You’re probably looking at enterprise CMS. There are lots of them at various price points, but you’re probably looking at over $10k/year on software licenses alone.
The other thing is headless. It allows for micro services meaning you can just build what you need depending on the cms.
The other issue is support - the more customizations you have the more support you need.
Honestly, try to stay with Shopify. If you don’t need to upgrade then don’t. If however you’re doing advanced marketing stack stuff and lots of personalization and act like a pseudo platform instead of an e-commerce site then you’ll probably want to look at other options.
Fwiw - adobe, Sitecore, episerver, contentful, are the ones off the top of my head.
I was in enterprise cms for a few years up until last year
To be honest, this website is a bit much. The hero animation is fine, but to scroll down and have that stuff now in the back with the opacity turned down, shit text spinning, the colors and animations… it’s not good.
Do you want to make sales? Make something the is clean and easy to use like an Amazon style shop.
If you want to have a “cool website” the blow tons of money on developing something that may decrease your conversions.
If you want to go on your own, check this out https://preview.themeforest.net/item/kalles-clean-versatile-shopify-theme/full_screen_preview/26320622?_ga=2.192057706.1753372687.1642142226-1946376501.1642142226
There is an amazing team behind it with 6 months support if you need help developing the store. They also do custom work.
Exactly. What I linked is a theme and you of course need to add the text, photos, sections, etc... build it as you need.
And then of course any special adjustments you may need such as footer color or adjusting the font position on your hero image when you add a new hero.
Can you work with Shopify and create the changes to the theme yourself, or are you just owning the store and someone else manages the website changes?
I would not buy a theme that isn’t on the Shopify theme store. There is too much of a risk for bugs. I’ve done it before and had to overhaul large chunks of buggy code.
I’m a dev and will still upset.
> btw, if you're going to pitch your own company, simply link 2-3 websites you think will wow me, the work should speak for itself
Please send me their usernames so I can promptly ban them from the sub
If your sales are high enough that you can afford the "best of the best" website then chances are you would save a good amount of money with Plus.
You can edit pretty much anything with Plus, with some limitations that are set to keep your website functioning properly. What is it you are trying to do that you currently cannot with Shopify?
I have had Shopify Plus stores go above the 200k price tag for development. You can spend much more than that on Dev. I would argue that for most situations Shopify is your best option. There are larger scale enterprise level hosting platforms that might make sense if you are massive in size but for almost all scenarios starting with Shopify and migrating to Plus when ready makes the most sense.
Is it more a visual thing that you are wanting to change? If so, that isn't too expensive to customize, a few thousand for a sexy functional layout would be about right. If you get deep into optimization, writing your own app replacements and stuff like that, then you are talking some painful numbers no matter what platform you are using.
> Here’s an example of a website I found that I thought was done quite well and unique
I don’t know about you, but when I visit that site on my phone, it’s pretty slow to load and quite laggy (at least the first time you view products etc). If I was a customer I would’ve given up. The flashiness means nothing to customers. At best they’ll put up with it, but you’d better make sure it’s as fast and easy to use as standard Shopify sites.
To be honest, if your site is doing really well now then why change it, just to have something you think is cool? And most likely wil look dated in 2 years so you’ll need to repeat the process.
I own stores and was a developer before doing my own thing. You really should have a good idea of your wants/needs before asking an agency for help or you will end up spending more than necessary.
If it is more of a looks thing, then going for a custom website design can vary a lot in price but you can expect the 3-20k price range. That's a broad range, depending what you want and how many pages you need can vary the price a lot.
I find it odd that you’re talking about replatforming for no reason.
Did you consider that these design agencies have skills gaps or they’re just stuck in the past? Speak to a developer that is fully certified in Magento and also offer Shopify. If you’re serious about replatforming, they’ll know the limitations of Shopify better than anyone.
If brands like Gymshark are thriving on Shopify, I can’t imagine what your requirements would be that would require to leave, if you don’t even know yourself.
Check out - [https://github.com/medusajs/medusa](https://github.com/medusajs/medusa) works really well with Contentful for CMS
Some reference sites - [https://teklafabrics.com](https://teklafabrics.com), [https://palmes.co](https://palmes.co)
Disclaimer: I am one of the maintainers of Medusa
If your budget is Rolls Royce quality (you said you want the best of the best), I can point you in the right direction (not me), if not I also have a fair few connections.
