Do it yourself
Pick a free or premium theme and set it up. You pay the Shopify plan and, for a premium theme, a one-off licence.
- Cheapest way to start
- Great for testing an idea
- Looks like every other store on that theme
- Your time is the real cost
Pricing guide · Updated October 2026
How much does a Shopify website cost in Australia?
Short answer: Shopify itself starts at A$42 a month, and a custom-designed store from us starts at A$1,500. Here's every cost in between, with real numbers, so you can budget before you talk to anyone. Us included.
A real first year
The receipt nobody shows you.
Most pricing pages give you a range so wide it's useless. Here's the actual first-year bill for a new brand launching a custom store with us.
YEAR ONE · NEW SHOPIFY STORE
- Custom store buildPAGEBOLT Launch, one-time
- A$1,500
- Shopify Basic plan12 × A$42, billed yearly
- A$504
- Theme licenceCustom theme, yours to keep
- A$0
- Hosting, SSL, securityIncluded in the Shopify plan
- A$0
FIXED COSTSA$2,004
PLUS: card fees on each sale, your domain name, and any paid apps you choose. All prices in AUD.
That's the honest floor for a store that looks like a real brand: about A$2,000 for the first year, then roughly A$500 a year after that for the Shopify plan, before card fees and apps.
Two things on the receipt are worth calling out. There's no theme licence, because a custom theme is built for you rather than rented. And hosting is free, because Shopify bundles it into the plan. On WooCommerce you'd be paying for hosting separately and keeping it patched yourself.
What's not on the receipt is the stuff that changes from store to store: how many sales you make (card fees), which apps you install, and whether you want help after launch. The rest of this page breaks those down.
The platform
Shopify plans in AUD.
What Shopify charges Australian stores right now. Paying yearly saves about a quarter on every plan.
| Plan | Billed yearly | Billed monthly | AU card rate | Third-party gateway fee | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | A$42/mo | A$56/mo | 1.7% + 30¢ | 2% | New and small brands. Where nearly everyone should start. |
| Grow | A$114/mo | A$149/mo | 1.55% + 30¢ | 1% | Growing brands with a small team. Unlocks Shopify's built-in A/B testing. |
| Advanced | A$431/mo | A$575/mo | 1.35% + 30¢ | 0.6% | Higher-volume stores, where lower card fees start paying for the plan. |
| Plus | from A$3,700/mo | Not listed | 1.15% + 30¢ | 0.2% | Large brands that need checkout customisation, B2B or complex international selling. |
What card fees actually look like
One A$80 order, three ways.
Card fees are the cost that grows with you, so it pays to understand them. Here's what Shopify keeps from a single A$80 order paid with an Australian card on the Basic plan:
Shopify PaymentsA$1.661.7% + 30¢
Same order on GrowA$1.541.55% + 30¢
Other gateway, Basic+A$1.60Shopify's 2% on top of the gateway's own fees
That last one is what catches people out. If you take payments through a provider other than Shopify Payments, Shopify charges its own fee on top, and you still pay the other provider. For most Australian stores, Shopify Payments is the cheaper and simpler choice.
Moving up a plan only makes sense on fees alone once you're doing serious volume. For most brands under a million in sales, Basic or Grow is plenty.
The build
Four ways to get a store built.
The plan is the easy part. The build is where budgets differ, because these four options are doing very different jobs.
Freelancer
One person customises a theme or builds pages for you. Quality and price vary a lot from person to person.
- Flexible and often affordable
- Usually design or code, rarely both
- Check who supports it after launch
Large agency
A full team with research, design and development. Built for bigger catalogues and bigger budgets.
- Deep expertise and process
- Often 8–12+ weeks
- Usually priced for established brands
PAGEBOLT Launch
A custom-designed store with a theme built from scratch, at a fixed price for brands on the way up.
- From A$1,500, fixed up front
- Live in 3 weeks
- AI-ready product data
- 30 days of support after launch
What changes the price
Why quotes swing so much.
If you've had three quotes and they're thousands apart, this is usually why.
1. Custom design or a tweaked theme
Changing the colours and logo on an existing theme is a few days' work. Designing every key page around your brand and customers, then building a theme to match, is a different job. Both are valid. Just make sure you're comparing like with like.
2. How many products, and how messy the data is
Ten products with clean photos load in an afternoon. Hundreds of products with variants, missing descriptions and inconsistent sizing need cleaning up first. That clean-up also matters for AI assistants, which favour stores with complete, consistent product data.
