Shopify or your own webshop? 3-year cost and the GDPR differences
Shopify or a webshop built for you? The three-year bill in DKK, where each fails on GDPR, and a plain answer to which one fits which kind of Danish shop.
This article was translated from Danish. Read the original.
For most small Danish shops, Shopify is the faster and initially cheaper route: roughly DKK 250–300 a month for the Basic plan plus payment fees, and you have a working store within days. A webshop built for you costs more upfront, removes the platform fee and the app subscriptions, gives you full control over where customer data lives, and stops the slow creep that quietly pushes many Shopify stores past DKK 1,000 a month. Over three years the totals are much closer than the sticker prices suggest, and on GDPR the two models fail in different places.
The short answer: choose Shopify if you need to validate a product fast, sell a standard catalogue, and can live with data processing linked to North America. Choose your own shop if you have requirements that do not fit a standard box (B2B prices per customer, configurators, an inventory or accounting integration that has to be tight), if margins on volume matter, or if you want customer data on European infrastructure under your own control. The rest of this article puts numbers and specifics behind that.
What each one actually is
Shopify is a hosted platform. Shopify runs the servers, the checkout, the security patching and the PCI compliance. You rent the machinery, customise a theme and extend it with apps from their marketplace. You can leave, but you export your data, not the shop.
DanDomain deserves a mention as the Danish hosted alternative: same rental model, but Danish company, Danish hosting, Dankort and MobilePay built in, and support in Danish. If the reason you are hesitating about Shopify is data location rather than flexibility, it is worth a look before you go custom.
Your own webshop, in the sense we build them, is a shop you own: code written for your business, running on hosting you choose, with Quickpay or Stripe handling cards, Dankort and MobilePay, and Shipmondo talking to GLS, PostNord and dao. “Custom” spans a wide range, from a tuned open-source shop to a fully bespoke build, which is why market prices vary so much.
Neither is categorically better. They trade convenience against control, and the right answer depends on which of those your shop is short of.
The bill over three years, in DKK
The table is a small shop with around 30 products. Shopify’s Basic plan is listed as approximately DKK 250–300 a month; check Shopify’s current DKK price before you decide, they adjust it. All figures excluding VAT.
| Shopify, set up yourself | Shopify, set up by an agency | Own webshop (NBS) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Setup | 0–5,000 (theme) | 10,000–40,000 | from 14,995 (Byg, fixed quote) |
| Platform, 36 months | ca. 10,000 | ca. 10,000 | 0 |
| Apps, 36 months | 11,000–36,000 | 11,000–36,000 | 0 |
| Hosting and maintenance, 36 months | included | included | 13,500 (Basis, DKK 375/month) |
| Three years | 21,000–51,000 | 31,000–86,000 | from 30,000 |
Three things the table hides.
Payment fees scale with your success. If you take cards through an external gateway such as Quickpay instead of Shopify Payments, which you typically do to accept Dankort, Shopify adds its own transaction fee of 0.5–2 % on top of the acquirer’s. On DKK 1.2 million a year that is DKK 6,000–24,000 a year, which alone funds a maintenance plan for a shop you own. Check the current fee on your plan.
App creep is the real Shopify budget killer. Stores rarely stay at the base price once they need shipping with a parcel-shop picker, sequential invoice numbers, e-conomic or Dinero sync, and proper email flows. The DKK 300–1,000 a month those cost is the middle column in the table.
Three years is an arbitrary cut, and the one where Shopify looks best. The setup for your own shop is paid once; the platform and app fees are paid forever. The lines cross after a few years and diverge every year after that.
The broader cost picture, including WooCommerce and the costs nobody puts in the quote, is in what does a webshop cost. This article is about the choice, not the price list.
The GDPR differences
Where the data lives
Shopify is a Canadian company with substantial processing in the US. Your customers’ data is processed under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and standard contractual clauses, and Canada holds an EU adequacy decision. That is lawful today. But the framework is the third attempt after the EU Court of Justice struck down its two predecessors, and it is being challenged again. If it falls, every stack that depends on it has a transfer problem overnight, as we lay out in Danish hosting or American cloud.
With your own shop, you choose: Danish or European hosting, European database, European email and analytics. Done that way, the transfer question largely disappears rather than being answered. That is not automatic, a custom shop pointed at US software for email and statistics inherits the same dependency, but with your own shop, European-only is achievable. With Shopify, some non-EU processing is structural.
