How much does a Shopify store cost in Australia?
There are three bills, and most guides only count two. Shopify charges $56 a month on Basic. A build runs from $1,500 for a fitted theme to $35,000 for a headless storefront. Then there is the app stack, which is the one that surprises people.
- Shopify
- $56 a month
- Theme build
- $1,500–40,000
- Headless
- $15,000–150,000+
- Apps
- $0–500 a month
- Card rate
- 1.7% + 30c
- Price
- see our own price list
Shopify's AUD prices and ours both exclude GST.
Australia · 2026$56 a month to Shopify, and $1,500 to $35,000 to build it.
Shopify's Basic plan in Australia is $56 a month, or $42 if you pay yearly, and it takes 1.7% plus 30 cents from a domestic card sale. That part is fixed, published, and the same for everyone; every plan, rate and extra fee is priced in our guide to Shopify fees in Australia.
What varies is the storefront on top of it: $1,500 to $3,500 for a freelancer to set up a bought theme, $9,000 to $16,000 for a custom theme built from a clean base, and $15,000 to $35,000 for a headless storefront where Shopify keeps the checkout and everything a customer sees is yours. Both rise once a large catalogue, an ERP or wholesale comes into it: to $16,000 to $40,000 for a theme store, and $35,000 to $150,000 and beyond for headless and enterprise builds.
The third bill is apps, the one nobody puts in the budget: reviews, subscriptions, bundles, upsells, a page builder, at $10 to $200 a month each, most of them adding a script to every product page, so a store on the $56 plan running eight of them usually pays more for its apps than for Shopify.
What the storefront costs.
What an Australian buyer pays in 2026 to get a store built, on top of Shopify's own subscription. Our own numbers are further down.
| Budget | What that buys | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|
| Budget $0–500 Do it yourself | What that buys A free or paid theme you set up yourself. Shopify's own themes are genuinely good, and a tidy store on Dawn beats a bad custom one every time. | Who it suits A first product, a small range, or finding out whether people will buy at all. |
| Budget $1,500–3,500 A theme, set up for you | What that buys A freelancer installs a paid theme, loads your products, connects payments and shipping and hands it over. Two to three weeks. | Who it suits A launch with a date on it and a catalogue small enough to load by hand. |
| Budget $3,500–9,000 A theme, customised | What that buys A bought theme reworked to your brand. Custom sections, a homepage that is yours rather than the theme's, collection and product pages that match the rest of your world. | Who it suits Brands that need to look distinct without leaving Shopify admin. |
| Budget $9,000–16,000 A custom theme Ours · theme | What that buys Built from a clean base instead of a marketplace theme. Sections and blocks your team rearranges without calling anyone, and only the apps that earn their place. | Who it suits Teams who want everything in one admin and a launch in weeks. |
| Budget $16,000–40,000 A theme store with systems to connect | What that buys A custom theme on a large catalogue, a move off another platform with every product and old address carried across, or an ERP or stock system kept in sync with Shopify. | Who it suits Established stores that want one admin, with a back office already running the business. |
| Budget $15,000–35,000 A headless storefront Ours · headless | What that buys A custom storefront on a modern framework, with Shopify keeping cart, checkout, payments and inventory. Sub-second pages, and no theme limits on layout, search or filtering. | Who it suits Brand-led stores, content-heavy sites, or a store that lives inside a bigger site. |
| Budget $35,000–80,000 Headless, with systems to connect | What that buys A headless storefront on a large catalogue, a move off another platform with every product and old address carried across, or an ERP or stock system kept in sync with Shopify. | Who it suits Established stores with thousands of products, or a back office that already runs the business. |
| Budget $80,000–150,000+ At enterprise scale | What that buys Several systems kept in step, such as an ERP, a product information system and a warehouse, wholesale pricing beside retail, or several stores and currencies, usually on Shopify Plus. | Who it suits Retailers and brands whose online store is one part of a bigger operation. |
One real store, line by line.
Made Quiet makes premium Australian sports caps. There was a name, a range, a clear idea of the brand, and no store, with a first drop already booked for February.
A week of design, then six working days from first commit to a live store. It sold in its first week, and a third of the visitors who arrive go on to buy. Here is what it cost, and what it costs to run.
- Client
- New brand, first store
- Scope
- Headless storefront, Sanity content, Klaviyo, reviews
- Built in
- 7 days design, 6 days build. January 2026
- Live at
- madequiet.co
- Design 7 days. Home, collection, product and cart, on their real products
- $3,000
- Development 6 working days. SvelteKit on Cloudflare Workers, Shopify Storefront API, own cart
- $9,000
- Total ex GST
- $12,000
Costs to run
- Shopify Basic plan. Products, cart, checkout and payments
- A$56
- Storefront hosting Cloudflare Workers, their own account
- $0
- Sanity, Klaviyo, Judge.me content, email capture, reviews and star ratings
- $0
No care plan. Changes are quoted and billed by the hour when they want them.
