Shopify Agency Australia: Shopify Developers Who Stay After Launch

A Shopify developer builds and changes the code behind a Shopify store. That covers the theme, which is the design layer written in Shopify’s Liquid language, plus custom sections, app setup, integrations with other software, and speed fixes. A good one also knows when to use an existing app instead of writing code, because every custom line is something you have to maintain.

A Shopify development partner is an agency or freelancer registered in Shopify’s Partner Program who builds stores for merchants. Registration gives them tools such as development stores for building and testing. Shopify also runs partner tiers based on the work partners bring to the platform. A partner label tells you someone is registered, not that they suit your project, so always check live stores they built.

FactoryJet is a registered Shopify Partner. We do not hold a named partner tier, and we will not claim one. What we offer instead is senior engineers, a founder involved on every project, more than a decade in commerce, and 500+ businesses served since 2014. Ask to see our recent Shopify work on a call, and judge us on that.

Yes. That is exactly what a Shopify agency or a freelance Shopify developer does. You supply your products, brand and business rules. They set up the store, design or adapt the theme, configure payments, shipping and GST, connect your other systems, and train you to run it. Ask who owns the theme code at the end. With us, you do.

Shortlist three providers from search results, Shopify’s Partner Directory and referrals. Look at live stores they built in your category, ask who will actually write the code, get a written scope with exclusions, and ask what support looks like after launch. A good Shopify expert will ask more questions about your products, stock and shipping than about colours.

A freelancer suits small, well-defined jobs: a theme tweak, a new section, a bug fix. An agency suits a full build, a migration or anything with integrations, because it brings design, development, testing and support together and does not stop when one person is sick or busy. Many Australian brands use both, an agency for the build and a freelancer for small edits.

There is no single best one, only the best fit for your size and problem. Large Shopify Plus agencies suit enterprise retailers. Design-led studios suit fashion and beauty. Integration-heavy teams suit brands with an ERP or wholesale channel. We list several Australian Shopify agencies on this page, including us, with a neutral note on each. Talk to two or three and compare.

A development store is a free Shopify store that registered Shopify Partners use to build and test a store before it goes live. It has most of the features of a paid plan, and you can place test orders, but it cannot take real payments. When the build is ready, the partner transfers ownership to you and you choose a paid plan. Ask your developer to build in a development store in your name or transfer it on launch.

Not on its own. ChatGPT can write product descriptions, suggest a collection structure, draft policies and explain Liquid code, and Shopify has its own AI tools inside the admin. What it cannot do is set up your payments, GST, shipping rules and Xero connection, test real checkouts, or take responsibility when something breaks. Use it to speed up the writing and let a person handle the build and the testing.

It depends on scope, not an hourly rate. The big cost drivers are custom design versus an adapted theme, how many products and variants you have, how much data moves in a migration, how many systems connect (Xero, MYOB, an ERP, a 3PL), and whether you need B2B or Shopify Plus features. We quote a fixed price per stage after a free scoping call with the founder. For published Australian market ranges, see our Shopify cost in Australia guide.

Shopify developer costs in Australia ↗

It depends on your plan and how the customer pays. With Shopify Payments you pay a card processing fee, a percentage plus a small fixed amount, and the percentage falls on higher plans. With a third-party payment provider, Shopify adds its own transaction fee on top of that provider’s fee. Our Shopify cost in Australia guide works out the fee on an example sale for every plan.

What Shopify takes from each sale ↗

A store on an adapted theme with up to five pages can go live with our 7-day delivery. A custom theme store usually takes 3 to 5 weeks. An advanced build with integrations, B2B or a migration takes 5 to 8 weeks. A headless or heavily custom build takes 8 to 14 weeks. We confirm the timeline in writing once scope is agreed.

7-day delivery applies to Shopify sites of up to five pages built on a proven theme, with your products loaded, payments, shipping and GST set up, and the basics of SEO and analytics in place. It suits new brands and small catalogues. Custom design, migrations, B2B and integrations take longer, and we tell you that upfront rather than squeezing them into a week.

