Shopify Templates: Custom Development or Theme Store?

Launching or scaling your Shopify store is crucial: should you build a custom Shopify theme or use a pre-built theme from the Shopify Theme Store? This choice significantly impacts your brand identity, operational flexibility, long-term costs, and scalability, especially for ambitious businesses. As Shopify Plus partners with experience across Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand, we’ve guided countless merchants through this process. Both options have their advantages and disadvantages, and the right choice will depend on your business needs, goals, and technical expertise. This guide breaks down the pros, cons, costs, and key differences to help you decide.

What is a Shopify Theme?

Definition and purpose of a Shopify theme

A Shopify theme is your online store's overall design, look, and feel. It’s the framework you use to build all the elements of your store around, including the layout, colours, fonts, and imagery. The theme is the foundation of your store, and it plays a crucial role in creating a unique and engaging shopping experience for your customers. A well-designed theme can help you stand out, increase conversions, and drive more sales.

Can you create your own Shopify theme?

Yes, you can develop themes from scratch. However, it requires knowledge of Shopify theme development, which can be daunting for beginner Shopify merchants. Creating a custom theme gives you the freedom and capacity to build the online store your brand needs. Still, it also requires a significant amount of time and effort. Suppose you’re unfamiliar with coding languages like Liquid, CSS, and HTML. In that case, you may need to hire a developer to create a custom theme without coding.

Shopify custom theme

A custom Shopify theme or Shopify template is a tailor-made design and functionality solution created specifically for your ecommerce Shopify store. Creating a new theme involves setting up a local development environment and using tools like Shopify CLI. It is usually developed from scratch in consultation with your advanced Shopify Plus agency. Setting up a local development environment is essential for testing and previewing your theme before it goes live.

Planning for your custom Shopify theme

Planning is essential before creating a custom Shopify theme. You need to plan the whole journey of your customers, from the moment they land on your store to the moment they make a purchase. Planning involves more than just the color scheme and logo placement; you need to consider the placement of elements like steps in a journey and ensure that your plan considers conversion best practices.

Advantages of a custom Shopify theme development

Better performance: Pre-built themes are designed to be “one-size-fits-all,” meaning they come packed with various features and customization options to accommodate different types of users. However, most businesses don’t need all these features, resulting in unnecessary scripts, styles, and functions that slow down page load speed and impact performance. This excess code, along with third-party scripts, slows down page speed and hurts performance. Speed is crucial for SEO and user experience—slow sites increase bounce rates and lower conversions. A custom Shopify theme includes only what’s needed, making it leaner, faster and more efficient. Using a development theme allows you to test and experiment with changes in a controlled environment, ensuring optimal performance before going live.

Full customization: Whether you're a B2B or D2C ecommerce brand, a premier Shopify Plus custom website gives you complete control over design and functionality, ensuring every element—layout and typography to user experience—aligns with your brand. Unlike pre-built themes with design limitations, a custom-built site offers flexibility, allowing you to craft a unique, cohesive digital presence tailored to your business needs. Shopify theme dev tools enable real-time previewing and testing of theme changes, making the development process more efficient.

Unique & exclusive design: With a custom-built theme, your ecommerce store is truly one of a kind. Instead of a generic template used by countless other businesses, you get a website designed by Shopify experts specifically for your brand. This distinctiveness helps you stand out in a crowded market, making your company instantly recognizable. A well-designed, unique Shopify site builds trust, reinforces brand recall, and leaves a lasting impression—essential in competitive industries. Your site’s design will align seamlessly with your brand identity, positioning, packaging, and retail stores, ensuring a consistent experience across all touchpoints.

Full access to Shopify's functionalities: Some think custom themes lose Shopify functionality, but that’s not true. You maintain access to everything: drag and drop editor functionality, access to app integrations in the Shopify App Store, secure checkout payment methods like ShopPay, and user-friend content management interfaces. Custom builds simply enhance your store’s look, leveraging Shopify’s robust platform and Liquid language for updates.

Potential drawbacks of custom Shopify development

• Higher costs: Developing a custom theme typically requires hiring a professional Shopify developer or designer, making it more expensive than ready-made themes. Once the development is complete, the theme can be made live using the shopify theme publish command.
• Development time: Since custom themes are built to your exact specifications, development can take months, depending on the complexity of your requirements and the depth of discussions needed.

