“How much for a Shopify website?” is the first question most Sri Lankan business owners ask us — and most answers they get are either a single number with no explanation, or “it depends”. Here is the full picture, so you can budget properly and compare quotes fairly.
The four costs of a Shopify store
Every Shopify store has the same four cost lines. Agencies usually quote only one of them.
- Shopify’s subscription — paid monthly or yearly to Shopify, in US dollars.
- Transaction and payment fees — a percentage of every sale.
- Apps — monthly fees for extra features.
- The build — design, setup, data and integrations (one-off).
1. Shopify’s subscription
Shopify has three main plans — Basic, Grow and Advanced — plus Shopify Plus for large businesses. Prices are set in USD and vary by country and by whether you pay monthly or yearly; at the time of writing the Basic plan is roughly US$19–39 a month, Grow is several times that, and Advanced is in the hundreds. Always check Shopify’s pricing page for the current figure in your region.
Most Sri Lankan stores should start on Basic. The higher plans mainly buy lower transaction fees, more staff accounts and better reporting — worth it only once your sales volume makes the fee saving bigger than the plan difference.
2. Transaction fees — the cost people miss
Shopify’s own payment service, Shopify Payments, is not offered to Sri Lanka-based stores at the time of writing. That means you take card payments through a local or international third-party gateway, and Shopify adds its own fee on top of the gateway’s charge:
| Plan | Shopify’s fee on third-party gateway sales |
|---|---|
| Basic | 2% |
| Grow | 1% |
| Advanced | 0.6% |
So on LKR 1,000,000 of monthly card sales on Basic, Shopify’s fee is about LKR 20,000 — in addition to your gateway’s own rate (commonly around 2.5–3.5%). Cash on delivery and bank transfer orders marked as manual payments do not attract Shopify’s percentage, which is one reason COD remains popular.
Rule of thumb: once you pass roughly US$4,000–5,000 a month in gateway sales, compare the fee saving from the next plan up.
3. Apps
A simple store can run on free apps. A typical growing store spends US$20–100 a month on things like reviews, email marketing, courier integration and product filters. The trap is app creep: ten apps at US$10–30 each quietly becomes your biggest monthly cost and slows every page. A good build replaces several apps with theme features or one small custom app.
4. The build
| Type of build | Typical range (LKR) | Typical time |
|---|---|---|
| Premium theme, customised, up to ~100 products | 250,000 – 600,000 | 3–6 weeks |
| Custom theme + integrations (couriers, POS, accounting) | 1,000,000 – 3,000,000+ | 8–14 weeks |
| Migration from WooCommerce / Magento with SEO protection | Add 300,000 – 1,500,000 | Adds 2–6 weeks |
What moves the number: how many products and variants you have, how clean your product data is, how many systems need connecting, and whether you’re moving an existing site whose Google rankings must be protected.
A premium theme licence (a one-off, often US$200–400) and your domain name are extra.
What it adds up to each month
A small Sri Lankan store on Basic with a few apps typically runs at US$40–120 a month before payment fees. That is usually less than the hosting, security and developer time a self-hosted WooCommerce or Magento store costs to keep healthy — which is the real comparison to make.
How to compare quotes
- Ask what is excluded: product upload, payment gateway setup, courier integration, training.
- Ask which apps the build depends on and what they cost monthly.
- Ask who owns the theme and any custom code.
- If you have an existing site, ask how your Google rankings will be protected.
Already on Shopify and not sure you’re getting value? We’ll review your store’s speed, apps and setup and send a written report — free. Request a free Shopify audit.