Cost of building a Shopify website
Building any form of website usually involves multiple forms of expenses, and the deeper we go into the technicalities attempting to make it better, the costs rise and so do the complexities. But for our initial understanding let’s study the structures of the website, and the costs associated.
There are 3 major forms of costs when it comes to building a Shopify website –
1. Cost of Creation –
There are several elements involved to creating a functional Shopify store, and the cost of creation involves –
- Shopify theme – There are Free themes and Paid Shopify themes
- Cost of developers/freelancers – To develop the Shopify store, there are multiple experts who can be hired to develop high-performing stores
- Costs of any external plugins or widgets (If any)
- Cost of content – Website content/copy, Product details, Product images, etc
2. Cost of Maintenance –
This is a monthly recurring expense and includes the cost of web-hosting servers, the domain name, and the monthly subscription costs one pays to Shopify.
Shopify offers 3 tiers of Shopify to its retail users – Basic Shopify, Shopify, & Shopify Advanced.
3. Cost of Growth/ Optimisation(Optional) –
These costs are outside the minimum required expenses, but almost every business owner who has a website for themselves wants to grow their business, and in such cases, there are additional costs involved, some of which are –
- Cost of employing store managers to manage the website orders, processes, etc
- Costs in optimizing website content – Copywriting, Product-Images, videos, etc
- Optimizing for SEO – Hiring SEO consultants, writing blogs, etc
- Improving user experience by making the UI/UX better
Now that we have a fair idea of the categories of costs involved, we can now explore the above-mentioned costs in detail to develop a better understanding of how the cost structure of a Shopify Website.
Cost of Development – Theme costs + Developers + Widgets/Plugins
There are 2 major components in the cost of development of a Shopify store –
1. Cost of themes, plugins, widgets
This is mostly a one-time expense where the business owners need to set up their online store. There are many themes that are available for use, some of which are Free to use, while some are Premium themes that are paid. Typically a decently paid theme by Shopify costs anywhere between $50-$200, and the cost depends on multiple factors such as design aesthetics, user experience, page speed, functionalities, design offerings, etc
Logically Free is good, but not good enough for someone to be able to fluently run all their business operations, and that’s when the Premium themes come into play offering a wide variety of options that otherwise would cost money in the form of widgets, and plugins.
Why do people pay for Premium themes?
There can be many answers to this question, but the major reasons for the choice of Premium over Free are as follows –
- Custom Branding – Free themes have limited offerings in customizing layouts
- Unique Features –
- Built-in theme features –
2. Cost in development of the store – Freelancers, Consultants, etc
Not everyone has the time to build their Shopify stores from scratch, and this is when Shopify experts come into the picture who will charge businesses a certain amount of money, and help them bring their ideas to life.
The honest answer to the question of cost is – “Depends”. The cost of a Shopify developer and their services is determined by the scope of work, and the amount of work needed to get it done.
If you’re hiring a Shopify Expert to set up a Shopify store from scratch, then the costs may be very high as compared to hiring a Shopify Expert to make changes in the site structure or the theme structure of an already existing Shopify Store.
The cost of hiring a Shopify Developer will depend on –
- Scope of work – Build a website from scratch or customize a theme? Costs are heavily dependent on the scope of the work to be done
- Experience of the Shopify Expert – People with more experience and projects are likely to charge higher than their counterparts who may not have that much experience
- Time took – Many developers charge hourly. A task as simple as uploading products can take more time than developing the store itself if the number of product SKUs is very high.
- The scale at which the work has to be done – High volume stores often require the expertise of multiple experienced developers to set up or maintain the store.
Pro-tip – If you’re looking to start a drop-shipping store, Shopify is a great place to start, as it’s loaded with great plugins that can help you boost your Shopify store.
Cost of Maintenance or Recurring costs –
There are 3 tiers that Shopify offers to its customers. We should note that these tiers of Shopify cover major features that are required to run a website – Hosting, Ability to add products to your online store, staff accounts to manage orders, 24/7 support, and the ability to add plugins, and do much more.
- Basic Shopify – This is for lite users, and the billing cost starts at just $29 every month, which includes a suite of features that is good enough for a small business or individual. Shopify charges 2% as transaction fees if you are in this tier.
- Shopify – This one costs users a minimum of $79/month, and has more offerings than the previous tier, and is suited for businesses who have more volume to handle. Shopify charges 1.0% as transaction fees if you are in this tier.
- Shopify Advanced – As the name suggests this is for advanced users who have huge amounts of volumes, and involves multiple stakeholders who manage the store. Shopify charges 0.5% as transaction fees if you are in this tier.
- Shopify Plus – This one is for power users, and the pricing starts at a minimum of $2000 per month.
Conclusion – Shopify is the best thing that ever happened to the internet businesses, as it allowed them to reduce their costs of development substantially, and helped them bring their ideas to the world.
800,000 businesses are already using Shopify. What are you waiting for? Looking for an expert Shopify developer?
