YourCart vs hiring an app agency
A custom app from an agency gives you total control, a bill to match, and a maintenance burden that never ends. Here's the honest comparison against a managed platform on a flat monthly price.
What a custom app actually costs
The upfront quote is only the start. A bespoke app is a piece of software you now own — and software has to be kept alive. We quote no agency figures here: every agency prices its own way, and we have no dated source of our own for what a build costs, so the shape of the bill is the honest part. Ours we can state exactly.
| Line item | What it costs |
|---|---|
| Bespoke build (design + iOS + Android + backend) | A large fee upfront, quoted per project |
| Hosting + maintenance retainer | An ongoing monthly charge, for as long as the app runs |
| OS-update fixes (every iOS / Android release) | Billed as they arise |
| App Store + Play Store submissions | Your time, or the agency's hours |
| YourCart on Shopify — both apps + updates, all in | $59/month, flat |
| YourCart standalone — apps + storefront + updates, all in | £49/month, flat |
The maintenance line is the one that catches people out. A custom app isn't "done" when it ships — every time Apple or Google changes something, a phone OS updates, or a library needs patching, someone has to be paid to fix it. That's the interest on the upfront cost, and it runs for as long as the app lives.
Why we built YourCart at all
This is the exact problem YourCart was built to solve. Small UK shops kept wanting a mobile app: a home-screen icon, a push when new stock lands, one-tap reorder for regulars. They kept hearing the same two answers, a five-figure quote from an agency or a heavy monthly bill from an app builder. Charging a neighbourhood shop many times more for an app than for a storefront felt absurd. So the app got built once, properly, and the cost got spread across everyone who uses it, which is what keeps it at a flat monthly price instead of a five-figure project.
Where an agency genuinely wins
A custom build is the right call for some shops. If this is you, hire the agency — a platform can't give you this.
- Requirements no platform supports. A truly bespoke feature — a custom booking engine, a hardware integration, an unusual fulfilment flow — is exactly what an agency is for.
- You want to own the source code outright. With a custom build the codebase is an asset on your books, to extend or sell however you like.
- You have the budget and someone to own it. If a large upfront build fee plus an ongoing retainer is comfortable, and you have (or can hire) someone to manage the relationship, the control is worth it.
Where YourCart wins
- One flat price, updates included. $59/month covers the branded iPhone app and Android app on your existing Shopify catalogue, and new versions ship as part of the plan. No per-fix invoices when the OS changes.
- One flat price, updates included. £49/month covers the branded iPhone app, the Android app and the web storefront, and new versions ship as part of the plan. No per-fix invoices when the OS changes.
- We build and submit the apps for you. The App Store and Play Store paperwork, the build pipeline and the resubmissions are ours to run, not a line on your retainer.
- Your shop keeps working the way it does. Checkout stays in your own Shopify checkout, and app orders read back into your Shopify admin as normal orders attributed to the YourCart channel. An agency build would have to reimplement all of that, and then keep it working.
- You still keep your identity. Your name, logo and icon on every customer's home screen, and you're the publisher of record on the App Store under your own Apple account.
- No project risk. There's no six-month build to go over budget or arrive late. Your web storefront is live the same week. Your Apple Developer enrolment starts your App Store app setup. If you enrol, one process then covers both stores and cannot start until your App Store app setup is complete, so each store's app goes live when that store's own review passes (or go live on Android first and add iPhone later, it's optional). Apple publishes that 90% of submissions are reviewed in under 24 hours on average, and Google publishes up to seven days, or longer in exceptional cases.
The honest trade: you don't get bespoke, one-off features an agency would custom-build, and the platform infrastructure is YourCart-operated rather than code you own. You're choosing a maintained product over a custom asset, and for most independent shops that's the better deal.
What you keep is the part that matters: your brand, your customers, your storefront and your Shopify data, which never leave Shopify in the first place.
What you keep is the part that matters: your brand, your customer relationships and your data, and you can export your product catalogue and customer list at any time. You're trading a custom codebase you'd have to maintain for a maintained product that leaves the things you actually built on with you.
YourCart opened to merchants in July 2026, so we're early and we don't have a stack of case studies to point at yet — we'd rather tell you that than dress up the page with logos. When we have real merchant results, we'll rewrite this section around them.
$59/month — both apps and updates, all in.
£49/month — app, storefront and updates, all in.
Early merchants get a direct line to the roadmap, because what you ask for genuinely shapes what gets built next.
Weighing a custom build against this? Email admin@yourcart.store and we'll talk it through honestly — mention this page.