Ecommerce in the US grew faster than overall retail for the fifth consecutive year in 2025. According to the US Census Bureau, retail ecommerce sales reached $326.7 billion in the first quarter of 2026, which is a 9.8% increase year over year.
As more sales moves online, more brands are competing for the same attention, clicks, and conversions. That raises the stakes for your ecommerce operations with more pressure to get the technical and marketing fundamentals right.
That’s where ecommerce agencies come in. Whether you need to rebuild your store from the ground up, drive more qualified traffic, or both, the agency you choose shapes what’s possible and what it costs.
This guide covers the main types of ecommerce agencies, what each one does, how to evaluate and choose one, what to budget, and how to use the Shopify Partner Directory to find vetted partners matched to your business size.
What is an ecommerce agency?
An ecommerce agency is a business that helps brands sell more online, either by building and maintaining the technical infrastructure behind a store, running marketing and paid media, or handling both.
Ecommerce agencies offer digital marketing solutions focused on the commercial side of selling online, like driving revenue, improving conversion rates, and optimizing the entire customer journey. This is slightly different from general digital agencies who deliver polished design files or brand campaigns.
The scope varies widely. A small boutique agency might specialize entirely in Shopify SEO. A large full-service ecommerce agency might own everything from initial online store architecture to ongoing paid search, email marketing, social media management, and analytics.
Types of ecommerce agencies
There are three broad ecommerce agency categories that cover most of what the market offers:
Marketing and growth
Marketing and growth agencies focus on customer acquisition and customer retention. Ecommerce marketing services include paid media (Meta, Google, TikTok), SEO, email marketing, SMS, and conversion rate optimization (CRO). These agencies specialize in driving traffic and improving the percentage of visitors who buy. They generally don’t build or technically maintain your ecommerce store.
Development and build
Development and build agencies focus on the architecture of ecommerce websites, design theme development, custom app integrations, and platform migrations. If you’re switching from another ecommerce platform, launching a headless storefront, or building a complex B2B portal on Shopify Plus, this is the agency type you need. They don’t manage ad budgets or offer promotional digital marketing solutions like email marketing campaigns.
Full-service
Full-service agencies combine web development, ecommerce marketing, and other digital marketing strategies under one roof. They offer tailored strategies and work best for brands that want a single accountable partner across all digital marketing channels.
When does your business actually need one?
Hiring an ecommerce agency makes most sense when one of three conditions applies:
- You’ve hit a ceiling on what your in-house team can do
- You need specialized expertise you can’t hire fast enough
- You’re entering a phase of ecommerce growth that requires both capacity and speed
A founder-operated ecommerce store with $300,000 in annual revenue might get more value from a focused freelancer than a retainer-based agency. A brand earning more than $5 million and preparing to scale paid media into new markets has a different calculus.
Industry West ran on Adobe Commerce for years, but they needed custom development work and more budget every time they wanted to change the storefront. Their B2B ordering flow was also too manual and too slow. That operational drag pushed them to replatform and bring in a Shopify Plus Partner, Domaine, to rebuild. As a result, their B2B web order revenue lifted 90% after the relaunch.
How to choose the right ecommerce agency
The best ecommerce agency for you depends on what you need help with, what resources you have in-house, and what your goals are.
Questions to ask
Before you shortlist or sign, ask each agency the following:
- What’s your experience with brands in our revenue range?
- Which platforms and tools do you specialize in?
- Who will actually work on our account?
- Can we see examples of before/after performance for comparable clients?
- How do you measure success, and how often do we get reports?
- What does your offboarding process look like?
Pricing models
A Databox survey of more than 40 agencies found most clients pay less than $30,000 per year. That’s a narrow sample, and costs vary considerably by agency size, scope, and channel mix, so treat it as more of a directional reference than a concrete market rate.
Agency pricing tends to follow one of three structures:
- Retainer-based pricing covers a defined scope of digital marketing services for a fixed monthly fee.
- Project-based pricing works for defined, bounded work: a store build, a platform migration, a new checkout flow. Pricing varies based on complexity. For Shopify store builds, Storetasker’s 2025 developer rate guide puts the range at $5,000 to $10,000 for basic agency builds and $15,000 to $35,000 for mid-tier custom builds with CRO-focused design.
- Performance-based pricing ties agency fees to results, which could be a percentage of revenue generated, a cost-per-acquisition threshold, or a share of incremental lift.
You might also come across agencies that use a hybrid rate structure, which might be a base retainer with a performance bonus or a project fee with a maintenance retainer on top.
Red flags to watch out for
- Guaranteed rankings or results. Performance depends on market conditions, product quality, and brand factors outside any agency’s control.