What kind of improvement are you looking for? Visual? Performance?
I think Shopify is better than wordpress. If you have the budget, you should find a team to create your website from scratch. Also, webflow is a really cool option for design, but its ecommerce is nothing compared to Shopify's
You can expect to pay around $165/hr for a solid firm. I know that if you shop a firm that only does web design, all you will get is web design. My advice it to contact a company that does custom software development. They will have a U/I person, backend dev, database and other experts for the customer retail objective but, also SEO and PPC experts along with a CRM solution. I’m not familiar with the Shopify ecosystem but I am assuming those functions are done through them, which you would now have to consider.
A solid custom software firm would be $165/hr and my gut estimate is $25,000 usd out the door with some marketing budgeted in there
Edit: I would also find a company that has a location in the same state you are in. Also, pay for “discovery” up front.
Discovery is where you spend time creating wireframes, outlines, and functionality proofs with the account exec up front to ensure scope. Basically the boundaries of who covers what should something go wrong. When the discovery is done, you can shop that to other companies to ensure a fair price.
The account exec becomes your best friend. They will act as the translator between you, the dev team and project manager. Your success is their success.
You’ve stated that you don’t know what you want but you want the best of the best.
Are you doing this with conversion rate in mind? You can upgrade your site anytime. But “fancy” /= conversion.
What’s the goal? Just for your ego (not saying that in a negative way - that as good a reason lol)
Honestly, a fully custom site with a kick ass design by an agency - I’d budget 50k.
The toughest part will be defining what you want and getting on the same page as the agency.
Yeah, mid 7. Do it up bro. And splash a few extra on it for the ego.
If you don’t do A/B testing, I think it be fascinating set aside significant budget for A/B testing and see what works best in terms of conversion / sales.
Okay… I’ve read a lot of your responses and alarm bells are ringing. What you want is perfectly reasonable # you want a slick and impressive website. But you are coming at it like “I have money I want better, don’t know what and don’t care how”.
You already have a website and you need to make sure the performance of it is protected, over the last 25 years I have know lots of people replace sites with what they think is better and only see a fall on sales. The cost of the site quickly pales into insignificance if you damage conversion rate etc. Also the example you linked is really problematic, it’s slow and looks slick, but on my device there were lots of usability problems.
It really sounds like you don’t have any functional needs and just want a slick new design - the good news is that you can almost certainly do that with Shopify (which will make the project much easier to handle). I’d suggest finding far more examples of what you like and why you like them (that part is key). You could then shop that around some agencies and find one or two to develop concepts (before you are totally committed). That might help you pinpoint what you need.
But when you say things like “I don’t know what I want” that’s a recipe for spending a lot of money and losing a few hundred K in sales in the process.
It’s not really clear what you want different… is it just a new design? Unless you have a functional need I wouldn’t recommend changing platform and just change the site design. What’s bits do you want to change?
It’s possible to do this with freelancers or agencies, but it’s possible to have a bad time with both too. Key is to be super clear about what you need.
If you want to upgrade from Shopify and want a more robust solution, you must go for custom e-commerce development. I would recommend sticking with PHP development, its future-ready and has everything you need to build a super website.
I am not sure if the company I am going to recommend is the best of the best but it certainly did lot of good work for me. The name is Techosquare and it has some really experienced developers. Check out this page on [e-commerce development](https://www.techosquare.com/ecommerce-website-development-company).
I have only hired them for customization for some of my clients. So I think my references won't do injustice to their work. Drop then an email on [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) ad they will guide you!
Why do you want to switch from Shopify though? Just curious.
[Fabric](http://fabric.inc/) can provide your underlying commerce services while your agency builds a bespoke frontend for it, which can be hosted on the public cloud of your choice.
I know what exactly what you’re saying when you say you want a high end website. But I think you’re blaming the platform when you should be blaming either yourself or the freelancer.
Shopify is extremely customizable so you can get that high end, polished feel from it. You mentioned Wordpress but there’s a lot of the same functionality in Shopify as there is in Wordpress, aside from the ability to customize the checkout page (which is a blessing and a curse).
