We built TeamGear.ca, which sells custom sports apparel with configurable products, bulk team ordering, and size charts across dozens of product lines. It grew 180 percent year over year. That experience is why we can be specific about what drives cost in this category — and it is rarely what clients expect.
The ranges
| Type of store | Build cost | Ongoing | Fits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify, themed | $3,000–8,000 | $50–120/mo + fees | Straightforward catalogue, standard checkout |
| Shopify, custom design | $8,000–20,000 | $100–400/mo + fees | Brand-led stores, custom product pages |
| Custom build | $20,000–60,000+ | $100–500/mo hosting | Configurators, B2B pricing, unusual logistics |
| Marketplace / multi-vendor | $40,000+ | Varies | Multiple sellers, commission handling |
Ontario market rates, 2026. Transaction fees and payment processing are separate and ongoing.
What actually drives the number
Product complexity, not product count
A thousand simple products is a data import. Fifty configurable products — pick a colour, add a name and number, choose a size per team member — is real engineering. Clients routinely assume catalogue size drives price. It almost never does.
How customers buy
A single customer buying one item is the easy case. Bulk ordering, team ordering where twenty people each pick their own size against one invoice, wholesale tiers, quote requests — each of those is a different checkout flow, and each adds meaningfully to the build.
What it has to talk to
Inventory systems, accounting, shipping rate calculators, ERP, print or fulfilment partners. Integrations are usually the largest single line on a serious e-commerce quote and the one clients forget to mention until late.
Photography and product data
The most commonly underestimated cost in the entire project. Product photography, descriptions, specifications, and variant data for a large catalogue is substantial work, and stores stall here more than anywhere else.
The number that should drive the decision
Work out your average order value and your realistic monthly order volume. A store doing 200 orders a month at $80 is $16,000 in monthly revenue — a $20,000 build pays back inside a couple of quarters and then compounds. If the arithmetic works, build for where you are going rather than where you are; rebuilding a store mid-growth is far more disruptive than building it right.
Ongoing costs people forget
- ✓Payment processing, typically 2.4 to 2.9 percent plus a per-transaction fee
- ✓Platform transaction fees on top, unless you use the platform’s own payments
- ✓Apps and plugins, which accumulate quietly into hundreds per month on Shopify
- ✓Product photography as the catalogue grows
- ✓Ongoing SEO — product pages need it more than any other page type
Where Shopify stops being enough
Shopify is genuinely excellent, and for most stores it is the right answer. It runs out of room in specific places: complex product configurators, B2B pricing tiers that vary per customer, order flows that split across multiple fulfilment partners, and any case where per-transaction fees at your volume start exceeding what a custom build would have cost.
That last point is worth checking annually. Stores growing quickly often discover the platform fee has quietly become their largest software expense.
How we quote it
We scope against how you actually sell — order types, integrations, and the product data you have — then quote a fixed price before any work starts. If Shopify covers what you need, we will build it there and say so. If your product genuinely needs a configurator, we will tell you what that costs up front rather than discovering it in month three.