Published with Made Quiet's permission. Excludes GST. Built January 2026.
Ex GSTThis one sits at our headless floor of $12,000. It was January 2026, one small range with no catalogue to migrate, one set of templates, two integrations, and a client whose brand and copy were ready before we started, and we would quote it the same today.
A store with four hundred products, a WooCommerce migration and an accounting system to stay in sync with is a different build at a different price.
What we charge.
- Headless storefront Shopify checkout, storefront built by us
- from $12,000 typically $18–35k
- Custom Shopify theme built from a clean base, not a marketplace theme
- from $9,000 typically $9–16k
- Care plan monitoring, updates, small changes, monthly performance snapshot
- from $250/month
What moves the price within those ranges:
- how many products, and how clean the data is. POP Local has 10,000 across 343 makers
- whether the design fits inside what a theme does, which is the line between $9,000 and $20,000
- what the store has to talk to. Accounting, shipping, a point of sale, a warehouse spreadsheet
- whether you are migrating, and from where. Exports are rarely as clean as they look
- more than one region, currency or catalogue, even through Shopify Markets
- how many people run it afterwards, and whether anyone approves before it goes live
Why we do not build $3,000 stores
Because a store at that price is a theme with your logo on it, and what you save up front gets spent later on apps that paper over what the theme cannot do. If a fitted theme genuinely is what you need, we will say so on the call and point you at someone who does them well.
Fixed quote after a scoping call. Shopify's subscription and card fees are yours and go to Shopify; they are not part of what we charge.
Ask away.
Nine things people ask before they spend the money. Still one missing? Ask us.
How much does it cost to pay someone to build a Shopify store?
In Australia in 2026, $1,500 to $3,500 for a freelancer to set up a bought theme, $3,500 to $9,000 for that theme customised properly, $9,000 to $16,000 for a custom theme built from a clean base, and $15,000 to $35,000 for a headless storefront. Once a large catalogue, an ERP or wholesale comes into it, a theme store runs $16,000 to $40,000, and headless or enterprise builds $35,000 to $150,000 or more. All of it sits on top of Shopify's own subscription, which you pay separately.
How much does Shopify take from a $100 sale?
$2.00 on the Basic plan in Australia, through Shopify Payments on a domestic card, as at October 2026. Every rate by plan, and what American Express, overseas cards and other gateways add, is in our guide to Shopify fees in Australia.
How much does a Shopify store cost per month?
$56 a month for Basic in Australia, or $42 if you pay yearly. Apps are where the number really moves, at roughly $10 to $200 a month each, and email marketing adds $20 to $100. A headless storefront hosted on Cloudflare adds close to nothing. Budget $100 to $400 a month all in for a small store that is running properly.
Is Shopify worth it in Australia?
For almost every store below enterprise, yes. What you are buying is checkout, payments, fraud, tax and shipping being somebody else's problem, at a scale you could not build for yourself. The parts worth arguing about are the storefront and the app stack, and those are exactly the parts you can own. Whether that storefront should be a theme or headless is its own guide, headless Shopify vs a Shopify theme.
What should I expect to pay for a headless Shopify storefront?
$15,000 to $35,000 in Australia in 2026 for a custom storefront on Shopify checkout, $35,000 to $80,000 once a large catalogue, a move off another platform or an ERP comes into it, and $80,000 to $150,000 or more at enterprise scale. With us from $12,000, typically $18,000 to $35,000. Made Quiet, itemised above, came to $12,000 in January 2026, our floor, because it was one small range with no catalogue to migrate and content ready before we started. Hosting the storefront adds close to nothing a month, and Shopify's own plan and card fees are the same as for a theme.
Do we have to use Shopify?
No. We have built on BigCommerce, and custom setups on Stripe and Square. Shopify is the default because it is the one we would pick for ourselves: the part customers trust is handled by a platform that does it at scale, and we do not rebuild that.
Does a headless store cost more to run?
It costs more to build and less to run. The storefront is pre-rendered and served from a CDN, so hosting is close to nothing and pages load in under a second. A theme launches in weeks and keeps everything in one admin. We will tell you which one you want on the first call, and it is not always ours.
What does it cost to move from WooCommerce, Squarespace or Wix?
The migration is usually $1,000 to $4,000 on top of the build. Products, customers, orders and every old URL redirected, so you keep the rankings you have earned. Karis Life and Kea Health both came across from WooCommerce stores that could not take the load.
Why is our current store slow?
Usually apps. Each one adds scripts to every page, and product and collection pages carry the most of them. We audit what is installed, keep what earns its place, rebuild the rest into the storefront, and then measure it rather than claiming it.
- Headless or theme? Which stores want which, the faster options, and what to ask a builder.
- Website costs. What a website costs in Australia, by band, with a real receipt.
- Shopify fees. Every Shopify plan, card rate and extra fee in Australia, with a calculator.
- eCommerce. Headless or a custom theme. What we build, and how.