Shopify Development in the US

About Shopify Development

We've shipped 7+ Shopify stores for D2C brands, B2B catalogs, and subscription businesses across India, USA, Canada, UK, and UAE. Whether you're launching your first store on Basic Shopify or replatforming a 10,000-SKU catalog onto Shopify Plus, our team handles the full build, strategy, theme development, app integration, payments, shipping, and post-launch growth.

What the engagement includes

• Custom Shopify theme development from scratch
• Premium theme customization (Out of the Sandbox, Switch, Archetype)
• Liquid templating, sections, and metafields
• Shopify App development (private + public apps)
• Headless Shopify with Next.js or Hydrogen
• Shopify Plus implementation and Launchpad scripts
• Store migration (WooCommerce, Magento, BigCommerce → Shopify)
• Performance optimization and Core Web Vitals tuning

What US sales tax, customs and FTC rules change in a Shopify build

Since the Supreme Court's Wayfair decision in June 2018, a store can owe sales tax in any state where its sales cross that state's economic nexus threshold, not only where it has an office or a warehouse, and the threshold, what counts toward it and whether marketplace sales are included all differ from state to state. Shopify Tax watches this up to a point. It marks a state as Monitoring once your sales within Shopify reach 80 per cent of the threshold and as Action required once they cross it, but it does not register you, it charges nothing in a state until you hold a permit and have entered the number, and it counts sales that pass through Shopify. Wholesale invoiced by hand, an Amazon account run outside Shopify or a separate point of sale system may not be in its figures, so the warning can arrive after the liability does. The Shop sales channel is the exception: since 1 January 2025 Shopify collects, remits and files the tax on those orders itself. Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon have no statewide sales tax, though Alaska lets local areas levy their own. The build work is product categories, because Shopify Tax takes product-specific rules from the category. Clothing under $110 is exempt in parts of New York only if it is categorised as clothing, and an uncategorised product is taxed at the general rate, which can be too much or too little. Which states you register in is for your accountant.

The second question a US store has to answer early is where the stock ships from. Low-value parcels used to enter duty free under the $800 de minimis exemption, which is what made dropshipping from overseas suppliers work on thin margins. Executive Order 14324 suspended that for commercial shipments from every country from 29 August 2025, CBP has since made the suspension indefinite for all modes of transport, and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act removes the exemption in statute from 1 July 2027. Every order a supplier sends straight to an American customer from abroad now carries duty, at rates that have moved repeatedly since. On a Shopify build that lands in three places: the dropshipping or print on demand app has to be checked for who is the importer and who gets billed the duty, the delivery promise on the product page has to allow for customs clearance, and margins have to be worked out on landed cost rather than supplier price. On origin, the FTC's Made in USA Labeling Rule, in force since 13 August 2021, reaches online marketing and carries civil penalties, and an unqualified claim needs the product to be all or virtually all made in the United States, which a flag badge on imported goods does not meet. Online listings for textile and wool products must say whether the item is made in the USA, imported or both, so that is a required product field rather than optional copy. How your catalogue stands is for your customs broker and counsel.

Several app store installs fall under US consumer protection rules rather than design taste. The FTC's rule on consumer reviews and testimonials took effect on 21 October 2024 and lets courts impose civil penalties for knowing violations. It bans fake and AI-written reviews, rewards conditioned on a positive or negative review, undisclosed reviews by staff, and presenting the reviews on show as all or most of them while low ratings are held back. That last one is a setting many review apps offer, auto-publish four and five stars only. A discount for leaving a review is allowed as long as it does not depend on what the review says. Subscriptions come next. The FTC's click-to-cancel rule was vacated by the Eighth Circuit on 8 July 2025, and the FTC has since reopened the question, but no replacement rule is in force and the federal ROSCA statute still applies, as Amazon's Prime settlement in September 2025 showed. California's amended automatic renewal law has applied since 1 July 2025: express affirmative consent, an annual reminder, and a cancel button online that a retention offer cannot stand in front of. Shop Pay Installments, offered in partnership with Affirm, needs Shopify Payments and excludes subscription products, so a subscription store promising pay later needs another route. Its advertising has US lending rules too: quoting a monthly payment or more than four payments requires a full example with the APR, while pay over time does not. How your offers read is for your own counsel.

How we work with US clients

A US engagement gets agreed twice. Once with the person who wants the thing built, and then again with legal, security, procurement and finance, who arrive separately and rarely in the same week. That second round is where a supplier outside the country loses the calendar: a master services agreement to redline, a security questionnaire, a certificate of insurance, and a vendor portal that assumes everyone it onboards can sign a W-9. Send all of it while the scope is still being written rather than in the week you wanted to start, and where the honest answer to a row is that we do not hold something, we write that in rather than leaving it blank.

You are also buying from a company you cannot drop in on, so the evidence has to do the work an office would otherwise do. What we send is live production URLs rather than a deck, a written scope with one fixed number against it, and the names of the people who will do the work rather than a bench that changes after signature. What we will also tell you is the shape of what you are hiring: a small team in Noida that has been building since 2021, not a firm that can put four more people on your project next Monday. If that is what your timeline needs, we say so before the contract rather than after it.

Indicative pricing in USD

Converted from our published Indian rates and rounded. Exchange rates move, so the figure on your quote is calculated on the day it is issued.

Questions US clients ask

Shopify Development: common questions

Other markets we work in