Design and build
We design and build the store in your accounts, so nothing leaves when we do
- Store design
- Theme development
- Custom development
- Design systems
- Integrations
Ecommerce agency San Francisco
Ecommerce agency San Francisco, we design, build and grow your store without adding headcount
Design, build, CRO and growth work, billed against your scope rather than a salary. Buy one kind of work or all four, with the price and start date agreed in writing first.
- 150+
- Stores built
- $400M+
- Revenue generated
- 8+
- Years on the platform
- 4.9★
- Average client rating
We've built 150+ stores. Here are a few.
Subscription brands, consumer products and premium food, among others.
Bring in an agency and somebody on your team will ask the obvious question: why not just hire?
It's a fair one, because a hire is yours, learns the brand and never sends an invoice. But a salary runs every week of the year, and most store work comes in bursts.
So here are the numbers for that conversation, from public sources, with the parts people leave out put back in.
In short
Ecomm Wizards is an ecommerce agency San Francisco brands bring in for design, build, CRO and ongoing growth. We build on Shopify and move stores onto it. You pay for the work you use, not for a seat that runs all year.
Brands here hire from the same pool as software companies
Subscription goods, DTC hardware, premium food. Brands here sell things you can hold, but they hire in a software town.
So the developer you want is weighing your offer against a software company's. In our sample of Bay Area front-end postings from the last month, 17 of the 20 employers sold software or services, not products. Across all 44 postings we sampled, 18 were outside the city, from Mountain View, Sunnyvale and San Jose to San Mateo and Oakland.
That's who sets the price of the person you'd hire, and you'd pay it for work that often comes in waves.
Three brands from the categories that sell here
Wild
- Vertical
- Subscription commerce
- What was built
- A first Shopify store with its subscription engine built in from launch
- Outcome
- 80K+ monthly subscribers at 12 months, -34% subscription churn
Loop Earplugs
- Vertical
- Consumer products sold direct
- What was built
- Landing pages built and A/B tested against revenue, not clicks
- Outcome
- +6.4% revenue in one test, +5.9% new-customer conversion in another
Candy Kittens
- Vertical
- Premium confectionery
- What was built
- Conversion and gifting work on a store that already had its traffic
- Outcome
- +182% conversion rate, +$8.1M annual revenue
An open role costs about half as much again as the salary on it
The middle half of web developers in the Bay Area earn $115,170 to $179,950. That's the government's May 2025 wage survey for the metro. Web and interface designers run $110,100 to $211,120.
That's the figure on your offer letter, and it isn't your cost.
Across private employers in the region, wages are 67.7% of what a worker costs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics measured that for June 2026. Benefits and required employer taxes make up the rest, so every $1 of salary costs about $1.48.
Then there's the wait. SHRM's 2025 benchmark puts the usual time from opening a role to an accepted offer at roughly a month and a half. The start date comes after that, and so does the learning curve.
None of that makes a hire wrong, but it makes the real number bigger than the salary, and that's the one to compare.
What we do
Four kinds of work, bought as a scope rather than a salary
Take one of these or all four. An ecommerce agency San Francisco retainer should flex with the work, and every row below is a store that was already selling.
Replatforming
We move you onto Shopify when the platform you're on is what's slowing you down
- Platform migration
- Store consolidation
- Redirect mapping
- Data migration
CRO and testing
We find what's costing you orders and prove the fix with a test first
- A/B testing
- Landing pages
- Checkout
- Analytics
Subscriptions and retention
We set up repeat orders so they keep working as your customer list grows
- Subscriptions
- Retention flows
- Customer portal
- Churn reporting
What the smallest in-house team costs, against a retainer
Two independent salary sources for each role, one employer-cost figure, and the sum. We used the lower salary every time, so the model doesn't flatter us.
| Role | BLS, middle half of earners | Postings, median of ranges | Loaded yearly cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify developerBLS files this as web developers, median $152,450. No posting was titled Shopify developer, so the posting figure is front-end roles. | $115,170 to $179,950 | $181,250, 20 employers | $225,300 |
| Ecommerce managerBLS has no ecommerce manager code. Marketing managers runs high, so the loaded cost uses the lower posting figure. | $174,750 to $309,110 | $179,550, 4 employers | $265,400 |
| Ecommerce designerWeb and interface designers, median $163,810. Product designers at software companies pull the posting figure up. | $110,100 to $211,120 | $174,750, 20 employers | $242,100 |
| The three seats togetherLoaded on the lower median for each role, before a recruiter's fee or the wait. A retainer for the same work runs $36,000 to $180,000 a year. | $536,740 at the medians | $535,550 at the medians | $732,800 a year |
Set the bottom row against a retainer. Three salaried seats cost about $732,800 a year before anyone is recruited, and a retainer across the same work runs $36,000 to $180,000.
