How much does a Shopify store cost in the UK?

The short answer

A Shopify store has two kinds of cost: running costs you pay every month for as long as the shop is open, and the one-off cost of getting it designed, written and built.

Running costs are Shopify’s own plan, any apps, your domain and payment fees. They’re paid directly to those companies, in your name. Check Shopify’s pricing page for the current plans, because they change.

The one-off cost depends almost entirely on who builds it and how much of the thinking they do for you. That’s where the big differences between quotes come from.

The four routes, and what you usually get

None of these is wrong. A brand-new side project can start on a theme. A business that already sells, or wants to, usually loses more in missed sales than it saves on the build.

Grade one of your product pages, freeFree, automatic, about a minute→

What actually changes the price

• Design from scratch or a theme. A theme is cheap because the design work is already done, for everyone who buys it.
• Who writes the words. Product descriptions and page copy are often the biggest hidden job. If you’re writing them, budget your own time honestly.
• Number of products and options. Ten products with no variants is a different job from 300 products in four sizes and six colours.
• Builders, bundles and subscriptions. Anything that helps people choose (a set builder, a finder, a subscription) is custom work.
• Moving from another platform. Products, customers, orders and redirects from WooCommerce, Wix or Squarespace take care.
• Markets and currencies. Selling to the UK and the US means prices, tax, shipping and sometimes content for both.
• Photos and film. If you need new product photography, it belongs in the budget from day one.

The costs nobody mentions

These are the lines that turn a cheap quote into an expensive store:

• App creep. Each app solves one problem and adds a monthly fee and code to every page. Ten apps can cost more than the plan itself and slow the shop down.
• Rewriting later. A store launched with supplier descriptions usually gets rewritten within a year, because it doesn’t sell.
• Redesigning a theme you outgrew. Themes are quick to start and slow to escape once you’ve customised them heavily.
• Your time. Uploading products, writing pages and testing checkout are real days of work. Someone has to do them.

What I charge

I publish my starting prices, because you shouldn’t have to book a call to find out if we’re in the same world:

• Online store from £8,500 ($11,000), usually 6 to 10 weeks. Designed and written from scratch, on Shopify or fully custom.
• Rebuild or refresh from £3,500 ($4,500), 3 to 5 weeks, when your store mostly works but needs the important pages redone.
• Audit £495 ($650), 5 working days, if you’re not sure what to fix first. The fee comes off a project started within 60 days.

Every price is fixed in writing before anything starts. If the scope doesn’t change, the price doesn’t either. Payment is 50% to book, 25% when you approve the design and 25% at launch.

Not sure which you need? The free project plan asks about your business for four minutes and gives you a written plan with a price on screen.

How to compare quotes properly

1. Ask who writes the words. If the answer is “you”, add that time to the quote.
2. Ask whether the design is from scratch or a theme, and which theme.
3. Ask what happens after launch: who fixes things, for how long, at what cost.
4. Ask who owns the store, the domain and every account. It should be you.
5. Ask for the price in writing, with what’s included and what would change it.