"How much does it cost to set up a Shopify store?" is one of the questions we hear most often. The honest answer is that there is no single figure that applies to everyone. On the same platform, the budget of a start-up launching with a handful of products and that of a brand with thousands of products, an ERP connection and sales in several countries can be worlds apart.

As an official Shopify Partner, Booster Wizard explains in this article the items that make up the cost and what makes each one grow, rather than quoting prices. Our aim is to help you see clearly what you need and what you are paying for before you ask agencies for proposals.

The Three Main Cost Groups

It helps to think of the total cost of a Shopify store in three groups:

  • Recurring platform costs: the Shopify plan, transaction fees, paid apps, the domain and payment provider commissions.
  • One-off project costs: design, development, integrations, data migration, content, SEO and tracking set-up.
  • Ongoing operating costs: maintenance, campaign preparation and growth marketing.

Recurring Costs Paid to Shopify

Plan subscription

Shopify offers plans at several levels, such as Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus. The plans differ in areas such as the number of staff accounts, the number of inventory locations, the level of support and payment fees. Because plan fees change over time and can vary depending on the country where the business is based, we recommend always checking the latest information on shopify.com. The right plan should be chosen for your current needs and near-term growth goals; your plan subscription can be changed later.

Transaction fees

Shopify's own payment solution, Shopify Payments, is not available to stores based in Türkiye, so stores selling from Türkiye work with third-party payment providers. Shopify charges an additional transaction fee on orders processed through third-party payment providers, and the rate depends on the plan, being lower on higher plans. We recommend checking the current rates on shopify.com/pricing. When budgeting, remember that this item grows along with your sales volume.

Apps

Some apps in the Shopify App Store are free, while others use a monthly subscription, usage-based pricing or a one-time payment. App subscriptions are added to your Shopify bill. App fees that look small individually can add up to a significant share of your monthly costs, so it is worth regularly reviewing whether each app is actually being used.

Theme and domain

The Shopify Theme Store offers both free themes developed by Shopify and paid themes from independent developers. You can try and customise a paid theme in your own admin before buying it, and a purchased theme is licensed only to the store it was bought for. You can buy your domain through Shopify or connect a domain you bought from another provider.

Payment Provider Commissions

Payment providers such as iyzico and PayTR apply their own commissions, separately from Shopify's transaction fee. Choices such as offering instalments and how long it takes for payments to reach your account can affect this cost, so the current terms should be obtained directly from the provider. When choosing a payment provider, we recommend weighing up not just the commission but also how the Shopify integration works and its 3D Secure support.

One-Off Project Costs

When you work with an agency, these items make up most of the proposal. The scope of each one directly determines the total budget.

Design

Adapting a ready-made theme to your brand gives you a faster, more affordable start. A custom theme takes more work because it is designed and coded from scratch, but in return it reflects your brand identity and conversion strategy exactly. The cost of design depends on the number of page templates, the need for custom sections, animations and how much weight is given to the mobile experience.

Development and integrations

Although Online Store 2.0 themes offer a lot of flexibility with sections and blocks, many brands have needs of their own. The jobs that affect the development budget most are:

  • Custom sections and product pages built with metafields, comparison tables or outfit suggestions.
  • Two-way data exchange with ERP, accounting and inventory systems.
  • E-invoice and e-archive, shipping carrier and marketplace integrations.
  • Brand-specific Shopify apps for processes that have no ready-made solution.

Building something custom where a ready-made app would do the job inflates the budget unnecessarily. Conversely, trying to solve a critical process with several apps that do not fit together can turn out more expensive in the long run.

Data migration

If you are coming from another platform, data migration is a separate item. The number of products, how complex the variant structure is, whether customer and order history will be moved and the number of 301 redirects to set up determine the scope of this work. Doing the transfer through the APIs of the source platform and Shopify reduces both the risk of errors and the time involved on large catalogs, compared with preparing files by hand. For a step-by-step migration process: Read our Ticimax to Shopify migration guide

Content and photography

Product descriptions, category copy, company pages and product photography are often forgotten in the budget, yet they have the biggest impact on conversion. Whether your existing content can be reused, whether new shoots are needed and how many languages the content will be prepared in determine the cost.

SEO and tracking set-up

Shopify generates the sitemap and robots.txt automatically, but page titles, meta descriptions, collection structure and internal links still need planning. Setting up conversion tracking correctly for Google Analytics, Search Console and ad platforms is a separate job too. Expanding into several countries and languages widens the scope of both content and SEO. For the article where we cover this in detail: See our guide to selling abroad with Shopify

Ongoing Costs After Launch

Because Shopify takes care of hosting, security and platform updates, you do not have to worry about server maintenance. Even so, keeping the store alive and growing means planning for these items:

  • Maintenance and development: theme updates, new sections, app changes and bug fixes.
  • Campaign preparation: landing pages, visuals and discount set-ups for special days and sale periods.
  • Growth marketing: ad management, email marketing, content production and conversion rate optimisation.

How Should You Plan the Budget?

The healthiest approach is to launch with a first version that is ready to sell, rather than trying to make the store perfect in one go. This is the order we recommend in our projects:

  • Identify the essentials for selling: product pages, payments, shipping, e-invoicing and basic tracking set-up.
  • Keep a separate "nice to have" list and leave it for the second phase.
  • After launch, look at real customer data to decide which improvement comes first.
  • Calculate recurring costs such as the plan, apps and commissions on a yearly basis.

Questions to Ask an Agency

Before you request a proposal, or during the proposal meeting, ask for clear answers to these questions:

  • Will a ready-made theme be adapted, or will a custom theme be developed?
  • Which integrations are included in the proposal, and which will be handled with ready-made apps?
  • Are data migration and 301 redirects within the scope?
  • How many rounds of revisions are included, and how does post-launch support work?
  • In whose name will the theme, the code and the store account be?

How Should You Compare Proposals?

The difference between two proposals usually comes from scope, not price. When you put proposals side by side, look at the content of each item rather than the total. One may include a custom theme and integrations while the other covers only a ready-made theme set-up. Every item left vague can come back later as additional work. Sending the same list of requirements to every agency is the easiest way to make the comparison fair.

Hidden Costs to Watch For

In projects that go over budget, we usually run into the same items:

  • App subscriptions that pile up over time and inflate monthly costs.
  • Transaction fees and payment commissions that grow as sales volume increases.
  • The effort spent winning back organic traffic lost because of missing redirects.
  • Content, photography and translation work that was not in the proposal.
  • Unplanned maintenance and small development requests after launch.

Conclusion

What determines the cost of a Shopify store is not so much the platform itself as the scope of your needs. Brands that calculate recurring costs correctly, keep the first version lean and split growth into phases protect their budget and start selling sooner.

If you are planning your Shopify store, let's talk about your project: See our Shopify Partner services