How much does Shopify development cost?
Real ranges from our quote history, the factors that move them, the costs quotes forget to mention, and an estimator that gives you a defensible number before you talk to anyone. Updated monthly.
140 stores built, 8 years on the platform, senior engineers only
Shopify development in 2026 costs between $3,500 and $60,000 for most projects, and the spread is not agency greed: it is five variables that legitimately change the work. This guide publishes our actual quote ranges, names the variables, and lists the costs that hide outside quotes, so you can budget the whole project instead of the headline number.
Estimate your project range
Indicative project range
$3,500 to $6,500
Same model as the published tables. A fixed quote needs the audit, which is free.
Published ranges
Shopify development prices by project type
Starting prices from our quote history, updated 2026-09-21. Every project is quoted fixed after the audit; these ranges exist so you can budget before that conversation.
| Project type | Price from | Timeline | What is included |
|---|---|---|---|
| Custom theme build | $3,500 | 4 to 6 weeks | Design, build, migration to 500 products, QA, launch |
| Theme rebuild (same brand) | $2,500 | 3 to 4 weeks | Rebuild of an existing design, faster and cleaner |
| Custom feature or app | $4,500 | 6 to 10 weeks | Design doc, build, tests, documentation, handover |
| Integration, two systems | $4,000 | 3 to 6 weeks | Orders, inventory, customers, reconciliation, alerts |
| NetSuite integration | $6,000 | 5 to 8 weeks | Full flow set, parallel run, runbook |
| Shopify Plus replatform | $9,000 | 8 to 12 weeks | Migration, theme, markets, redirects, training |
| Headless build (Hydrogen) | $15,000 | 10 to 16 weeks | Front end, CMS, caching, staged cutover, training |
| Care plan (ongoing) | $1,500/mo | Monthly | Monitoring, updates, fixes, reporting |
What actually moves the price
- 1
Storefront scope
Template count and design depth. Every template beyond the revenue carriers (home, collection, product, cart) adds design and build time. A blog with three templates is cheap; a content system with twelve is not.
- 2
Feature complexity
The edge cases in your buying flow. A configurator with three steps is a week; one with constraints, live pricing and production handoff is a month.
- 3
Integrations
Each system connection adds a flow set, adapter work and reconciliation. The first integration costs the most because the queue and monitoring come with it.
- 4
Migration and data
Catalogue size, historical orders, review content and cleanup. Dirty data is the classic unbudgeted cost, which is why our audit prices it explicitly.
- 5
Launch risk
Fixed dates, peak season windows and zero downtime requirements add rehearsal, rollback engineering and out of hours cover.
- 6
Who does the work
Senior engineers bill more per hour and finish sooner. Junior heavy teams look cheap per hour and expensive per launch. Compare quotes by delivered scope, not rate.
Cost structures compared
Agency, freelancer or in-house: the money view
| Factor | Codioo agency | Freelancer | In-house hire |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | Fixed project price, from about $3,500 for a theme to $15,000+ for headless | Lowest hourly rate, variable total as scope moves | Salary plus overhead, the highest fixed cost per year |
| Speed | Team of specialists, typical build 6 to 12 weeks | One person, fast until they are busy elsewhere | 6 to 12 weeks to hire, then ramp up time |
| Risk | Contract, senior review, no single point of failure | One illness or holiday stops the project | Hiring risk and retention risk on you |
Pick an agency when
the project is mission critical, spans design and systems, or a launch date is fixed. You buy a team and a contract, not hours.
Pick a freelancer when
the scope is small and sharp, one template, one app, one fix, and you can flex the deadline around their availability.
Build in-house when
Shopify is your core competitive edge and you need daily iteration. Pair the hire with an agency for peak load and rare skills.
Three real project shapes, priced
Ranges mean little without shape. These three composites show how scope drives the same service up or down. Your project lands somewhere on each line.
The theme rebuild at $4,300
7,000 SKU apparel brand, existing brand system
- Theme design and build, 7 templates: $3,600
- Script and app cleanup, 2 apps retired: $450
- Content migration, 60 products: $250
The number sits near the floor because the brand system existed and the catalogue was clean. The speed gain came mostly from subtraction.
