10 September 2026 / 6 min read
What an ecommerce website costs in the UK, Shopify or custom
Shopify from around £2,500, custom ecommerce £7,500 upward. The right answer depends on how strange your products are.
- ecommerce
- pricing
- websites
Selling online is the one area where the cheap route is often genuinely correct — and where getting talked into a custom build can cost you a year of trading.
The short answer
A well set-up Shopify store with your brand applied runs roughly £2,500 to £6,000. A custom-coded ecommerce site starts around £7,500 and climbs with product complexity. If your products are ordinary and your margins matter, start on a platform.
When a platform is the right answer
| You have | Use |
|---|---|
| Simple products, standard sizes, standard shipping | Shopify |
| A handful of products and a strong brand story | Shopify with custom front-end work |
| Bookings, hire periods, or per-customer pricing | Custom |
| Products configured by the customer | Custom |
| Wholesale and retail pricing side by side | Custom, or Shopify Plus |
What the platform actually costs you
The build is not the whole number. Budget £19–£300 a month for the platform, roughly 2% in transaction and payment fees, and £0–£100 a month in apps. Those apps are how a £29 plan becomes £180 a month without anyone noticing.
Where custom earns its money
Custom ecommerce pays for itself when the checkout is unusual, when stock lives in another system, or when the shopping experience is the brand. Ecstatica sells event places and cacao — deliberately built on a platform, because the team needed to run it without us. That was the cheaper, correct answer.
The mistake that costs most
Spending the whole budget on the build and nothing on being found. A beautiful store with no traffic earns nothing. Set aside a quarter of the budget for search structure, product content and photography.