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So, you’ve decided to use Shopify to set up your online store. This is a really good decision, considering that Shopify remains one of the most popular ecommerce platforms out there and is perfect for both small and large businesses. The next big question is probably: how much does a Shopify website cost?
You need to learn what factors impact the overall cost of the store so you can plan the budget correspondingly. Below we’ll walk you through the main factors that impact the Shopify website cost and will explain the available pricing plans that the platform offers.
What impacts Shopify website development cost?
The overall price of a Shopify store is impacted by many factors, with the core ones being:
- Selected pricing plan: Shopify offers several pricing options, each having its own monthly cost and a specific set of features included in the plan.
- Design: business owners can either select from readymade and available themes or create a custom theme (which will be more expensive).
- Integrations: the more integrations you need, the bigger the cost of your store will be.
- Functionality: custom Shopify website development is always more expensive than using available templates and solutions so if you need any complex or unique features, it will cost more.
- Add-ons: Shopify offers a variety of free and paid apps that allow you to extend the functionality of your store in an easy manner.
- SEO: search engine optimization is critical for any online business, especially an ecommerce store, so get prepared to spend some time and money on it. Though Shopify has built-in SEO tools, you might want to use additional ones.
- Marketing: a solid marketing strategy will help you attract more traffic to the site and stand out from the competition so it’s important to invest in PR and marketing and plan your activities in advance.
You can either set up a store independently or hire someone to build Shopify store in accordance with your business needs. The latter option is recommended for medium-sized and big businesses since their online stores normally require a certain amount of customization which should be done by knowledgeable developers.
Main stages of the development process and corresponding costs
The costs described above arise during different development stages. Here is a rough breakdown of the process and the corresponding costs:
- Research and market analysis: consulting fees. If you partner with a development company, you will most probably pay for the services of a business analyst. This person will help you analyze the market and the competition and will help create a solid business strategy.
- Pre-development activities: a monthly fee, hosting. Before working with the platform, you will have to select the pricing plan and the hosting option. More about each – below.
- Design: UX/UI design, usability testing, paid theme. If you decide to go with a custom theme, you will have to pay for the design services and usability testing. If you decide to select among the available and readymade themes, you might need to pay for the selected paid one.
- Development: customization, integrations, add-ons. This stage includes all coding-related processes and corresponding development fees, if you delegate these tasks to a software provider.
- Testing: debugging, testing. It is recommended to perform comprehensive testing to check whether the platform performs as expected and its design matches intended user journeys.
- Launch: marketing, app store fees. Though some marketing should definitely be done in advance, the main marketing activities happen during the store launch. Hence, you will be paying for marketing and promotion as well as for app store fees, in case you have an ecommerce app and decide to publish it on a store.
- Maintenance: testing, debugging, fixes. Once the store goes live, the work doesn’t stop there. You will need to monitor its performance and quickly debug arising issues, so it’s best if a development team does that for you.
Available Shopify pricing plans and what they offer
While Shopify offers four pricing plans, we will focus only on three since the last one named Plus is a bit too specific. What you need to know about the Plus plan is that it is suitable for complex businesses and is available on a 1- or 3-year term only. And now, let’s look at the three plans that are the most popular among ecommerce store owners: Basic, Shopify, and Advanced.
Basic plan
Price: $32/month if charged monthly, $24/month if billed once yearly.
The Basic plan is perfect for new and small businesses that are just entering the online market. It offers just enough functionality for a solid start and helps business owners easily set up and fine-tune their store. The most interesting features included in this plan are:
- Localized global selling
- 10 inventory locations
- POS Lite
- Built-in blogging engine
- Competitive transaction fees
- Advanced reporting
As you can see, the available functionality is perfect for small businesses that want to deliver omnichannel selling experience and establish robust online presence.
Shopify plan
Price: $92/month if charged monthly, $69/month if billed once yearly.
The Shopify plan is suitable for growing ecommerce businesses that already have an online presence and wish to enter new markets and expand their business operations. Its distinctive feature is International – a cross-border management tool for setting up and optimizing your international stores. Other notable features are:
- Support for five additional staff accounts
- More advanced reporting
- 24/7 chat support
The Shopify plan is pretty similar to the Basic plan and they share almost the same functionality. The only differences are the International feature and the number of staff accounts and locations.
Advanced plan
Price: $399/month if charged monthly, $299/month if billed once yearly.
Finally, the Advanced plan is recommended for well-established ecommerce businesses with large sales volumes. In addition to all the features from the Shopify plan, the Advanced one also offers the following:
- Carrier-calculated shipping
- Customized reporting
- Advanced options for international commerce
- 15 staff accounts
- 10x checkout capacity
Overall, the Advanced plan offers a very high level of store customization, thus being perfect for big ecommerce companies that focus on individuality and globalization.