- Long lock-in contracts without clear exit clauses. Standard arrangements include notice periods. Contracts that ask you to give 6 to 12 months’ notice to exit, or that don’t say what happens to your assets and data when you leave, are high-risk.
- Vague or templated reporting. Reporting that doesn’t connect activity to revenue, or that changes methodology month to month makes it hard to evaluate what’s actually working.
- No platform-specific experience. If an ecommerce agency can’t name the Shopify features, themes, or apps relevant to your build or marketing stack, they’re not platform specialists.
- Pressure to move fast. A legitimately good ecommerce agency has capacity and doesn’t need to rush you.
Finding Shopify-specialized agencies with the Partner Directory
The Shopify Partner Directory can help you find agencies with verified Shopify expertise. Unlike general agency directories, Shopify Partners have to follow the Shopify Partner Program Agreement, which holds Partners to a code of conduct and gives store owners a way to flag problems if things go wrong.
You can filter the directory by service type (store setup, development, social media posts, influencer marketing, content marketing, visual content creation and branding), price range, location, industry, language, and Partner tier.
How Partner tiers map to your business size
There are four Partner tiers in the directory:
- Select partners
- Plus partners
- Premier partners
- Platinum partners
| Partner tier | Best for | Specialization | Use case |
|---|---|---|---|
| Select | Small and medium businesses | Store setup, basic customization, growth marketing | First store builds, theme customization, early-stage marketing |
| Plus | Mid-market and larger businesses | Shopify Plus builds, advanced integrations, growth marketing | Replatforms, headless builds, multichannel marketing at scale |
| Premier | Large enterprises | Complex builds, B2B, international rollouts | Enterprise replatforms, custom app development, large-team engagements |
| Platinum | Global enterprise businesses | Global scale, multi-region, advanced Plus architecture | Global commerce operations, enterprise integrations, headless architecture |
What to look for in a Shopify Partner’s profile
When reviewing a Partner’s profile in the directory, look at four things:
- Portfolio and case studies. Look for profiles that show the agency has a proven track record, such as specific client outcomes, before/after conversion data, revenue metrics, or named outcomes from comparable brands.
- Reviews. Look for patterns in the language, like how reviewers describe communication, responsiveness, and what happened if things went wrong.
- Industry and service filters. If your brand operates in a regulated category (e.g., supplements, fashion, B2B), filter for Partners with direct experience in that vertical.
- Tier and partner status. Tier reflects depth of Shopify-specific experience and how they’re assessed by Shopify.
Once you’ve identified two or three candidates, use the Hiring and Working with Shopify Partners guide to find out how to plan, contact, and work with a partner.
Top ecommerce marketing agencies in 2026
P3 Media
P3 Media is a New York–based full-service ecommerce agency covering growth marketing, development, CRO, and Shopify POS. In April 2025, they were named a Shopify Platinum Partner, a tier introduced in January 2025 and held by fewer than 1% of agencies globally.
Their work spans direct-to-consumer (DTC) and omnichannel brands, with a focus on revenue acceleration and Shopify migrations. When shoe brand Jack Rogers brought in P3 to rebuild their store on Shopify Plus, traffic increased by 60% and conversions improved by 30%.
Swanky
Swanky is a Shopify-specialist ecommerce agency with offices in the UK, Australia, and France.
Swanky works with international brands on store development, creative, and growth strategy. The agency has been focused on Shopify since its early days, and the brands they’ve built for have collectively transacted billions through the platform. Much of their work involves moving brands off older, more expensive platforms and building something faster and cheaper to run in its place.
They worked with One Retail Group, a multibrand retailer that needed to manage several brands across 13 geographies. Swanky built them a single Shopify architecture to run all their brands from one place, replacing a setup that required managing each brand separately. At the time, One Retail Group ranked seventh on the Sunday Times Top 100 fastest-growing companies list.
Red Van
Red Van is an ecommerce agency founded by a group of technologists who previously worked together at New Balance. Their existing client list includes New Balance, Patagonia, and TaylorMade. They partnered with Shopify in 2024, after recognising that clients were moving to the platform and they needed to move with them.
They’ve worked with CarBahn, a US brand specialising in high-performance parts and tuning software for BMW, Audi, and Mercedes vehicles. Red Van rebuilt CarBahn’s store on Shopify, adding a custom fitment checker so customers could find parts for their specific car, organized product pages with clearer warranty and installation information, and a unified store locator covering 80 locations. After launching, CarBahn’s organic traffic increased by 300% and online sales tripled on a month-to-month basis.
Top ecommerce development and build agencies in 2026
Domaine
Domaine is a Shopify-exclusive development agency, meaning they work only on the Shopify platform.
