Hiring
Hiring a Shopify developer: freelancer, agency, or neither
Most of the risk in this decision is not the day rate. It is hiring someone who disappears, or commissioning something nobody can maintain afterwards. Both are avoidable with about four questions.
Checked 1 October 2026
The three routes
| Route | Good at | The real cost | Breaks when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marketplace freelancer | Small, well defined jobs | Your time managing it | Scope is vague, or they vanish mid build |
| Agency | Capacity, cover, process | Overhead in every hour billed | You are their smallest client |
| One experienced developer | Continuity, judgement, speed | No cover if they are ill | You need several things at once |
There is a fourth route people forget: not building anything, and configuring an app you already pay for properly.
The four questions that matter
Where will it run, and who pays for that? A Shopify app is a server and a database with ongoing cost. A quote with no answer here is a quote for a third of the job.
What happens when Shopify changes its API? Shopify versions its API quarterly and deprecates old versions. Unmaintained apps stop working. Not immediately, which is what makes it dangerous.
What does a small change cost in month thirteen? If every change is a new quote and a new wait, the cheap build is not cheap.
What happens if you stop answering? Ask it directly. The answer should involve handing over code and access, not reassurance.
On day rates and fixed prices
A day rate puts the risk of a bad estimate on you. Fixed price puts it on whoever quoted. That is why fixed prices come with a scope document and why fixed price developers get fussy about scope changes, and it is a feature rather than an inconvenience.
If you are quoted a day rate, ask for a ceiling. If someone will not give you one, they do not know how long it will take, and you are funding them finding out.
Judging whether someone can actually do it
Portfolios are weak evidence. Almost anything can be screenshotted, and shipping something once is not the same as keeping it running.
Better questions: what are you still maintaining, how long has it been live, and what broke in the last six months. The last one is the useful one. Everyone who runs software in production has a good answer, and it is specific. Anyone who says nothing has broken either has not shipped much or is not watching.
When not to hire anyone
A reasonable share of build enquiries turn out to be a setting nobody found, two apps conflicting, or theme work that does not need an app at all. It is worth an hour of someone's time establishing which before you commission a project.
The other case is where an off the shelf app genuinely covers it. The App Store is enormous and most requirements are not unusual. Paying four figures to rebuild something that exists for thirty a month is only sensible when the thirty a month comes with a percentage attached, or when it almost fits and you are running half the process in a spreadsheet beside it.
Start with the free review
Send me your store and what you are trying to solve. I will tell you whether it needs a build, a configuration change, or nothing at all. Two working days, in writing, no call.