A website involving Shopify themes is expensive. You will also see websites or experts saying that the demand for such themes is very high these days. This is quite obvious because so many businesses now accept the fluidity and forwardness of mobile platforms and applications.
If you never heard about Shopify, you might be thinking about what it is all about. This could be a platform for all online businesses since eCommerce has been relaxed to most online shops, product sellers, and services providers, primarily with big communities in this new era of the Internet and digital economy. While Shopify themes might be a great starting point for new merchants, and they are also a powerful tool to help you get up and running with your business, there is much more to consider for an eCommerce store than just the look of the design.
It’s no secret that Shopify themes are expensive. A lot of people don’t understand why they’re so expensive. Thus we did explain here:
Developers spend a lot of time making Shopify themes.
- Developers spend a lot of time making Shopify themes. It takes many hours, days, and weeks to design, create and test a theme. Because of this, developers need to charge enough money to be worth their time.
- Themes are often updated and maintained by developers. Many developers/companies continue supporting themes by adding new features, fixing bugs, and improving the code after release. So when you decide to buy a theme, you’re also paying for future updates that will be made to the theme over time.
- Additional features can be added to themes over time. Over several months or years, there will usually be new functionality released by Shopify that can improve your store somehow. For example: recently, we added support for “collections” (grouping similar products together) to our themes because Shopify added this feature themselves!
There is a lot spent on maintaining and supporting Shopify themes.
- It’s important to understand how much time goes into supporting customers. A good Shopify plus developers support team can expect to spend many hours on email, chatting, and over the phone with customers. And that’s just the support desk itself—it doesn’t even touch on what developers spend re-building custom functionality for merchants who get in touch about more complex issues.
- There are also costs involved in running a support desk. Because supporting customers is time-consuming, running a support team often involves extra costs. It may be necessary to hire an extra person or two (or three) and pay for software to help manage customer inquiries and bugs reported by users of your Shopify theme. This is likely why you may see some theme stores charging an annual fee for their themes or having different tiers based on the amount of support you’ll get with your purchase. While these charges can seem frustrating at first, remember that they’re contributing directly towards better support, which benefits everyone!
- Supporting customers is often a full-time job for a team of people. While some businesses offer certain types of products without technical or customer service expertise on staff, this isn’t possible when it comes to selling complex items like Shopify themes (or any software). The technical nature requires specific coding knowledge and an understanding of how different browsers render webpages differently, so when someone reports a bug, you know which browser they’re using before trying out any fixes yourself!
Shopify plus developers have to build for many variations of devices, browsers, and screen sizes.
It’s important to consider the varying capabilities of devices and browsers. The term “theme” is somewhat misleading because retailers aren’t providing you with a static design that you submit and then put up on your site. Instead, they’re giving you various templates that come in different designs to address these different variations of devices, browsers, and screen resolutions. An amateur developer will usually build a theme that doesn’t take these variations into account or doesn’t work well for them—which means a lot of downtime for the customer trying to add products or other content.
It can also be frustrating when a theme isn’t easily customized with themes created by different designers. In some cases, it might just be easier to create your custom design if you happen to know HTML/CSS/JavaScript—or maybe you’ll do more research before hiring someone else to help make everything look beautiful on Shopify.
Shopify themes are often licensed under an extended license.
- What is an extended license?
An Extended License allows you to sell the product or incorporate it into your work and sell that work. You can buy an extended license for a theme if you plan on reselling the theme at a profit as long as it’s not under Shopify’s brand name.
- What does this mean for Shopify theme developers?
Shopify themes are often licensed under an extended license because of their expensive nature. Since these themes take a considerable amount of time and effort to create, it makes sense that they would be sold for higher prices than other Shopify products.
- Why do theme developers need an extended license?
Developers need an extended license so they can make money from their work. If you’re selling your products on Shopify, you’ll want to make sure everything is covered by a legal agreement such as this one! So if something goes wrong with one of your customers – perhaps they bought something they shouldn’t have – then there are rules in place that protect both sides from bad situations; otherwise, we’d all end up getting sued every day!
There is a relatively large amount of revenue from selling a single theme.
All that said, there are still ways to avoid high theme prices. For example, you can choose a Shopify theme with useful features and comprehensive instructions. When looking for the right theme for your store, you’ll be able to find one that suits your needs without having to spend more on a custom design.
The average cost of a Shopify theme is USD 160. Given the large number of vendors selling themes on Shopify’s Theme Store, this is a relatively low price point compared to other e-commerce platforms like Magento or BigCommerce.