“We built our company focusing only on the Shopify platform because the total cost of ownership (TCO) on legacy systems was no longer justifiable, and that’s even more relevant today than it was five years ago,” says Marko Bon, cofounder of Tomorrow (now merged with Half Helix to form Domaine).
Their work includes a $150 million fashion brand that saved approximately $30 million after migrating from Salesforce to Shopify and the Industry West rebuild that led to a 90% lift in B2B order revenue.
DotCollective
DotCollective is an Australian Shopify Platinum Partner specializing in development, design, and technical integrations.
“Because we work mostly in certain industries, there are a lot of similarities between clients’ requirements,” says Brendon Nicholas, founder and technical director at DotCollective. “Sometimes, we think ’Hey, we’ve actually just done that,’ and we can spend half a day on the migration and take more time tailoring it to their brand.”
When organic baby clothing brand Purebaby moved to Shopify with DotCollective’s help after years of platform problems, their revenue grew 600% over the following three years. Fashion brand Scanlan Theodore brought the agency in ahead of a global expansion to rebuild their store, and saw a 25% increase in transactions.
One apparel retailer they worked with was spending 60% of their budget just keeping their old ecommerce website running. After 12 months on Shopify, that dropped to 20%, freeing up budget to invest in growth instead.
How to work with an ecommerce agency effectively
A 2025 joint study by the ANA and 4As found that the average client-agency relationship now lasts around seven years, which is more than double the 3.2-year average recorded in 2016.
Integrated full-service agencies averaged 7.3 years, while media-only agencies averaged 3.7. The same research found that clients without mandatory review periods had significantly longer relationships (8.1 years) than those who reviewed frequently.
So, you’re not just choosing an ecommerce agency; you’re potentially choosing a long-term partner for your business.
Setting clear goals and KPIs from day one
Before an ecommerce agency starts any work, agree on what success looks like in concrete, measurable terms. Tie it to revenue or conversion outcomes if you can. Write those goals into the contract so there’s an agreed basis for evaluating performance at the 30-, 60-, and 90-day marks.
Before the engagement starts, audit your analytics setup. Check that conversion tracking is firing correctly, that you have your attribution model well documented, and that both sides agree on which numbers to track.
What good agency reporting looks like
According to the AgencyAnalytics 2025 Marketing Agency Benchmarks Report, 70% of agency leaders say client reporting plays a critical role in client retention.
Make sure the reporting covers these three things:
- It’s tied to your commercial goals. Impressions, clicks, and email open rates work all right as inputs, but you want your reports to clearly show revenue attribution, return on ad spend (ROAS), and conversion rate trends.
- It shows issues as well as wins. An ecommerce agency that only reports upward is either lucky or curating the story. Ask to see performance on campaigns or channels that underdelivered and what they plan to change so they perform better.
- It’s delivered on an agreed schedule. Monthly is standard for most retainer engagements. An ecommerce business running significant ad budgets should expect weekly check-ins on performance, with monthly strategic reviews.
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Ecommerce agency FAQ
What does an ecommerce agency do?
An ecommerce agency helps brands sell more online, either by building and maintaining the technical side of a store, running marketing channels like PPC advertising, search engine advertising, SEO, marketing automation and email marketing, or both. Unlike general digital agencies, they’re measured on commercial outcomes, such as revenue, conversion rate, and average order value.
How much does an ecommerce agency cost?
It depends on the type of work. For store builds, ecommerce agency projects on Shopify typically start at $5,000 to $10,000 for a basic build, $15,000 to $35,000 for a mid-tier custom build, and more than $50,000 for enterprise or Shopify Plus work. Marketing retainers vary widely by scope, channel, and agency size. Get itemized quotes from at least two or three agencies before committing.
What’s the difference between an ecommerce agency and a digital marketing agency?
A digital marketing agency may serve clients across many industries and campaign types, like social media marketing, with success measured in reach, impressions, or leads. An ecommerce agency focuses specifically on commerce conversion outcomes, like getting more people to buy, spend more, and come back again.
How do I find a Shopify-certified agency?
Use the Shopify Partner Directory and filter by service type, industry, and Partner tier. Agencies listed there have agreed to Shopify’s Partner Program Agreement and are searchable by the type of work you need.
When should I hire an ecommerce agency vs. building an in-house team?
An ecommerce marketing agency makes more sense when you need specialized or technical expertise quickly, or when the volume of work doesn’t justify a full-time hire. In-house teams make more sense when the work is consistent, high-volume, and benefits from deep knowledge of your brand. Many ecommerce companies do both by keeping a generalist in-house to manage the agency relationship while the ecommerce agency handles channel execution.
