How much do Shopify development services cost?

Theme customisation typically costs $4,000 to $12,000, a custom Online Store 2.0 theme $12,000 to $35,000, and a Shopify Plus build with Functions or checkout extensions $25,000 to $80,000. Custom apps run $8,000 to $40,000, headless builds $40,000 to $120,000, and migrations to Shopify $10,000 to $45,000. Cost scales with template count, custom functionality, and integration complexity.

Do Shopify apps slow down my store?

Many do, because they inject scripts and styles on every page rather than only where their functionality is used. The cumulative effect on load time is usually the largest single performance factor on a Shopify store, ahead of theme code. A secondary problem is residual code: uninstalling an app frequently leaves its injected code in the theme, so it continues loading for functionality that no longer exists. Both are measurable and both are fixable.

Should I use a premium Shopify theme or a custom build?

A premium theme configured carefully is the right choice for most stores under a certain size, and we will say so rather than selling you something you do not need. Custom builds make sense when your merchandising or content model does not fit standard themes, when performance is a competitive factor, when you have accumulated so many patches that the theme is unmaintainable, or when you need editor controls a premium theme cannot provide.

Should I go headless with Shopify?

Usually not. Headless costs two to four times more to build, requires ongoing frontend engineering capability, breaks compatibility with many apps, and reduces the editor experience significantly. It makes sense for application-like storefront interfaces, genuine extreme performance requirements, serving multiple frontends from one backend, or teams that already have React engineers. Most stores considering headless have a performance problem caused by apps and theme code, which headless would not solve.

What can and cannot be customised in Shopify checkout?

On standard plans, checkout customisation is limited to settings and branding, so the leverage sits in the cart and pre-checkout experience instead. On Shopify Plus, checkout extensions allow genuine customisation within a supported framework, and Shopify Functions handle custom discount, shipping, and payment logic. Anyone proposing checkout changes on a non-Plus plan beyond branding is describing something the platform does not permit.

Can you migrate our store to Shopify?

Yes. Migration covers products, variants, collections, customers, order history, content, theme build, integration reconnection, and the redirect map. Shopify enforces /products/ and /collections/ URL paths, so almost every migration involves a complete URL change, which makes the redirect map the most consequential deliverable in the project. We baseline with a full crawl before anything changes and monitor daily for thirty days after launch.

Do you build custom Shopify apps?

Yes, both custom apps for a single merchant and public apps for the App Store, built with the Shopify CLI, Polaris, and App Bridge. Custom apps make sense when no public app handles your requirement well, when you are paying for several apps that one purpose-built tool would replace, or when you need functionality tied to your own systems. Shopify has no arbitrary server-side execution on the storefront, so custom logic lives in an externally hosted app communicating through the APIs.

Will a custom theme improve my store speed?

Usually yes, though the gain depends on how much of your current weight comes from apps rather than theme code. A custom theme removes premium theme overhead, patch accumulation, and residual code, and lets script loading be designed rather than inherited. If most of your page weight comes from apps you intend to keep, a rebuild delivers less than app rationalisation would, and we will tell you which situation you are in before quoting.

Shopify development services

Shopify development services without the app tax

We build and extend Shopify stores: custom Online Store 2.0 themes, Liquid development, custom apps, Shopify Functions, checkout customisation, headless builds on Hydrogen, migrations, and integrations. Every build accounts for Shopify's structural constraints from the start, because we spend the rest of our time auditing stores where they were discovered too late.

Shopify's promise is that it handles the hard parts, and it genuinely does. Which is why most stores plateau at the same point: everyone gets the same foundation, and what separates a store doing well from one doing very well is everything above it. Most stores we audit have never had that decision made.

Get a free Shopify store review The four problems

Theme code, the measured performance cost of every app, and conversion blockers on your current store · five business days

Scope it roughly estimating

What are you building

Apps and integrations

Typical band

End to end

What decides the number

Indicative bands, not a quote. Fixed price follows a scoped conversation, and where requirements are genuinely uncertain we scope a paid discovery phase rather than inventing a number.

Before you enquire

What you are actually looking for

Four things nearly every enquiry turns out to be about, in the words people actually use.

The honest answer

What you mean

What we do about it

What you end up with

In practice

What the work looks like

Screens from live engagements, with client details removed.

The main view

Scope

What we build

Fifteen kinds of work. Most engagements combine three or four of them.

Try it · interactive

The four problems we find in almost every store

Different stores, same four findings. Tick the ones you recognise and the cost of each appears alongside.

The common thread is that nobody owned the architecture. Shopify makes it easy to add capability without deciding where it should live, and the cost of that arrives gradually rather than all at once.

