Shopify Pricing: Explained (2024)

There’s no running away from it: if you want a Shopify store, you have to pay for a Shopify plan. There’s no free Shopify plan.

Shopify has five plans in total: Starter, Basic, Shopify, Advanced, and Shopify Plus.

Each plan includes all major ecommerce features, unlimited products, unlimited bandwidth, fraud analysis, SSL certificate, and 24/7 support. And each plan comes with a 3-day free trial (no credit card required).

Plus, you have to pay just $1/month for the first three months of the Starter or Basic monthly plan. The real plan pricing starts after.

Shopify pricing table (as of 25th January 2023)

Shopify highlights only these three plans on its Pricing page. They are its core plans and what most Shopify customers use to run a successful ecommerce business. Here are the major differences:

Basic — $29/month

I’d recommend most stores start with this plan.

It has everything needed to build a solid ecommerce store. You’ll have access to all the themes, apps, and features needed for an ecommerce website.

Shopify — $79/month

Move to this plan when you need gift card support, reporting, 3rd party shipping rates, and lesser 3rd party transaction fees.

Mathematically speaking, you should choose this plan over the Basic plan just for the lower transaction fees if…

1. You are using Shopify payments and your monthly revenue is over $15,000.
2. You are using a third-party payment service and your monthly revenue is over $5,000.

Of course, there are many more reasons to move to this plan. For instance, the higher shipping discount makes sense over lower plan costs, you need better reporting, etc.

Advanced — $299/month

This plan includes features for advanced reporting, more staff accounts, more inventory locations, ecommerce automation, adding custom pricing by market, even lower transaction fees, etc.

You should switch to this plan when you need the advanced features. But switching just for the lower commission rates is also logical for stores earning over $40,000 in monthly revenue.

Shopify Plan Calculator

Here’s a simple Shopify plan calculator to help you choose the ideal plan for your business size—just enter expected revenue and the payment method you’ll be using:

The Other Two Plans

You’ll find the other two Shopify plans as you scroll down the page. They target a more specific audience:

Starter — $5/month

This plan allows you to create a simple storefront. It includes essential ecommerce features like product pages, order management, checkout, and analytics.

However, you can’t build a website with the Starter plan. It merely enables you to add ecommerce functionality to a non-Shopify site (through the Buy Button channel) and social media (through Linkpop, Shopify’s link in bio tool).

So, for example, let’s say you run a successful blog on WordPress and want to sell merchandise. You can set up a Shopify storefront with the Starter plan and showcase and sell merchandise on your existing website by embedding products or collections from Shopify into your blog.

Shopify Plus — starting at $2300/month

There’s no set price with Shopify Plus. Instead, prices are set by a quote and run from $2,300/month to $40,000/month.

This plan is for enterprise-grade stores like AllBirds, Rothy’s, Gymshark, Staples, etc. In total, 48,000+ stores use Shopify Plus. You should only ever consider it if your store does $1 million+ in annual revenue (unless you have a specific need).

Shopify Plus has everything that the Advanced Shopify plan has. Plus:

• You’ll get an account manager,
• You can create unlimited staff accounts,
• You can create additional stores (for free) under the same account,
• You’ll get better payment processing rates (2.15% + $0.30),
• You can sell B2B,
• You can make advanced customizations to Shopify Checkout,
• You can find high-intent customers at lower costs with Shopify Audiences,
• And more.

Shopify Plan Pricing: Monthly vs Yearly

Shopify offers a 25% discount on yearly Basic, Shopify, and Advanced plans.

Here’s how the monthly vs yearly Shopify plans compare:

Unlike the Shopify plan and theme costs, you have to pay transaction fees when an actual transaction happens (i.e., after you make money). But you must consider them before pricing your products to maintain a healthy profit margin.

With Shopify, transaction fees come in multiple shapes and forms. Some of them are avoidable; some are not.

1. Credit Card Processing Fee (Unavoidable)

To accept credit card payments, you need a payment processor. And all payment processors charge a credit card processing fee.

With Shopify, you can use:

1. Shopify Payments (recommended) - This is Shopify’s own credit card processor. It is available in 22 countries - Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong SAR, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
2. Or from 100+ 3rd party processors such as Braintree, Stripe, Paypal, etc.

These are Shopify Payments’ processing fees, and they get cheaper with more expensive Shopify plans:

The 3rd party processors have their own rate cards. For example, if you use Stripe, you have to pay them 2.9% + $0.30 in processing fees. You can negotiate a lower fee if you are doing high volume ($500k+ per month).

Note: The Shopify Payments transaction fees differ depending on the country. For example, Shopify UK charges a lower processing fee: 2% + 25p for Basic users, 1.7% + 25p for Shopify users, and 1.5% + 25p for Advanced users.

2. Transaction Fee (Avoidable)

If you use Shopify Payments for credit card processing, Shopify will charge no additional transaction fee.

But if you decide to use a 3rd party credit card processor, Shopify will add a fee on top of every transaction. The amount changes based on your plan:

This can be expensive if Shopify Payments isn’t available in your country or you have to choose a third-party payment gateway for some reason. This YouTube comment from a Basic Shopify user illustrates a common scenario perfectly:

3. Shopify Tax Fee (Avoidable)

Shopify recently launched an advanced sales tax collection solution for US users. It’s called Shopify Tax, and these are its prices:

• No cost before $100,000 in sales: You can use Shopify Tax to collect sales tax at checkout for your first $100,000 (per year) for free.
• 0.35% after $100,000: Once your store surpasses $100,000 in US sales in the calendar year, you have to pay a 0.35% calculation fee on each transaction in the US. This fee reduces to 0.25% for Plus merchants.

