How much does a Shopify website cost in the UK?

A Shopify website in the UK typically costs a few hundred pounds to set up yourself, roughly £1,500 to £5,000 for a professional theme setup, roughly £6,000 to £20,000 for a custom-designed theme, and £20,000 and up for a headless build. On top of that you'll pay a monthly Shopify plan, payment processing fees on every sale and, usually, a few app subscriptions. The build is the number people ask about, but the running costs are what decide whether Shopify is good value for you.

Here's how the costs break down, and what moves a project from one end of the range to the other.

The short answer

These are typical UK market ranges for the build. Your project could land outside them.

• DIY with a free or premium theme: from a few hundred pounds, plus your own time. Fine for testing a product or a very small catalogue.
• Theme setup by a freelancer or studio: roughly £1,500 to £5,000. An existing theme configured to your brand, products imported, payments, shipping and tax set up, and a few small customisations.
• Custom Shopify theme: roughly £6,000 to £20,000. Designed around your brand and products, then built as a bespoke theme that your team manages in Shopify as normal.
• Headless Shopify: roughly £20,000 to £60,000 and beyond. Shopify runs products, checkout and orders, while a custom front end, often built with Next.js, handles the shopping experience.

Then add ongoing costs: the Shopify plan, payment fees, apps and some maintenance.

How much does Shopify cost per month in the UK?

Shopify plan fees

At the time of writing, Shopify's main UK plans run from roughly £19 to £259 a month when billed annually, or roughly £25 to £344 a month when billed monthly, across Basic, Grow and Advanced. Shopify Plus, for high-volume and enterprise merchants, is priced separately and costs a lot more. Shopify changes its pricing from time to time, so check Shopify's own UK pricing page before you budget.

Most small and medium shops start on Basic or Grow. The main reasons to move up are lower card rates once your sales volume is high enough, more staff accounts and more advanced reporting.

Payment and transaction fees

If you use Shopify Payments, you pay a card processing fee on each online sale. In the UK this is a percentage plus a small fixed fee per transaction, and the percentage drops on higher plans. It's typically around 1.5% to 2% plus a few pence per order, depending on your plan.

If you use a third-party payment provider instead of Shopify Payments, Shopify charges an extra transaction fee on top of that provider's own fees. On lower plans this adds up quickly, so most shops use Shopify Payments unless they have a specific reason not to.

Themes

Shopify has free themes that are perfectly good for many shops. Premium themes from the Shopify Theme Store are a one-off purchase, typically a few hundred pounds. A custom theme has no licence fee, but you pay for the design and build instead.

Apps

Apps are where Shopify costs quietly grow. Reviews, subscriptions, upsells, wishlists, product filters, loyalty schemes and email marketing all tend to come from apps, many charging monthly. A small shop might spend nothing on apps. A busy one can easily spend a few hundred pounds a month.

Apps also slow your store down. Each one can add scripts to every page, which hurts load times and Core Web Vitals. A good developer will often build simple features into the theme rather than adding another subscription.

Domain and email

Your domain is a small annual cost. Business email isn't included with Shopify, so budget for Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 separately.

Hosting

Hosting is included in every Shopify plan. That's one of the platform's real advantages. With a headless build, though, you'll also pay to host the custom front end, which we cover in our guide to website hosting costs.

What drives the build cost?

Theme setup or custom design

A theme setup works with an existing layout and adapts it. A custom theme is designed from scratch around your products and customers. Custom costs more, but it can make a mid-sized brand look and feel noticeably more premium than a theme everyone else is using.

Catalogue size and complexity

Fifty products with simple variants is a quick import. Thousands of products with complex variants, bundles or made-to-order options need more careful setup, data cleaning and sometimes custom code.

Integrations

Connecting Shopify to stock systems, warehouses, accounting software, ERPs or marketplaces adds work. Some integrations are a quick app install. Others need custom development.

Content and photography

Product descriptions, lifestyle photography and landing pages often take longer than the build. If you need help with content, budget for it separately.

Migration

Moving from WooCommerce, Magento or another platform means migrating products, customers and order history, and setting up redirects so you don't lose search rankings. It's a project in its own right.

Theme, custom or headless: which do you need?

Most shops should start with a well-built theme on Shopify. It's the fastest and cheapest way to start trading, and the platform isn't the limiting factor for most businesses. Our comparison of Shopify and custom e-commerce covers when a different platform makes more sense.

A custom theme makes sense when your brand is a big part of why people buy, or when the theme you're on is fighting you at every turn.

Headless makes sense when speed, content or the shopping experience are a real competitive advantage, or when you sell across several sites or regions from one catalogue. It's significantly more expensive to build and run, because you're maintaining a custom website as well as a Shopify store. We explain the trade-offs in our guide to headless Shopify with Next.js.

What does Shopify cost to run after launch?

Beyond plan fees, payment fees and apps, a Shopify store still needs looking after. Apps update and occasionally conflict, themes need updating to pick up new Shopify features, and integrations break when other systems change. Most shops either keep a small monthly retainer with a developer or pay as they go for changes.

A headless store needs more maintenance than a theme, because there are two systems to keep healthy. Our guide to website maintenance costs covers typical ranges.

How to keep Shopify costs under control

1. Start with a theme. Prove what sells before paying for a custom build.
2. Audit your apps every few months. Remove anything you're not using, and replace simple apps with theme code where it makes sense.
3. Use Shopify Payments unless you have a good reason not to, to avoid the extra transaction fee.
4. Pick the plan for your volume. Move up when the lower card rates save you more than the higher plan costs.
5. Work out the three-year cost, not just the build. Plans, apps, payment fees and maintenance often add up to more than the build itself.

Getting an accurate quote

Tell potential developers what you sell, roughly how many products and variants you have, what Shopify needs to connect to, where you're migrating from, and who is providing the content and photography. With that, you'll get quotes you can actually compare.

We've built e-commerce for brands including Levi's, and you can see more on our e-commerce and app work for Cre8tive Resources. If you're planning a Shopify store, tell us what you sell and we'll suggest the simplest setup that does the job.