"A Shopify app" covers three quite different things, and conflating them is how quotes end up ten times apart.
The three kinds
| Custom app for one storeSolves your problem, installed only on your store | $6,000 - $20,000 |
| Public app, focusedListed, multi-tenant, billing, support, review process | $25,000 - $60,000 |
| Public app, substantialComplex logic, scale, ongoing product investment | $60,000 - $150,000+ |
Most brands asking this question need the first one and are being quoted for the second.
A custom app is software for your store alone. No listing, no billing system, no support desk, no App Store review. It is the right answer when you need behaviour Shopify does not offer and no existing app provides.
A public app is a product business. Multi-tenant architecture, subscription billing, onboarding, support, App Store review, and a roadmap. The build is a fraction of the total commitment.
If the words "we should list it and make money from it" appear in the first conversation, price the second thing. Brands routinely scope a custom app and describe a product company.
What drives the number
How much of Shopify it touches. Reading orders is cheap. Writing to inventory across locations, handling webhooks reliably, and reconciling state is where the hours go.
Whether it has a UI in the admin. Embedded admin UI with Polaris is real front-end work.
Whether it touches checkout. Checkout UI extensions are Plus-only and are their own discipline.
Reliability requirements. An app that can fail quietly costs far less than one that cannot.
Before you build anything
Check whether an existing app does eighty percent of it. A $49 a month app that gets you most of the way is almost always better than $15,000 of bespoke code you then own forever.
We have talked several brands out of app builds by finding the app. That is a worse outcome for us and a better one for them, and it is the right recommendation often enough to be worth asking about first.
Talk it through
Describe what you need it to do.
We will tell you whether an existing app covers it, what a custom build would cost, and whether the problem is better solved somewhere other than an app.
Ask us firstA real read within one business day — not a sales call.
Ongoing cost
Shopify deprecates API versions on a schedule. Somebody has to keep up, and a custom app with no maintenance plan becomes a broken app on a timeline you do not control. Budget a small retainer or accept that you will pay for an emergency later.
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.
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