Platform Cost Comparison
Shopify vs a custom store — and the point where custom stops being reckless
Quick Answer
A custom store costs about 3× a Shopify store of the same scope — $12,000–$30,000 against $2,000–$8,000 for a small catalogue — and ships in roughly twice the time. Shopify then charges $39+ a month, $600–$2,400 a year in apps and 0–2% on transactions outside Shopify Payments; the custom store charges none of that and costs 15–20% of its build a year to keep alive. The crossover is arithmetic: at $500,000 of revenue on a 2% rate you hand over $10,000 a year, and a $20,000 build pays back in two. Below roughly $250,000 a year it does not. Multipliers are our engine's; bands come from 600+ project quotes across 6 markets.
Nearly every store should start on Shopify. The interesting question is not which platform is better — it is when the fees, the catalogue or the checkout logic have grown enough that paying three times the build becomes the cheaper decision. This page prices both sides of that line.
Price your store both waysBuild cost by store size — Shopify against a custom build
Same scope on each row. Log scale: the bands run from $2,000 to $80,000.
| Project type | Shopify min | Shopify max | Custom build min | Custom build max |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small store, up to ~100 products | $2,000 | $8,000 | $12,000 | $30,000 |
| Mid store, variants and integrations | $8,000 | $25,000 | $30,000 | $80,000 |
Side by side
| Shopify | Custom build | |
|---|---|---|
| Engine multiplier, identical scope | 0.85× | 2.5× |
| Timeline multiplier | 0.8× | 1.8× |
| Small store build (up to ~100 products) | $2,000 – $8,000 | $12,000 – $30,000 |
| Mid store build (variants, integrations) | $8,000 – $25,000 | $30,000 – $80,000 |
| Platform fee, per month | $39+ | $0 |
| Apps / add-ons, per year | $600 – $2,400 | $0 (you build or buy libraries) |
| Transaction fee beyond the processor | 0% – 2% | 0% |
| Maintenance, per year | included in the fee | 15% – 20% of build |
| Catalogue it stays efficient with | ~5,000 products | no engine limit |
The crossover, worked
A store doing $500,000 a year, 80 products, using a payment provider that is not Shopify Payments, with ten apps:
- •Shopify, three years: $6,000 build + $1,400 platform + $5,400 apps + $30,000 transaction fees = about $42,800
- •Custom, three years: $20,000 build + $1,800 hosting + $9,000 maintenance + $0 platform fees = about $30,800
Now take the same store on Shopify Payments, where the extra transaction fee is 0%: Shopify falls to about $12,800 over three years and custom does not come close. That single configuration detail moves the answer more than any argument about technology — which is why the first question to ask is not “Shopify or custom” but “what are we actually paying Shopify today, line by line”.
Stay on Shopify when…
- ✓Revenue is under roughly $250,000 a year, or you use Shopify Payments and pay no extra transaction fee
- ✓The catalogue is under a few thousand products and the variants are ordinary
- ✓Nobody on the team wants to own security updates, PCI scope and an on-call rota
- ✓You are still changing the business model — the platform you can abandon cheaply is worth a premium
Build custom when…
- ✓Platform and transaction fees already cost more per year than a build would amortise over two
- ✓The checkout or pricing logic is the product: B2B tiers, quotes, contracts, configurators, subscriptions with rules apps cannot express
- ✓The catalogue or the integrations have outgrown what the admin can hold
- ✓You already run engineering — the maintenance that sinks custom builds is a cost you pay anyway
Frequently asked questions
How much more does a custom store cost than Shopify?
Roughly three times the build. Our engine prices Shopify at 0.85× and a custom React/Node build at 2.5× on identical scope, so a store that costs $6,000 on Shopify lands near $18,000 custom, and takes about twice as long to ship. The custom store then has no platform fee and no app subscriptions, which is where it starts clawing the difference back.
At what revenue does a custom store start paying for itself?
Work it out on fees, not feelings. Shopify Basic is $39/month plus app subscriptions that realistically run $600–$2,400 a year, plus 0–2% on transactions when you do not use Shopify Payments. A store doing $500,000 a year on a 2% non-native rate pays $10,000 a year in transaction fees alone — at that point a $20,000 custom build is a two-year payback. Below about $250,000 a year it almost never is.
What breaks first on Shopify?
Checkout logic and catalogue shape. Shopify is efficient up to roughly 5,000 products in our model; beyond that, and especially with variant-heavy or configurable products, the admin and the theme start fighting you. The other common wall is B2B: customer-specific pricing, quotes, credit terms and approval flows are app territory on Shopify and native work on a custom build.
Is custom cheaper to maintain?
No. It is cheaper to subscribe to and more expensive to own. A custom store carries its own security updates, dependency upgrades, payment integration maintenance and on-call — budget 15–20% of the build cost per year. Shopify absorbs that for the platform fee, which is exactly what you are buying.
Is there a middle path?
Two. Shopify with a custom front end (headless) keeps the checkout and admin you are not trying to replace and puts the money into the storefront — price it as the Shopify build plus a custom front end, typically 1.6–2× a standard Shopify project. Or Shopify Plus, which buys checkout extensibility and B2B features instead of a rebuild; our engine treats it as its own platform because the licence changes the arithmetic entirely.
Ready to build? Three ways to do it
The right path depends on budget, not preference. These bands come from our own published cost data.
Do it yourself
$0–$500
A Shopify store you set up yourself — fastest route to selling online.
Hire a freelancer
$500–$5,000
Custom design and setup without agency overhead — the sweet spot for most small-business sites.
Browse Fiverrdevelopers →Custom project
$5,000+
Scope it properly before you talk to anyone — our calculator prices your exact feature list so quotes can't inflate.
Price my project →Disclosure: some links above are partner links — we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Recommendations come from our cost data, not from who pays us.