10 Questions to Vet a Shopify Agency in India 2026

How do you choose a Shopify agency in India?

Our suggestion is to shortlist three agencies, send them all the same brief and put the ten questions below to each of them. Their answers usually say more than a portfolio deck does, and you'll get quotes you can compare line by line.

We say this because the price gap in India is huge. A freelancer might quote ₹15,000 for a store that a big studio prices at a few lakh, and everyone sounds sure of themselves on the first call. You usually find out who was right a few months in, once the store has slowed down, or checkout breaks because of some app nobody remembers installing, or your developer goes quiet on WhatsApp.

We've written down the questions we'd ask if we were hiring an agency ourselves. Under some of them we've added how we'd answer at Amwhiz, so you have something to compare against. Feel free to hold us to the same standard.

1. Are you a Shopify Partner, and how long have you built stores?

A Shopify Partner account is basic. Anyone can sign up for free, so having one doesn't tell you a lot. The useful part of this question is the follow-up: how many years have they been building stores, roughly how many have they launched, and how many of those are still selling today?

We've been a Shopify Partner for over eight years, and our team has set up more than 1.2 million products across client stores.

2. Can I see live stores and speak to a client?

Screenshots and mockups prove very little. Ask for links to live stores, open them on your phone and go as far as the checkout page. Do they load quickly on mobile data? Do the product images look right? Then ask for one or two client contacts. An agency that's proud of its work will usually set up that call without much fuss.

3. Who will actually build my store?

This one catches a lot of people out. The senior person on the sales call isn't always the one writing code, and some agencies hand the build to freelancers they've never worked with before. Ask who your project manager will be, who the developers are, and whether they're on the payroll.

Everyone who works on an Amwhiz project is in-house. We have more than 100 people in our Chennai office and we don't subcontract client work.

4. What exactly is in the quote?

"Complete Shopify store" means something different to every agency. Ask for the scope in writing with numbers attached: how many products they'll upload, which pages they'll build, which apps they'll set up, how many rounds of design changes are included and how many days of support follow launch. If the quote can't answer those, you'll probably end up arguing about them later.

5. How is it priced, and what costs extra?

Find out whether it's a fixed price or hourly, what happens when you ask for something new halfway through, and how payments are split. Paying in milestones is normal. Paying everything upfront isn't. Also ask which costs come from Shopify and app makers, since your plan, premium theme and paid apps are usually billed to you directly.

Our launch packages are listed publicly: ₹45,000 for a two-week Starter store and ₹1,20,000 for a four-week Professional build. Anything outside the agreed scope is charged at a fixed hourly rate, which we tell you before any extra work begins.

6. What happens if you miss the deadline?

Every agency gives you a date, but very few attach anything to it. Ask for a timeline broken into milestones, then ask what the contract says if they deliver late. The answer tells you how seriously they take that date.

In our contracts, if we deliver after the agreed date, you aren't charged for the extra time.

7. Will the store and code belong to me?

Your Shopify store should be opened under your own email and business details, with the agency added as a collaborator. You should also own the domain, the theme files and any custom app you paid for. If an agency wants to keep the store on its own account "for now", be careful, because getting it back later can be surprisingly hard.

8. How do you handle SEO and page speed?

A lovely store that nobody finds doesn't sell much. Ask how they set up page titles, meta descriptions and URLs, how they compress images, and whether they add structured data to product pages. If you're moving from WooCommerce or another platform, ask specifically about 301 redirects. Skipping them can wipe out years of Google rankings in a week.

9. Can you connect Shopify to our other tools?

Most brands outgrow a basic store fairly quickly. You might soon need a payment gateway like Razorpay, a shipping aggregator, accounting software, a CRM, POS for a physical shop, or WhatsApp order updates. Ask which of these the agency has connected before, and whether they can build a custom app when nothing on the App Store fits.

We build Shopify integrations with POS systems, couriers, CRMs such as HubSpot and Zoho, ERPs and the WhatsApp Business API, and we write custom apps when the ready-made ones fall short.

10. What support do I get after launch?

The first few weeks after launch are when real customers find the bugs that testing missed. Ask how long free support lasts, how quickly they reply, and what ongoing help costs once that period ends.

Our Starter package comes with 30 days of support and Professional comes with 90. After that you can move to a monthly plan with a set number of hours.

Want to put these questions to us? Book a free call and ask all ten. We'll answer in writing and send you live stores to check for yourself. Book a free call or message us on WhatsApp.

Warning signs worth taking seriously

Some answers should make you pause. If an agency wants to open the store on its own account, quotes far below everyone else, can only show mockups, asks for full payment before starting, or agrees to everything you say without asking a single question, keep looking. Very cheap quotes in particular tend to rely on pirated themes or skip testing, and you end up paying for that after launch.

One question we find useful is asking the agency what they'd leave out of your store for now. It's a good sign if they push back on at least one of your ideas, because it means they're thinking about your launch and not only the invoice.

Questions founders ask us

How much does a Shopify agency charge in India? With an established agency, a basic store on a free theme starts at around ₹45,000. Premium theme work with app setup usually starts near ₹1,20,000, and custom builds or migrations are quoted after a scoping call.

Should I hire a freelancer or an agency? A freelancer can work well for a small store on a tight budget. If you need design, development, integrations and support from one team that's answerable for all of it, an agency is usually the safer choice.

Can an Indian agency build a store for overseas customers? Yes. We build multi-currency and multi-language stores for brands selling to the US, UK, the Gulf and Australia.

Talk to Amwhiz

If you're shortlisting agencies right now, add us to the list and ask us the same ten questions. After a free discovery call, we'll send a fixed quote with the scope, timeline and support terms spelled out.

Book a free consultation · Chat on WhatsApp · sales@amwhiz.com · +91 91500 65500

Keep reading: Shopify Agency RFP Scoring Matrix for India in 2026 · How to Pick Shopify Development Services for Quick Launch