Shopify or custom for a WA business?
Shopify is the better pick if...
- You sell lots of standard products and want to manage them yourself every day.
- You want to add features by installing apps, without calling anyone.
- You also sell in person or on marketplaces and want one stock count across all of it.
A custom store is the better pick if...
- Your sales have rules: quotes above a price, configurable products, trade accounts.
- Your products already live in other software, like simPRO or an inventory system.
- You'd rather pay once than pay a platform every month for as long as you trade.
What Shopify really costs in Australia
Shopify's Australian plans are $56 a month for Basic, $149 for Grow and $575 for Advanced, billed monthly. Paying yearly brings them down to roughly $42, $114 and $431 a month. That is the number on the pricing page, and it's rarely the number on your bank statement.
On top of the plan you pay:
- Card fees on every sale. With Shopify Payments, Basic sits around 1.75% + 30c per online card payment, lower on the bigger plans.
- An extra fee if you use a payment provider other than Shopify Payments.
- Apps. Reviews, bundles, subscriptions, better search, product filters: many are monthly subscriptions of their own.
- A premium theme if the free ones don't suit you, and a designer if you don't want to set it up yourself.
None of that makes Shopify a bad deal. You're renting a complete, well-run shop: hosting, security, checkout, stock management and support. For a lot of businesses that rent is worth paying.
What a custom online store costs
My custom stores start at $3,000 AUD, paid once. The first year of hosting and maintenance is included, then it's $100 a year for hosting, security updates, backups, an hour of small changes and email support. Payments go through Stripe, which charges its own card fee per sale, the same way Shopify Payments does.
The price goes up with what the store has to do. For a real example, the MAP Group site cost $4,600. It sells spare parts pulled from simPRO, takes payment online under $1,000 and turns anything above into a quote request, prices freight by postcode, has a 4-step truck configurator, and gives both customers and staff their own login.
Shopify Basic
$56 a month × 60 months. Subscription only: no apps, no theme, no card fees.
$3,360
Shopify Grow
$149 a month × 60 months. Same exclusions.
$8,940
Custom store
$3,000 build, first year included, then $100 a year for four years. Stripe card fees on top, as with any store.
from $3,400
Shopify prices from its Australian pricing page, monthly billing, checked October 2026. The build cost of the Shopify store itself (a designer, a theme) is not included.
Read that honestly: against Shopify Basic, a custom store doesn't save you much over five years. It starts saving real money once you'd need Grow or a stack of paid apps. If cost is your only reason to go custom and Basic covers you, stay on Shopify.
What a custom store can do that a theme can't
The cost argument is the weak one. The strong one is fit. A Shopify store is shaped like every other Shopify store: product page, cart, checkout. That's perfect for selling t-shirts. It gets awkward when the way you sell doesn't look like that.
- Quote thresholds: pay online for small orders, request a quote for big ones, on the same product page.
- Configurators: customers build a product step by step and the result goes to your team, not to a cart.
- Data from your other software: prices and stock read from the system your team already uses, instead of typed in twice.
- Freight rules that depend on what's being shipped and where, worked out on the server.
- Customer accounts that show what matters to your customers: quote history, past orders, saved builds.
Some of this is possible on Shopify with the right apps or a developer who writes Shopify code. Each piece is another subscription or another custom job inside someone else's platform.
What you give up with custom
Fair is fair. Going custom has real downsides, and you should know them before you pay a deposit.
- No app store. A new feature means asking a developer, at $100 an hour beyond the hour included each year.
- No built-in point of sale or marketplace sync. If you sell at markets or on Amazon too, Shopify handles that out of the box.
- You depend on a developer for bigger changes. Ask who owns the code and what happens if they disappear. With me, you own the code and it can be handed to anyone.
Shopify and Google in Perth
Shopify stores can rank. The platform handles the basics well. What you can't change is the structure: products always live under /products/ and collections under /collections/, and every app you install can add its own scripts to your pages, which slows them down on a phone.
That matters if Google is how customers find you. For a local business competing on searches in Perth, a store where every page, every word and every script is chosen on purpose is easier to keep fast and easier to rank. If your sales come from Instagram, ads or word of mouth instead, it matters a lot less.
Already on Shopify?
If your Shopify store sells and you're happy with what it costs, keep it. Rebuilding a working shop for the sake of it is money you won't get back. A custom store is worth the move when the monthly bill keeps climbing, or when you keep hitting things the platform won't let you do.
If you do move, your products, customers and orders come with you as CSV files. Map every old URL to its new address before launch, so the rankings your product pages have earned carry over.
Smaller options worth knowing
Selling three products? You may not need a store at all. Stripe Payment Links or a buy button on your existing site can take payments with no subscription. WooCommerce on WordPress is another middle path, and I've written about when WooCommerce makes sense.
Common questions
Not sure which one fits?
Tell me what you sell and how you sell it. If Shopify is the better fit, I'll tell you that. If custom makes sense, you get a fixed price.
More reading: Custom coded website vs website builder · Wix vs custom website · Web design pricing in Australia