What a Shopify website really costs in Australia
9 min read
By Param, Webstallion
The short answer
There are two numbers, and almost every guide gives you one. Shopify's subscription in Australia runs $7 AUD a month on Starter, $56 on Basic, $149 on Grow and $575 on Advanced, cheaper if you pay annually. Having the store built is separate: about $500 to $3,000 for a theme-based store, $2,000 to $10,000 for a freelancer or small agency, $10,000 to $50,000+ for a full custom build. Add the domain, the apps and the card fees and a realistic all-in first year for a small Australian store is roughly $4,500 to $5,000, before transaction fees. Every figure on this page is AUD, which matters more than it sounds.
Search this question and you get two completely different answers depending on who wrote the page. Shopify and the review sites tell you about the monthly plan. Agencies tell you about the build. Nobody adds them together, which is unfortunate, because the total is the only number you actually need.
So this page does the addition. Plan, transaction fees, build, domain, apps, in Australian dollars, with the assumptions written down so you can swap your own numbers in.
One warning before any of the numbers. A lot of what you will read about Shopify pricing quotes United States dollars without saying so, and the US rates are genuinely different, particularly on card fees. If a guide says Basic is $39 and card processing is 2.9% + 30c, you are reading American figures. The Australian equivalents are $56 monthly and card rates from about 1.75% + 30c. Check the currency before you budget.
Number one: what Shopify charges you every month
This is the recurring cost, and it never stops for as long as the store exists.
| Plan | Annual billing | Monthly billing | Suited to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $7 | $7 | Selling through social and messaging. Not a full store |
| Basic | $42 | $56 | Most new Australian stores start here |
| Grow | $114 | $149 | Small teams, more staff accounts, better reporting |
| Advanced | $431 | $575 | High volume, lower card rates |
| Plus | from $3,700 | from $3,700 | Enterprise. If you are reading this, not you |
Paying annually on Basic saves about $168 a year over monthly billing. That is the easiest money on this entire page, and the only catch is committing for twelve months.
Number two: the transaction fees, which nobody puts in the quote
Every sale carries a card fee. On Shopify Payments in Australia, online card rates start around 1.75% + 30c on Basic and fall on higher plans. That is the number that matters, and it is meaningfully lower than the 2.9% figure you will see quoted on American pages.
Put real numbers on it. A store turning over $100,000 a year with an average order of $80 is processing about 1,250 orders:
| 1.75% of $100,000 | $1,750 |
| 30c x 1,250 orders | $375 |
| Total for the year | $2,125 |
More than the annual plan fee, and entirely absent from most quotes. Three things make it worse:
- Not using Shopify Payments. If you use a third-party gateway, Shopify adds its own surcharge on top of whatever that processor charges: about 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced. On our example store that extra 2% is another $2,000 a year, for nothing.
- International cards. Overseas cards typically push the rate up substantially, and currency conversion adds roughly 1.5% to 2% again if you collect in a currency different from your payout account.
- Shopify Tax. Once a store passes $100,000 in lifetime sales, a 0.35% fee applies on transactions where tax is calculated through it.
Number three: what it costs to have the store built
This is the one-off, and it is where quotes diverge wildly. The reason they diverge is that "build" covers four genuinely different products.
| What you get | Range (AUD) | Reality |
|---|---|---|
| Do it yourself | $0 to $500 | A free theme like Dawn and your own products. Genuinely viable for a simple catalogue |
| Theme-based build | $500 to $3,000 | A premium theme ($100 to $430) customised to your brand |
| Freelancer or small agency | $2,000 to $10,000 | Tailored layout, real branding, app configuration |
| Full custom agency | $10,000 to $50,000+ | Bespoke storefront, complex integrations, migration |
Narrowing to Australia specifically, the published figure for a professionally built store is $3,500 for a starter build up to $15,000+ for a fully custom one. Timeframes run about three to eight weeks for a production-ready store.
Worth being clear about the two rows underneath that, because they are the ones people quote at each other. The $0 to $500 band is you doing it yourself, which is a real and sensible option for a simple catalogue. The $500 to $3,000 band is largely marketplace and overseas work, or a very light setup rather than a build. Neither is what an Australian studio quoting a professional theme build is selling, and $3,500 is where that work genuinely starts here. If you are comparing a $1,200 quote against a $4,000 one, they are almost certainly not the same job.
And there is a fifth option that gets quoted alongside these and is not a build at all: the monthly retainer. At least one Australian agency ranking for this topic advertises packages from $9,750 a month plus GST. That is a different product for a different kind of business, but it appears in the same search results, so it is worth knowing what you are looking at.
The number nobody publishes: add it up
Assumptions, stated so you can change them: a small Australian store, theme-based build at $3,500, Basic plan on annual billing, one domain, and $50 a month of apps. Transaction fees excluded because they depend on your sales.
| Item | Year 1 | 5 years |
|---|---|---|
| Build, one-off | $3,500 | $3,500 |
| Shopify Basic, annual billing | $504 | $2,520 |
| Domain | $20 | $100 |
| Apps, at $50/month | $600 | $3,000 |
| Total | $4,624 | $9,120 |
Two things fall out of that table that are worth more than the total itself.
