Shopify vs Custom Website: The 3-Year Cost

In Shopify vs custom website, Shopify is usually cheaper and faster to launch, and a custom build is usually cheaper to run once a store is large, unusual or growing fast. The fair comparison is total cost over about three years: Shopify's plan fee, its transaction fees and paid apps, against a custom build's upfront cost, hosting and maintenance. Most small stores should start on Shopify. Some should not, and it is worth knowing which you are before you commit.

The monthly plan price is the least important number in this decision. Transaction fees and apps are where the real cost of Shopify lives.

What does Shopify actually cost in India?

Shopify's India pricing page, at the time of writing in September 2026, lists these plans when billed yearly: Basic at ₹1,499 a month, Grow at ₹5,599 a month, Advanced at ₹22,680 a month, and Plus from ₹1,75,000 a month. Monthly billing costs more.

Then there are the costs that do not appear in the headline:

• Transaction fees on third-party payment gateways. If you take payments through a provider other than Shopify's own, Shopify's page lists an extra fee on each sale: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus. That is on top of what the payment gateway itself charges.
• Apps. Most stores add apps for reviews, subscriptions, wishlists, advanced filters, shipping rules or invoicing. Many are billed monthly, and a store with eight or ten of them can pay more for apps than for the plan.
• A theme. Free themes exist; most brands buy a premium one and then pay someone to adjust it.

Prices change, so check Shopify's page before you decide. The structure is what matters: a plan fee, a percentage of sales, and a growing app bill.

What does a custom website cost?

A custom store, built on an open-source platform or from components, moves the cost to the start:

• The build, which is the large number. It depends on catalogue size, how unusual your product or checkout is, integrations with inventory or accounting, and design.
• Hosting, which for a typical small store is modest, and scales with traffic.
• Maintenance: security updates, fixes, small changes. Budget for this every month or it becomes an emergency later.
• Payment gateway fees, which you pay on any platform, but with no platform fee on top.

The custom route has no percentage of your sales going to a platform and no app subscriptions, but you pay for every feature once, and someone has to keep it all working.

How do you compare Shopify vs custom website costs fairly?

Put both on a three year view. For each option, add up:

Then do the one calculation that changes most decisions: your expected annual online sales multiplied by Shopify's transaction fee for your plan. At small volumes that number is trivial and Shopify wins easily. At larger volumes it can become the biggest single line in the table, and the point where a higher plan, or a custom build, pays for itself becomes visible.

A worked example of the transaction fee maths

Take an illustrative store selling ₹50 lakh a year online through a third-party gateway, using the yearly prices above.

• On Basic: ₹1,499 × 12 is ₹17,988 in plan fees, plus 2% of ₹50 lakh, which is ₹1,00,000 in Shopify transaction fees. About ₹1,18,000 a year.
• On Grow: ₹5,599 × 12 is ₹67,188, plus 1% of ₹50 lakh, which is ₹50,000. About ₹1,17,000 a year.

So at roughly ₹50 lakh in sales the two plans cost about the same, and above it the higher plan is cheaper despite its price. Run the same sum with your own numbers, add your app bill, and you have the figure to hold against a custom build.

When is Shopify the right choice?

• You are launching or testing a product and speed matters more than anything.
• Your catalogue and checkout are standard: products, variants, a cart, delivery.
• Nobody on your team wants to think about hosting, security or updates.
• Your sales volume is modest enough that transaction fees are small.

For most new stores, this describes them, and Shopify is a sensible, low-risk start. Starting on Shopify and moving later is a normal path.

When is a custom website the better choice?

• Your product or checkout is unusual: made to measure, configurable, quote-based, subscription with complex rules, B2B pricing per customer.
• Your sales volume has grown to the point where transaction fees and app subscriptions add up to more than a custom build would cost over three years.
• You need deep integration with your own inventory, ERP or fulfilment that apps only approximate.
• Brand experience is the product, and a theme limits what you can show.
• Performance is a priority. A store weighed down by many apps can load slowly, and Google's Core Web Vitals measure exactly that.

Does the platform affect SEO?

Less than people think. Google's own ecommerce guidance is platform neutral: it cares about crawlable product pages, clear structure, good product data and page experience. You can rank well on Shopify, and you can rank badly on a custom build.

What does matter is control. On Shopify some URL structures and technical details are fixed by the platform, and each app can add scripts that slow pages down. On a custom build you control everything, which also means everything is your responsibility.

What about leaving Shopify later?

Plan for it from day one, even if you never do it. Keep your product data clean and exportable, own your domain, and avoid building your whole operation around an app with no export. A move is always work, but it is far less painful for a store that was set up expecting it.

Shopify vs custom website: a short decision rule

1. New, standard store, uncertain volume: start on Shopify.
2. Growing store, standard needs: stay on Shopify, but recalculate the transaction fee and app bill every year.
3. Unusual product, heavy integration, or large volume: price a custom build against your three year Shopify total.

The same total-cost thinking applies to any website, not just stores. Our notes on what drives the cost of a website in India and website design cost in Dubai walk through it for those markets.

Where this studio stands

We build custom sites and stores when the numbers and the product justify it, and we say so when Shopify is the better answer for now. Every build is set up to be found in search and quoted by AI assistants, which is what the answer engine optimisation page covers.