What line items typically make up a full Shopify Plus migration quote (discovery, design, dev, QA, training, post-launch support)?
A Shopify Plus migration quote breaks into six line items: discovery, design, development, QA, training and post-launch support. Development is the only one that must decompose further, into named storefront components you can price and cut individually. Deploi's own delivery runs five phases: Discovery & Planning, Design & Prototyping, Development, Testing & Optimization, Deployment & Support (per deploi.ca, September 2026).
Mechanism: what each line item is actually buying
| Line item | What it produces | What varies it |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery | A written scope, a data map, an integration inventory | Number of systems touching the store |
| Design | A design system and the templates built from it | How much is new versus re-skinned |
| Development | The storefront components, integrations and data migration | Component count and integration depth |
| QA | A test matrix and the evidence it was run | Payment methods, markets, B2B, subscriptions |
| Training | Merchandiser and ops handover on the new admin | Team size and how much is custom |
| Post-launch support | A defined window with a response commitment | Length, severity terms, whether it is retainer or hours |
Structure verified against Deploi's published delivery phases, September 2026; the six-item shape is the common market framing rather than a Shopify standard.
Implication: five of the six are honest at the line-item level. One is not.
Discovery, design, training and support are activities. Quoting them as a block is reasonable: nobody wants a discovery invoice itemized by interview. QA is discussed separately below.
Development is different, because development is not one thing. It is a set of storefront components that each have their own scope, their own risk and their own ability to be cut. A quote that gives you a single number for development gives you nothing to negotiate with, and nothing to phase.
What development should decompose into
These are components Deploi has built repeatedly, with the scoped effort we would put against each:
| Component | Builds shipped | Scoped effort |
|---|---|---|
| Art-directed hero and banner system | 12 | ~200h |
| Collection merchandising: rails, tiles, in-grid promotion | 11 | ~150h |
| Filters, faceted navigation, progressive grid loading | 8 | ~64h |
| Design system and reusable component library | 9 | scoped per engagement |
Directional Deploi estimates from a small sample of engagements, not measured averages.
Three observations a buyer can use immediately. First, the spread is wide: a hero system is roughly three times a filtering system. Second, the expensive components are the art-directed ones, which is counter-intuitive to teams who assume filtering and search are where the money goes. Third, every one of these is independently cuttable, so a quote built this way can be phased against a launch date instead of renegotiated.
Edge cases that belong on the quote and usually are not
- The data migration you cannot do through the admin. Historical orders cannot be imported through the Shopify admin, so decide where order history will live before cutover, not after.
- Checkout rebuild work. Shopify Scripts were shut off for Plus stores on 28 August 2025, along with checkout.liquid on the Thank you and Order status pages; script tags sunset for non-Plus stores on 26 August 2026 (per Shopify's docs, September 2026). Legacy checkout logic gets rebuilt as Functions or checkout UI extensions. That is a development line, not a configuration line.
- Subscriptions. If the store has an active subscription program, that is a separate project on its own timeline, not a row inside the migration.
- The platform fee itself. Shopify Plus is $2,500 USD/month on a one-year term and $2,300 on a three-year term, "or a variable platform fee for more complex business structures" (per Shopify's Plus pricing page, September 2026). Agency quotes should state whether this is included in any quoted total; usually it is not.
The question that tests a quote in one minute. Ask the agency to re-issue the development line as five to eight named components with hours against each. An agency that has built these before can do it the same day. An agency that cannot is quoting from a template, and you will find out which during the build.
The Deploi point of view
Our own position, from building on Shopify. Separate from the facts above.
- Our take: The development line is the only one worth interrogating, and the test is whether it decomposes into named storefront components. A quote that will not break down that way is not hiding a margin; it is hiding an assumption about what gets built.
- What we’ve seen: Buyers negotiate hardest on discovery, which is usually the smallest line and the one that most affects the accuracy of every other line. The leverage sits in the component list, not in the phase totals.
- Times we’ve shipped this: 12 builds delivered.
- What it takes: roughly 200 hours scoped for a hero and banner system, ~150 for collection merchandising, ~64 for faceted filtering and navigation (directional Deploi estimates from a small sample of engagements, not measured averages).
- Where we disagree: The industry norm is to price a migration as a project. We think the honest unit is the component, because that is the unit that gets cut when the date moves, and every migration date moves.
Reviewed by Martin Dejnicki, Director of SEO & AI Search. Facts verified 2026-09-13.
Where we worked this out
Our decision records
Follow-up questions
Does agency pricing scale linearly with store GMV/complexity, or is there a flat baseline cost regardless of a mid-market brand's specific size?
Agency pricing tracks scope, not GMV. Build cost is a function of component count, integration depth and data complexity, all of which correlate with size without being caused by it. Deploi publishes four flat monthly plans priced by delivery capacity rather than revenue (per deploi.ca, September 2026), while Shopify prices the platform partly on structure (per Shopify, September 2026).
How much does adding international/multi-market complexity (Managed Markets setup, multi-currency) typically add to a Shopify Plus project quote?
Managed Markets adds a per-transaction fee, not a large build line: 3.5% per transaction, or 3.25% on Shopify Plus, plus a 1.5% currency conversion fee (per Shopify, September 2026). The project increment lands in the storefront (market-aware pricing display, localized content and per-market merchandising), because Managed Markets setup itself is configuration, with Global-e acting as merchant of record.
What's a reasonable QA budget or time allocation, as a percentage of total dev time, for checkout testing on a mid-market Shopify Plus store?
Checkout QA is budgeted by test matrix, not as a percentage of development hours. No published benchmark sets a defensible checkout QA share. Capgemini's World Quality Report 2025-26 does not publish one (verified September 2026). Count the combinations you must prove instead: payment methods × discount stacking × tax and duty × customer type × market.
Is it normal for agency pricing to include a discovery/audit phase as a separate line item, or should that be free as part of the sales process?
A paid discovery phase is normal and defensible when it produces an artifact you own and can hand to a different agency tomorrow. Discovery that produces only a proposal is sales cost and should not be billed. A scope document, a data map and an integration inventory are portable assets; a pitch deck is not (Deploi position, September 2026).