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Most Shopify stores run on a Theme Store theme, and most of them should. A custom build starts to make sense when the theme is working against you: product types it can't display well, a design system it can't hold, or years of patches that break with every update.
Shopify custom theme development means building a theme around your catalogue and designs, usually from a Figma file, on Online Store 2.0 (Shopify's current theme architecture, where every page is made of editable sections). The finished theme should let your team change layouts and content in the theme editor without calling a developer.
It is not adjusting the theme you already have; that is theme customisation, a far smaller job. Nor is it the visual design itself. A designer produces the files, and the developer turns them into a working theme.
Compare portfolios and starting prices below, and ask each developer for a live store they built from someone else's designs.
I have been a Shopify Developer for over 5 years and have experience handling a wide range of projects, from custom theme builds to specific app development. My focus is always on providing practical solutions and high-quality work that meets your specific requirements without overcomplicating the process.
Vevol Media is a Shopify Plus Partner agency specialised in web development and email marketing, with a strong focus on CRO growth & migrations to Shopify Plus. They have collaborated with renowned brands such as: Bound Apparel (Ireland) One Dame Lane (Ireland) DY Nutrition (US) Dossier Perfumes (US) and many more. Their expertise is also recognised through the creation of an official Shopify theme, “Noblesse”, and their community involvement is reflected by organising events like Shopify Meetup CEE (2025/26) and Shopify Meetup Dublin (2025). Their team provides end-to-end migration solutions to Shopify and Shopify Plus, transforming complex stores from platforms such as Magento or VTEX into modern, high-performance experiences. To date, they have completed over 35+ migrations for clients across various industries, from fashion and lifestyle to jewellery and B2B. For further information, visit www./vevolmedia.com/
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I help Shopify brands launch, scale, and optimize their online stores through custom theme development, advanced section builds, and seamless app integrations like subscriptions. With 8 years of hands-on Shopify experience and over a decade in tech, I deliver reliable, conversion-focused solutions that are easy to maintain as your business grows.
Hey! I'm Kat. I've been working with Shopify since 2018, offering store set up, development, and eCommerce consulting services. I have products listed on both the Shopify Theme Store (Divide, Leap, Explore, Move, and Treat), and Shopify App Store (QuickSwatch), and am listed on the Shopify Partner directory. I primarily work with brands in the premium-to-luxury lifestyle space (think: fashion, accessories, food and drink, home, kids products) both in Australia and internationally. I'm a Shopify, Klaviyo, and Judge.me. partner. Whether you're a new brand looking for store set up, or a more established one wondering how you can improve your website (think conversions, integrations, and development support), feel free to reach out.
Sounds Good Agency is a leading Shopify Plus Partner and the first dedicated Shopify agency in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. As certified Shopify Experts since 2016, we specialize exclusively in building and scaling high-performance e-commerce solutions for medium to large enterprises, with a focus on DTC, B2B, and omnichannel retail brands achieving $3M–$200M+ in GMV. Our 15+ person team of full-stack developers, designers, strategists, and project managers brings over 20 years of combined expertise in every phase—from strategic planning and architecture to seamless implementation and ongoing optimization. We're passionate about AI-first processes to accelerate development, foster honest collaboration, and deliver future-proof results that drive real growth. Team Skills E-commerce Strategy & Consulting: Optimizing customer journeys, B2B wholesale portals, and omnichannel ecosystems; expertise in data-driven decisions, CRO (conversion rate optimization), and AI integration for scaling. Project Management & Leadership: End-to-end oversight of complex migrations, custom builds, and integrations, with a track record of 50+ projects completed on time and within budget. Full-Stack Development: Balanced frontend/backend capabilities for enterprise-grade apps, themes, and architecture. Design & UX: High-conversion themes, custom templates, and traffic-ready interfaces tailored for global audiences. Projects We Specialize In We excel in transformative e-commerce projects that blend technical precision with business impact. Highlights include: Store Migrations & Builds Custom App Development B2B/Wholesale Implementations Redesigns & CRO-Focused Themes Systems Integrations With a 5.0 rating from 120+ Shopify reviews and clients spanning fashion, electronics, health/beauty, and food/drink industries, we're committed to stability, innovation, and partnership. Let's build something extraordinary together!
