Shopify Theme Customisation: Should You Hire a Freelancer or Agency?

Shopify’s theme ecosystem is one of its biggest advantages – but outgrowing your starter theme is inevitable. Whether you’re optimising for speed, brand experience or conversion, a custom Shopify theme can unlock serious upside.

The question is: who should build it?

Freelancer or agency? One costs less, the other handles more. Here’s how to choose the right approach for your stage, your team and your goals.

What Counts as Theme Customisation?

Theme customisation usually refers to:

• Visual updates to match your brand

• Layout changes to improve UX or CRO

• Feature enhancements (like upsells, quizzes or sticky carts)

• Speed and performance improvements

• Accessibility or mobile responsiveness fixes

Sometimes that means building a brand new theme from scratch. Other times it means heavily editing an existing one.

Pros and Cons of Hiring a Freelancer

Pros:

• Lower cost – Rates typically range from NZD $70–$150/hour

• Faster turnaround – Especially for small changes or tweaks

• Direct communication – One person handles everything

Cons:

• Limited scope – Most freelancers are either design-first or code-first, not both

• No strategic oversight – CRO, SEO, UX are often an afterthought

• Less support – One person means limited QA, slower bug fixes and no holiday coverage

• Varying quality – It’s harder to vet their process or scalability

Best suited for: small changes, theme tweaks, or brands under $1M/year

Pros and Cons of Hiring an Agency

Pros:

• Multidisciplinary team – Designers, developers, QA and strategists

• Strategic input – Agencies often include CRO, UX, SEO or brand insight

• Capacity for complex builds – Larger product catalogues, B2B logic, multi-region stores

• Ongoing support – Structured timelines, documentation, and post-launch optimisation

Cons:

• Higher cost – Most agency custom builds start at NZD $15K+

• Longer timelines – More stakeholders means more process

• Variable fit – Not all agencies understand Shopify specifically

Best suited for: high-growth brands, complex builds or full-site redesigns

Questions to Ask Before Deciding

• Are we trying to fix a few UX issues, or completely rethink the site?

• Do we have internal design or dev capacity to support this project?

• Are we trying to move fast, or set up for long-term scale?

• Do we need strategic input beyond just development?

• What’s the opportunity cost of getting this wrong?

It’s not just about cost – it’s about risk, reliability and results.

How Atlas Studios Approaches Theme Custom Work

We’ve seen brands struggle with bloated themes, unsupported freelancers and half-built features that don’t scale. Our approach is different.

• We audit your current theme for performance, UX and CRO

• We define what can be edited vs rebuilt

• We design, develop and QA every component in-house

• We document your new theme for internal teams

• We support post-launch refinement with data and testing

Whether it’s a ground-up rebuild or a conversion-led facelift, our work is designed to scale with your growth.

Final Word

You can get a Shopify theme built by anyone – but whether it converts, scales and stays fast? That depends on who builds it and how.

If you’re ready for more than theme tweaks, but not quite ready for enterprise – we’d love to show you what’s possible.