How Much Does a Shopify Website Cost to Build in 2026?
Summarize this article with AI
A Shopify website costs $39 to $2,300 a month just for the plan, plus a domain, a theme, whatever apps you install, and the cost of actually building the thing. A single number for "the cost of a Shopify website" almost always means the plan alone, skipping processing fees, apps, and the build itself entirely.
We pulled current pricing straight from Shopify's pricing page, the Shopify Theme Store, a domain registrar, and several named apps, all fetched today, September 30, 2026. Where a number depends on choices you have not made yet (which apps, which theme, DIY or hired help), we say so and label it as an assumption instead of inventing an average.
This guide covers the plan cost, payment processing, theme, apps, domain, and the build itself: doing it yourself, hiring a freelancer, or hiring an agency. Then it lays out three year one cost scenarios by store size, and says plainly when Shopify is not the right platform for you.
Key Takeaways
- Shopify's own plans run $39 to $399 a month if paid monthly (Basic, Grow, Advanced), or $29 to $299 if paid yearly, plus a custom Plus plan starting at $2,300 a month for larger merchants. Verified on shopify.com/pricing, September 30, 2026.
- Card processing through Shopify Payments runs 2.9% + 30 cents on Basic down to 2.25% + 30 cents on Plus. Skip Shopify Payments for another processor and Shopify adds an extra 0.2% to 2% fee on top of whatever that processor already charges.
- A theme is $0 (24 free options) or a one-time $210 to $450 on the Theme Store's first results page (1,274 paid options total), not a subscription. The build cost, not the theme, is what actually varies by thousands of dollars.
- DIY setup costs close to nothing beyond the plan itself. Freelancers and agencies price a build against your specific catalog and requirements rather than a published flat rate, so treat any quote as project-specific, not a benchmark. Rankwyre's own published custom-store plans, a different product from a one-time Shopify build, start at $499 a month for up to 20 products (rankwyre.com/pricing, fetched September 30, 2026).
- Apps are the hidden recurring cost. Named examples fetched September 30, 2026: Judge.me's paid review plan is a flat $15 a month, and Recharge's subscription plans start at $99 a month plus a 1.49% transaction fee. Running even two apps like these adds over $100 a month on top of the plan, indefinitely.
- A small side-hustle store on the Basic plan with a free theme and no paid apps has verified year one costs (plan plus domain) of about $479, doing the build itself. Add a paid theme, named apps, and a build cost, and the total moves into the thousands; the year one table below breaks out exactly which lines are verified prices and which are a labeled assumption.
- Shopify is the wrong call for a five-page brochure site with no cart, a store that needs deep custom logic Shopify's app model cannot cover cheaply, or a founder who cannot afford the ongoing app and plan cost on top of a one-time build.
Shopify's Plan Cost (Verified September 2026)
Shopify has four consumer plans as of September 30, 2026, verified live on shopify.com/pricing: Basic, Grow, Advanced, and Plus. Paying yearly instead of monthly lowers the price on every plan.
| Plan | Pay monthly | Pay yearly | Online card rate | Third-party gateway fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $39/mo | $29/mo | 2.9% + 30¢ | 2% |
| Grow | $105/mo | $79/mo | 2.7% + 30¢ | 1% |
| Advanced | $399/mo | $299/mo | 2.5% + 30¢ | 0.6% |
| Plus | from $2,300/mo | custom | 2.25% + 30¢ | 0.2% |
Basic fits a store with one person running it and simple needs. Grow adds staff accounts and shipping discounts, which starts to matter once you have real order volume. Advanced is for stores that need better card rates and more staff seats to justify the jump. Plus is a different product built for large or complex merchants, with a custom quote, not a menu price.
Basic or Grow is a reasonable starting point for a new store. Shopify's current offer, per shopify.com/pricing, is 3 days free and then $1 a month for 3 months on any plan, which lowers the cost of the first few months regardless of which plan you start on.
Payment Processing: The Cost Most People Miss
Every card payment costs you a percentage plus a flat fee, no matter which plan you are on. On Basic that is 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction if the customer pays with Shopify Payments (Shopify's built-in processor). A $50 order costs you $1.75 in processing, before you have paid for a single app or dollar of ad spend.
Here is the part that catches new merchants: if you use a different payment processor instead of Shopify Payments (PayPal alone, Stripe directly, or a specialized processor your industry requires), Shopify still charges an extra fee on every transaction, on top of what that processor charges you. That extra fee is 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced, and 0.2% on Plus. There is close to no reason to skip Shopify Payments unless your business is in a category it will not support.
This cost scales with your sales, not your plan cost, so it does not show up in a "how much does Shopify cost per month" answer that only counts the subscription. As an example: at 200 orders averaging $50 each (a $10,000 month), that is 200 × $50 × 2.9% = $290 in percentage fees, plus 200 × 30¢ = $60 in flat fees, for $350 a month in card processing alone on Basic, separate from the $39 plan fee.
Theme Cost
A Shopify theme is a one-time purchase, not a subscription. The Shopify Theme Store lists 24 free themes and 1,274 paid ones, fetched September 30, 2026. Paid themes on the store's first results page ranged from $210 (Strade and Ardent) to $450 (Sky and Bliss), charged once as a one-time purchase rather than a subscription.
