Search for help growing a Shopify store and you'll find three kinds of people, all promising growth: Shopify Experts, Shopify growth consultants and marketing agencies. They're very different hires. Picking the wrong one is how founders end up with a beautiful new theme and the same flat revenue, or a monthly retainer and a junior account manager.
I'm a Shopify growth consultant, so I'm not neutral. But I've worked with 50+ brands and inside or alongside 5 agencies, and here's how I'd tell them apart.
The short answer
- Hire a Shopify Expert when the store itself needs building or fixing: a theme, a migration, custom features, app setup.
- Hire a Shopify growth consultant when the store works but revenue doesn't grow, and you need one senior person to find out why across ads, tracking, the site and email, and fix it.
- Hire an agency when you need many specialists at once, such as video production, PR and paid media, and have the budget for a team.
What a Shopify Expert is
"Shopify Expert" usually means a developer, designer or studio listed in Shopify's Partners Directory. Their work is the store: themes, page builds, migrations, apps and integrations. Some offer marketing too, but most are builders first. Judge them on the quality of the build and whether it's delivered on time.
If you're giving one access, Shopify recommends a collaborator account rather than sharing your admin password.
What a Shopify growth consultant is
A Shopify growth consultant is accountable for revenue growth, not a deliverable. The work starts with a diagnosis: do Meta, Google and Shopify agree on purchases? What does a new customer really cost? Where do paid visitors drop out? How much comes back through email? Then the consultant fixes what's costing the most, usually across Meta ads, Google Ads, tracking, conversion and Klaviyo email.
A good one judges the work at store level: new customer acquisition cost and blended return across every channel, not each platform's own report. And the person you talk to is the person doing the work.
What a marketing agency is
An agency gives you a team: strategists, media buyers, designers, copywriters. That's valuable when you need many skills at once. The trade-off is that the senior person who sells the engagement often isn't the person running your account, and each channel can end up optimized on its own report. The 12 questions to ask before signing an agency are worth asking whoever you hire.
How the costs compare
Experts usually quote per project. Agencies usually charge monthly retainers, often with minimum terms. Consultants vary; my own rates are published: a fixed $300 USD audit, $75 USD an hour, or from $689 USD a month for Meta and Google together. See pricing.
Questions that tell them apart on a first call
- Who exactly will work on my store each week?
- What will you look at before changing anything?
- Which numbers will you report, and do they come from Shopify or from the ad platforms?
- Can you show a real case study with before and after numbers and a time frame?
- What happens if the problem turns out not to be in your area?
A growth consultant should answer the last one easily: the job is to go wherever the biggest problem is. You can see how I've done that in my real case studies, like Brooklyn Transfers, where the biggest gains came from product pages and mobile checkout as much as the ads.
The longer comparison
For a side-by-side of an agency, a gig freelancer and an independent growth consultant, see Shopify agency vs freelancer vs growth consultant.
Not sure which one you need? Book a free 30-minute call. I'll tell you honestly, even if the answer is a Shopify Expert or an agency.