How to choose a Shopify theme: free, paid or custom

A theme is the design and layout layer of your store. It controls how your home page, collections, product pages, cart and menus look and behave. It does not decide your prices, your range or your photography, and it will not fix a weak offer. What it does decide is how easily your team can edit pages, how much code your store loads, and which selling features you get without paying for an app.

So pick a theme by the job, not the demo. A 40-product skincare brand, a 3,000-SKU hardware store and a furniture maker selling made-to-order pieces need different things from the same template. Write down your top five shopper actions first, such as filter by size, compare two products, read a size guide, build a bundle, or reorder. Then judge themes against that list.

If you are still working out what the whole project costs, use our Shopify cost calculator and read the full cost guide first. The theme is usually a small part of the total.

The Shopify Theme Store lists free and paid themes. At the time of writing, its free collection holds 24 themes, including Dawn, Horizon, Craft, Origin, Refresh, Sense and Studio. Shopify builds the free ones. Horizon is Shopify's newer flagship theme family, introduced in the Summer 2025 Edition.

Paid themes are built by outside developers. The Theme Store's front page showed prices from USD $100 to USD $400 when we checked, for example Pebble at $400, Sleek and Voltix at $350, Halftone and Attitude at $320, Gumdrop at $170, Xtra at $150, and Forge and Triumph at $100. These are USD prices, so your Australian dollar cost moves with the exchange rate. Check the listing for the billing terms before you buy.

You can preview paid themes before you commit. Shopify's help centre says you can try up to 19 paid themes at the same time, marked with a theme trial label, and that customisations you make during the preview carry over if you buy. Use that. Load your real products and your real logo, then look at it on your phone.

Online Store 2.0 is the theme architecture Shopify released in July 2021. Older themes are called vintage themes, and Shopify's help centre says features released only for Online Store 2.0 do not reach them. Every theme on the Theme Store today should be Online Store 2.0, but older themes still sit in stores and on third-party marketplaces, so check.

The practical benefit is control for your team. Sections can be added and rearranged on any page of the store, except gift card and checkout pages, and each template supports up to 25 sections. That means your marketer can rebuild a collection page for a sale without calling a developer.

• Confirm the theme is Online Store 2.0 before you buy anything. If a marketplace listing is vague, assume it is not.
• Open the theme editor on the preview and try moving sections on a collection page and a product page. If you can, you are on a modern theme.
• Check that the theme supports metafields in the editor, so product details such as ingredients or dimensions can show without custom code.

Speed

Shopify's performance documentation says the theme's code and your installed apps are the key factors in how fast a store loads. Theme Store themes must clear a bar before they are accepted. Shopify's requirements say reviewers test a benchmark store and a theme needs an average Lighthouse performance score of at least 60 across the home, product and collection pages. That is a minimum, not a target, so test the demo yourself with real images on a mid-range phone.

Speed is also a function of what you add. A fast theme plus eight apps is a slow store. Our speed and Core Web Vitals guide covers the targets and the fixes.

Collection filters and search

Filtering is a feature of the theme, so how it looks and behaves differs a lot between themes. Check that filters work on mobile without a clumsy full-screen takeover, that swatches show for colour, and that active filters are easy to clear. The Theme Store lets you filter by feature, and on the free collection, 24 themes carry a mega menu and sticky header and 23 carry colour swatches and swatch filters.

Mega menu and navigation

If you have more than about seven top-level categories, a mega menu helps shoppers get to the right collection in one click. If you have fewer, a mega menu is decoration. Check that it works with a keyboard and on touch screens, because hover-only menus fail on phones.

Product page features

• Variant picker styles that suit your range: buttons, swatches, dropdowns.
• A zoomable image gallery with video support, and sensible behaviour when variants have their own images.
• Space for size guides, delivery information and returns copy, so you do not bury the details that answer pre-purchase questions.
• Sticky add to cart on mobile.
• Built-in quantity breaks, cross-sells or a bundle block if you sell sets.
• Product recommendation sections that you can switch on without an app.

Score each demo against this list using your own products, not the demo products.

Australian selling features

Check that prices display with GST the way you want, that the cart shows shipping thresholds in AUD, and that there is room for Afterpay or Zip messaging near the price. See our guides on GST setup and Afterpay and Zip.

Support and updates

For paid themes the developer supports the theme, so look at how they handle questions before you buy. Look for a documentation site, a changelog showing recent updates and a stated support response time. A theme that has not been updated for a year is a warning sign.

1. Step 1

   Write your shopper actions

   List the five things your shoppers must do on the store, in order of importance. Filtering, comparing, customising, subscribing, reordering.

2. Step 2

   Shortlist three themes

   Use the Theme Store's feature filters and pick two free and one paid, or three free if the budget is tight. Avoid choosing by screenshot alone.

3. Step 3

   Load your real catalogue

   Add 20 real products with real photos, a real collection and your logo. Many themes look great with stock photography and poor with your own.

4. Step 4

   Test on a phone

   Most Australian shoppers browse on mobile. Work through add to cart and checkout on a phone, on mobile data, not office Wi-Fi.

5. Step 5

   Score speed

   Open Shopify's web performance reports after a week of live traffic, or run PageSpeed Insights on the preview. Drop any theme that stumbles.

6. Step 6

   Decide who edits it

   Make sure the person who will maintain the store can rearrange a page in the editor without help. If they cannot, pick a simpler theme.

A custom theme is designed and built for your brand rather than adapted from a template. It is not a status symbol. It is the right call in a few cases:

• Your product needs a bespoke buying journey, such as made-to-order furniture with delivery quotes or a build-your-own kit.
• Your brand relies on a layout no theme preset can approach, and you are already fighting the editor.
• Your catalogue or content model is unusual, such as heavy use of metafields, wholesale and retail in one store, or several markets with different content.
• You have outgrown a theme plus apps and the combined weight is slowing the store.
• You are migrating from a custom platform and want parity on features that matter to your best customers.

It is not the right call when the real problem is photography, copy or traffic. Our packages reflect this. Launch is $8,900 ex GST and sets up and styles a premium theme in 4 to 6 weeks. Custom is $18,500 ex GST for a bespoke designed theme with migration in 8 to 10 weeks. If a premium theme can do the job, we will tell you, and we will not sell you the larger package. See our custom Shopify themes and store design services for how each works.

You can also see how different theme layouts can feel in our concept stores. They are concepts we designed to show our approach, not live client stores.

• Buying on the demo. The demo has professional photography and tuned copy. Your store will not.
• Paying for features you will not use. Complex animations and parallax slow the store and rarely lift sales.
• Changing themes at the last minute. Switching late means redoing sections, translations and app blocks.
• Editing theme code for small changes. Direct code edits make updates harder. Use the editor, theme settings or a developer you trust.
• Ignoring accessibility. Colour contrast, keyboard use and clear focus states matter to shoppers and to legal risk. Test the demo with a keyboard before you buy.