The Plus replatform at $16,200
Magento 2 store, 22,000 SKUs, 5 years of orders
- Replatform and migration matrix: $5,000
- B2B price lists and company accounts: $3,200
- Redirect engineering, 11,000 URLs: $1,600
- Staff training and 60 day watch: $1,900
Data volume and B2B pushed it past the base. The redirect line is the one clients try to cut; it is the one that protects revenue.
The integration at $7,300
Shopify to NetSuite, orders both ways, 3PL
- NetSuite flows and reconciliation: $6,000
- 3PL connection and exceptions screen: included scope
- Peak readiness, 3x load test: $1,300
The queue, retries and reconciliation are inside the base price, not add ons. Without them the sync is a liability wearing a feature list.
Composite figures for illustration. Your audit prices the same lines against your actual catalogue, markets and systems.
How to read an agency quote
A quote is a promise wearing a spreadsheet. The good ones read like a plan: deliverables you can point at, a launch date with rehearsal time behind it, and exclusions listed plainly. The bad ones read like a mood: phases with vague names, discovery that never ends, and a total that only means something until the first change request.
Compare quotes on four axes. Coverage: does it include migration, QA, training and post launch support, or are those invoices waiting to happen. Specificity: are deliverables named (seven templates, two integrations, a redirect map for every indexed URL) or just promised. Incentives: hourly billing on projects rewards slowness; fixed scope rewards precision. Ownership: repositories, infrastructure and documentation transfer at launch, or the relationship has a toll booth in it.
Then ask the question that ends most evaluations: what happens when something goes wrong after launch? A care plan with response times is an answer. A shrug with an invoice rate is also an answer.
How projects are scheduled and paid
Cash flow shape matters as much as the total. Ours is boring on purpose, and it keeps incentives pointed the right way.
Milestones, not months
Fixed scope projects bill at signed milestones: typically a deposit at kickoff, a payment at design sign off, a payment at build completion, and the balance after launch. You always know what the next invoice buys.
Launch is a gate, not a finish line
The final payment comes after the store trades and the post launch check passes, not at DNS cutover. The 60 day indexation watch on replatforms sits inside the project fee.
Changes are quoted, never drifted
New scope gets a written change order with price and schedule impact before work starts. The original number holds while the original scope holds, and both are in writing.
What controls the timeline, in order of how often it bites: sandbox and access availability (the single most common delay), data cleanliness, decision speed on designs and content, and third party dependencies like ERP sandboxes or 3PL test accounts. Engineering throughput is rarely the constraint; waiting is. Projects where the client names a single decision maker and grants access in week one finish roughly two weeks faster than the same scope with a committee, which is why we ask for both in kickoff.
Rates, regions and what sits behind them
Shopify development rates cluster by region and seniority. Senior independent developers in North America and Western Europe bill $100 to $180 an hour; agencies $120 to $200 blended; offshore teams $30 to $70 with wide variance in what senior means. Our embedded rate of $25 an hour reflects a distributed senior team, and our project pricing is fixed rather than hourly, so the rate math matters less than the scope math.
A caution on shopping by rate: the cheapest hourly quote usually prices the work optimistically, and change requests are where the difference is collected. A fixed quote forces the estimate to survive scrutiny before signature, which is why we quote that way even when an hourly comparison would look lower on a spreadsheet.
Time zone overlap affects price more than geography does. Four hours of guaranteed overlap with your team costs less than full day sync, and async discipline with written weekly notes costs less than both. We quote overlap explicitly rather than pretending it is free.
FAQ
Cost questions, answered with numbers
Anything else, the audit answers it against your actual scope.
How much does Shopify development cost?
Why do agency quotes for the same project vary so much?
What are the hidden costs of a Shopify project?
Is it cheaper to hire a freelancer?
What does a Shopify Plus migration cost?
How much does ongoing support cost after launch?
Turn a range into a fixed quote
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