The build is the smaller half over five years. $3,500 to build, $5,620 to keep. Which means a cheaper build that pushes you onto more apps or a higher plan is not a saving. Ask what the ongoing cost looks like before you compare two quotes.
Apps are the line that runs away. $50 a month is a modest assumption: reviews, email, a loyalty tool and a stock sync will pass it comfortably. At $200 a month, apps cost $12,000 over five years and become the single largest line in the whole exercise, larger than the build and the plan combined. Every app is a small monthly decision that compounds into the biggest number on the page.
Where we sit, since this page uses our number
The $3,500 in that table is where Webstallion's Shopify builds start, and it is a floor rather than an opening position: we do not quote Shopify work below it. From there it is quoted per project with page limits, including six months of post-launch support. It is a one-off. We add no ongoing fee of our own, and the Shopify subscription is yours, in your account, paid by you.
We used it because it happens to sit exactly on the published Australian floor for a professionally built store, which makes it a useful anchor rather than a plug. If you would rather run the sums against a different builder's price, swap the number and the rest of the table still works.
The honest limit on what we do: we build standard Shopify themes. Headless commerce, Shopify Plus and heavily customised checkout work are not what we sell, and if that is what you need, the $10,000+ agency band is the right place to be looking.
Four honest ways to spend less
- Pay annually. About $168 a year on Basic for doing nothing except committing.
- Use Shopify Payments. Avoiding the third-party surcharge is worth roughly 2% of revenue on Basic. On a $100,000 store that is $2,000 a year.
- Audit the apps quarterly. Open the billing screen and cancel anything you have not deliberately used this month. This is the single biggest lever in the five-year column.
- Do not buy custom until a theme has failed you. Start theme-based, sell for six months, and let real customer behaviour tell you what needs building. Custom work commissioned before you have any sales data is a guess with a five-figure price tag.
One question worth asking before any of this
Do you actually need a checkout?
If you sell products online, Shopify is very likely the right answer despite everything above, because building and maintaining a secure, compliant, well-tested checkout yourself costs vastly more than the subscription ever will. That is the thing you are paying for, and it is worth it.
If you are a service business that takes enquiries rather than payments, you are looking at the wrong product. A static site has no platform fee, no transaction fees and no app subscriptions, which over five years is a different order of cost entirely. We have written up what a non-commerce website costs in Australia separately.
Common questions
How much does a Shopify website cost in Australia?
There are two numbers and most guides only give one. Shopify's subscription runs from $7 AUD a month on Starter to $56 on Basic, $149 on Grow and $575 on Advanced, cheaper on annual billing, with Plus starting near $3,700. Having the store built is separate: roughly $500 to $3,000 for a theme-based store, $2,000 to $10,000 for a freelancer or small agency, and $10,000 to $50,000+ for a full custom build. A realistic all-in first year for a small Australian store lands around $4,500 to $5,000 including plan, domain and a couple of apps, before transaction fees.
How much does Shopify take per sale in Australia?
Using Shopify Payments, Australian online card rates start around 1.75% plus 30c AUD on Basic and drop on higher plans. Many guides quote 2.9% plus 30c, which is the United States rate, not the Australian one. If you use a third-party gateway instead, Shopify adds a surcharge on top of whatever that processor charges: roughly 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced. International cards and currency conversion cost more again.
Is Shopify or a custom website cheaper for an Australian small business?
It depends entirely on whether you need to take payments. If you sell products online, Shopify is almost always the right answer despite the monthly fee, because building and maintaining a secure checkout yourself costs far more than the subscription. If you are a service business that does not sell products, a static hand-coded site has no platform fee and no transaction fees, so over five years it is dramatically cheaper. The question is not which platform is cheaper in the abstract, it is whether you need a checkout.
What does a Shopify store cost to run each year in Australia?
Excluding the build, budget roughly $500 to $1,800 a year for the plan depending on tier and billing, about $15 to $20 for the domain, and anywhere from $0 to $6,000 a year for apps, which is the line that varies most. On top of that, transaction fees scale with sales: at $100,000 of annual revenue on Basic with Shopify Payments and an average order around $80, card fees come to roughly $2,100 for the year.
Why do Shopify quotes vary so much in Australia?
Because the word "build" covers four different products. Setting up a free theme with your own products is a day's work. Customising a premium theme is a fortnight. Designing a bespoke theme from scratch is months. And an ongoing retainer, which some Australian agencies quote from several thousand dollars a month, is not a build at all. Establish which of those four you are being sold before you compare the numbers.
The bottom line
Budget the build once and the running costs forever, because over five years the running costs are the bigger half. Check every figure you read is in Australian dollars. Use Shopify Payments, pay annually, and treat the app list as the thing most likely to quietly become your largest expense. And before any of it, be honest about whether you need a checkout at all.