Most Shopify Plus agency selections are decided in the first call, on chemistry and a slide deck, and regretted around week six, when the senior person from the call has been replaced by someone junior and the “fixed” quote grows a change request. The questions below exist to move the decision to the evidence. They are the ones we would want asked of us, and several of them are uncomfortable for every agency, ours included.
Fourteen questions is more than you will ask on one call. Use the first five to cut a long list to three, and the rest on the three.
Key takeaways
- Ask who will write the code, by name, and whether that person is on the call. Most agencies sell with one team and build with another.
- Ask for the scope and the price in writing before the contract, with what is excluded listed. An agency that will not do this is pricing by the hour whatever it calls the engagement.
- Ask for one live Plus store you can open now, and one client you can phone. Slide decks are not proof; a URL and a phone number are.
- Ask what happens at month four. The launch is the easy part; the store has to keep running through Shopify’s next checkout change and your next product launch.
Before you ask anything: know your own scope
An agency can only quote what you can describe. Before the first call, write down four things: the platform you are on now and what data has to move; every system the store must talk to (ERP, 3PL, POS, booking, subscriptions, email and SMS, reviews, loyalty); the countries and currencies you sell in; and the three things about your current store that cost you sales. That page is your brief. It also makes quotes comparable, because every agency will be pricing the same thing — which is the single biggest reason quotes for “the same build” arrive at $40,000 and $250,000.
If you do not know whether you need Plus at all, read Shopify Plus vs Shopify Advanced first; a good agency will tell you if Advanced is enough, and you should notice which ones do not.
The 14 questions
People
1. Who will write the code on this project, and are they on this call? The answer you want is a name, a role and a yes. The answer you usually get is “our senior team” — which means the person on the call sells, and someone you have not met builds. Ask to meet the builder before you sign. On our projects the engineer who scopes the work writes it, which is a structural choice, not a promise.
2. How many Shopify Plus stores has that person shipped, and can I see two of them? Not the agency; the person. Ask for two live URLs and what they built on each. A portfolio page is the agency’s history; you are hiring an individual’s.
3. Where is the team, and what hours will I get them? Location is not a quality signal in either direction — some of the best Plus engineering is done from Lahore, Lviv and Montreal, and some of the worst from Manhattan — but time zone is a delivery signal. Ask for the overlap with your working day in hours, and who answers when something breaks on a Friday afternoon.
Scope and price
4. Will you put the scope and the price in writing before the contract, with the exclusions listed? This is the question that sorts the market. A fixed-scope agency will send a document that says what is built, what is not, what it costs and when it ships. A time-and-materials agency will send an estimate with a rate card. Both are legitimate; only one lets you compare offers. Our packages are the written version of this answer; what Plus agencies charge explains where the numbers come from.
5. What is the total cost of ownership for year one, not just the build? A Plus build has at least five cost lines: the platform fee (Shopify’s own pricing page puts Plus at US$2,300 a month on a three-year term, US$2,500 on a one-year term, or a variable fee for complex businesses), the build, the apps and third-party subscriptions the build depends on, the integrations, and whatever keeps it running after launch. An agency that quotes the build alone is leaving you to discover the rest.
6. What triggers a change request, and how is one priced? Every project changes. The question is whether a change is a conversation or an invoice. Ask for the process, the approval step and an example from a past project.
7. What do you need from me, and when? Content, product data, brand assets, integration credentials, decisions. The agency that gives you a dated list of what it needs from your side is the one that has shipped on time before. The one that says “we’ll figure it out” will be blaming your late product feed in month three.
Proof
8. Which live store is most like mine, and what was the result? Not the biggest logo — the closest fit. A salon group with booking, a supplement brand with subscriptions, a wholesaler with an ERP. Then ask for the number that changed and where it came from: analytics, Shopify reports or the client’s own word. On True Glory Hair the number is a 27% lift in repeat purchases; on Gene Juarez it is a Zenoti booking integration most agencies declined. Every agency should have an answer at this level of detail.
9. Can I call a client? One phone call with a past client is worth more than every review site combined. Ask for a recent one and a two-year-old one; the second tells you what the agency is like after the launch glow.
10. Which partner tier do you hold with Shopify, and what does that actually get me? Platinum, Premier and Plus Partner are real programme tiers with real requirements, and they are self-reported on agency sites. They confirm the agency has shipped Plus work; they do not assign your engineer. Take the answer, then go back to question 1.
Process
11. What does your discovery phase produce, and do I own it if we stop there? A good discovery ends with a document you could hand to another agency: architecture, integration map, data migration plan, the scope. Ask whether it is a separate, priced piece of work and whether you own the output. If the answer is that discovery is free but only usable with them, it is a sales step, not discovery.
12. How do you handle checkout? Shopify Plus checkout has moved to checkout extensibility — apps, functions and branding rather than edited liquid. Ask what the agency has built with it on a live store. An agency still describing checkout.liquid customisations is describing the past.
13. What is your definition of done, and who signs it? Ask for the launch checklist: performance budget, accessibility checks, tracking verified, redirects mapped, search rankings protected on a migration. Ask who runs it and whether you see the results. If there is no list, the launch will be a date, not a standard.
After launch
14. What happens at month four? Shopify changes something every quarter; your business changes every month. Ask what support looks like after launch — a retainer, a block of hours, nothing — what it costs, and how quickly a P1 gets picked up. Ours are on the retainers page with the response times written down; whatever an agency’s answer is, it should be that specific.
A scoring sheet
Score each agency 0, 1 or 2 per question and total it. Anything under 18 of 28 has a gap you will pay for later; the highest total is not automatically the winner, but the lowest is reliably the wrong choice.
| Area | Questions | What a 2 looks like |
|---|---|---|
| People | 1–3 | The builder is named, on the call, with two live stores and stated overlap hours |
| Scope and price | 4–7 | Written scope with exclusions, year-one total, a change-request process, a dated needs list |
| Proof | 8–10 | A comparable live store with a sourced number, a client you can phone, a straight answer on tiers |
| Process | 11–13 | Owned discovery output, checkout-extensibility work you can open, a written launch standard |
| After launch | 14 | Support terms and response times in writing |
What to do with the answers
Take the three best totals and ask each for the written scope from question 4. Compare those documents, not the calls. If two are within 20% of each other and the third is half the price, the third has left something out — find it before you sign, because you will pay for it either way.
The 12-agency comparison is a starting shortlist compiled from the agencies’ own sites. If you would like to run these fourteen questions on us, the Shopify Plus development page has the scope, the packages have the prices, and a free audit of your current store is the fastest way to see how we work before a call.
