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10 business days
To start a Shopify engagement
Scoping through first sprint
100%
Senior engineers, US-based
No offshore handoff on your storefront
Every sprint
Working software on a preview URL
Not a status deck between milestones
100%
Code and app ownership yours
From the first commit
What we build
Shopify work that goes past picking a theme
Shopify is a hosted platform on purpose — you don't manage servers, PCI scope, or checkout security, and that trade is almost always worth it. What's left to build custom is the storefront experience, the app-level functionality Shopify doesn't ship, and the integrations that connect a store to everything else the business runs on.
Custom theme development
A theme built in Liquid around your catalog and your brand, not a marketplace theme with your logo dropped in. That matters most when the product experience is unusual — configurable products, large catalogs with complex filtering, or a merchandising layout a stock theme's sections can't express.
Custom app development
When a business rule doesn't fit an off-the-shelf app — custom pricing logic, a loyalty mechanic, a checkout customization only available through Shopify Functions on Plus — a purpose-built app is usually cheaper over the life of the store than stacking three overlapping apps that all touch the same data.
Shopify Plus migrations and builds
Plus unlocks checkout customization via Shopify Functions, higher API rate limits, and multi-store/B2B tooling that standard Shopify doesn't offer. Moving to Plus is worth scoping deliberately — it's a real jump in capability and a real jump in what the store is committed to maintaining.
Platform migrations onto Shopify
Moving a store off Magento, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, or a custom cart, with product data, customer accounts, and order history migrated and URL redirects mapped so existing SEO rankings and customer bookmarks survive the switch.
Headless Shopify
Shopify as the commerce backend — via the Storefront API — behind a separately built front end, usually Next.js. The right call when the front end needs performance or interactivity a themed store can't deliver, and overkill when a themed build would have shipped faster for the same result.
Third-party and ERP integrations
Connecting Shopify to inventory management, fulfillment, accounting, and ERP systems so a sale on the storefront doesn't require someone to re-key it somewhere else. This is often the highest-leverage work on an established store, and the part a theme-focused agency isn't set up to do well.
The build decision
Build custom, install an app, or wait — decided before the sprint starts
The Shopify App Store has thousands of apps covering most common needs, and the single most common overspend on this platform is custom-building something an app already does well. Here's how we actually make that call.
When an existing app is the right answer
Reviews, loyalty programs, subscriptions, upsells, and most marketing tooling are solved problems with mature apps built specifically for them. Installing and configuring the right app is faster, cheaper, and easier to maintain than rebuilding the same functionality from scratch — and it's the answer we'll give even when a custom build is the more interesting project to quote.
When custom development earns its cost
A business rule genuinely specific to how you operate — pricing logic, a checkout modification, an integration into a system with no existing Shopify connector — is where custom work pays for itself. The tell is usually 'we're stacking three apps and none of them quite do it,' which is a sign the actual requirement was never a generic one.
Stacking apps has a real cost
Every installed app adds page weight, another vendor with access to store data, and another dependency that can break on a Shopify platform update. A store running fifteen apps to cover functionality four purpose-built ones could replace is a common state we inherit, and untangling it is often the first real piece of work.
Shopify Functions changed what's possible without a full rebuild
On Plus, Functions let custom logic run inside checkout, discounts, and shipping without replacing Shopify's checkout entirely — which used to be the only way to get real checkout customization. It's a narrower, safer surface than a bespoke checkout rebuild, and it's usually the right tool when checkout logic is the actual requirement.
What's involved
Shopify engagement types
What moves the scope here isn't SKU count — it's how much of the request is genuinely custom versus configuration, and how many outside systems (ERP, fulfillment, a legacy platform being migrated from) the store has to reconcile against.
| Engagement | Commitment | Timeline | What's included |
|---|---|---|---|
| Custom theme build | Fixed scope | 4 – 10 weeks | A Liquid theme built from your designs and catalog structure, with merchandising and filtering matched to how you actually sell. |
| Custom app development | Fixed scope | 3 – 10 weeks | Purpose-built functionality — pricing logic, checkout customization via Shopify Functions, a workflow no App Store app quite covers. |
| Platform migration to Shopify | Fixed scope | 6 – 14 weeks | Product, customer, and order data migrated with redirects mapped so rankings and bookmarks survive the move. |
| ERP or fulfillment integration | Fixed scope | 4 – 10 weeks | Inventory, order, and fulfillment sync between Shopify and the systems the rest of the business already runs on. |
| Ongoing store support | Ongoing retainer | Ongoing | Theme and app updates, Shopify platform-change monitoring, and a developer available when something needs fixing before a launch. |
Ranges assume US-based senior engineers and include the app-conflict debugging and data-migration cleanup a cheaper quote often strips out. A migration quote well under these bands is usually missing the redirect mapping and historical order import, and that gap tends to surface as a traffic drop right after launch rather than before it.
What Shopify does and doesn't handle
The platform boundary that decides most of the scope
Shopify is hosted, which means a large category of infrastructure work simply isn't part of a Shopify project — and knowing exactly where that boundary sits is what keeps a scope from creeping into rebuilding something Shopify already does well.
Checkout and PCI compliance
Shopify owns checkout, payment processing, and PCI scope on standard plans — you don't manage cardholder data or a payment gateway integration yourself. This is the single biggest reason most merchants shouldn't build a custom cart from scratch, and it's true regardless of which theme or app strategy the rest of the store uses.
Hosting and uptime
Shopify runs the infrastructure and scales for traffic spikes automatically, including the kind a flash sale or a viral moment generates. There's no server to provision or scale for a Shopify build, which removes an entire category of DevOps work a custom-built storefront would otherwise need.
