What does a Shopify website cost? Honest answer: the build runs between €1,500 and €50,000, but that is not where most business owners get caught out. The real surprise sits in the monthly costs Shopify stacks on top: the subscription, a pile of paid apps and the transaction fees per order. A shop on a free theme and a custom shop on Shopify Plus are both called a “Shopify website”, yet they are two completely different projects with two completely different price tags. One team handling both the design and the build keeps the price at the lower end of these ranges and the lead time short. What you pay depends on five things: the subscription, the theme, the apps, the integrations you need and how much of your own logic it holds. This article is the Shopify deep-dive under our broader guide on what a website costs, and it shows the real prices, including the running costs most quotes leave out. For the build itself, see our webshop service.
What does a Shopify website cost per route?
The most useful way to look at prices is per route, not per agency. Below are four categories with the one-time build cost, the lead time and the monthly costs in the Dutch market in 2026. These are realistic ranges for SMB shops, not teasers and not enterprise figures.
| Route | One-time build cost | Lead time | Monthly costs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Start yourself on an existing theme | €0 to €500 | 1 to 3 weeks yourself | €28 to €90 |
| Shop on an existing theme via an agency | €1,500 to €5,000 | 2 to 4 weeks | €60 to €150 |
| Professional Shopify shop (custom design, integrations) | €6,000 to €15,000 | 4 to 7 weeks | €120 to €350 |
| Custom or Shopify Plus (B2B, headless, own logic) | €20,000 to €50,000 | 6 to 12 weeks | €300 to €2,500 |
The monthly costs cover the Shopify subscription, apps and regular maintenance. Transaction fees come on top, because they scale with your revenue. Shopify, by the way, is only one route to a webshop, and the costs differ sharply per platform. If you are torn between Shopify and another platform, our comparison of WordPress, Webflow, Wix and Shopify helps you decide.
What do the Shopify subscriptions cost in 2026?
The subscription is the fixed base of your Shopify costs, and you pay it for as long as your shop exists. Shopify works with four tiers, from a simple starter pack to an enterprise plan. The higher the subscription, the lower the transaction fee per order, so the cheapest plan is not automatically the most economical.
| Plan | Per month (monthly) | Per month (annual) | Extra transaction fee with external provider |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | €28 | €21 | 2.0% |
| Grow | €78 | €59 | 1.0% |
| Advanced | €384 | €289 | 0.6% |
| Plus | from €2,100 | on request | 0.2% |
These amounts come straight from Shopify’s own pricing page (2026). For most starting webshops, Basic is enough. Grow gets interesting once you drive more revenue, because the lower transaction fees pay back the pricier subscription. Advanced and Plus are for shops with many orders, multiple countries or B2B logic. Always convert it to your expected revenue, because that is where the real trade-off sits.
What do the costs of a Shopify shop consist of?
This is where Shopify works differently than most people think. The build price is one-time, but Shopify stacks five running costs on top of it. Below is the full cost breakdown, so you see exactly which dial you can push or release to stay within budget.
| Cost item | Price indication | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription | €28 to €384 per month | Basic to Advanced; Plus from €2,100 |
| Theme | €0 to €350 one-time | Free theme such as Dawn or a premium theme |
| Apps | €0 to €300 per month | Reviews, email, upsell, subscriptions, stock |
| Build and setup | €1,500 to €50,000 one-time | Design, build, content, integrations |
| Transaction fees | 1.6% to 2.9% per order | Payment provider plus any Shopify surcharge |
The item sellers underestimate most is the apps. Shopify deliberately ships a bare base and earns from an app store full of paid extensions. An average shop quickly stacks five to ten apps for reviews, email marketing, upsells and stock management, each €10 to €40 a month. Before you know it you pay €150 a month for apps that come built in on a custom shop. Premium themes cost, according to the sellers in the Shopify store, mostly between €90 and €320 one-time. For the broader trade-off between an off-the-shelf platform and a purpose-built shop, read our comparison of WordPress, custom or headless.
What are Shopify’s transaction fees?
This is the Shopify-specific trap that appears in almost no quote. Shopify has its own payment solution, Shopify Payments, and steers you toward it on purpose. Use it and you pay roughly 1.9 percent plus €0.25 per online payment on Basic, dropping to 1.6 percent plus €0.25 on Advanced, according to the pricing page. So far, so normal.
