How to choose a Shopify expert
in Singapore.

• An agency brings a team: designers, developers, an account manager. Good for large builds; you pay for the team and usually talk to the account manager rather than the person building.
• A freelancer is often the cheapest and often strong in one skill, usually theme design or code. Ask who handles POS, payments and the back office.
• A consultant is a senior person who leads the work, brings in specialists where needed, and advises on the whole setup. Fewer hands than an agency, more breadth than most freelancers, and you deal with them directly.

For a growing merchant with a shop and an online store, breadth matters more than headcount: the hard problems sit between the website, the POS and the books.

1. Will you be the one doing the work? If not, who is, and can you meet them?
2. Can I see stores you've built, and speak to their owners? Live stores, not screenshots.
3. Do you work with Shopify POS, not only the website? If you have a shop, your stock has to be one number in both places.
4. How will the store connect to my accounting or ERP? Retyping orders into the books is the problem most merchants want gone.
5. What will it cost in total? The build, the Shopify plan, apps, payment fees and support afterwards.
6. What happens after launch? Is there monthly support, and at what price?
7. Who owns the store and the accounts? It should be you, from day one.

• No live stores you can visit, or no owners you can talk to.
• Prices only "on application", with no idea of cost before a long sales process.
• The store or the Shopify account registered in their name, not yours.
• An app for everything, each with its own monthly fee, where a setting would do.
• A shop in a mall, and no plan for the daily gross turnover (GTO) file your landlord needs.

A good fit if you are a growing merchant with an online store, a shop or both, and you want:

• the website, Shopify POS, payments and back office working as one;
• one senior person as your main contact, with trusted specialists brought in where needed;
• senior help without agency pricing, through a monthly retainer or a single consultation.

He takes on a limited number of clients at a time, so each one gets the attention it needs.

Not the right fit if you need a large in-house team on site, or a big enterprise build run by a project office. An agency will serve you better there, and he will tell you so.