How much does a custom Shopify store cost in France?

A custom-built Shopify store generally costs €8,000-25,000 for the redesign of an existing store, and €15,000-40,000 for a full build with catalog, content and tools, at an agency that codes the features instead of stacking paid apps. Those figures cover art direction, theme build, custom-coded features, catalog and customer migration, SEO, testing before launch, and training so the client's team can handle day-to-day edits afterward. A themed store, less customized, runs €2,500-8,000 to build, plus €100-300/month in apps afterward to cover the same needs. At Sonho, every project starts at €2,000 excl. VAT, the quote is fixed-price and set after a discovery call, and it does not move once signed. Monthly support of €800-2,500, with no commitment, stays available after launch, either as a fixed package or billed per request.

Is a €2,500 Shopify theme a good choice?

Yes, in certain specific cases. A €2,500 themed store suits a catalog under 50 products, a brand testing an idea before investing further, or a genuinely tight starting budget. It goes live fast and keeps the financial risk contained. The math changes over time: the bigger the catalog grows, the more paid apps pile up to cover needs a generic theme does not handle, often €100-300/month. Over three years, a themed store and its apps can end up costing as much as a custom project built from the start, without the store gaining any speed or independence. The right question is not “how much does the theme cost” but “how much will it cost in two years”, once the catalog and the needs have grown.

How much do Shopify apps cost each month?

On an active store, paid apps generally cost €100-300/month: customer reviews, automated emails, search, upsells, pop-ups. Each app adds a recurring billing line and a dependence on a third-party publisher who can change prices overnight. On top of that come payment fees, roughly 1.5% + €0.25 per transaction, which is €1,500 a year on €100,000 in sales. Coding a feature directly into the theme costs more once, at build time, but removes the monthly subscription that comes with it. At [Grillé](/realisations/grille), that choice cut about €200 a month in apps and made the store twice as fast. Before signing an agency quote, ask for the list of planned apps and their combined monthly cost: it is often the real bill, the one discovered well after launch.

The price of a custom-built Shopify store in France in 2026: the line-by-line breakdown

Between a €2,500 themed store and a €30,000 hand-coded one, nobody explains what actually justifies the gap. Here is the line-by-line breakdown, plus the costs that usually get left out of the estimate.

The short answer

A custom-built Shopify store generally costs between €8,000 and €25,000 for a redesign, and between €15,000 and €40,000 for a full build, with an agency that codes the features instead of stacking paid apps. A themed store, by contrast, runs €2,500-8,000 at launch, plus €100-300/month in apps afterward. At Sonho, every project starts at €2,000 excl. VAT, with a fixed-price quote set after a discovery call and never revised once signed.

Why do two Shopify quotes range from €3,000 to €30,000 for the same project?

Ask three agencies for a quote on the same Shopify store and you will get back three numbers that have almost nothing in common. That is not a case of dishonesty, it is a scope problem: “Shopify store” covers everything from a paid theme with light tweaks to a site built entirely from code, with features that exist nowhere else.

The first gap comes from the theme. A themed store (logo, colors, a handful of settings) goes live fast and costs little, between €2,500 and €8,000 depending on customization. Custom code starts from a blank page: every template in the theme is hand-coded for your catalog and your buying journey, which takes longer and costs more to build.

The second gap comes from the features. A product configurator, a loyalty program or a faceted search engine can be switched on in a few clicks with a paid app, or coded directly into the theme. The first option is fast and bills a subscription for as long as you keep the app; the second costs more once, at build time, then charges nothing every month after.

The line-by-line breakdown of a custom Shopify store

A serious quote for a custom-built Shopify store breaks down into specific line items, each one standing for real work hours. Here they are, in the order they usually run on a project, with the ranges seen on the French market.

Art direction: visual identity, desktop and mobile mockups, sign-off before a single line of code. Often 15-25% of the total budget.
Theme build: constructing the templates (homepage, category, product page, cart) hand-coded for your brand rather than adapted from a template.
Custom-coded features: configurator, filters, loyalty program, connection to an existing management tool. The line item that varies the most from one project to the next.
Catalog and customer migration: importing products, customer records and order history from the old platform, checked line by line.
SEO: page structure, redirects, structured data, loading speed. Built in from the start, not tacked on at the end.
Testing: checks on mobile, across the main browsers, and on the full buying journey through to payment.
Training: hands-on onboarding to the Shopify admin so the client's team can edit copy, photos and products without going through a developer.

The Sonho price grid for a Shopify store, as a benchmark

Those ranges give a basis for comparison, but every agency prices differently. Here is what that looks like at Sonho, as a benchmark: not a fixed grid, a starting point for a quote set after a discovery call.

Redesign of an existing store: €8,000-25,000 excl. VAT, depending on catalog size and the number of features to recode.
Full build (catalog, content, tools): €15,000-40,000 excl. VAT.
Minimum project fee: €2,000 excl. VAT.
Ongoing support after launch: €800-2,500/month, no commitment.

What are the real recurring costs of a Shopify store?

The build price is only part of the bill. An active Shopify store pays a subscription of €27-79/month depending on the plan, plus apps that add up fast: often €100-300/month on a growing store, between customer reviews, automated emails and search.

