Shopify maintenance and retainers

Shopify Maintenance and Support Plans

SPLIT Development provides Shopify maintenance services for DTC brands that need a stable store and a plan to grow it. One team handles fixes, app updates, speed checks and monthly improvements, so you don’t hire a freelancer for every task. Plans start at $500 per month, with no minimum term.

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150+

Projects delivered

7+

Years on Shopify

Top 3

Shopify Plus agency on Clutch

Shopify Maintenance Packages

Shopify website maintenance cost depends on what your store needs each month. Every package lists what you get, not only the hours. Unused hours roll over for one month, and you can switch packages from the next month.

Care

Support and a Growth Plan

$500 / month

15 hours. For live stores without an in-house developer.

  • App updates and compatibility checks after Shopify releases
  • Uptime and speed monitoring for your homepage, collections, product pages and cart
  • Bug fixes within plan hours
  • Monthly checks of forms, cart and checkout on desktop and mobile
  • Theme backup before every change
  • App audit: unused, slow or duplicate apps
  • Small content and layout edits
  • A monthly store health report
  • A quarterly roadmap of 5 improvements with estimated impact and hours
  • First response within 48 hours on working days
Choose Care

For stores with 10K+ monthly sessions

Growth

CRO and A/B Testing

$1,400 / month

40 hours. More revenue from the traffic you already have.

  • Up to 4 A/B tests a month, set after the first audit to match your traffic
  • Research in GA4, heatmaps and session recordings
  • Hypotheses ranked by expected impact
  • Test designs in Figma, development and QA on real devices
  • Every test run to statistical significance
  • Winning variants shipped to your theme
  • A report per test in conversion and revenue per visitor
  • First response within 24 hours on working days
  • Everything in Care

How we run Shopify CRO projects

Choose Growth

Scale

A Shopify Development Retainer

from $2,100 / month

60+ hours. For a steady flow of features, integrations and Shopify Plus work.

  • Fixed monthly hours of development and design, with extra hours on request
  • Two-week sprints planned with your team
  • A demo at the end of every sprint
  • Sprint reports: what shipped, hours used, what’s next
  • Shopify Plus, B2B and integration work
  • First response within 12 hours on working days
  • Everything in Care
Choose Scale

SEO add-on · any plan

A monthly Search Console review, a 5-step plan, title and meta for 5 pages, a check of one new page before it goes live, and an SEO check after every theme release (noindex, canonical, redirects). Search Console access required.

$70 / month · 2 hours

Shopify Support Services in Every Plan

The same Shopify maintenance experts stay on your store month after month, so nobody has to learn your codebase from scratch.

A named team

A project manager, a tech lead and a backup developer assigned to your store.

Your channel

Slack, Telegram, email or your project tool. We work where your team already talks.

Critical issues first

A broken checkout or a store that’s down gets picked up right away, outside the task queue.

Zero downtime guarantee

Changes are built on a copy of your theme and published only after QA.

Free store review

Before you sign, we review your store and tell you which plan fits, if any.

No minimum term

Stay as long as the plan pays off. Unused hours roll over for one month.

How a Month of Shopify Maintenance Works

The first week of the first month is an onboarding audit of your store, included in the price.

01

Week 1: Review

Store health check, analytics, last month’s results and this month’s priorities.

02

Week 2: Design and build

Fixes, test variants and features designed and built on a copy of your theme.

03

Week 3: Launch

QA on real devices, then release. A/B tests go live and start collecting data.

04

Week 4: Report and call

A one-page report and a 30-minute call on what worked and what comes next.

A/B Tests We Run on Shopify Stores

We work with Elevate, Shoplift or Intelligems, picked for your store and budget. The testing app subscription is paid by the store.

+9.7%

conversion rate

Star Rating Next to the Price

On a skincare store, we moved the star rating and review count under the product title. Revenue per visitor grew 8.4%, add to cart rate 12.3%.

+11.2%

conversion rate

Shade Swatches Instead of a Dropdown

On a color cosmetics store, visual color swatches replaced the shade dropdown. Revenue per visitor grew 10.5%, add to cart rate 14.6%.

Beauty stores, brands under NDA. Both tests ran for 3 weeks and reached 95%+ significance.

What Your Monthly Report Looks Like

One page, sent before the monthly call. You see what we checked, what changed and what it did for revenue.

Sample report · October

All checks passed

Uptime

99.98%

Tasks done

14

Hours used

38 / 40

Fixed

  • Size selector not updating the price on mobile product pages

Test results

  • Shade swatches: conversion +11.2%, revenue per visitor +10.5%, shipped

Next month

  • Cart drawer upsell test, collection page speed, app audit follow-up

Shopify Retainer, Freelancer or In-House Developer

How a monthly retainer compares to the other ways brands keep a Shopify store running.

SPLIT planFreelancer per taskIn-house developer
CostFixed monthly price from $500Hourly, changes every monthSalary, taxes and tools
Who knows your codeThe same team every monthWhoever takes the taskOne person, until they leave
Vacations and sick daysA backup developer steps inYou wait or look for someone elseWork stops
Proactive workQuarterly roadmap and A/B testsOnly what you ask forDepends on their workload
Design, CRO and SEOIn one teamSeparate hiresSeparate hires

Shopify Stores We Support

+22%

average order value, abandoned carts down 31%

Meroda Cosmetics

Beauty, five market stores on Shopify Plus

Ongoing support and a Shopify 2.0 redesign for the EU, NL, IT, DE and CH stores, with cart and checkout improvements.

Ongoing support

See case →

5.0

client rating on Clutch

One Clear Drop

Sustainability, subscription store on Shopify

Store built from scratch with custom subscription logic, then ongoing support on a retainer: bug fixes and new features as the subscriber base grows.

Ongoing support

See case →

Results as reported by each brand.

FAQ

What’s included in Shopify maintenance services?

Shopify maintenance services at SPLIT Development cover app updates and compatibility checks, bug fixes, uptime and speed monitoring, checks of forms, cart and checkout, theme backups and small content edits. Every plan also includes a monthly store health report and a quarterly roadmap of improvements.

How much does Shopify maintenance cost?

Shopify maintenance at SPLIT Development costs $500 per month for 15 hours of support, $1,400 per month for CRO and A/B testing with 40 hours, and from $2,100 per month for a development retainer with 60+ hours. An SEO add-on costs $70 per month.

What is a Shopify retainer?

A Shopify retainer is a monthly agreement where an agency reserves a fixed number of hours and a named team for your store. You pay one predictable price instead of an hourly invoice for every task, and the same people work on your store every month.

What happens to unused hours?

Unused hours roll over to the next month once. Hours not used by the end of that second month expire.

How fast do you respond?

Critical issues, such as a broken checkout or a store that is down, are picked up right away. Other tasks get a first response within 48 hours on Care, 24 hours on Growth and 12 hours on Scale, on working days.

Is there a minimum term?

There is no minimum term on any plan. You can switch to another plan or stop the retainer from the next month.

Do you need a lot of traffic for A/B testing?

A/B testing on Shopify works best from about 10,000 sessions per month. With less traffic a test takes too long to reach statistical significance, so we focus on CRO improvements measured before and after launch instead.

Do you maintain Shopify Plus stores?

Yes. SPLIT Development provides Shopify Plus maintenance services, including multi-store setups, checkout customizations and integrations. Meroda Cosmetics, for example, runs five market stores on Shopify Plus with ongoing support from our team.

Need a hand with your store?

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Tell us about your store and what keeps breaking or slowing you down. We’ll review it and tell you which plan fits, if any.

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