Shopify SEO is priced by the work, not the keyword. A one-off technical clean-up after a build or migration is a fixed piece of work. Ongoing Shopify SEO, meaning content, collection pages and links over months, is usually a monthly engagement. The drivers are catalogue size, how much duplicate content the theme creates, and how competitive your category is. Published Australian ecommerce SEO ranges are in our SEO cost guide.

Ecommerce SEO cost in Australia ↗ Shopify SEO services ↗

The recurring costs are known if you ask early: the Shopify plan, card or transaction fees, paid apps, a paid theme licence if you use one, domain and email, and any support plan. App fees are the one that creeps. We keep app count low and list every paid app in the handover, so you can see the monthly total before you commit.

For most Australian brands selling direct to consumers, yes. Shopify handles hosting, security and updates, supports Afterpay, Zip, Australia Post and Xero through apps, and your team can run the store day to day without a developer. It fits less well if you need very complex product configuration or pricing that fights the platform. That is a case-by-case call.

Yes. Shopify is a legitimate platform used widely by Australian businesses, and it publishes Australian pricing in Australian dollars. The legal duties sit with you as the seller: the Australian Consumer Law applies to your store, you must not make misleading claims, and you handle GST if you are registered. We set the store up so those basics are covered.

Both run on the same hosted platform with the same themes and admin. Shopify Plus is the enterprise plan. According to Shopify’s help centre it adds checkout customisation, custom apps built with Shopify Functions, deeper B2B features, nine expansion stores, up to 200 locations, unlimited staff accounts and priority support. If your problems are about how the store looks, standard Shopify is usually enough.

When a Plus feature solves a problem that is costing you money. Common triggers are wholesale buyers ordering by email, checkout rules you cannot build on a standard plan, separate stores for New Zealand or another region, or app bills piling up to fake what Plus does natively. Revenue alone is not a reason. Plenty of brands sell well on Advanced.

Shopify says Scripts were deprecated on 30 June 2026, and any Scripts still published were deactivated. Scripts were small pieces of code Plus stores used to change discounts, shipping and payment options at checkout. The replacement is Shopify Functions. If your old discounts or shipping rules quietly stopped working this year, that is the likely cause, and we can rebuild them.

Headless means the shopfront customers see is a separate custom website, often built with Shopify’s Hydrogen framework, while Shopify still runs products, checkout and orders behind it. It gives total design freedom and can be very fast. It also costs more to build and maintain. Most Australian brands do not need it. A well-built theme store is the right answer far more often.

Five come up most. Monthly costs grow as you add paid apps. Using a payment provider other than Shopify Payments adds a Shopify transaction fee. Checkout changes are limited below Shopify Plus. Web addresses must follow Shopify’s fixed pattern, such as /products/ and /collections/, which matters in a migration. And complex product builders or pricing rules can fight the platform. For most Australian direct-to-consumer brands these are manageable.

How Shopify compares with other platforms ↗

Yes. We move stores to Shopify from WooCommerce, Magento (Adobe Commerce), BigCommerce, Maropost Commerce Cloud (formerly Neto), Wix and Squarespace. We migrate products, variants, images, customers, order history where needed, reviews and content, then map every old URL to its new home with 301 redirects. We rehearse the move on a copy of the store before switching your domain.

Not if the migration is done properly. Rankings drop when old URLs break, titles and descriptions get lost, or content is thinned out. We crawl your current site first, keep the pages that bring in traffic, redirect every old URL with a 301, move your metadata across, and check Google Search Console daily for the first weeks after launch.

Shopify covers the basics: editable titles and descriptions, clean URLs, a sitemap and mobile-friendly themes. What it does not do is choose your keywords, write useful collection pages, fix duplicate product URLs a theme creates, or earn links. That is the work of a Shopify SEO agency or an in-house marketer. We build SEO basics into every store and offer ongoing Shopify SEO services through our ecommerce SEO team.

