Cost of a Shopify website in 2021 and should you hire a Shopify Expert?

Wondering how much it costs to hire a Shopify expert? Or the price of doing it all alone? Read on to find out how much you should pay for your Shopify store.

Maybe, you’re intending on starting a new eCommerce business?  Or you might have an existing business and website that aren’t good enough? Perhaps, you’re after the simplest of websites so you can start your online journey and get those first elusive first sales into your business.

Whatever situation you are in, it can be a daunting and extremely confusing process when choosing the right website for your business.

What features must it have? Which Shopify templates work best for your niche? What questions should you ask the Shopify expert? And of course, the most important question… How much does it all cost to build?

Generally, this all boils down to how much work is involved in the designing and development phase. The 2 factors determining how much work is involved are the size and complexity of your Shopify website.

What amount of custom developments are required from the Shopify developer? Here, we’ll be going through all the options and prices on building a Shopify website in 2021.

Let’s go.

Option #1 Do it all yourself

If you have lots of free time and an interest in learning the back end of your Shopify store, then doing it alone can be a great amount of fun and insanely rewarding as you’re learning new things and picking some great new skills along the way.

You will most likely be limited in choice when choosing a Shopify theme template. You should only choose the free themes as the paid theme templates will generally need development and they are much more complex in their build and these will require some coding done.

That is why choosing the right free Shopify template theme in this phase will save you countless £££ down the line. Test as much as possible to ensure you’ve picked the right one to best display your products to the audiences.

The cost of Shopify is roughly £22 per month after the currency conversion from dollars to pounds. There are many free themes to choose from and we recommend Debut or Brooklyn if you’re planning on going it alone.

The standard Shopify subscription is £22 a month and includes a free domain and hosting.

However, we do suggest buying your own domain name to use if you want your customers to have the best experience when visiting your online store.

No two Shopify websites are the same.  Ensure you choose the right apps for your business model based on which niche you are in and the products you are planning to sell. Shopify apps vary in prices with many available for free and others charging 100’s of pounds a month.

Total cost

Shopify subscription = from £22   per month

Option #2 Hire a Shopify Expert to build an MVP/Basic website

Some business owners just won’t have the time to build a Shopify website themselves. They may not want to invest large sums of cash into the business before the model has been proven and they have generated substantial sales.

So, for this scenario probably the best solution is an MVP website (minimal variable product). You will choose the website template and the developer will adapt it to suit your brand and business needs.

Most of the time you’ll find that the paid Shopify templates have better features. They can cost anything from $50 to $250 as a one-off payment and you’ll get the template theme applied to your store within minutes. Then it’s up to the Shopify expert to adjust the template accordingly and this will generally set you back £1500 to £2000 from the UK-based Shopify freelancer.

This kind of website tends to be suitable for businesses that want to be agile in getting to market ASAP but also want a professional-looking website.

An MVP website is a great way to get your online presence going without spending too much time and money in the initial building process.

Total cost

Shopify subscription = £22   per month

Template price = £39 – £195 one-off

Developer price = £1500 – £2000 one-off

Option #3 Hire a Shopify Expert to build a custom small to medium-sized website

Do you have a physical business selling products? Perhaps now you want to grow a separate online revenue stream in eCommerce?

With this option, a theme or template will be chosen. This gets you 50-60% over the finish line. Then the last part is customization and fitting the template to your business. The more customization and coding required, the greater the cost will be.

Prices will vary depending on the number of pages on the site and the amount of customization required. Custom graphics can give your Shopify site that wow factor, but they will come at an extra cost. Dynamic effects often require a lot of work to get there and will not be cheap.

At times getting your site to do what you want requires significant trial/error and testing. In a perfect world, everything would work perfectly well the first time — but rarely is that the case. Normally a good amount of tinkering and testing is needed to have the site working as intended.

Design revisions are another reason for the rising costs. Keep in mind, every design iteration takes time with some iterations requiring over 20 hours of solid coding. So, it’s important to try to stay as close to the original brief as possible to keep costs down.

Total cost

Shopify subscription = from £22 per month

Template price = £39 – £195 one-off

Developer price = £2500 – £5000 one-off

Option #4 Hire a Shopify Expert to build a fully custom large website

If you’re in the market for a large scale Shopify website with 100’s of pages, custom design layouts and bespoke imagery, unique functionality, and supplementary features (such as personalized development, blog integration, multimedia creation, etc.). You can expect to pay anywhere between £6000 to £12500 for the Shopify freelancer or web developer to complete your project

These types of projects typically start once the UI/UX design is ready and this price is not included in the developer price. So, the UI/UX designer will build the prototype (mockup) website, then the Shopify developers would turn it into a working product that runs on all major browsers.

Accordingly, development for a large-scale project can take many months and it all depends on the complexity of the build, ultimately this will influence your business’s web development costs.

Total cost

Shopify subscription = from £22 per month

Template price = £39 – £195 one-off

Developer price = £6000 – £12500 one-off

Pros & Cons: Hiring a Shopify Expert vs. Do it all Yourself

DO IT YOURSELF

PROS:

• If you don’t have much money then building it alone is cheaper than hiring a Shopify expert.
• Shopify has some clean themes and templates that will be decent enough to start with if you’re a very small business.
• You can make changes or updates to your Shopify site after it launches by yourself.

CONS:

• If you don’t have web development experience your website might look amateurish and negatively impact how your brand is perceived.
• Building a website can be a set of huge tasks and can sometimes feel overwhelming, so it’s common for people to procrastinate for months.
• If the aversion to building your Shopify site is big enough, you may never finish it.

HIRE A SHOPIFY EXPERT

PROS:

• No need to spend time on learning technology required to build and operate a Shopify website.
• The final product will be a modern, professional website that accurately represents your company and your brand and one you’re proud of.
• The good experience for visitors will be replicated on desktop, tablet, and mobile.
• They can recommend ideas and help you avoid mistakes you probably wouldn’t have thought of alone.

CONS:

• This will require an investment of at least £1000 and can go above £12500.
• If you haven’t proven your business model spending big amounts on an unproven business can be a risk.
• If you hire the wrong team it can be a frustrating and costly experience.

Summary