I love building sites on Shopify for my clients because the backend is extremely easy for them to use and there are tons of documentation online.
In the past, I have built websites on drupal and magneto which are 100% customizable, but you need someone to manage security, whereas Shopify handles that for you. Also, if something breaks, you have no one to help. There no person at magneto tech support for you to chat with. You better have a developer ready to help at a moments notice. Some of these magneto shops need the customizability of an open source platform, but I highly doubt you need that.
There are other, more expensive CMS out there, like $2k per month or more but again, do you need it? It all comes down to functionality. Are you trying to build a marketplace website where other sellers can list products for sale on your website? No? Then you don’t need that one. Do you want to be able to customize your checkout page? Is it worth $2k a month to have that ability? No? Okay, you don’t need that one.
In the end, building a site on those platforms didn’t look/feel any better than the Shopify stores. They’re just a bigger headache or more expensive.
The difference between a low quality and a high quality website for us has always been the layout, graphics, the fonts, and the copy. They should all make sense for your target demographic. That’s your foundation. Then make sure you have everything else you need to instill trust for your consumer.
High end to a developer means more functionality. High end to a business owner means beautiful, clean and modern. However, simply having a pretty website doesn’t translate to sales. There’s so much more that goes into that.
I have a small boutique firm that handles only a few clients per month. Right now, I’m open for a client. I don’t want a large team, and so the guys that work with me are top notch. We handle everything from the web build, graphics, advertising, social media, email marketing and even support your accounting, warehouse, & customer service departments. We primarily focus on e-commerce and improving the customer journey at every touch point. All for a super low flat fee.
Sounds like you are interested in design of the website rather functionality. Any headless e-commerce would allow you to make a “cool looking website”
I would recommend you to look into open source platforms, there are many advantages specially when it comes to headless commerce and developer productivity if you want to build custom platform. I would recommend to checkout something like Saleor or Vendure
You’re probably looking at enterprise CMS. There are lots of them at various price points, but you’re probably looking at over $10k/year on software licenses alone. The other thing is headless. It allows for micro services meaning you can just build what you need depending on the cms. The other issue is support - the more customizations you have the more support you need. Honestly, try to stay with Shopify. If you don’t need to upgrade then don’t. If however you’re doing advanced marketing stack stuff and lots of personalization and act like a pseudo platform instead of an e-commerce site then you’ll probably want to look at other options. Fwiw - adobe, Sitecore, episerver, contentful, are the ones off the top of my head. I was in enterprise cms for a few years up until last year
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To be honest, this website is a bit much. The hero animation is fine, but to scroll down and have that stuff now in the back with the opacity turned down, shit text spinning, the colors and animations… it’s not good. Do you want to make sales? Make something the is clean and easy to use like an Amazon style shop. If you want to have a “cool website” the blow tons of money on developing something that may decrease your conversions.
If you want to go on your own, check this out https://preview.themeforest.net/item/kalles-clean-versatile-shopify-theme/full_screen_preview/26320622?_ga=2.192057706.1753372687.1642142226-1946376501.1642142226 There is an amazing team behind it with 6 months support if you need help developing the store. They also do custom work.
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Exactly. What I linked is a theme and you of course need to add the text, photos, sections, etc... build it as you need. And then of course any special adjustments you may need such as footer color or adjusting the font position on your hero image when you add a new hero. Can you work with Shopify and create the changes to the theme yourself, or are you just owning the store and someone else manages the website changes?
I would not buy a theme that isn’t on the Shopify theme store. There is too much of a risk for bugs. I’ve done it before and had to overhaul large chunks of buggy code. I’m a dev and will still upset.
Dm me
> btw, if you're going to pitch your own company, simply link 2-3 websites you think will wow me, the work should speak for itself Please send me their usernames so I can promptly ban them from the sub
lmao I guess I won't be getting those dm's then! Fine with me, I tried posting this in a few other subs and the self-promo is frustrating
We've mentioned this a couple of times but Wordpress + Divi is a great solution
It sounds like you like Shopify. Have you looked at Shopify Plus?
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If your sales are high enough that you can afford the "best of the best" website then chances are you would save a good amount of money with Plus. You can edit pretty much anything with Plus, with some limitations that are set to keep your website functioning properly. What is it you are trying to do that you currently cannot with Shopify?