A free theme is a completely reasonable choice for a new store. The paid ones buy you more built-in layout options, merchandising blocks, and speed optimizations, so they save design time rather than adding features you could not get otherwise. If a freelancer or agency quotes "custom theme development," that is a different, much larger line item covered under build cost below, not a Theme Store purchase.
App Costs: The Real Hidden Cost
Apps are where a "cheap" Shopify store quietly becomes an expensive one, because every app is a recurring charge that stacks on top of your plan, forever.
Three named examples, all fetched September 30, 2026, show the range. Klaviyo's free email plan covers up to 250 profiles, 500 emails a month, and $5 of mobile message credit, per Klaviyo's own pricing page, a limit a growing list can pass. Judge.me's paid review plan, called Awesome, is a flat $15 a month, stated on its own pricing page as "the most you can ever pay." Recharge's subscription plans start at $99 a month plus a 1.49% + 19¢ processing fee per transaction, rising to $499 a month plus 1.34% + 19¢ on its Plus tier.
Install a review app and a subscriptions app on top of your plan and you are already at roughly $114 a month in app fees (Judge.me Awesome at $15 plus Recharge Starter at $99), before adding email, shipping, or search apps. Check each app's current pricing page against your own list size or order volume before installing it, since a free-tier limit that fits today can be crossed as the store grows.
Domain Cost
A domain is the smallest line item and the easiest to get right. Registering a new .com currently costs $11.08 for the first year at Porkbun, fetched September 30, 2026, a registrar that publishes at-cost pricing with no first-year discount trap. Other registrars can advertise a lower first-year sign-up price that jumps at renewal, so read a registrar's renewal price specifically before you buy, not just the sign-up price.
You do not need to buy a domain through Shopify itself. Any registrar works, and pointing an external domain at your Shopify store takes a few DNS changes.
The Build Itself: DIY vs. Freelancer vs. Agency
This is the line item that actually swings your total cost by thousands of dollars, and it depends entirely on how much of the work you can and want to do yourself.
DIY
Cost: close to $0 beyond the plan and any theme you buy. Shopify's setup wizard, free theme options, and drag-and-drop editor can get a simple catalog live without hiring anyone. The real cost is your own time, which scales with how many products you have to load and how comfortable you are with the editor. DIY makes sense for a small catalog, a simple design, and an owner who has the time and patience to learn the tool.
Freelancer
Cost: freelancers price a Shopify build against your specific scope rather than a published industry rate, so there is no reliable flat number to quote here. What moves the price: how many products need to be listed, how much custom styling you want beyond the theme's defaults, and whether they are also writing your copy or you are supplying it. Get a written quote against a specific scope from more than one freelancer, and check past Shopify work specifically, not general web design work.
Agency
Cost: agencies also quote against your specific requirements rather than a menu price. For comparison, Rankwyre's own published ecommerce plans, fetched September 30, 2026, which build and manage a custom store rather than a one-time Shopify project, start at $499 a month with a $499 one-time setup fee for up to 20 products, and rise to $1,299 a month for an unlimited-product Pro Store, published at rankwyre.com/pricing. What drives any agency's number up, on Shopify or elsewhere, is the same: product and variant count, how many outside systems need to talk to the store, how custom the design is, and how much content strategy is included versus supplied by you.
Get a scoped quote against your actual catalog and requirements before comparing prices. Rankwyre is a digital technology company based in Miami, Florida. It builds custom websites, ecommerce stores, web apps, CRM systems, and dashboards, then runs the SEO and ads that bring in customers, including custom ecommerce store builds scoped against your actual catalog rather than a flat package price.
Year One Cost by Store Size
These three scenarios use only verified prices for the plan, domain, theme, and named apps above. The build itself is not in this table, because a freelancer or agency quotes it against your specific catalog and requirements, not a published flat rate; see the build cost section above and get your own quote before you budget for it. Card processing fees are not included below either, since they scale with your sales, not your setup, and were covered with a worked example above.
| Cost item | Small (DIY, Basic plan) | Growing (Grow plan, hired help) | Established (Advanced plan, hired help) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify plan (paid monthly, 12 months) | $468 | $1,260 | $4,788 |
| Domain (year 1, Porkbun .com) | $11 | $11 | $11 |
| Theme (Theme Store first-page range: $210 to $450) | $0 (free theme) | $320 (mid-range paid theme, one time) | $450 (top-range paid theme, one time) |
| Apps (named-app assumption) | $0 (free tiers only) | Judge.me Awesome, $15/mo × 12 = $180 | Judge.me Awesome + Recharge Starter, $114/mo × 12 = $1,368 |
| Estimated year 1 total (plan, domain, theme, apps only) | ~$479 | ~$1,771 | ~$6,617 |
The build itself is separate and scoped to your own catalog: DIY adds close to nothing, while a freelancer or agency quote can add anywhere from several hundred to tens of thousands of dollars depending on product count, custom design, and integrations, which is why it is not folded into the totals above.