That isn't a like-for-like fight, and it isn't meant to be. A salary buys every week, while a retainer buys the weeks you use. So what decides it is how many weeks each seat would really be busy.
Anyone on your ecommerce agency San Francisco shortlist should run this against your own roadmap before they quote.
Hire in-house when these are true
- The work would keep one person busy every week of the year, not in bursts.
- Your store is the product itself, and what they learn has to stay inside the company.
- You already have someone senior to manage them and review their work.
The costs that aren't on the offer letter
The wait. Roughly a month and a half from opening a role to an accepted offer, in SHRM's 2025 benchmark, and notice periods come after that.
A recruiter, if you use one. We plan on 20% of first-year salary. That's our assumption, not a measurement, so ask yours what they charge. On the developer above it's $30,490.
The learning curve. We plan on three months at about half output while a new hire learns your setup, and that's our figure too, so use your own.
Laptops, software seats and licenses. Real, but small next to the rest.
The seat emptying again. When someone leaves, the search starts over, and the work waits for it.
How the loaded number is worked out
Salary times 1.48. BLS found wages are 67.7% of total employer cost in the region, so each $1 of salary sits inside about $1.48 of cost.
The lower of two medians. Each role has a government figure and a posting figure. We took whichever was lower, every time, so in-house looks as cheap as the evidence allows.
Swap in your own. If your offer is $140,000, the loaded cost is about $207,000, because the multiplier stays the same at any salary.
What you get that a hire doesn't, and what you give up
Nobody from our team sits in your office, and a hire would, so here's what you get in exchange.
Everything we build lives in your accounts
Your repository, store, design files and app logins. A hire leaves with what's in their head. We leave the documentation beside the code.
Four disciplines on one invoice
Design, development, testing and retention, used as your work needs them. Nobody is paid to wait for the next project.
The scope shrinks when your team grows
When you do hire, their work comes out of our scope. You're paying for work, not a headcount.
What you give up is the desk next to yours
Nobody drops by, but you message the person doing the work directly, in a shared channel.
What you're probably thinking
“A hire would learn our brand. An agency won't.”
A good hire will, over months, and that's worth something real.
But the brand knowledge a store runs on is either written down or it leaves with the person. We work from your guidelines, your data and your team, and we write down what we learn.
If what matters can't be written down, that's a case for a hire, and it's on the list above.
“We'll need someone full-time eventually. Why not now?”
You might, and the model shows when: the seat pays off once it's busy every week.
Until then you'd be paying $225,300 a year for a developer between projects. Bring us in for the bursts, and hire the day the weekly work is really there.
“An agency costs more per hour than a salary works out to.”
Per hour, an agency can look dearer, and every ecommerce agency San Francisco pitch should let you check that.
But a salary isn't paid per hour of work. It's paid for every hour of the year, busy or not, plus about 48% on top and the weeks the seat sat empty.
Compare what each costs per finished piece of work, because that's the number that decides it.
What a retainer costs, and where it starts
It starts with a plan, not a retainer. We go through your roadmap and sort it into work that needs someone every week and work that comes in bursts.
The weekly work is your case for a hire, and we'll say so, while the bursts become a scope with a number and a date.
A retainer is $3,000 to $15,000 a month, and builds are quoted separately at $5,000 to $50,000. Any ecommerce agency San Francisco quote should keep those two apart.
Ecommerce agency San Francisco FAQs
You do, and it lives in your accounts from day one: your repository, your store and your app logins. Nothing runs on a system of ours that keeps you paying.
Enough for your next hire to pick it up without us: what was built, why, how it's set up, and what to watch. It's handed over beside the code, not left in someone's inbox.
When your in-house hire starts, their work comes out of our scope and your retainer comes down with it. We hand over what they need to get started. You can keep us for the bursts after that.
Ongoing work is $3,000 to $15,000 a month, and a build is $5,000 to $50,000, with the number agreed before anything starts. Set that against $732,800 a year for three loaded salaries, and ask how much of the work you'd really use.
No. Shopify is what we build on, so moving your store onto it is part of the work. Where you are now just decides where the plan starts.
No, though a hire would give you a desk to visit. We work remotely for brands across the US, and bring the cost model above instead, run on your numbers.
Yes, remotely, for brands across the Bay Area. Most of your work is design, build and testing, and none of it needs us in the room.
Next step
Send us the job description
You already know which role you've been meaning to post.
Send it over. We'll run it through the model and hand you the findings:
- What the role costs loaded, with recruiting and the wait included.
- How many weeks a year that work would really fill.
- Which part a retainer would cover, and which part is a hire.
It stops at the numbers, and any work is quoted separately, so you can decline.
No charge, and the numbers are yours if you hire instead.
Someone who scopes these replies inside a working day.
