERP integration" without the name of the system, "checkout customization" without detailed rules, "catalog migration" without volumes. Each one can hide a factor of three in the actual workload.
- Be wary of a missing redirect plan on a migration or a redesign: it is the omission that costs the most after go-live.
- Ask for comparable references, with a ballpark budget. An agency that has really delivered these projects answers in five minutes.
Finally, a good sign: the agency tells you under what conditions the project is not worth it. The other criteria for selecting a provider are in our guide to choosing a Shopify agency.
How to keep your Shopify site budget under control
- Give the agencies you consult a budget range. They will be able to propose the right solution, instead of guessing.
- Prioritize your needs between what is essential at launch and what can wait for a phase 2.
- Start from a customized off-the-shelf theme rather than a custom theme, unless brand experience is your main lever.
- Compare apps and custom development over three years, not over the first month.
- Budget for the post-launch period: a site that stops evolving stagnates within a few months.
A budget well spent is measured by the results. Maroquinerie Renouard, which we supported in its switchover to Shopify, grew its online revenue by about 20% in 2025 and doubled its traffic.
Pricing your project with Stellar Projects
Stellar Projects mainly works with lifestyle brands generating between €500,000 and €5M in revenue, on Shopify builds, redesigns and migrations. As a certified Shopify Plus Partner agency, we also run more complex Plus projects, up to dedicated B2B instances.
Our pricing principle is simple: separate services from platform costs, project the budget over twelve months, and tell you when a line item is not needed. Do you have a project to budget or quotes to weigh up? Let's talk about your project: one initial conversation is enough to get a well-reasoned price range.