Paying yearly instead of monthly lowers each scenario's plan line: about $348, $948, and $3,588 respectively, which pulls a few hundred to over a thousand dollars off the total. Beyond year one, drop the one-time theme cost and the ongoing cost is just the plan, apps, domain renewal, and processing fees, which is why the app stack matters more over time than the theme did.
Common Mistakes
- Comparing only the plan price between platforms. A "$39 a month" Shopify store and a "$0 a month" WooCommerce store are not comparable numbers until you add hosting, a theme, apps, and processing to the WooCommerce side too. The fix: compare total year one cost, not the headline subscription price.
- Stacking free trials of apps you never audit. An installed app is easy to forget about once its free trial ends and it starts billing. The fix: review your installed apps every quarter and remove anything you are not actively using before its trial converts to a paid plan.
- Skipping Shopify Payments to use a "cheaper" processor. The extra gateway fee Shopify charges usually erases whatever you were saving. The fix: run the actual math on your transaction volume before switching, including Shopify's added percentage.
- Buying a custom theme build when a Theme Store option would do. Custom theme development inside an agency quote can add thousands of dollars for a layout a $350 Theme Store theme already covers. The fix: start from a Theme Store theme and pay for customization only where your brand genuinely needs something the theme cannot do.
- Not budgeting for year two. The build cost is one time, but the plan, apps, and domain renewal are not. The fix: budget the ongoing monthly number separately from the launch number before you commit.
When Shopify Is Not the Right Choice
Shopify earns its cost when you are actually selling products online and need a cart, checkout, and inventory system that works out of the box. It is the wrong tool in a few specific cases.
If you need a simple brochure site with no products and no cart, a website builder or a basic custom site costs less and does not carry a transaction fee structure you will never use. If your business needs deep custom logic that Shopify's app-based model cannot cover cheaply, such as complex configurable pricing, B2B quoting rules, or a workflow no app on the market handles, a custom-built web app may cost less over several years than paying for and stitching together five specialized apps forever. And if you cannot comfortably afford the ongoing plan and app cost on top of a one-time build, a lower-cost platform with fewer recurring fees is the honest answer, even if Shopify's brand name feels like the safer choice.
Run your own numbers through Rankwyre's website cost calculator before deciding, and see Rankwyre's published store plans if you want a monthly plan instead of an hourly estimate.
FAQs
The plan alone is $39 to $399 a month paid monthly, or a custom quote starting at $2,300 a month for Plus. Add a domain (Porkbun charges $11.08 a year for a .com), an optional theme ($0 to $450 one time, per the Shopify Theme Store), named apps you install (Judge.me at $15 a month, Recharge starting at $99 a month, as examples), and the build itself, which costs close to nothing for DIY or a scoped quote from a freelancer or agency priced against your specific catalog.
At minimum, the Basic plan is $39 a month paid monthly or $29 a month paid yearly. Add card processing on every sale (2.9% + 30 cents on Basic through Shopify Payments) and whatever apps you run: Judge.me's paid review plan is a flat $15 a month and Recharge's subscription plans start at $99 a month, as two named examples.
Running an existing store costs the monthly plan fee, any app subscriptions, domain renewal (Porkbun charges $11.08 a year for a .com), and card processing fees on every sale. There is no separate hosting bill since that is included in every plan, and no required ongoing developer cost unless you want new features built.
A lean solo store on the Basic plan with a free theme and no paid apps runs about $479 in year one: the plan plus the domain, using September 2026 pricing paid monthly. Add a paid theme and even one or two named apps like Judge.me or Recharge, and the ongoing yearly cost moves into four figures before counting any build work.
Yes. Skipping Shopify Payments for another processor adds an extra transaction fee on top of whatever that processor already charges: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced, and 0.2% on Plus. That fee makes Shopify Payments the cheaper option whenever a business qualifies to use it.
For a store that just needs to sell products, Shopify is typically cheaper than a fully custom build, because the cart, checkout, and hosting are already built and maintained for you. A custom web app only becomes competitive when your business needs functionality no combination of Shopify apps can deliver affordably.
Freelancers and agencies price a Shopify build against your specific catalog and requirements rather than a published flat rate, so there is no reliable industry-wide number. For comparison, Rankwyre's own published custom-store plans, a different product from a one-time Shopify project, start at $499 a month with a $499 one-time setup fee for up to 20 products, published at rankwyre.com/pricing. Get a written quote against your own scope before comparing prices.
Conclusion
The plan price is the smallest number in the real cost of a Shopify website. Processing fees, a theme, an app stack that grows every year, and the build itself add more to your first year than the plan line alone, as the scenarios above show.
Before you commit to a platform or a developer, write down your actual product count, the apps you expect to need, and whether you are building it yourself or hiring help. Then compare that real number, not the $39 headline, against your budget.
If you would rather have a custom store built and run for you, start your project with Rankwyre and we will price it against your actual catalog and requirements.
About the author:
Rankwyre Team
Digital technology company, Miami, Florida
Rankwyre is a digital technology company based in Miami, Florida. It builds custom websites, ecommerce stores, web apps, CRM systems, and dashboards, then runs the SEO and ads that bring in customers.