Choose custom Shopify development if:

Custom Shopify themes are perfect for growing merchants and established businesses  that need unique functionality, have a strong brand image, and are ready to invest time and effort into optimizing their Shopify site for growth. A customized site is more than just about looks—it’s an investment in long-term flexibility, performance, and brand differentiation, giving your business a competitive edge online. Using Shopify's reference theme, Dawn, as a starting point can streamline the development process and ensure high performance.

Themes from Shopify Theme store

Shopify’s store offers more than a 100 free and paid Shopify pre-made themes designed by Shopify or third-party developers. These themes are often categorized by industry or store type, making it easy to find one that fits your vision. You can also modify an existing theme to better meet your store's specific needs.

Benefits of using the Shopify Theme store

• Quick Setup: Pre-designed and ready-to-use Shopify themes allow you to jumpstart your basic Shopify store with minimal setup. Since these Shopify themes come with pre-configured layouts and built-in features, you only have to focus on adding your products, branding elements, and essential settings instead of conceptualizing a site from scratch. The theme library allows you to manage multiple themes and switch between them seamlessly. This makes them ideal for small businesses that need to go live quickly.
  
• Cost-Effective: Shopify themes from the Theme Store are significantly more affordable than custom-built solutions. Whether you choose a free or premium theme, the upfront cost is often much lower than the investment required for a fully custom theme. Hiring an expert Shopify developer or Shopify agency to modify sections or pages is a viable option for businesses looking for customization without the expense of a complete custom build. However, this hybrid approach still inherits some drawbacks of using a theme, such as excess code and unnecessary functionalities that can slow down page speed. Despite these limitations, Shopify themes remain a practical choice for small businesses, startups, and merchants looking to launch quickly with a limited development budget.
  
• Built-in Features: Many Shopify themes come with built-in features that simplify site management and enhance the user experience. Design presets, for example, allow merchants to quickly set up their store by selecting predefined colors, fonts, and layouts. These tools make it easy to create a polished, professional-looking website with minimal effort, helping businesses launch and manage their store efficiently.
• Support & Updates: Themes typically include dedicated developer support and regular updates, ensuring compatibility with Shopify’s evolving platform and minimizing technical issues. However, if modifications were made to the theme’s core templates, you cannot apply future updates from the theme developer.
  

Potential of drawbacks of using the Shopify Theme store

• Limited Customization: While some level of customization is possible, you’ll likely be restricted to the features and design options provided. To overcome these limitations, you may need to modify the theme code directly.
• Less Uniqueness: Your theme may look similar to other Shopify stores using the same design—this could impact brand differentiation.
• Generic Features: The functionality may not fully match your specific business requirements without additional custom coding or third-party apps.

Choose custom Shopify Theme store if:

Shopify Theme Store is great for small businesses or entrepreneurs who need an affordable, quick, and easy way to launch their store without requiring advanced customization. With Shopify Online Store 2.0, you can add sections to every page of your store, not just the homepage, providing greater flexibility.

Working with a Shopify Plus Agency (Like 360&5)

Embarking on custom Shopify development is complex. Partnering with an experienced Shopify Plus agency like 360&5 provides:

• Strategic guidance on the right technical approach.
• Expert UI/UX design tailored to your audience.
• Skilled development focused on performance, scalability, and best practices.
• Project management to keep things on track.
• Deep understanding of the Shopify Plus platform and its capabilities.
• Experience navigating the specific e-commerce landscapes in Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand.
  

Ultimately, the choice for a Shopify merchant between a Shopify theme and custom development hinges on your budget, timeline, technical needs, and growth ambitions. Standard themes offer speed and affordability for simpler stores, while bespoke Shopify development provides unparalleled flexibility and scalability, often essential for unique brands and Shopify Plus merchants aiming for market leadership. Consider your 5-year plan: will a theme limit your potential?

Contact 360&5 today for a free consultation on the best approach for your Shopify merchandise store. We also specialize in seamless migrations, ensuring minimal disruption while delivering tailored solutions.

For deeper e-commerce understanding, compare Shopify Plus and Shopify Advanced plans.