3. Moving from another platform
Coming from WooCommerce, Wix or Squarespace means moving products, customers and order history, and redirecting every old URL so you keep your Google rankings. Done properly, it's real work. We cover it in detail on our Shopify migration page.
4. Integrations
Email marketing like Klaviyo, reviews, subscriptions, a 3PL warehouse or an accounting system. Each one is an app to choose, set up and test so the data flows the right way.
5. Content and copy
Someone has to write the product descriptions, the About page and the shipping policy. If it's you, the build costs less. If it's the agency, ask whether copywriting is in the quote.
6. Shopify Plus and international selling
Multiple currencies, languages, wholesale pricing and checkout customisation push a build into a different bracket. Most brands don't need them on day one.
- 01Quote A: an existing theme installed and restyled. Quicker and cheaper, and it'll look like the theme.
- 02Quote B: research, custom design, a theme built from scratch, data clean-up and migration.
- 03The gap between two quotes is usually scope, not margin. Compare them line by line.
- 04Often in neither quote: integrations, copywriting and Shopify Plus features. Ask.
After launch
The costs that keep coming.
Budget for these from day one, and none of them will surprise you.
Shopify plan
MONTHLYFrom A$42 a month on yearly billing. Most brands stay on Basic or Grow for a long time.
Card fees
PER SALEFrom 1.7% + 30¢ per Australian card payment on Basic. Use Shopify Payments to avoid Shopify's extra third-party gateway fee.
Apps
MONTHLYReviews, email, subscriptions, upsells. Many have free tiers. Paid ones add up fast, so install with intent and remove what you don't use.
Domain
YEARLYA small yearly fee for your .com.au or .com. Buy it through Shopify or any registrar and point it at your store.
Improvements
AS NEEDEDNew pages, landing pages for campaigns, speed fixes, testing. With us that's Accelerate at A$50 an hour, only when you need it.
Your time
ALWAYSThe cost nobody quotes. A store that's easy to edit, with sections you can rearrange yourself, saves hours every month.
Spend less, not worse
Five ways to save.
- Pay Shopify yearly. Basic drops from A$56 to A$42 a month, a 25% saving. That's A$168 back in year one.
- Start on Basic. Upgrade when the numbers say so, not before. Lower card fees on bigger plans only pay off at real volume.
- Use Shopify Payments. It avoids Shopify's extra fee for third-party gateways, which is 2% of every sale on Basic.
- Audit your apps every quarter. Stores collect apps they no longer use. Each one costs money and can slow the store down.
- Launch focused, then grow. Get the pages that sell live first: home, collections, product, cart. Add the nice-to-haves once you've got sales data telling you what matters.
One thing not to save on: the product page. It's where the buying decision happens, and it's the page AI assistants read when they decide whether to recommend you.
Questions
Good questions. Straight answers.
How much does a Shopify website cost in Australia?
You need two things: the Shopify plan and the store build. Shopify plans start at A$42 a month on yearly billing (A$56 billed monthly). A store you set up yourself on a free theme costs little more than that.
A custom-designed store from us starts at A$1,500 one-time, so a realistic first year for a small brand starts at around A$2,000, plus card fees and any paid apps.
What are Shopify's transaction fees in Australia?
With Shopify Payments on Basic, online payments with Australian cards cost 1.7% + 30¢, AMEX costs 2.9% + 30¢ and international cards cost 3.5% + 30¢. Rates drop on higher plans.
If you use a third-party payment provider instead, Shopify adds its own fee on top: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus.
Is Shopify cheaper than WooCommerce?
WooCommerce itself is free, but you pay for hosting, security, premium plugins and someone to keep it all updated. Shopify bundles hosting, security and updates into one monthly fee.
For most small and growing brands, Shopify works out similar or cheaper once you count the time spent maintaining WooCommerce. If you're weighing up a move, see how we migrate stores to Shopify.
Do I have to pay for a Shopify theme?
No. Shopify has free themes that are a solid starting point. Premium themes in the Shopify Theme Store charge a one-off fee.
A custom theme, like the ones we build, is designed around your brand and products instead of adapting a template, and there's no licence to pay.
Can I build a Shopify store myself?
Yes. Shopify is built for that, and if you're testing an idea it's often the right call. We'll tell you so.
Bring in help when the store needs to look like a real brand, stay fast with several apps installed, move data from another platform, or be found by Google and AI assistants.
Why do Shopify agency quotes vary so much?
Because they cover very different amounts of work. One quote might be a theme install with your logo; another includes research, custom design, a theme built from scratch, data migration and support after launch.
Ask every agency exactly what's included, who owns the code, and what ongoing help costs.