Grow faster and scale smarter with Velstar. A full service e-commerce agency for D2C and B2B, combining strategic, technical and creative expertise.
We specialise in working with Fashion, Beauty and Jewellery retailers - developing sites, crafting e-commerce strategies and CRO optimisation. Our clients have included The Couture Club LTK The Edit LDN Emello Ed Hardy Doll Beauty WAWWA RASCALS LOOPI & more!
Hey there, I’m Yoon, I have been in the Shopify ecosystem for 6 years – and I have worked with different industries, such as fashion, skincare, lifestyle brands, to build and optimize their Shopify stores. My focus is on creating fast, scalable Shopify stores that combine good performance and design.
Built by operators, backed by results. Enterprise-level Shopify solutions designed and optimized by eCommerce veterans who measure success in growth, conversions, and ROI - not just launches. We help fast-growing DTC brands squeeze more money out of their websites and future-proof their tech stacks through redesigns, ongoing conversion optimizations, and custom platform enhancements. https://sparky.us/ _____________________________________________________________________________________________ Recent Projects: - HeyDude: Grew checkouts reached by 51% with bespoke Shopify theme in three months ahead of Holiday. Implemented SEO best practices to boost discoverability and site health - ' 47: Increased site speed by 300% with custom theme build, including custom Algolia Integration, & favorite teams concept to personalize shopping experience. - GHOST: Increased conversion rate by 7% with custom designed & built Shopify theme. Built custom award-winning loyalty program, mobile app, and GWP feature. - Rockets of Awesome: Led a Shopify Plus migration and built editable subscription bundles, reworked curation and box logic to empower merchandising, and delivered a custom quiz and box curator integrating Shopify, Awtomic, and Pitney Bowes. - Legends B2B: designed & build custom B2B website to drive wholesale growth leading to $9M in YoY revenue & 7.8% conversion rate. Improved wholesale efficiency: Faster bulk ordering, clearer inventory visibility, reduced manual ops - VENUS Fashion: Full scale migration, migrating products, customer data, and content into a streamlined Shopify Plus storefront with clear product structures. Unified tools and integrations into one ecosystem, reducing complexity and maintenance. - York Athletics: Designed and built a bespoke Shopify theme driving a 40% YoY conversion lift post-launch, sustained despite fewer promotions, plus a front-end solution for gendered SKUs without back-end impact.
function(), MALVI's Shopify branch, crafts high-performance, scalable commerce projects with forensic engineering, brand-led strategy, and zero fluff. As a Shopify-exclusive agency, we carry forward MALVI's award-winning DNA in design, strategy, and storytelling—so every function() project benefits from over a fifteen years of big-picture thinking and pixel-perfect rigor. Working with Shopify exclusively for over 9 years, function() has helped brands grow and expand, reach their intended audience and goals, and enjoy life-changing support from a stellar team. From Shopify Plus official case studies to emerging boutique stores, function() partners with ambitious teams at every stage of growth. We specialize in complex builds, replatforming, and long-term evolution—turning Shopify into a durable growth engine rather than a short-term solution. Our work is opinionated, data-informed, and execution-obsessed, with a hands-on approach embedded from strategy through launch and beyond. The promise: commerce experiences that scale cleanly, convert intentionally, and stand up to real-world demand.
Custom Shopify theme development quotes are hard to compare, because each developer prices their own reading of the same design file. Remove the guesswork before you ask for numbers.
Finish the designs before you request quotes. Desktop and mobile layouts for the home page, a collection page, a product page, the cart and one content page give a developer something concrete to price. Unfinished designs get quoted as if the developer will fill the gaps, and they will, at build rates.
Ask for a Figma to Shopify build, not a portfolio. Plenty of attractive portfolio stores started as a purchased theme with new colours. Ask which projects began from another team's design file, then open those live stores on a phone and click through to checkout.
Look at the theme editor, not just the storefront. A good custom theme gives your team sections and blocks with sensible settings: a banner with image, heading and button fields, not a hard-coded image that needs a developer to change the text. Ask for a screen share of the editor on a past build.
Agree a performance target in writing. Custom code can be lean or bloated depending on the developer's habits. Ask how they'll measure Core Web Vitals, Google's scores for loading (LCP), responsiveness (INP) and layout stability (CLS), on product and collection templates before launch.