The cost of development tools like Photoshop and Sketch can be very expensive.
- The cost of development tools like Photoshop and Sketch can be very expensive.
- New versions are released regularly, notorious for charging developers to upgrade.
- Developers must purchase stock photos, images, fonts, and sounds that aren’t available under a free license.
- An ongoing subscription to premium training courses (like Lynda or Treehouse) is also common for developers who wish to keep up with new trends in the industry.
- Developers have to deal with the costs of hardware, including computers, software licenses, hard drives, etc., and the cost of web hosting to run a successful website or blog.
- Printing costs can also add up quickly if you send mailers or promotional material regularly.
Developers working in other areas also have their fair share of expenses:
- Designers must invest money into photography equipment so they can take artistic shots for use on websites and blogs. This applies even if you are simply taking photos of your products for your online store! It’s not unheard of for designers to spend thousands on cameras and lenses alone – let alone everything else that goes along with it (studio space rental fees, additional lighting equipment). And then there are travel expenses too.
- Suppose clients want their websites built from scratch instead of just using themes provided by companies like Shopify. In that case, designers will often hire professional photographers as part-time employees, which increases overhead costs even more, so these days many designers choose not to offer custom website design services anymore because there isn’t enough demand; instead, they focus solely on providing prebuilt themes at much lower prices, so they don’t need such large staffs or make very little profit per project due to increased competition within this niche market segment right now.”
There are marketing costs involved in releasing a new premium theme for Shopify.
One of the reasons that Shopify themes are so expensive is that there are marketing costs involved in releasing a new premium theme for Shopify. If you’re an online business owner, you know how important marketing is to your success. The same thing applies to theme developers as well. It’s not enough to create an amazing product; you also need to let people know about it so that they can purchase it. This means investing in marketing, which can be costly depending on the type of campaign chosen and its length (i.e., one-time versus ongoing).
Marketing strategies vary widely between businesses but usually include social media posts and paid ads across various platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, or Google Adwords. Other strategies include email campaigns designed specifically for existing customers who have purchased products from your company before — these emails would highlight new features or promotions offered by the company at large (e.g., discounts on shipping costs) rather than focusing solely on individual products like most other types of advertising do nowadays.”
Developers need to charge more for their work as they grow their business.
Why is it that the cost of a theme can be $50 to $160 when it’s just lines of code? Well, believe it or not, developers pay a lot of costs to make great themes. If developers aren’t charging enough for their themes, they will quickly lose money and go out of business.
You may wonder how much work goes into making a Shopify theme anyway. You might think that since it’s “just lines of code,” anyone with some computer programming skills could make one in no time. However, you are likely to take up far more hours on this project than you expected. The biggest reason for this is that developing software applications follows the rule: it always takes longer than you expect. This is especially true if you don’t have any experience designing digital products such as websites before undertaking your first website design project.
Because most Shopify theme designers are small companies or freelancers who don’t have large teams working on projects together (which would mean they could get things done faster), they have to charge more to cover their costs and stay in business.
There are server costs to consider when creating a theme marketplace site.
This brings us to the next reason why Shopify themes are so expensive: server costs. This is one of those things that many people don’t consider. When you buy a theme, you’re not only buying a product that took time and effort to create, but you’re also paying for the servers it takes to host the product in the first place. Maintaining servers can be very expensive, and unfortunately, it’s not a one-time cost.
The amount of traffic your website gets impacts how much money you need to spend on hosting, so if your theme marketplace expects to become successful over time, they have a responsibility to make sure they can support their server costs as their site becomes more popular.
eCommerce tools aren’t cheap to run websites or provide support tickets.
Support desk software and eCommerce tools aren’t cheap to run websites or provide support tickets.
- There’s a large amount of overhead involved in providing support.
- It’s not cheap to run websites (you know this already unless you’re a web developer)
- It’s not cheap to provide support.
Think about it: when you pay for something, the price includes the cost of making the widget and all of the unglamorous parts that make up running a business. Things like rent, employee salaries, and even taxes are part of what goes into the final price tag you see.
Final words
Shopify themes are slightly more expensive than those from another platform, primarily because of the relative ease with which the templates can be customized. With Site Theme, for example, you can choose to use their fully-customizable code base so you can integrate the template with your code or other third-party apps. Furthermore, the themes are created by professionals, meaning they function exactly how they are intended and look stunning.
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