You sell where it was easy. We open the rest, and we run them.

Shopify Markets handles the storefront layer on every plan: local currencies through Shopify Payments, market-specific pricing and rounding, up to 20 published languages with per-market subfolders and automatic hreflang, and there is no limit on how many country markets you create. Estimating and collecting duties at checkout is included on all plans too, which surprises people who last checked a year ago, though it has operational requirements like HS codes on your products and a DDP-capable carrier. That covers presentation. The work that decides whether international actually converts sits around it: which payment methods each market expects, what the delivery promise is, and whether anyone in that market can find you at all. We run those as one program, in an order chosen by where your analytics show demand already exists.

Not on day one, and starting with one is usually backwards. Most brands should begin by shipping cross-border from their home warehouse with landed cost shown at checkout, because it proves demand without fixed costs. A 3PL in the destination market earns its place when order volume covers its minimums and storage: at that point delivery drops from a week or more to a day or two, returns become locally possible, and shipping cost per order falls. We model that break-even per market with your real numbers before recommending anything, because a 3PL added too early is rent on inventory that is not selling.

DDP, delivered duty paid, means the buyer pays duties and import taxes at checkout and the parcel clears customs with nothing further owed. The alternative, where the carrier collects duties from the buyer at the door plus a processing fee, is how international first orders become international last orders. Whether collecting duties at checkout makes sense depends on your markets, order values, and platform setup, and the rules differ by destination. What is not in question is the principle: the buyer should know the full landed cost before paying, every time.

Translate where the market expects it, localize everywhere. Some markets convert fine in English with local currency and credible delivery; others effectively require the local language before buyers trust the store. Shopify supports up to 20 published languages from one store, and its free Translate & Adapt app auto-translates a maximum of two, so anything beyond that is deliberate, maintained work. That is the real cost to weigh: every product launch and campaign now ships in every language you publish. We have built bilingual stores where it multiplied wholesale reach, and advised against translation where the same budget moved more revenue in shipping. The analytics say which market justifies which.

Two jobs. First, tell search engines which version of the store belongs to which market, using hreflang and a consistent URL structure, so a buyer in the UK lands on UK pricing rather than being told to convert. Done wrong, your markets compete with each other in the same results page. Second, rank for how each market actually searches, which is rarely a translation of your home keywords: demand, phrasing, and competitors differ by country. We map each market’s search demand before entry, because it is also the cheapest read on whether the market wants the product at all.

It scales with how many of the six workstreams a market needs, and the honest answer is that sequencing controls cost more than anything else. Checkout localization for a first market is weeks of work on the store you already have. In-market inventory, translated storefronts, and per-market campaigns each add real cost, which is why they come only when the earlier steps prove the demand. We scope each phase as fixed work with its own go and no-go numbers, so expansion never becomes an open-ended retainer chasing a map.