eCommerce
Own your store. Stop paying platform rent.
We build and grow online stores on a stack you own outright — a storefront that loads in about a second, Stripe checkout, and no app tax quietly compounding against your margin. Run by operators who sell online themselves, with the numbers published.
Published store results — our own brands first
The problem
Your store makes the money. Your platform keeps the margin.
Plan fees. App subscriptions for features that should be built in. A surcharge on every sale if you dare use your own payment provider. Wholesale pricing locked behind a $3,700-a-month tier. Rent compounds — and at the end of it, you still don't own the store.
The outcome
A store that's an asset, not a subscription.
- You own the code, the data and the customer list
- Loads in about a second — published scores
- Stripe checkout: no platform cut on top
- Wholesale & B2B pricing built in, not gated
- Measured from day one against a frozen baseline
The honest comparison
Shopify vs WooCommerce vs owning it.
We'll tell you when Shopify is the right call — for a solo founder launching this week, it often is. This is for brands past that stage.
| Shopify | WooCommerce | The Salty stack | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Platform fee | A$56–575/mo (Plus: A$3,700) | Free software | None — you own the code |
| Apps / plugins to be functional | Typically $100–800/mo, forever | $50–200/mo + conflicts | Built in, built once |
| Extra fee per sale | Up to +2% on third-party payments | None | None — Stripe only (~1.7% + 30¢, same as anyone) |
| Wholesale / B2B price tiers | Gated behind Plus (A$3,700/mo) | More plugins | Included where needed |
| Typical mobile speed | Decent, theme-dependent | Slow — we measured our own at 13.5s | About a second — published scores |
| Who owns the store | Shopify (you rent it) | You (plus the maintenance treadmill) | You — code, data, customers |
| When it's the right call | Solo founder, day-one launch | Existing stores (we service these) | Established brands done paying rent |
Shopify AU pricing and third-party payment surcharges as published 2026; app-spend ranges from industry migration research; WooCommerce speed figure is our own store, measured before we rebuilt it — see the case study. Stripe's rate is what any modern store pays for cards; we add nothing to it. Read the full three-way comparison →
What we do
Build it, rank it, automate it — one team.
Shopping feeds & Merchant Center
Product feeds built, compliant and converting — including the policy and structured-data work that gets stores approved and keeps them there.
Measurement & CRO
Full analytics with e-commerce tracking from day one, a frozen baseline, and conversion work reported in revenue — not sessions.
Pricing — published, like everything else
One build. One flat monthly. Zero platform rent.
A $200k/yr store typically hands Shopify around $750 a month for software alone — nobody working on its growth. Every dollar below buys engineering and growth work on a store you own.
Store Care
Keep it fast & safe
Your store hosted, secured, updated and watched — by the team that built it.
- Hosting, SSL & daily backups included
- Security & dependency updates handled
- Uptime & speed monitoring
- Up to 1 hour of changes every month
- No platform fees on top — ever
Store Growth
Care + growth work
Everything in Care, plus real hours spent growing the store every month.
- Everything in Store Care
- ~6 hours/month of SEO, CRO & content
- Shopping feed & Merchant Center upkeep
- Quarterly performance audit
- Reported in revenue, not sessions
Store Scale
Automation & B2B
For stores with wholesale, integrations and automation on the roadmap.
- Everything in Store Growth
- Automation buildout allowance (orders, stock, books)
- Wholesale / B2B features & price tiers
- Priority response
- A third of Shopify Plus — humans included
Store builds — fixed-quoted within these bands
Starter store
$7,500–12,000
Up to ~100 products, standard checkout, content migration — shipped to our published standard: 90+ speed scores, full measurement, SEO structure.
Growth store
$12,000–25,000
Up to ~1,000 products, platform migration with rankings preserved (proper 301s), reviews & shopping feeds, integrations like Xero.
Complex / wholesale
from $25,000
B2B portals & trade price tiers, multi-warehouse, ERP/ops integrations, custom checkout flows — the things platforms gate behind enterprise plans.
Fixed-quoted after a free 30-minute audit — the number we quote is the number you pay. Local currency (NZD/AUD) confirmed at the audit. Every build ships the full standard: 90+ speed scores, measurement, SEO structure and your rankings migrated intact.
Questions
Asked by every store owner.
Every new store is the same proven stack: a Next.js storefront on edge hosting, the open-source Medusa commerce engine, and Stripe for payments. One repeatable process — the same one behind our own stores — which is why we can fix-quote builds and publish our speed scores.
For a solo founder launching this week — genuinely yes, and we'll tell you so. Shopify's trade is convenience for rent: plan fees, app subscriptions, surcharges on third-party payments, and B2B features locked behind a $3,700/month tier. Once a brand is established, that rent buys nothing your own store wouldn't do faster. That's the point where we make sense.
The software is free; running it isn't. We operate a WooCommerce store ourselves, so this is first-hand: hosting, a stack of paid plugins, constant updates — and a hard performance ceiling. Ours measured a 13.5-second mobile load before we rebuilt it lean. We still service and improve Woo stores, but we don't build new ones.
No. Card processing is Stripe's standard rate (about 1.7% + 30¢ domestically — roughly what Shopify Payments charges too). We charge for the build and an optional monthly care/growth retainer. Nothing scales against your revenue.
Our prices are published right on this page: builds from $7,500 (fixed-quoted within the band after a free audit — the number we quote is the number you pay) and care plans from $299/month. Comparable to a serious agency build on any platform — minus the platform rent every year after, and you own the asset.
Yes — with your rankings intact. We freeze your baseline first (speed, rankings, revenue), migrate every URL with proper redirects, and publish the before-and-after. That's the same evidence-led process as every case study on this site.
Find out what your platform is really costing you.
Book a 30-minute audit. We'll add up your real platform spend — plan, apps, surcharges — and show you what owning the store would change, with your baseline frozen so the after is provable.