Shopify makes its money on the apps stack. The core platform is cheap, $39 to $399 a month, depending on plan. The total cost of running a real store is usually two to five times that, and most of it is invisible at the start.
Here's the full cost picture for an Australian DTC brand setting up on Shopify in 2025: build, apps, themes, and the bits you'll trip over in year one.
Build costs: what an Australian developer charges
- Theme refresh: $2k–$5k. Polish your existing theme, audit apps, set up Klaviyo flows. Three weeks. Right answer for stores doing under $20k a month who want to clean up before scaling.
- New store: $7.5k–$18k. Custom-designed Shopify with full launch, theme, up to 200 SKUs, three integrations, photography reviewed. Six to ten weeks. The bulk of new DTC brands land here.
- Plus migration: $24k–$70k. Migrate from Magento, WooCommerce, or upgrade to Shopify Plus. Includes B2B, subscriptions, multi-currency. Twelve to twenty weeks.
Subscription costs you can't avoid
- Shopify Basic: $39/month. Probably enough for the first year.
- Shopify (standard): $105/month. Better reports, more staff accounts.
- Shopify Advanced: $399/month. Real analytics, lower transaction fees.
- Shopify Plus: from $2,300/month. Worth it above ~$2m revenue, or if you need Launchpad, Scripts, or B2B at scale.
The trap: most stores upgrade based on plan FOMO, not on features they actually use. Stay on the cheapest plan that does what you need until your transaction fees alone justify the upgrade.
The apps stack is where the money goes
The average healthy Shopify store I see has 8–14 paid apps installed. Typical costs:
- Klaviyo (email marketing): $50–$1,500/month based on contact list size
- Recharge or Skio (subscriptions): $99–$499/month plus 1% of subscription revenue
- Yotpo or Stamped (reviews): $30–$300/month
- Loox (visual reviews): $10–$300/month
- Judge.me (alternative reviews): $15–$50/month
- Bundle apps: $30–$200/month
- Upsell/cross-sell: $30–$200/month
- Shipping calculator and rules: $10–$80/month
- SEO apps: $30–$200/month (most of this you can do natively)
Add it up and a typical store is paying $400–$1,500/month just on apps. Worse, half of those apps overlap in features you don't realise. An app audit by a Shopify specialist will usually save you 20–40% of monthly app spend within the first month.
The cheapest Shopify app is the one you've cancelled. The second cheapest is the one you actually use weekly.
Theme: free, paid, or custom?
Three honest options:
- Free Dawn theme + customisation: $1.5k–$3k. Dawn is genuinely good. With four to six days of design and Liquid work, you can ship a brand that looks bespoke for under $3k.
- Premium theme ($200–$400) + customisation: $3k–$8k. Solid middle ground. Themes from Out Of The Sandbox or Pixel Union are reliable.
- Fully custom theme: $9k–$30k. Right when your brand has serious motion or layout opinions, or when you need conversion features no theme handles.
The "secret" costs in year one
- Transaction fees: 1.7% on Plus, 1.6%–2% on lower plans, plus card processing. At $500k revenue, that's $8k–$10k/year before any apps.
- 3PL setup: warehouse onboarding fees, often $500–$2,000 to start.
- Photography: $1k–$5k per collection drop. Stock won't cut it.
- Returns logistics: usually 6–12% of revenue. Worth modelling.
- Klaviyo migration and flow setup: $1.5k–$4k if a specialist does it. Worth it; the flows pay for themselves in weeks.
The bottom line
A new Australian Shopify store usually costs $9k–$15k all-in for a great launch (theme + apps + Klaviyo + integrations) plus around $500/month in subscriptions and apps thereafter. If you're being quoted $25k for a store that doesn't include B2B, subscriptions, or a complex catalogue migration, push back.
If you want three quotes from vetted Australian Shopify specialists, that's exactly what we do. Free, real numbers, in 24 hours.