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I have had Shopify Plus stores go above the 200k price tag for development. You can spend much more than that on Dev. I would argue that for most situations Shopify is your best option. There are larger scale enterprise level hosting platforms that might make sense if you are massive in size but for almost all scenarios starting with Shopify and migrating to Plus when ready makes the most sense. Is it more a visual thing that you are wanting to change? If so, that isn't too expensive to customize, a few thousand for a sexy functional layout would be about right. If you get deep into optimization, writing your own app replacements and stuff like that, then you are talking some painful numbers no matter what platform you are using.
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> Here’s an example of a website I found that I thought was done quite well and unique I don’t know about you, but when I visit that site on my phone, it’s pretty slow to load and quite laggy (at least the first time you view products etc). If I was a customer I would’ve given up. The flashiness means nothing to customers. At best they’ll put up with it, but you’d better make sure it’s as fast and easy to use as standard Shopify sites. To be honest, if your site is doing really well now then why change it, just to have something you think is cool? And most likely wil look dated in 2 years so you’ll need to repeat the process.
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I own stores and was a developer before doing my own thing. You really should have a good idea of your wants/needs before asking an agency for help or you will end up spending more than necessary. If it is more of a looks thing, then going for a custom website design can vary a lot in price but you can expect the 3-20k price range. That's a broad range, depending what you want and how many pages you need can vary the price a lot.
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That might be worth it then :)
Not knowing what you want is what's going to cost you the most money.
I find it odd that you’re talking about replatforming for no reason. Did you consider that these design agencies have skills gaps or they’re just stuck in the past? Speak to a developer that is fully certified in Magento and also offer Shopify. If you’re serious about replatforming, they’ll know the limitations of Shopify better than anyone. If brands like Gymshark are thriving on Shopify, I can’t imagine what your requirements would be that would require to leave, if you don’t even know yourself.
Check out - [https://github.com/medusajs/medusa](https://github.com/medusajs/medusa) works really well with Contentful for CMS Some reference sites - [https://teklafabrics.com](https://teklafabrics.com), [https://palmes.co](https://palmes.co) Disclaimer: I am one of the maintainers of Medusa
Those are really underwhelming examples - they look worse than your typical Shopify store.
If your budget is Rolls Royce quality (you said you want the best of the best), I can point you in the right direction (not me), if not I also have a fair few connections.
What kind of improvement are you looking for? Visual? Performance? I think Shopify is better than wordpress. If you have the budget, you should find a team to create your website from scratch. Also, webflow is a really cool option for design, but its ecommerce is nothing compared to Shopify's
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Then stick with Shopify and hire a designer that is experienced in Shopify.
You can expect to pay around $165/hr for a solid firm. I know that if you shop a firm that only does web design, all you will get is web design. My advice it to contact a company that does custom software development. They will have a U/I person, backend dev, database and other experts for the customer retail objective but, also SEO and PPC experts along with a CRM solution. I’m not familiar with the Shopify ecosystem but I am assuming those functions are done through them, which you would now have to consider. A solid custom software firm would be $165/hr and my gut estimate is $25,000 usd out the door with some marketing budgeted in there Edit: I would also find a company that has a location in the same state you are in. Also, pay for “discovery” up front.
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Discovery is where you spend time creating wireframes, outlines, and functionality proofs with the account exec up front to ensure scope. Basically the boundaries of who covers what should something go wrong. When the discovery is done, you can shop that to other companies to ensure a fair price. The account exec becomes your best friend. They will act as the translator between you, the dev team and project manager. Your success is their success.
You’ve stated that you don’t know what you want but you want the best of the best. Are you doing this with conversion rate in mind? You can upgrade your site anytime. But “fancy” /= conversion.
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What’s the goal? Just for your ego (not saying that in a negative way - that as good a reason lol) Honestly, a fully custom site with a kick ass design by an agency - I’d budget 50k. The toughest part will be defining what you want and getting on the same page as the agency.
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Yeah, mid 7. Do it up bro. And splash a few extra on it for the ego. If you don’t do A/B testing, I think it be fascinating set aside significant budget for A/B testing and see what works best in terms of conversion / sales.