On top of that come payment fees, roughly 1.5% + €0.25 per transaction, which is €1,500 a year on €100,000 in sales. None of these lines is a trap: they are normal costs of running a store. The problem is discovering them six months after launch instead of building them into the math from day one.

What custom code removes: the proof from Grillé

Every paid app replaces a feature that could instead be coded once, for good, into the theme, with no monthly bill behind it. That is exactly what happened at Grillé: the features that used to run on paid apps were recoded directly into the theme.

Measured result: about €200/month in app subscriptions cut, a store twice as fast, and 3x the sales compared with the old site. That is not a given on every project, but it shows what custom code changes once a store is live, not just during the build.

What the price does not tell you

A quote prices the build, rarely what happens afterward. Two questions worth asking before signing: who edits a piece of copy, a photo or a price tomorrow, and how long it takes to fix a bug once the store is live.

At Sonho, the client's team is trained before the project counts as finished: the theme's sections are coded to be edited without a developer. If a bug turns up after launch, the response arrives within 48 hours, and further work is handled as a fixed-price package or on a per-ticket basis, whichever fits the project.

A store that depends on an app for every feature also depends on that app's publisher: a price hike, an acquisition, a service shutdown. A feature coded into the theme does not disappear because a third-party publisher changes its pricing policy.

What budget makes sense relative to your revenue?

The price of a store is rarely judged on its own, it is better measured against what the store is supposed to bring in. A brand doing €500,000 in revenue that invests €8,000 in its store is putting 1.6% of its annual revenue into the tool that collects most of its sales.

The same math applied to a brand at €1.5 million makes a €24,000 budget just as rational, and at €2.5 million, a €40,000 budget stays in the same proportion. Conversely, an under-invested store sitting on top of already-established revenue costs money a different way: every conversion point lost on existing traffic weighs more than the gap between two quotes.

A €2,500 theme or custom-built: the 3-year comparison

A €2,500 themed store is a good choice in three specific cases: a catalog under 50 products, an idea worth testing before investing further, or a genuinely tight starting budget. In those cases, stacking a few paid apps costs less than a custom build, at least in year one.

The math changes over time. The bigger the catalog grows and the more apps pile up, the higher the monthly bill climbs, without the store getting any faster or any easier to run. Here is what that looks like over three years, comparing a themed store with a custom build:

The lowest total is not always the right math: it says nothing about the time a themed store demands in settings, or its loading speed, or its dependence on app publishers. Custom-built costs more to build and less to run, month after month.

	Themed store + apps	Custom-built store
Initial quote	€2,500-8,000	€8,000-40,000 excl. VAT
Shopify subscription (3 years)	about €1,000-2,800	about €1,000-2,800
Apps (3 years)	about €3,600-10,800	often €0-3,600
Estimated 3-year total	about €7,100-21,600	about €9,000-46,400

Frequently asked questions

How much does a custom Shopify store cost in France?: A custom-built Shopify store generally costs €8,000-25,000 for the redesign of an existing store, and €15,000-40,000 for a full build with catalog, content and tools, at an agency that codes the features instead of stacking paid apps. Those figures cover art direction, theme build, custom-coded features, catalog and customer migration, SEO, testing before launch, and training so the client's team can handle day-to-day edits afterward. A themed store, less customized, runs €2,500-8,000 to build, plus €100-300/month in apps afterward to cover the same needs. At Sonho, every project starts at €2,000 excl. VAT, the quote is fixed-price and set after a discovery call, and it does not move once signed. Monthly support of €800-2,500, with no commitment, stays available after launch, either as a fixed package or billed per request.
Why do two Shopify quotes range from €3,000 to €30,000 for the same request?: Three reasons explain most of the gap. First: the theme. A paid theme dressed in your colors costs less than a theme hand-coded section by section for your brand. Second: the features. A configurator or a loyalty program can be switched on fast with a paid app, or coded once and for all into the theme, which costs more to build and nothing after. Third: the scope. One quote might include catalog migration, SEO and team training; another stops at putting an empty template online. Before comparing two quotes, ask for their line-by-line breakdown: art direction, theme build, features, migration, SEO, testing, training. A provider who refuses to detail it is already telling you something about what you are actually buying.
Is a €2,500 Shopify theme a good choice?: Yes, in certain specific cases. A €2,500 themed store suits a catalog under 50 products, a brand testing an idea before investing further, or a genuinely tight starting budget. It goes live fast and keeps the financial risk contained. The math changes over time: the bigger the catalog grows, the more paid apps pile up to cover needs a generic theme does not handle, often €100-300/month. Over three years, a themed store and its apps can end up costing as much as a custom project built from the start, without the store gaining any speed or independence. The right question is not “how much does the theme cost” but “how much will it cost in two years”, once the catalog and the needs have grown.
How much do Shopify apps cost each month?: On an active store, paid apps generally cost €100-300/month: customer reviews, automated emails, search, upsells, pop-ups. Each app adds a recurring billing line and a dependence on a third-party publisher who can change prices overnight. On top of that come payment fees, roughly 1.5% + €0.25 per transaction, which is €1,500 a year on €100,000 in sales. Coding a feature directly into the theme costs more once, at build time, but removes the monthly subscription that comes with it. At Grillé, that choice cut about €200 a month in apps and made the store twice as fast. Before signing an agency quote, ask for the list of planned apps and their combined monthly cost: it is often the real bill, the one discovered well after launch.