Consent and trackers
This is where Shopify stores most commonly fail in practice. A default theme plus a typical set of apps loads trackers whose behaviour you do not fully control. Each app is a data processor you are responsible for vetting, and app-injected scripts frequently fire before consent. Shopify’s own privacy API can gate its own tracking, but making a real app stack honestly consent-gated takes work most store owners never do.
On a shop built for you, every script is one your developer put there, so blocking non-essential scripts before consent is straightforward. It can even be a shop with no banner at all: nbsweb.dk measures visitors with cookieless, self-hosted statistics and has no cookie banner. The full standard is in the GDPR checklist for webshops.
Where each model is stronger
| Area | Shopify | Own webshop |
|---|---|---|
| Card security (PCI DSS) | Handled by the platform, a genuine advantage | Handled by Quickpay or Stripe; your developer’s job to wire it correctly |
| Security patching | Automatic | Your agency’s responsibility, which is what maintenance plans are for |
| Data location | Limited, depends on the DPF | Full control, European-only achievable |
| Blocking trackers before consent | Hard with an app stack | Straightforward |
| Processor overview (Art. 28/30) | One DPA with Shopify plus one per app, partly opaque | Few, chosen processors, fully knowable |
| Access and deletion | Built-in tools, but spread across all apps | Must be built, then fully under your control |
Neither makes you compliant by itself. Shopify removes the patching failure mode and adds the opaque-tracker failure mode; your own shop does the reverse, unless someone is actually maintaining it, which is non-negotiable either way.
VAT and invoicing
Danish VAT, EU distance selling (OSS) and B2B reverse charge apply identically to both. Shopify calculates the rates, but sequential invoice numbers that satisfy the Danish Bookkeeping Act, and automatic posting to e-conomic or Dinero, are apps. A shop built for you implements whatever your accountant specifies. Budget for it either way; this is the area people discover late.
Which should you choose?
Choose Shopify when you are validating a product and speed beats everything; your catalogue and checkout are standard; you have no technical help in-house or at an agency; your revenue is small enough that fees and apps stay trivial; and you accept processing linked to North America.
Choose DanDomain when the above applies but Danish data location, Dankort and Danish support matter more to you than Shopify’s app ecosystem.
Choose your own webshop when you have requirements that fight the platform: B2B price lists, configurable products, an inventory or production system that has to be in sync, unusual shipping logic; when your volume makes the transaction fee matter; when a fully consent-clean, European setup is a commitment rather than a preference; or when you are past validation and tired of app subscriptions.
The migration pattern we see most: start on Shopify, validate, then move to your own shop in year two or three once requirements and revenue justify it. That is a legitimate path. Products and customers export easily; the design and the apps are rebuilt, and URL redirects are the careful part.
Our position
We build webshops for Danish businesses from DKK 14,995 as a fixed quote (Byg), with operations on a subscription from DKK 375 a month (Basis), precisely because the assumption that “custom is a five-figure gamble” is what pushes small shops onto rented platforms by default. At those numbers, your own shop is cost-competitive with Shopify from the first year for many shops, with the GDPR control included rather than bolted on. See webshops and pricing.
And if you sell 30 standard products with no special requirements, we will tell you plainly: take Shopify. It is faster for you, and we would rather build the shops that actually need to be built.
Frequently asked questions
Does Shopify support Dankort and MobilePay? Through a Danish gateway such as Quickpay, yes. Note that an external gateway can trigger Shopify’s own transaction fee on top; check the current terms for your plan.
Can I move from Shopify to my own shop later? Products, customers and order history can be exported. Design, apps and automations are rebuilt. Plan the URL redirects carefully so you keep your Google rankings.
Is a shop I own harder to keep secure? Only if nobody is maintaining it. With a maintenance plan, patching and backups are the agency’s job, exactly as they are Shopify’s on a hosted platform.
Why us
Cheaper than most, and not worse for it
We are three developers. No project managers, no salespeople, no open-plan office downtown. That overhead is what you would otherwise be paying on top of the work itself, and it is why we can keep the price down on websites, webshops, web apps and mobile apps alike. Every price is published and fixed in writing before we start — from DKK 375 a month or DKK 3,995 one-time. See prices.
Cheaper does not mean less. We build and run our own products: NBS Booking, NBS Food and the KalorieTracker app, which is live in the App Store and Google Play. So we have already paid for the mistakes we advise you about. You talk to the person writing the code, and you own the code afterwards. If you want to move on without us, you can.