Going Headless With Shopify: How Much Does It Cost?

Going headless is pricey. We all know it. It’s more pricey than having a regular Shopify store with out-of-the-box features. But how much exactly?

Let’s get straight to the point here. First, you need to break down the setup cost for a Shopify headless storefront.

I. Initial Setup Costs Breakdown

To go headless, you’d need the right tech stack. Here’s the typical tech stack of a headless Shopify store:

Platform: Shopify ($25 - $2000)
Frontend: Hydrogen ($0)
CMS: Weaverse + MetaObjects (if needed) ($12-$250)
Deployment: Oxygen ($0)
Filter & Search: Shopify Predictive Search & Filter ($0)
Analytics: GA, Pixel, Clarity, Plausible
Additional Apps: Reviews, Support (CRM), CX, Email, Filter, Subscription. ($1,000-$10,000)

Now let’s break further the cost for each of these components.

1. Shopify Subscription

Yes, with Hydrogen and Oxygen, you can go headless even when you’re on Shopify regular tiers. Shopify offers several subscription tiers:

Basic Shopify ($25 per month): This plan is suitable for small businesses just starting out but has limitations in API call capacity and feature set.
Shopify ($79 per month): A mid-tier plan that offers more features and higher API limits, suitable for growing businesses.
Advanced Shopify ($299 per month): Ideal for larger businesses needing advanced reporting and more significant API usage.
Shopify Plus ($2,000+ per month): The go-to choice for most headless implementations. It provides unlimited API calls, advanced customization options, and priority support. This plan is crucial for businesses looking to fully leverage the capabilities of headless commerce, ensuring a smooth and efficient operation

Most merchants who go headless go with Advanced Shopify or Shopify Plus - which is a necessity for accessing advanced features and ensuring you have unlimited API calls. The starting cost is $2,000 per month. This subscription acts as the gateway to the full potential of your headless setup, providing the essential infrastructure and support you need to start building your custom front-end experience.

2. Frontend: Hydrogen

In case you don’t know, Hydrogen is Shopify’s headless stack engineered for performance and UI flexibility. It’s a Remix-based framework that helps developers build custom storefronts quickly and efficiently.

Using Hydrogen, merchants can create content-rich and dynamic shopping experiences without being tied to Shopify's traditional front-end limitations. Hydrogen allows you to leverage modern development tools and frameworks, ensuring your site is fast, scalable, and performant. It also provides built-in components and hooks that simplify common tasks, making the development process smoother and faster.

And the best part? It’s free.

3. Visual CMS (Weaverse) + Metaobjects

Hydrogen is great - but it lacks a visual preview and a theme customizer, one that’s similar to Online Store 2.0, for easy content editing. There are plenty of CMS that are well-integrated with Shopify Hydrogen (i.e.: Storyblok or Sanity - both of which start at $99/month ), however, Weaverse is the only visual CMS that’s native to Hydrogen, without the huge price tag.

Weaverse starts at only $12/month and is priced by traffic. Even when your store has over 1M traffic, it only costs you around $100 - no more than Sanity’s starter plan.

With Weaverse, you can use SDKs, pre-made Hydrogen themes, and a visual editor to launch Shopify headless stores faster. Meanwhile, non-technical team members can easily edit content and design using a familiar section-based editor. (Imagine Online Store 2.0, but for Hydrogen instead).

MetaObjects further complements this setup by providing structured content types within Shopify. They enable you to create reusable content blocks, which can be used across various pages and products, making it easier to maintain consistency and efficiency. You can update a MetaObject once and have it reflected wherever it’s used across your site.

4. Deployment: Oxygen

Oxygen is Shopify’s global hosting solution, designed to work with Hydrogen for easy deployment and scaling of your headless storefront. Oxygen is completely free to use with Shopify plans. It ensures that your storefront is hosted on a global CDN, providing fast load times and high availability regardless of where your customers are located. This seamless integration with Hydrogen simplifies the process of deploying and managing your custom storefront.

5. Analytics: Google Analytics

Tools like Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, Microsoft Clarity, and Plausible provide necessary insights and data for optimizing your store’s performance and user experience. These tools often have free tiers with optional premium features. Google Analytics, for instance, helps track user interactions, providing valuable data to improve marketing strategies and user experience.

