01 / Insights
Three routes, three budgets
Ask five agencies what an online shop costs and you will get five numbers that seem to describe five different products. They usually do. Every serious quote falls into one of three routes, and knowing yours before you compare offers saves weeks of confusion.
As a market snapshot for 2026:
- Do it yourself on a Shopify theme: roughly €27–79 a month for the plan, €0–450 one-off for the theme, plus many hours of your own time.
- A theme shop built by professionals: most European studios and agencies land between €3,000 and €10,000, depending on catalogue, content and integrations.
- A custom storefront, headless with Shopify Hydrogen: rarely under €10,000 in the market; typical projects run €15,000–50,000, enterprise builds beyond that.
02 / Insights
What drives the price
The biggest cost drivers are rarely visual. They are structural: how many products you sell, how they are organised, how many languages and currencies you need, and which systems the shop has to talk to: invoicing, email marketing, shipping, inventory, sometimes an ERP.
Content is the second driver, and the one most quotes leave out. Product photography, texts that sell and translations take many hours whether you produce them or your agency does. A shop with 40 products and good existing material is often cheaper to build than one with 12 products starting from zero.
Custom features sit on top: subscriptions, configurators, B2B price lists, click and collect. Each one is a line item with a name, and a good quote lists them individually.
03 / Insights
Route one: a Shopify theme
A standard theme is the sensible starting point for most first shops. Shopify's free themes are usable as they are, paid themes cost about 200–450 US dollars once, and hosting, security and the checkout (one of the best-converting in e-commerce) are part of the plan.
The limits arrive on two fronts. Your shop looks like the other shops built on the same theme, which matters more in brand-driven markets than in functional ones. And every gap in the theme gets patched with another app, which adds monthly fees and slowly drags performance down.
If you are validating a product or selling a small catalogue to people who already know you, take this route and put the saved money into marketing.
04 / Insights
Route two: a customised theme
The middle route: professionals take a solid theme and adapt it: your typography, custom sections, a sharper product page, cleaner navigation. In the European market this typically costs €3,000–10,000 and takes a few weeks.
It is the right call when brand matters but your buying journey is standard: browse, product page, cart, checkout. You get a shop that looks like yours without paying for a bespoke frontend.
One warning: a theme bent too far becomes expensive. If more than half the templates need rebuilding, you are paying custom prices for theme constraints, and at that point building clean is the cheaper decision.
05 / Insights
Route three: headless with Shopify Hydrogen
Hydrogen is Shopify's React framework for fully custom storefronts. The frontend, everything your customer sees, is designed and built for your brand alone, while products, inventory, payments and the proven checkout stay in Shopify. Hosting on Shopify Oxygen is included in the plan.
It costs more because nothing is prefabricated. What you buy is complete design control, editorial shopping journeys and performance headroom no app-heavy theme can match. We have built a production Hydrogen storefront for Drop Bike in Lisbon, live and trading.
It pays off when differentiation carries your margin, when content and commerce need to blend, when the catalogue outgrows theme logic, or when speed at the top of the funnel translates into revenue. With a small catalogue, a standard journey and a tight budget, take the theme.
06 / Insights
The running costs nobody puts in the quote
The build price is half the story. Over three years, even the small line items double the bill: a €5,000 theme shop with €150 in monthly costs totals around €10,400. A realistic monthly budget for a small to mid-sized Shopify shop in 2026:
- Shopify plan: roughly €27–289 a month depending on tier; Shopify Plus starts around 2,300 US dollars.
- Apps: €30–150 a month is typical; reviews, email, translations and bundles add up month by month.
- Maintenance and small changes: €50–300 a month across the market, as a retainer or on demand.
- Domain and email: €20–80 a year, the cheapest line on the list.
- Content: new photography and campaign assets recur every year.
07 / Insights
Payment fees: the percentage on every sale
Every sale carries a fee. With Shopify Payments, card fees in Europe typically run between 1.5 and 3 percent plus a small fixed amount per transaction, depending on plan and card type. PayPal usually sits around 2.5 to 3.5 percent, and buy-now-pay-later providers bring their own pricing.
Two details deserve attention. If you use an external payment provider instead of Shopify Payments, Shopify adds an extra 0.5 to 2 percent platform fee on top. And higher plans come with lower card rates: at around €200,000 in yearly revenue, a single saved percentage point is worth €2,000 and can pay for the plan upgrade on its own.
08 / Insights
How we quote a shop at Tanomedia
We start with a short discovery call: catalogue, journey, integrations, content status. Then you get a fixed price, with no day rates and no open-ended billing. Payment is 50 percent to start and 50 percent at launch, and most of our projects go live within 2–6 weeks, with shop builds at the upper end of that range.
Our websites start at €1,500; shop budgets depend on the route and the catalogue, and the number is in writing before work begins. And if a theme serves you better than Hydrogen, we will say so; a shop that sells is the reference we want.
FAQ
Common questions
01How much does it cost to start a small online shop?
On a Shopify theme you can start for roughly €27–79 a month plus up to €450 one-off for a paid theme, if you do the work yourself. A professionally built theme shop typically costs €3,000–10,000 in the European market.
02What does a Shopify Hydrogen storefront cost?
Custom headless storefronts rarely come in under €10,000; typical mid-market projects run €15,000–50,000 depending on catalogue, integrations and content. Checkout, products and payments stay in Shopify, and Oxygen hosting is included in the plan.
03What monthly costs should I budget for a Shopify shop?
Plan (€27–289), apps (€30–150), maintenance (€50–300), plus payment fees of roughly 1.5–3 percent on every sale. For most small shops, €100–400 a month is a realistic total before marketing.
04Can I start with a theme and switch to Hydrogen later?
Yes, and that is one of the strongest arguments for Shopify. Products, customers and orders stay where they are; a Hydrogen migration replaces only the storefront layer, so you can upgrade the frontend once revenue justifies it.