How Much Does a Shopify Store Cost in Australia (2026)

Shopify's own fee for an Australian store starts at A$56 a month on the Basic plan, or A$42 a month if you pay yearly, and a domestic online card sale on that plan costs 1.7% + A$0.30 through Shopify Payments (Shopify Australia pricing page, last checked 27 September 2026). That answers "how much does Shopify cost" for the platform alone. A working store also needs a theme, some apps, a domain and, unless you build it yourself, someone to design, build and load it. This guide lists every third-party cost with its source and the date we checked it, explains why build quotes for the same store differ, and shows how to read one.

Every third-party cost in one table

These are the costs Shopify and the other vendors publish themselves. Design and build work is not in the table, because nobody can price it without a scope; the sections after the table cover what drives it.

Shopify's pricing page also advertised a 3-day free trial, then $1 a month for the first 3 months on most plans (last checked 27 September 2026). Offers like this change often, so check the page on the day you sign up.

Choosing a plan

Shopify pitches Basic at solo entrepreneurs, Grow at small teams, Advanced at businesses selling across regions and Plus at complex businesses. Grow adds lower card rates and up to 5 staff accounts. Advanced raises that to 15 staff accounts and adds live third-party shipping rates. Plus adds full checkout customisation, where the other plans get limited customisation, and unlimited staff accounts (Shopify Australia pricing page, last checked 27 September 2026).

Once sales grow, the card rate can matter more than the subscription. On a A$100 domestic online order, Basic's rate costs A$2.00 (1.7% is A$1.70, plus A$0.30) and Grow's costs A$1.85. Paid yearly, Grow costs A$72 a month more than Basic, so on our arithmetic the lower rate alone only covers that difference above about A$48,000 a month of domestic online card sales, before counting American Express, overseas cards or GST. Below that level, the reason to move up a plan is the staff accounts and features, not the rate. Card fees are taken from your payouts rather than added to your Shopify bill (Shopify Help Center, types of charges; rates last checked 27 September 2026).

Payment fees and the third-party transaction fee

You do not have to use Shopify Payments. If you use another payment provider, Shopify adds its own transaction fee: 2% of each sale on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus, and the provider still charges its own fees (Shopify Australia pricing page, last checked 27 September 2026). On Basic that is another A$2.00 on every A$100 order. If your business needs to keep an existing merchant facility, include this fee when you compare plans.

Shopify Payments in Australia accepts Visa, Mastercard, American Express and UnionPay cards, plus Apple Pay, Google Pay and Shop Pay, and EFTPOS cards in person through Shopify POS (Shopify Help Center, payment methods in Australia, last checked 27 September 2026). On Basic, American Express costs 2.9% + A$0.30 and cards issued overseas 3.5% + A$0.30, so a store that sells mostly to overseas customers should budget with those rates rather than the headline one (Shopify Australia pricing page, last checked 27 September 2026).

Themes: free, paid or custom

On 27 September 2026 the Shopify Theme Store listed 24 free themes and 1,257 paid ones, with paid themes priced from US$100 to US$500 as a one-off purchase. Free themes are made by Shopify. Paid themes are made by third-party developers, are licensed only to the store you buy them for, and are final sale (Shopify Help Center, adding and buying themes, last checked 27 September 2026).

The licence is a small, fixed line. The work to set a theme up is what varies: a bought theme configured with your products, colours and content is a much smaller job than a bought theme changed in code, and both are smaller than a custom theme designed and built from scratch. Code changes carry an upkeep cost as well: Shopify notes that if changes to a theme's code are incompatible with a theme update, they are removed in the updated copy (Shopify Help Center, editing theme code).

Apps: small monthly charges that add up

Apps add features Shopify does not include, such as product reviews or advanced email marketing. Each developer sets its own price: free, a monthly plan, usage-based charges or a one-off fee, and the charges appear on your Shopify bill (Shopify Help Center, types of charges, last checked 27 September 2026). All four examples below, read on the App Store on 27 September 2026, say their charges are billed in US dollars, so their cost in Australian dollars moves with the exchange rate:

• Shopify Search & Discovery (made by Shopify, for search and filters): free.
• Shopify Messaging (made by Shopify, for email, SMS and WhatsApp marketing): free to install, with the first 10,000 emails each month free, then from US$1 per 1,000 emails.
• Judge.me Product Reviews: a free plan, or US$15 a month for its paid plan.
• Klaviyo (email and SMS marketing): free for up to 250 email contacts, with paid email plans from US$20 a month for 251 to 500 contacts. Klaviyo's listing notes that some charges may be billed by Klaviyo separately from your Shopify bill.

Judge an app by what it returns as well as what it costs. For Puzzle Art Australia, a Shopify store we built and also market, Klaviyo email produced 38.5% of net revenue in January 2026, according to the platform's own report for that month. That app is a monthly cost, and for that store it was also a large share of sales. The Puzzle Art Australia case study has the detail.