Red flags in a theme quote. No line for testing across devices and browsers. A private starter theme the developer won't let you see. Silence on accessibility, which is cheaper to build in than to retrofit. And any plan to edit a purchased theme's core files while calling the result custom.
A premium Theme Store theme costs $180–$500, once. A bespoke build costs $5,000–$30,000, and every future fix is yours to fund. That gap needs a specific reason.
Build from scratch when your products don't fit a standard product page (made-to-measure clothing, configurable furniture, kits assembled from many parts), your merchandising depends on layouts no theme offers, or you run a design system across other channels and every theme needs its styles overridden line by line. A theme buried under years of patches from different freelancers is often cheaper to replace than to keep repairing.
Extend a premium theme when the problem is one or two templates. Custom sections at $600–$3,000 each leave the rest of the theme intact, and updates stay manageable as long as the new code lives in its own section files. Most stores belong here — and a good developer will tell you so.
Either way, the handover decides whether you own the theme. Ask for:
- A Git repository in your company's account, connected through Shopify's GitHub integration or a documented deploy process
- Section and block schema (the settings definitions behind each section) with every setting labelled in plain language
- Short written documentation: what each section does and what not to touch
- An update path: who fixes the theme when Shopify changes something, and at what rate
Two typical market ranges for a build from approved designs, plus the entry prices developers list on shopexperts.
Full custom theme
Bespoke build from approved designs
Custom sections
Per section, with editor settings
Starting prices on shopexperts
Median $475 across 82 developers
Template count moves the price most. Five templates and a dozen sections sit near the bottom of the full-build range; product configurators, several collection layouts, multiple languages and a large section library push toward the top. Theme and Liquid developers (Liquid is Shopify's templating language) typically charge $60–$150 an hour.
Every one of the 82 custom theme developers on shopexperts published a starting price in September 2026, and their $475 median sits below even the custom sections tile. Use it to spot who takes small theme jobs, and budget a full build against the market ranges.
Quotes compare fairly only on finished designs, so send approved desktop and mobile files with your request.
Most custom theme projects combine several of these:
Approved designs turned into templates, sections and styles
Reusable sections with settings your team edits in the theme editor
Configurators, variant logic and specs fed from metafields
A heavily patched theme replaced with clean, documented code
Fast templates and keyboard-friendly markup from the first commit
Git repository, documentation and an agreed update path
Most builds from approved designs take 4 to 12 weeks. The spread comes from template count, how many custom product features are involved, and how quickly your team signs off each stage. Content entry and app setup are often left out of the estimate, so ask whether the developer is loading products and pages or handing over an empty theme. Rushing usually means cutting device testing, which is where launch-week bugs come from.
The developer breaks the design into templates, sections and blocks, decides which elements your team should be able to edit, and builds each one in Liquid. Expect questions about states the designer didn't draw: empty collections, long product titles, sold-out variants, error messages. A Figma file that includes those states produces a cheaper, faster build. Pixel-perfect matching at every screen size is possible but costs extra, so agree which breakpoints matter.
Not automatically. A custom theme can drop features you don't use, which helps, but speed depends as much on image handling, fonts, third-party scripts and the apps you install afterwards. A careless custom build can be slower than a well-made Theme Store theme. Put a Core Web Vitals target in the contract and test the product page with your real apps installed, not an empty demo store.
Both are well represented. In September 2026, the 82 custom theme developers on shopexperts included 43 freelancers and 39 agencies, with 20 in the US, 14 in the UK and 7 in Canada. A freelancer suits finished designs and a contained scope. An agency suits projects that also need design, copy, migration or project management, and gives you continuity if one person leaves.
Yes, if it was built properly. Text, images, section order and most layout choices should be editable in the theme editor with no code. New section types, logic changes and anything that touches Liquid still need a developer, so many stores keep a small retainer or book a theme customisation specialist for later changes. Ask the developer to walk your team through the editor before final payment.
No. Custom themes work on every Shopify plan. Checkout is the exception, because it sits outside the theme entirely: you set its colours, fonts and logo in Shopify's checkout editor, and custom blocks inside the checkout steps are built as app extensions rather than theme code, which on those steps requires Plus. A theme developer who promises a fully custom checkout on a non-Plus store is describing something the platform doesn't allow.