Transaction fees on non-Shopify Payments gateways
Using a payment gateway other than Shopify Payments adds a per-transaction fee on top of the gateway's own processing cost. This is a real ongoing cost line worth understanding before choosing a payment provider, though it's a Shopify platform fee rather than anything DEV.co charges or influences.
API rate limits shape integration architecture
Shopify's REST and GraphQL APIs are rate-limited, and an integration that doesn't account for that — batch syncing inventory across thousands of SKUs, for instance — will get throttled in production even though it worked fine in testing. Designing for the limit from the start avoids a rebuild once real data volume hits it.
Theme performance is still your responsibility
Shopify hosts the store, but a bloated theme with too many apps injecting scripts is still slow, and slow storefronts convert worse regardless of who's hosting them. Performance is a build and maintenance concern even on a platform that handles the infrastructure underneath it.
Data ownership and portability
Product, customer, and order data lives in your Shopify account, and export tools exist if you ever need to move platforms. Apps you install may retain their own copies of store data under their own terms, which is worth checking before installing anything that touches customer information.
Hiring a Shopify developer
What to look for before you hire
"Shopify developer" ranges from someone comfortable customizing a theme's settings to someone who can build a Shopify Function, debug a webhook that's silently failing, or architect a headless storefront. The gap matters more here than it looks, because a shallow theme edit and a genuine Liquid or app-level customization can look identical in a portfolio screenshot.
Liquid and the theme architecture, not just theme settings
A developer who understands Shopify's Liquid templating language, section and block architecture, and the theme's JSON structure can build what a design actually calls for. One who only knows a theme's built-in customizer options will hit a wall the moment the design needs something the theme wasn't built to do.
App and API experience beyond installing apps
Building a custom app means working with Shopify's Admin API, webhooks, and OAuth, and understanding the rate limits and data model well enough not to design something that breaks under real order volume. Ask specifically about apps they've built, not just apps they've configured.
A track record with your kind of store
A large catalog with complex variants, a subscription model, a B2B wholesale tier, or a multi-currency international store all draw on different parts of Shopify's platform. A developer who's built beautiful five-product boutique stores can still be a poor fit for a 20,000-SKU B2B catalog — ask about the specific kind of build you need.
Comfort saying 'install this app instead'
A developer who only ever recommends custom work, regardless of what you're asking for, is optimizing for billable hours over your actual outcome. The right answer is sometimes a three-hundred-dollar-a-month app instead of a custom build, and a developer worth hiring will tell you that even when it costs them the larger project.
Related
Related services
What Shopify projects usually connect to.
Questions
Common questions about Shopify development
What teams ask before a first call.
It depends on whether the work is a theme build, a custom app, a platform migration, or an integration — each is a different-sized engagement, and an ongoing support retainer is priced differently again from a one-time project.
The variable that moves a quote the most is how much of the request is genuinely custom versus something an existing App Store app already does well. A short scoping call, looking at your actual catalog and requirements, gets to a real number faster than any general range would.
Use an app when the need is common — reviews, loyalty, subscriptions, most marketing tooling are solved problems with mature apps built specifically for them. Build custom when a business rule is genuinely specific to how you operate and no combination of apps quite covers it, which usually shows up as 'we're running three apps and none of them fully solve this.'
We'll tell you which situation you're actually in before quoting custom work, because installing the right app is very often faster and cheaper than the alternative, and that's true even when it means a smaller engagement for us.
Shopify Plus is the enterprise tier: it unlocks Shopify Functions for checkout customization, higher API rate limits, and multi-store or B2B tooling that standard Shopify doesn't include. It's a genuine step up in capability, and it's also a genuine step up in commitment — moving to Plus should be a deliberate decision based on a specific need, not a default upgrade.
If the actual requirement is checkout customization, Shopify Functions on Plus is usually the right tool rather than a fully custom checkout rebuild, which was the only option before Functions existed and is rarely the right one now.
Yes. A migration moves product, customer, and order data onto Shopify and maps every existing URL to its new destination with redirects, so search rankings and customer bookmarks survive the switch rather than resetting at launch.
We treat the redirect and data-migration plan as its own piece of scoping before anything moves, because that mapping work is the part a rushed migration skips — and the part most likely to show up afterward as a sudden, hard-to-diagnose drop in organic traffic.
Yes — for functionality that doesn't fit an existing App Store app, working against Shopify's Admin API, webhooks, and (on Plus) Shopify Functions for checkout-level customization. The goal is always to build the smallest thing that solves the actual business rule, not a broader platform than the problem calls for.
We'll also tell you plainly if an existing app already covers what you're describing, because that's usually the faster and cheaper path, and it's the honest answer even when it means less custom-development work for us.
Shopify hosts the store, handles checkout, payment processing, and PCI compliance, and scales automatically for traffic. A developer is for everything layered on top: the theme, custom apps, integrations with your other business systems, and platform migrations — the parts that make the store yours rather than a default install.
Understanding that boundary is most of what keeps a Shopify project's scope honest, since it rules out an entire category of infrastructure work a custom-built storefront would otherwise require.
Yes, using Shopify as the commerce backend via the Storefront API behind a separately built front end, usually Next.js. It's the right call when the storefront needs performance or interaction design a themed Shopify store genuinely can't deliver.
It's not the default recommendation — a well-built theme is faster to ship and cheaper to maintain, and we'll only recommend headless when the front-end requirements actually justify the added complexity of running two systems instead of one.