6. Additional Apps

Review Apps: Needed for building trust with customers, review apps allow customers to leave feedback on products, which can significantly influence purchasing decisions.
CRM/Customer Support: CRM tools help manage customer interactions and ensure a seamless support experience.
Email Management: Tools for handling email campaigns and customer communication are vital for maintaining engagement and driving sales.

Of course, these are only the essential apps. The cost of these additional apps can range from $1,000 to $10,000, depending on the features and service providers you choose.

7. Deployment

Development costs represent a significant part of your initial investment.

Agencies can charge anywhere from $100,000 to $500,000 for a complete headless Shopify project, covering design, development, and testing. Alternatively, an in-house team offers more control but requires substantial investment in salaries, training, and development tools. These costs are essential for creating a robust, customized storefront that meets your business needs and provides a superior customer experience.

8. Ongoing Maintenance Costs

Once your headless setup is live, ongoing maintenance is essential to keep everything running smoothly. This includes:

Regular Updates: Both frontend and backend updates to ensure security, performance, and compatibility with new features.
Bug Fixes and Optimizations: Addressing any issues that arise and optimizing the site for better performance and user experience.
Additional Feature Development: As your business grows, you might need new features, which requires additional development time and resources.

These maintenance activities typically cost between $5,000 and $20,000 per month, depending on the complexity of your setup and the level of support required.

Conclusion

Based on the breakdown above, going headless with Shopify would cost you anywhere from $2000 to $100,000, depending on your requirements and the scale of your project. However, its worth noting that going headless with Shopify has become a lot more affordable in recent years. You can easily go headless with a basic stack (Hydrogen + Oxygen + a Visual CMS like Weaverse), which would cost you around $2000 - given that you have some experience with React.

When planning your headless development plan, you also need to take into account the following costs.

Key Considerations Before Going Headless With Shopify (Beyond Just Costs)

Technical Expertise and Resources

A headless setup isn’t for the faint-hearted.

You’ll need a team that knows its way around modern web technologies like React (which Hydrogen uses) and can handle API integrations. If your current crew isn’t up to speed, you might have to hire new talent or bring in an agency. Both options can get pricey.

Business Needs and Objectives

Even though Shopify makes it a lot more affordable to go headless, you’d still need to ask yourself if going headless aligns with your business goals.

If you’re feeling constrained by your current setup and need advanced customizations or better performance, headless could be the answer. But if your current setup is doing just fine and you don’t need those extra bells and whistles, it might be more hassle than it’s worth.

Flexibility and Customization

One of the big draws of headless commerce is the ability to create a unique shopping experience. You can tailor every aspect of your site to fit your brand perfectly.

But remember, this flexibility means ongoing development work. Your team needs to be ready for the constant updates and tweaks that come with maintaining a custom setup.

Integration Capabilities

Think about the tools you currently use. Some might not play nice with a headless setup, meaning you’ll need custom integration solutions. Check how your CRM, marketing automation tools, and other essential services will work in a headless environment to avoid any nasty surprises.

Future Scalability

Consider your long-term plans. A headless setup is great for scalability, letting you add new features and sales channels as your business grows. If you’re planning significant expansion or need to frequently update your site, headless commerce could provide the flexibility and scalability you need.

Risk Management

Lastly, don’t forget about the risks. Moving to a headless setup means you’ll rely more on developers, and you might face some downtime during the transition. Managing a decoupled system can be tricky, so plan carefully, choose reliable partners, and set aside a contingency budget for any bumps in the road.

Time to Market

Switching to a headless setup can be time-consuming. It involves extensive planning, development, and testing phases before you can go live. If your business needs to launch quickly or adapt to market changes rapidly, consider whether you can afford the time investment. A prolonged development cycle could delay your go-to-market strategy and impact your revenue targets.

Final Words

In short, going headless is resource-consuming, yet, with the recent innovations, the cost is going down. I believe that going headless will soon be as affordable as using Shopify out-of-the-box features, but at the end of the day, you still have to ask yourself - does this make your beer taste better?

Godspeed, and happy selling!