Shopify SEO agency ↗

We can, and so can most established Australian Shopify agencies. We move stores from Magento (Adobe Commerce), WooCommerce and Maropost Commerce Cloud, which was called Neto, with products, customers, order history and reviews, then redirect every old web address so Google rankings carry across. Whoever you choose, ask for a written redirect map and a rehearsal on a copy of the store before the domain switches.

Magento to Shopify migration checklist ↗

Yes. Both have Shopify connections, either through their own app or a trusted connector. The real work is deciding what flows where: orders as invoices or daily summaries, how GST and payment fees are recorded, and how refunds are handled. We set it up with your bookkeeper so the numbers reconcile at month end, not just so the sync runs.

The trick is that a Shopify payout is not the same as your sales. Each deposit is sales minus card fees and refunds, often across several days of orders. Record gross sales, fees and refunds separately through a clearing account, then match the payout to your bank feed. Connector apps such as A2X do this summary for you, so each Xero entry matches the deposit to the cent.

For most Australian stores, Xero, because it is what most bookkeepers here use and it has well-tested Shopify connectors. MYOB is a sound choice if your business already runs on it, and QuickBooks works too. The software matters less than the setup: decide whether orders go in one by one or as daily summaries, and how GST, fees and refunds are recorded, with your bookkeeper before anything syncs.

Shopify does not deliver parcels itself. Your store connects to carriers, and you choose which. Australian stores most often use Australia Post or its StarTrack service, Sendle, Aramex or CouriersPlease, either through the carrier’s own Shopify app or a multi-carrier app such as StarShipIt that prints labels and sends tracking emails. Live rates at checkout come from those connections.

It depends on what you send and where. Australia Post has the widest reach, which matters for regional and remote postcodes. Sendle suits small, light parcels from small businesses. Courier services such as StarTrack or Aramex often suit heavier or bulkier items in metro areas. Many stores use two carriers through a multi-carrier app, sending each order with whichever is cheaper or faster for that postcode.

Yes. Afterpay and Zip both work with Shopify for buy now, pay later at checkout. For shipping we set up Australia Post, Sendle or StarShipIt, depending on your volumes and where you send, with live rates or flat rules, label printing and tracking emails. We test real checkouts end to end before launch, including a refund.

Yes. Standard plans can run a simple trade store with apps. Shopify Plus adds native B2B: companies with their own buyers and locations, custom catalogues and price lists, payment terms, deposits and partial payments. That lets your wholesale and retail customers share one admin, one stock pool and one set of product data, with trade prices shown only to trade buyers.

Yes. We connect Shopify to ERPs such as NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Pronto, and to third-party logistics warehouses, through a proven connector or a small custom integration. We agree which system owns each piece of data, such as stock, prices and customers, before writing anything, which prevents the double-counting problems most integrations suffer from.

We work with brands in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and the rest of Australia remotely, with video workshops, a shared project board and a named lead engineer. We do not pretend to have an office on your street. A Shopify build does not need anyone on site, and you get the same senior team and the founder wherever you are based.

The ACCC says online businesses have the same responsibilities to consumers as physical ones. That means the consumer guarantees apply, your prices and claims must not mislead, and your refund process should be clear. You also need GST set up correctly if you are registered, an ABN shown on the site, and a privacy policy. We build all of that into the store.

Yes. Our support plans cover updates to themes and apps, bug fixes, new sections and landing pages, speed checks, and help for your team when something looks wrong. You get a named engineer who knows your store, not a ticket queue. You can also run the store yourself day to day and call us only for development work.

Yes. The Shopify store sits in your own account, and the theme code, custom apps and documentation belong to you. We work in version control, so you get the full history of changes. If you ever move to another agency or bring development in-house, everything they need is already in your hands.

Yes, and it is a common starting point. We begin with a short audit of the theme, apps, integrations and speed, tell you what is healthy and what is fragile, and fix the urgent issues first. Often the store is fine and the problem is too many apps or an integration nobody documented.

Send your name and work email through the form on this page. The founder, Bhavesh Barot, replies within 24 hours to book a short call. We talk about your products, where you sell, what systems you run and what is not working. You leave the call knowing the right scope, even if you decide not to work with us.