Main components that make up the cost of a Shopify store
We’ve briefly discussed what factors impact the cost of setting up a Shopify store. Now let’s look at them in more detail and discuss available options and the approximate price of each. This will also partially answer the “how to build a shopify store” question since we’ll go through the main components and stages.
Store hosting and domain name
Price: included in a subscription fee
In general, there are two hosting options available: SaaS hosting and self-hosting. In case of Shopify, the platform offers hosting services and the hosting fee is already included in your monthly subscription. That being said, you don’t have to worry about the cost of hosting. Plus, Shopify hosting includes many perks like unlimited bandwidth or an SSL certificate.
Design
Price: $0 – $400
Design is critical for any ecommerce store as it forms the first impression and impacts the way users interact with your store. When talking about the design of a Shopidy store, the following options are available:
- Free themes: quite simple yet user-friendly and appealing. Perfect for small businesses that are just starting.
- Paid themes: offer more customization options and are more suitable for middle-sized and big businesses.
The price of paid themes varies between $180 – $400 but the good news is that it is a one-time payment.
If the customization provided by a paid theme is not enough, you can actually deep-customize it through coding. Note that it would cost you extra since you will need a skilled developer to do the job.
Customization
Price: $5,000 – $40,000
In terms of an ecommerce store, customization means all coding activities that you do in order to make the store look and perform exactly how you need it. This is usually done in the case when the available functionality is not enough or you need to tweak certain features (most often, design).
For the best results, it is recommended to partner with a reliable software development company that has experience in Shopify customization. In this way, you will make sure that the performance and operation of your store is not disrupted while the changes are being made and that you will get exactly what you need.
Payment processing
Price: depends on the selected plan
Payments are an integral part of any ecommerce store and normally, customers expect online businesses to accept multiple formats of payment, like credit cards, PayPal, or Stripe. To minimize effort for business owners, Shopify has Shopify Payments included in all of its plans. It is a payment gateway that supports various payment processors and allows store owners to start selling immediately after the store launch. Shopify Payments supports credit cards, Apple Pay, Shop Pay, and other processors.
Note thought that Shopify charges you a payment processing fee, the amount of which depends on the selected plan:
- Basic: 2% 3rd-party payment providers
- Shopify: 1% 3rd-party payment providers
- Advanced: 0.6% 3rd-party payment providers
For more detailed information, please contact Shopify support.
Add-ons and applications
Price: $0 – $5,000
Though Shopify offers extensive functionality out of the box, you will most probably need a few additional features that come in the form of Shopify apps and are available in the Shopify App Store. These apps can be described as modules that you plug in the store to extend its functionality.
As for the price, there are free and paid apps available (same as design themes). The price of paid apps varies and note that most of them charge you on a monthly subscription basis. One more option that you can choose is development of a custom application. This is the most expensive option and is normally used only by those stores that need something truly unique and innovative.
SEO
Price: included in the out-of-box features
One more thing to talk about is search engine optimization which is critical for making your store visible among hundreds of similar sites. Just like most of ecommerce platforms, Shopify offers built-in SEO tools that help you start off strong. However, you will most likely need additional SEO help as your site launches and operates as SEO is a highly dynamic matter and should be performed consistently. Hence, you will need assistance of an expert SEO professional who will analyze the performance of both your store and the competition and suggest the most actionable SEO strategy.
How to build a Shopify store and save costs?
In general, Shopify is a very affordable yet powerful ecommerce solution. But in case you need to cut your budget a bit, we’ve prepared a list of tips that will help you save money without compromising the performance of your store.
Select the right Shopify plan
The first step that will help you save money is selecting the right pricing plan for your store. Some business owners tend to over-estimate the expected load and needed functionality and choose a more costly option from the start. Hence, we recommend that you clearly define the requirements for your store and see which pricing plan matches them the best. Sometimes it can be more cost-efficient in a long run to go with a cheaper plan and implement a few custom extensions than to choose a more expensive option.
Check for unused apps
This tip is more relevant to the owners of the already running Shopify store but we’ll mention it anyways. It is a frequent case when you add too many apps to your store in an attempt to make it as user-centric and functional as possible. With time, some of these apps may become unused – but the subscription still stays and adds to the overall store cost. Hence, double-check if you really need all the apps in use or can remove a few without affecting the performance of the store.
Consider using a design template
We’ve already mentioned that a design template is the cheapest option available in terms of design. So in case of a tight budget, we highly recommend considering a readymade design template. This will help you save a significant amount of money and create a satisfactory user experience at the same time since all Shopify themes are highly user-friendly and feature-rich.
How much does a Shopify website cost? Summing up
The final Shopify website cost depends on multiple factors and may fluctuate with time as your store grows and changes. But in general, Shopify is a more cost-friendly ecommerce solution than other platforms and allows you to set up a highly functional and user-friendly store even with the Basic plan. Just choose the option that meets your business needs and budget the best and prioritize the functionality so you can plan which features to add in the future and which are the essential must-haves from the start.
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