Real numbers by scope and stage. What an MVP store actually costs, what a Plus rebuild actually costs, and the four invisible drivers that swing the bill 3x in either direction.
A working Shopify store can cost as little as $5,000 if you start from a paid theme, install standard apps, and accept the platform's defaults. A Shopify Plus rebuild for a $5M DTC brand routinely runs $80,000 to $150,000. The gap is not agency markup. It's the actual scope: custom theme work, checkout extensibility, B2B catalogs, multi-region setup, integrations with ERP and warehouse systems, and the engineering hours those decisions require. We have built across that whole range and the cost moves with scope, not with the agency.
Numbers below are market ranges across US + UK + India agencies, not Digital Heroes-specific quotes. Our scoped quotes land inside these ranges; we will tell you which tier fits your store on a 30-minute call.
| tier | scope | timeline | market range |
|---|---|---|---|
| MVP launch | Paid theme, 5-15 products, Klaviyo basic, 2 payment gateways | 2-4 weeks | $5K-$15K |
| Custom DTC | Custom theme, subscriptions, reviews, multi-app stack | 6-10 weeks | $15K-$50K |
| Plus rebuild | Plus migration, checkout extensibility, B2B, multi-region | 12-20 weeks | $50K-$150K |
| Headless / Hydrogen | Hydrogen storefront, headless CMS, ERP integration | 16-26 weeks | $80K-$250K+ |
Source: combined market data from Shopify Partner directory rate cards, Clutch hourly-rate surveys, and our 2024-2026 scoped engagements.
A Shopify Theme Store theme costs $200-$400 once and 8-20 hours to set up. A custom theme costs 80-160 hours of design + Liquid + section building. The paid-theme path is the right call for most stores under $1M/yr; custom theme work pays back above that revenue floor when brand differentiation drives conversion.
Standard app installs (Klaviyo, Recharge, Judge.me, Loox) take 2-8 hours each and cost the app subscription. ERP integration (NetSuite, SAP, Microsoft Dynamics) takes 80-300 hours and is usually the single biggest line item on a Plus rebuild.
A WooCommerce migration with 500 products and clean data: 40-80 hours via Matrixify. A Magento migration with 50,000 SKUs, custom attributes, and 300+ category pages: 200-600 hours plus 90 days of redirect QA. Source platform + data quality is the biggest unknown until we audit.
Plus-only features: Checkout Extensions + Shopify Functions + B2B company accounts. Each adds 60-200 hours of engineering depending on the rules. The post-checkout.liquid migration alone is 40-120 hours for stores that had heavy customization.
A $300K brand should not buy a $100K Plus rebuild. A $5M brand should not patch a free theme. Match the build cost to the store stage; budget 3-5% of annual revenue as a reasonable rebuild ceiling.
10 SKUs with one variant each is a different problem from 5,000 SKUs with size + color + material. Configurable products, B2B catalog pricing, and per-customer rules each multiply the data-modeling work.
ERP sync, fulfillment 3PL, custom CRM hooks, financial reporting — list them upfront. Adding integrations after launch costs 2-3x what it would have cost in the original build.
A working basic Shopify store costs $5,000 to $15,000 from a competent agency. That covers a paid theme ($200-$400), light customization, 5-15 products, Klaviyo welcome flow, payment gateway setup, and shipping zone configuration. Cheaper builds usually skip the parts that matter — the conversion flow, the email automation, the SEO basics. We have rebuilt many $1,500 stores at the $8,000 price point a year later because the original cut every corner that drove revenue.
Plus subscription is $2,300/mo or 0.25-0.4% of revenue, whichever is higher. The Plus build itself runs $50,000-$150,000 for a typical $2M-$10M DTC brand migrating from Basic or another platform. A clean Plus migration plus checkout extensibility, B2B accounts, and one ERP integration lands at the upper end. Stores under $1M/yr almost never recoup the Plus subscription difference; we recommend Plus when monthly Shopify Payments revenue exceeds $80K and when Plus-only features (B2B, Functions, checkout extensibility) are on the roadmap.
A fully custom Shopify theme runs $15,000 to $45,000 depending on section count, animation complexity, and how much of the theme is built on the Online Store 2.0 section primitives versus hand-rolled Liquid. Lighter custom work — taking a paid theme like Dawn or Horizon and reskinning it with brand-specific sections — runs $6,000 to $15,000 and is the right scope for most $500K-$2M brands. Above $2M, the brand-specific custom theme usually pays back in conversion lift inside 12 months.
Magento to Shopify Plus typically runs $40,000 to $120,000 for a mid-market store with 5,000-50,000 SKUs. WooCommerce to Shopify is usually $15,000 to $50,000 because WooCommerce data extraction is cleaner. Both numbers assume a real 301-redirect plan, attribute mapping, and 90 days of post-launch SEO monitoring. The cheapest migration quotes ($5K-$10K Magento) almost always skip redirects entirely and lose 30-60% of organic traffic — see our Shopify migration page for the full methodology.
A reasonable Shopify retainer is $1,000-$3,000/mo for a DTC store with monthly feature work, app updates, and CRO experiments. Plus stores typically run $5,000-$15,000/mo for Plus partner agencies handling theme work, app integrations, B2B configuration, and quarterly performance reviews. Our Shopify maintenance and block-of-hours retainer options cover both shapes — preventive maintenance versus project hours.
Three reasons. First, scope differences: a $3K quote often skips checkout customization, email flows, real product photography, and post-launch support. Second, ownership: cheaper builds frequently leave the store on a developer's account or use a closed page builder; you cannot cleanly migrate later. Third, the engineering market: senior Shopify developers in the US bill $120-$250/hr; offshore agencies bill $25-$70/hr but vary widely on quality. We bill at competitive global rates with US senior leads on every project; the cheapest quote is rarely the lowest total cost.
30-minute discovery call. We send a written scope and a real fixed-fee quote within two business days. No retainer commitment to scope.
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