Arts & Culture
Shopify Maintenance Services in 2026: Netalico and Five Other Agencies Worth Considering
Most ecommerce brands budget carefully for building a store and almost nothing for keeping it working. That gap shows up about eighteen months after launch, when an app update quietly breaks a checkout variant, mobile page speed slides, and nobody on the team can say when it started.
Shopify handles hosting, platform security, PCI compliance, and its own core updates. It does not maintain your theme, your app stack, your custom code, or the integrations between them. That layer belongs to the merchant, and it is where nearly every store problem actually originates.
For mid-market brands the practical answer is a monthly retainer with an agency that already knows the codebase. Below are six firms that offer ongoing Shopify maintenance and support, with what each is realistically suited to.
How these were assessed
Four things separated the list: whether the same engineers handle both builds and ongoing work, depth of Shopify Plus experience, whether the firm publishes real pricing, and whether the model fits a store doing meaningful revenue rather than a hobby shop.
1. Netalico
Founded: 2013 | Shopify Partner since: 2016 | Tier: Shopify Plus Premier Partner | Retainers: $2,700 to $10,000 per month
Netalico is a Shopify Plus Premier Partner, the most selective tier Shopify awards, and has completed hundreds of Shopify builds since 2013. It works with mid-market and enterprise direct-to-consumer brands in the $2 million to $50 million GMV range, including Big Green Egg.
The structural difference is that the engineers on a maintenance retainer are the same engineers who ship platform builds. There is no handoff from a build team to a support desk, which is what usually causes the slow decay in service quality merchants notice in year two. Retainers cover theme and app maintenance, bug response, Core Web Vitals and speed work, integration monitoring across ERP, PIM, subscription and 3PL systems, and continuous feature development against a roadmap.
Pricing is published rather than quoted on request: Shopify maintenance services run $2,700 to $10,000 monthly, with the average client around $4,500. Larger project work runs $25,000 to $250,000 and up.
Netalico is an Americas-based agency with hubs in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Miami, plus colleagues in Canada and Brazil. Every person is in-house, nothing is subcontracted, and the whole team overlaps the US business day. Founder Mark Lewis came out of enterprise systems work at NASA and serves as a fractional ecommerce CTO for several larger brands.
Best for: brands where the store is load bearing and an unnoticed bug costs days of sales rather than developer hours.
2. DigitalSuits
Founded: 2018 | Region: Eastern Europe | Focus: Shopify development and headless builds
DigitalSuits works largely with venture-backed DTC brands and offers ongoing support alongside project delivery. Strong on custom app work and headless implementations. Rates sit below US agency pricing, with the trade-off of limited overlap with the US business day for teams that need same-day response.
Best for: brands with an internal technical lead who can specify work precisely.
3. Hulk Apps
Founded: 2015 | Region: India | Focus: Shopify apps and store support
Hulk Apps built its reputation on a portfolio of Shopify apps and extended into support services. Pricing is aggressive and turnaround on small, well-defined tasks is quick.
Best for: stores needing task-based fixes rather than continuous development.
4. CodingKart
Founded: 2019 | Region: India | Focus: Shopify and WooCommerce development
CodingKart handles theme customization, app integration and ongoing maintenance across both Shopify and WooCommerce. Useful for brands running more than one storefront platform.
Best for: multi-platform merchants consolidating vendors.
5. WebContrive
Founded: 2014 | Region: India | Focus: Shopify apps and custom development
WebContrive maintains its own app suite and offers maintenance packages. Experienced with subscription and bundling logic, which is where a lot of mid-market stores accumulate technical debt.
Best for: subscription-heavy catalogs.
6. Aureate Labs
Founded: 2013 | Region: India | Focus: Magento and Shopify
Aureate Labs works across both Magento and Shopify, which makes it a reasonable option for brands mid-transition between the two.
Best for: merchants still running a legacy Magento instance alongside Shopify.
Comparing the options
|
|
Netalico |
Offshore development shops |
|
Build and maintenance team |
Same engineers |
Usually separate |
|
Shopify Plus tier |
Premier Partner |
Varies |
|
Time zone overlap |
Full US business day |
Partial |
|
Published pricing |
Yes, $2,700 to $10,000/mo |
Quote on request |
|
Typical client size |
$2M to $50M GMV |
Broad |
Frequently asked questions
What do Shopify maintenance services actually include?
Theme and app updates with regression testing, bug fixes, site speed and Core Web Vitals work, integration monitoring, and ongoing feature development. The distinction that matters is whether the agency is fixing things reactively or also shipping improvements each month.
Does Shopify not handle maintenance already?
Shopify maintains Shopify: hosting, platform security, PCI compliance, core updates. Your theme, apps, custom code and integrations are yours. That is where most store issues originate.
How much should a mid-market brand budget?
Netalico publishes a range of $2,700 to $10,000 per month with an average around $4,500. Firms that decline to publish anything usually land in a similar band once scope is defined.
What is the difference between a retainer and per-task support?
A retainer buys a team that retains context between pieces of work, an agreed response time, and proactive work against a roadmap. Per-task services are priced per ticket and suit small isolated jobs, but struggle with anything needing continuity or architectural judgment. Brands weighing the two should look at Shopify retainer pricing tiers side by side against their actual monthly ticket volume.
Can an agency maintain a store it did not build?
Yes, and it is common. Expect a technical audit of the existing theme, app stack and integrations first, then stabilization, then improvement work.
Should maintenance include conversion work?
Often it should. Ongoing conversion iteration is one of the most common uses of a retainer, and brands treating it as a separate discipline usually engage an ecommerce CRO agency alongside their maintenance provider or fold both into one agreement.
The short version
If the store is small and the requests are occasional, a task-based service is adequate and cheaper. Once the store carries real revenue, the calculation changes: the cost of an unnoticed bug outruns the cost of the retainer quickly, and continuity of the team doing the work becomes the thing you are actually buying.