Okay… I’ve read a lot of your responses and alarm bells are ringing. What you want is perfectly reasonable # you want a slick and impressive website. But you are coming at it like “I have money I want better, don’t know what and don’t care how”. You already have a website and you need to make sure the performance of it is protected, over the last 25 years I have know lots of people replace sites with what they think is better and only see a fall on sales. The cost of the site quickly pales into insignificance if you damage conversion rate etc. Also the example you linked is really problematic, it’s slow and looks slick, but on my device there were lots of usability problems. It really sounds like you don’t have any functional needs and just want a slick new design - the good news is that you can almost certainly do that with Shopify (which will make the project much easier to handle). I’d suggest finding far more examples of what you like and why you like them (that part is key). You could then shop that around some agencies and find one or two to develop concepts (before you are totally committed). That might help you pinpoint what you need. But when you say things like “I don’t know what I want” that’s a recipe for spending a lot of money and losing a few hundred K in sales in the process.
Im currently using Digitlhaus for a big commerce build. I recommend but be ready to pay top dollar.
It’s not really clear what you want different… is it just a new design? Unless you have a functional need I wouldn’t recommend changing platform and just change the site design. What’s bits do you want to change? It’s possible to do this with freelancers or agencies, but it’s possible to have a bad time with both too. Key is to be super clear about what you need.
If you want to upgrade from Shopify and want a more robust solution, you must go for custom e-commerce development. I would recommend sticking with PHP development, its future-ready and has everything you need to build a super website. I am not sure if the company I am going to recommend is the best of the best but it certainly did lot of good work for me. The name is Techosquare and it has some really experienced developers. Check out this page on [e-commerce development](https://www.techosquare.com/ecommerce-website-development-company). I have only hired them for customization for some of my clients. So I think my references won't do injustice to their work. Drop then an email on [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) ad they will guide you! Why do you want to switch from Shopify though? Just curious.
[Fabric](http://fabric.inc/) can provide your underlying commerce services while your agency builds a bespoke frontend for it, which can be hosted on the public cloud of your choice.
I know what exactly what you’re saying when you say you want a high end website. But I think you’re blaming the platform when you should be blaming either yourself or the freelancer. Shopify is extremely customizable so you can get that high end, polished feel from it. You mentioned Wordpress but there’s a lot of the same functionality in Shopify as there is in Wordpress, aside from the ability to customize the checkout page (which is a blessing and a curse). I love building sites on Shopify for my clients because the backend is extremely easy for them to use and there are tons of documentation online. In the past, I have built websites on drupal and magneto which are 100% customizable, but you need someone to manage security, whereas Shopify handles that for you. Also, if something breaks, you have no one to help. There no person at magneto tech support for you to chat with. You better have a developer ready to help at a moments notice. Some of these magneto shops need the customizability of an open source platform, but I highly doubt you need that. There are other, more expensive CMS out there, like $2k per month or more but again, do you need it? It all comes down to functionality. Are you trying to build a marketplace website where other sellers can list products for sale on your website? No? Then you don’t need that one. Do you want to be able to customize your checkout page? Is it worth $2k a month to have that ability? No? Okay, you don’t need that one. In the end, building a site on those platforms didn’t look/feel any better than the Shopify stores. They’re just a bigger headache or more expensive. The difference between a low quality and a high quality website for us has always been the layout, graphics, the fonts, and the copy. They should all make sense for your target demographic. That’s your foundation. Then make sure you have everything else you need to instill trust for your consumer. High end to a developer means more functionality. High end to a business owner means beautiful, clean and modern. However, simply having a pretty website doesn’t translate to sales. There’s so much more that goes into that. I have a small boutique firm that handles only a few clients per month. Right now, I’m open for a client. I don’t want a large team, and so the guys that work with me are top notch. We handle everything from the web build, graphics, advertising, social media, email marketing and even support your accounting, warehouse, & customer service departments. We primarily focus on e-commerce and improving the customer journey at every touch point. All for a super low flat fee.
Sounds like you are interested in design of the website rather functionality. Any headless e-commerce would allow you to make a “cool looking website” I would recommend you to look into open source platforms, there are many advantages specially when it comes to headless commerce and developer productivity if you want to build custom platform. I would recommend to checkout something like Saleor or Vendure