Most answers to this question are a range so wide it tells you nothing. Here is the version with the reasoning attached, including the recurring costs that never appear in a build quote and account for more of the three-year total than people expect.
The four realistic tiers
| Theme setupPremium theme, your branding, light configuration | $500 - $3,000 |
| Theme customisationCustom sections, a reworked PDP, real merchandising control | $3,000 - $8,000 |
| Custom buildDesigned and built around your catalogue and buying decision | $8,000 - $25,000 |
| Plus or headlessB2B, multi-market, checkout logic, custom front end | $25,000 - $100,000+ |
Starting points, not quotes. We fix the number in writing after a discovery call so it does not move afterwards.
Theme setup is right for a first store or a brand testing a category. You are buying a launch, not a competitive advantage.
Theme customisation is where most brands doing real revenue should be. You keep the theme's foundations and rebuild the parts that carry money — usually the product page and the collection experience.
A custom build earns its cost when the buying decision is unusual, when merchandising needs to be run by the team, or when performance has become a constraint.
Plus and headless are capability purchases. If you cannot name the capability, you are not ready to buy them.
What actually moves the number
Integration count. Every system you connect — ERP, 3PL, subscriptions, loyalty, a PIM — is a workstream with its own edge cases. This is the single biggest driver and it is consistently underestimated.
Catalogue complexity. Thirty products with two variants is a different build from three thousand SKUs with dependent options.
Number of markets. Each one adds currency, tax, content and routing work.
Content readiness. A build waiting on photography and copy costs more than one where they exist, because the team is idle and the timeline stretches.
The most expensive thing in any build is an unscoped change made late. A change agreed in week one costs an hour; the same change in week seven costs a day and breaks two other things.
What is never in the quote
App subscriptions. A functioning store commonly carries $200 to $800 a month in apps. Reviews, subscriptions, search, loyalty, helpdesk, email. Budget this from day one because it never stops.
The platform. Shopify from roughly $40 a month, Plus from roughly $2,300.
Photography and copy. Real costs, usually larger than brands expect, and almost never included in a development quote.
Paid media. A store with no traffic converts nothing.
Maintenance. Somebody has to own the store after launch.
The three-year view
A $12,000 build with $400 a month in apps and modest maintenance is not a $12,000 decision. It is closer to $30,000 over three years, and that is the number worth comparing platforms and approaches against.
Talk it through
Want a real number rather than a range?
Send us your store URL or your brief, your catalogue size and the systems you need connected. You will get a scoped figure within a business day — and if a theme would serve you better, we will say so.
Get it scopedA real read within one business day — not a sales call.
How to read a quote
Ask what is explicitly not included. A good quote lists that as clearly as what is.
Ask what happens when scope changes. Fixed-price with a change process beats hourly with an estimate, because the risk sits with the party who can actually control it.
Ask who writes the code, and whether they were on the scoping call.
And be suspicious of the cheapest bid. It is usually the one that has understood the least about what you are asking for, and the difference reappears later as change requests.
About the author
Manpreet Singh
Manpreet Singh is the founder of Proscube, an ecommerce growth studio. He leads the studio's Shopify and Shopify Plus engineering, headless builds, CRO, and its work on AI engine optimization, and writes its guidance on how to grow a DTC brand without wasting money. He works directly with founders — no account-manager layers between you and the people doing the work — and would rather tell a client not to build something than sell them work they don't need.
More about Manpreet