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What each one costs you

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Nothing ticked yet. Pick whichever ones sound like your store and the cost of each appears here.

Platform limits

What Shopify will and will not let you do

Honesty about platform limits saves expensive discovery later. These are development constraints, distinct from the URL constraints covered on our Shopify SEO page.

Constraint Changeable? What we do instead

⚠

If someone is proposing a Shopify build that requires arbitrary server-side logic on the storefront, they are proposing a custom app or a headless build and should say so, because both change the cost and the maintenance picture significantly.

Method

How we build

Five decisions that separate a store that stays good from one that degrades over eighteen months.

Interactive · the opinionated bit

Liquid or headless?

Headless is oversold, and our default recommendation is Liquid built well. We say so before quoting the larger project. Tell us your situation and we will tell you which one you actually need.

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The trade you are making

Recommending against headless costs us our largest projects. We would rather fix the actual problem for a fifth of the price and have the conversation again in two years.

Standard Liquid theme Headless (Hydrogen or custom)

Highest risk work

Migrations to Shopify

From WooCommerce, Magento, BigCommerce, or a custom platform. Five things we handle, and one of them decides whether the project succeeds.

✓ {{ m.a }} {{ m.b }}

The one that decides it

Shopify enforces /products/ and /collections/ paths, which means almost every migration to Shopify involves a complete URL change. That makes the redirect map the single most consequential deliverable in the project.

Migrations that lose traffic almost always lost it here. The damage typically appears in week two rather than day one, which is why we monitor daily for thirty days rather than declaring success at launch.

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Deliverables

What you receive

The actual documents, not a sample deck built for the pitch.

Build spec

Shopify theme and app architecture

4,380 SKUs · 22 apps audited

01App-by-app keep, rebuild or remove 02Theme section architecture 03Image and font strategy 04Checkout and conversion path 05Merchandiser handover

B Written against your live theme

Report

Store health at handover

Core Web Vitals88

App surface4 of 22

Checkout speed1.1s

Theme maintainabilityGood

Conversion moved before traffic did, which is the usual order on Shopify.

Priorities

Per-template report

Template Was Now

Home5.1s1.6s Collection4.6s1.4s Product4.9s1.5s Cart3.4s1.0s Search4.2s1.3s

Largest Contentful Paint per template on a mid-range Android device.

Handover

Pricing

Shopify development pricing

Cost scales with template count, custom functionality, and integration complexity.

01 · What do you need

02 · How big {{ estSizeLabel }}

Small Very large

03 · Anything else

Estimate {{ estUnit }}

{{ estLow }} to {{ estHigh }}

Get this scoped properly

An estimate, not a quote. Fixed price follows a scoping call, and where requirements are genuinely uncertain we run a paid discovery phase first.

⊕

Fixed price on defined scope. Where requirements are genuinely uncertain, particularly on app and integration projects, we scope a paid discovery phase rather than quoting a number we will need to revise.

Fit

Who we work with

∅

Probably not us if you need a small store launched quickly on a modest budget. A well-chosen premium theme configured carefully will serve you, and we will say so rather than quoting a custom build.

Free · five business days

Get a free Shopify store review

For existing stores. Focused on code, performance, and architecture rather than search.

Build walkthrough Screen share · {{ gLoomTime }}

Requires collaborator or staff access, and if your store is in good shape and the answer is to remove three apps, we will tell you that. Looking at this from a search angle instead? Our Shopify SEO audit covers indexation, collections, and schema.

Store URL *

Work email *

What is prompting this? *

Roughly how many apps are installed?

No sales sequence. Shopify projects take a few conversations and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

✓

Request received.

Evidence

Before and after

The same view, before the work and after it.

Before

Two thirds of sessions never saw a rendered product page on mobile.

After

Same products, same prices, same photography.

Our stack

Billion Game runs your work through the same instruments the best in-house teams use.

Licences are on us, and every export we pull from them is yours to keep.

✎

Be wary of any agency whose reporting is a tool dashboard with their logo on it. Tools measure; they do not decide what matters, and every one of these will happily generate a hundred findings that change nothing. What you are paying for is the judgement about which three of those hundred are worth your developers’ time.

FAQ

Shopify development FAQs

Anything not answered here, ask us directly.

The short version

Fewer apps, version-controlled theme code, merchandisers who can ship pages without a developer, and performance decided during the build rather than retrofitted afterwards.

Your apps are probably costing more than your theme.

Free store review with the measured performance cost of every app, plus a theme code assessment. Five business days.

Get a free store review Get a scoped quote

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