The risk with apps is accumulation. Each one is small, but a store with several paid apps can spend more on them each month than on its Shopify plan. Before launch, list every app with its plan and monthly price, and remove the ones the store does not use. Uninstalling an app stops future billing, although a charge that has already been generated can still appear on the next bill (Shopify Help Center, app charges, last checked 27 September 2026).

Domain names, including .com.au

Every Shopify store comes with a free myshopify.com address, and you can connect a domain you already own or buy one through Shopify. Shopify says its domains typically start at US$9 a year, that the price depends on the extension, and that renewal prices can differ from the first year; .com.au is among the extensions it lists (Shopify Australia domains page, last checked 27 September 2026).

A .com.au name has rules of its own. auDA, which administers .au names, requires a commercial connection to Australia, usually an ABN or ACN; you must stay eligible for as long as you hold the name, and a licence runs for one to five years at a time (auDA, com.au domain names, last checked 27 September 2026). If a developer registers the name for you, auDA says they should use your name, contact details and ABN, so the licence is held by your business and not by whoever set it up.

Why build quotes for the same store vary so much

Two agencies can quote very different amounts for what sounds like the same store because they are pricing different amounts of work. These are the scope drivers that move a Shopify quote most:

• Design approach. A bought theme set up as it comes, a bought theme changed to fit your brand and range, or a custom theme designed and coded from scratch.
• Catalogue size and structure. How many products, variants and collections are loaded, and who prepares the data. Shopify allows up to 2,048 variants and three options per product; a product that needs more requires an app or custom theme code (Shopify Help Center, adding variants, last checked 27 September 2026).
• Migration. Moving products, customers and past orders from an old store, and redirecting old URLs so search results and bookmarks still land on the right page.
• Integrations. Connections to an ERP, a 3PL or warehouse, accounting software or a marketing platform, through an existing app or through custom API work.
• Custom features. Subscriptions, bundles, product builders, wholesale or B2B pricing, and anything else no app does the way you need it done.
• Markets and languages. Selling in more than one currency, language or region adds setup and testing for each one.
• Plan level. Checkout changes beyond the standard options need Plus, the only plan with full checkout customisation.
• Testing, training and support. Whether the quote includes test orders across your payment and shipping cases, staff training, written documentation and a bug-fix period after launch.
• Who does the work. A freelancer, a local studio and an agency with an offshore development team price their time differently. Ask who will build your store and where they work.

How to read a Shopify quote

A good quote lets you compare like with like. Check that it:

• Lists the scope as deliverables: which page templates are designed, how many products are loaded and by whom, which apps are set up and which systems are connected, named one by one.
• States what is excluded, so extra work is priced before it starts rather than argued about afterwards.
• Keeps the build fee separate from third-party costs, and names each third-party cost: the Shopify plan, the theme licence, every paid app and the domain.
• Puts the store, the domain, the theme licence and the app subscriptions in your business's name and on your payment method.
• Says whether the prices include GST.
• Gives a timeline with milestones and what you need to supply at each one, such as product data, photos and approvals.
• Defines what a post-launch bug fix covers and what counts as new work.
• Says what ongoing support costs after launch, and whether it is optional.
• Confirms that the code, design files and content are handed over once the work is paid for.

If two quotes are far apart, lay their scope lists side by side and look for the difference in the drivers above.

Common questions about Shopify costs

Getting a quote for your store

Digitalis Global quotes each store after a free scoping call, as a fixed proposal that lists the scope, price, timeline and exclusions, so ask us for a Shopify quote when you are ready.

To see the kind of stores we build first, browse our case studies or read what our Shopify and WooCommerce development service includes.

Sources

Every source below was read on 27 September 2026. Vendors change prices without notice, so check the linked page before you budget.

• Shopify Australia: Pricing (plans, card rates, third-party transaction fees, POS Pro, trial offer, hosting and plan-change FAQs)
• Shopify Help Center: GST exemptions for Shopify billing in Australia and New Zealand
• Shopify Help Center: Types of charges on your Shopify bills
• Shopify Help Center: App charges on your Shopify bills
• Shopify Help Center: Payment methods with Shopify Payments in Australia
• Shopify Theme Store (theme counts and price range)
• Shopify Help Center: Adding, previewing, and buying themes
• Shopify Help Center: Editing theme code
• Shopify Help Center: Adding variants
• Shopify App Store listings: Shopify Search & Discovery, Shopify Messaging, Judge.me Product Reviews, Klaviyo
• Shopify Australia: Domains
• auDA: com.au domain names
• Puzzle Art Australia's January 2026 email figure: Klaviyo's platform report for that month, as recorded in our case study

Drafted with AI assistance; researched and reviewed by Saad Ali.