The sting is in the external providers. If you would rather check out through Mollie or Stripe, for example for iDEAL, Shopify adds a surcharge on top: 2 percent on Basic, 1 percent on Grow and 0.6 percent on Advanced. That surcharge is purely a penalty for not using Shopify Payments, and it comes on top of your own provider’s costs.
A worked example makes it concrete. Drive €10,000 in revenue a month on the Basic plan and check out through an external provider, and you pay 2 percent in Shopify surcharge alone, which is €200 a month. Over a year that is €2,400, purely because you do not check out through Shopify. At high revenue that is often reason to move to a higher plan or to reopen the whole Shopify-versus-custom trade-off.
Why is Shopify so expensive?
This question keeps coming back on the SERP, and the honest answer is not that Shopify is bad. Shopify feels expensive because you pay in four places at once: the subscription, the paid apps, the transaction fees and the build. Each piece looks small, but together they add up. A shop on Basic with eight apps and €10,000 in revenue easily sits at €28 subscription plus €150 in apps plus €200 in transaction surcharge, before you have spent anything on maintenance or marketing. That is nearly €380 a month in fixed Shopify costs.
There is something in return, though. You do not have to think about hosting, security or updates, because Shopify handles that. For an owner who wants to sell fast without technical hassle, that is worth money. The question is not whether Shopify is expensive, but whether the convenience it gives you outweighs the running costs. The moment you stack many apps or drive high revenue, that trade-off often tips toward a purpose-built shop.
Shopify or custom: which is cheaper long term?
This is the question that causes most budget arguments. Shopify is almost always cheaper than custom in year one. The question is whether that still holds after two years. Below is a worked example for a professional Shopify shop of €10,000 in build cost on the Grow plan, run across two years, so you see where your money goes after launch.
| Cost item | Year 1 | Year 2 | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| One-time build cost | €10,000 | €0 | Design, setup, integrations, delivery |
| Shopify subscription (Grow, annual) | €708 | €708 | €59 per month |
| Apps and licences | €1,440 | €1,680 | Five to eight paid apps |
| Maintenance and small changes | €900 | €1,080 | Updates to theme, content, apps |
| Total | €13,048 | €3,468 | 24-month TCO: €16,516 |
The build cost here is about 77 percent of year one and nothing in year two. Anyone comparing on the build quote alone misses the running costs that, over two years, add up to a third of the build price again, transaction fees not even included. On Shopify those running costs climb faster the more apps you stack, because every app is a subscription that ticks every month. Custom costs more up front, but keeps those monthly costs low and is tied to nothing.
Our rule of thumb: Shopify is fine for a standard B2C shop you want to launch fast and are happy to revisit in two years. Choose custom the moment you sell B2B, need heavy integrations with your warehouse or accounting, or want a feature no app solves cleanly. The underlying question, whose shop is it really, we cover in website ownership without lock-in. For a worked example, see the anonymous e-commerce case.
Why is a cheap Shopify shop sometimes false economy?
A Shopify shop “from €699” exists, but you pay the difference back somewhere else. Usually in one of these forms. A standard theme that looks like thousands of other shops and so builds no trust. A stack of free apps that load slowly and drag down your conversion. Or a setup that stalls after six months the moment you want something the theme does not offer.
Speed is no detail here. According to research by Google, the probability of a visitor bouncing rises 32 percent when load time goes from 1 to 3 seconds. And the Baymard Institute, which pools nearly fifty studies, measures an average cart abandonment rate of around 70 percent. So every second of delay and every bump in your checkout costs you revenue directly, and a shop crammed with heavy apps is exactly the kind that loads slowly. The market is there: according to Eurostat, the Netherlands has one of the highest shares of online shoppers in the EU. The question is whether they find and trust your shop. For the full picture of what a too-cheap choice costs later, read our article on the hidden costs of cheap websites.
What is the first step?
- Write down what your shop has to do, not how it should look. Do you sell to consumers or businesses? How many products? Which integrations and apps do you truly need?
- Run your Shopify costs against your expected revenue. At low revenue Basic is fine; at high revenue a higher plan pays back through lower transaction fees. Always count apps and the transaction surcharge in.
- Ask every quote split out: subscription, theme, apps, build and integrations separately, transaction fees included. That way you compare apples with apples instead of a teaser price.
Book a free intake call. In thirty minutes we look at what your shop needs to do, give an honest price indication and tell you whether Shopify or custom is the right choice for you. For the full decision path around your online presence, read our complete custom website guide.