Also, there’s a 0.99 USD order cap and a 5,000 USD yearly cap. This means you won’t pay more than $0.99 per order and more than $5000 per year for Shopify Tax.

The Shopify Tax fee is avoidable by using Shopify’s legacy tax solution, which has proved good enough for many merchants.

4. Transaction Fees by Apps (Avoidable)

Some Shopify apps charge a fee on each transaction that happens through/because of the app. Here are a couple of examples:

• Recharge enables Shopify stores to collect subscription payments. They charge 1% + $0.10 transaction fee on its free plan and 1% + $0.19 on its Pro plan.

• Social Snowball helps create automated affiliate programs and referral programs. They charge 3% of the revenue that affiliates bring.

You can avoid third-party app transaction fees by choosing a more premium option of the same app or choosing an alternative app (because there’ll likely be an alternative app without transaction fees).

Shopify has some of the best ecommerce themes of all ecommerce platforms. They are modern, responsive, and well-optimized (for both performance and conversions).

You can divide Shopify themes in multiple ways: paid and free, official and non-official, for small catalogs and for large catalogs, across industries, etc.

I like to put it this way (and it’s probably the clearest way to understand Shopify themes): There are three types of Shopify templates:

1. Official Shopify Themes — Free

There are 12 official Shopify themes that are free to use. Shopify provides official support for them and includes up to 60 minutes of complimentary design support for modifications.

Free Shopify Themes

All of them are a great fit for small to mid-sized catalogs.

2. Official Theme Providers — Paid

Official theme providers can sell on the Shopify theme store. They are vetted to ensure theme development is their full-time job—that way, the themes are kept up to date and can provide ongoing theme support.

All themes published in the official theme store must support a minimum set of features, such as a collection page with pagination, search, advanced filtering with price, metafields…this may not be the case for unverified themes. Those are all the requirements that theme developers must pass to have their theme approved (and there is also manual testing by Shopify).

— Michael Gallego, co-founder of Maestrooo - a leading official Shopify theme provider.

Themes from official theme providers have a one-time cost between $100 and $360.

There are 123 themes from official theme providers on Shopify Themes. Most of these themes are suited for high-volume, big-catalog stores.

Themes from official theme providers.

3. Unofficial Theme Provider — $14–$114 (Theme Forest)

Unofficial theme providers sell themes on unofficial theme marketplaces. They aren’t vetted by Shopify. Therefore, you may want to research the companies before you buy their themes—for example, you’ll want to ensure they provide good customer support in case something goes wrong.

Some of the most popular places to get unofficial Shopify themes are:

• Theme Forest, with 1,500+ Shopify themes.
• TemplateMonster, with 1,700+ Shopify themes.
• EnvatoElements, with 400+ Shopify themes.

Browsing Shopify themes on Theme Forest.

Shopify has the most extensive app store of any ecommerce builder -- as of May 2023, it has over 10,000 apps!

The way Shopify has structured its platform, you’ll inevitably need to add apps to your store.

The basic ones are free and from Shopify itself. For example, these Shopify’s marketing apps are free or freemium:

• Shopify Inbox (Free): To chat with customers and drive sales.
• Shopify Email (Freemium - first 10,000 emails per month are free. Then, it is $1 for every 1,000 emails.): Shopify’s email marketing tool. It includes basic templates and a nice email editor.
• Linkpop (Free): Shopify’s link-in-bio tool.

However, you’ll need to add third-party apps to your store as you scale. These third-party apps can quickly add to the business costs.

Typically, beginner-level stores invest between $50–$100 per month on Shopify apps, but many also make do with $0 in app costs. The number can go into hundreds or even thousands depending on the size of the business. For example, this Reddit user spends $1200 per month on Shopify apps:

It’s impossible to say which apps your store will need—but your store will likely use apps.

Think of it like this: Shopify’s core covers about 80% of what you will need— the App Store covers the remaining 20%.

Some apps are free, but many cost money.

Examples Of Real Shopify Stores

I looked at some of the recently listed or sold Shopify stores on ExchangeMarketplace. Here is the monthly app spend for some real-life Shopify stores:

App Prices

This table shows what some of the most popular apps cost. As you’ll see, most apps have free plans that can work well for most starter stores:

Shopify Domains Pricing

Shopify plans do not include a free domain name. You have to purchase it separately from either Shopify itself or a third party like Namecheap or GoDaddy.

We recommend you get it from Shopify because the prices are competitive and you won’t need to configure it. Here’s how much the popular TLDs cost on Shopify:

• .com: $14/year
• .net: $17/year
• .org; $17/year
• .ca: $16/year

In other words, you’ll pay the typical $10-$20 for a normal domain name.

Note: Your domain name bill can go in thousands if you want a premium/high-value domain name. This is despite the domain registrar you choose.

The first thing to know is that you don’t necessarily need any hardware for Shopify POS. You could easily use the iOS or Android app to take in-person payments.

Shopify POS on iOS.

Choosing a POS Plan

Shopify has two different POS plans:

1. Shopify POS Lite — Free. In-person credit card rates starting at 2.4%.
2. Shopify POS Pro — $89/month per location.

Both plans let you accept credit cards and debit cards. And connect with the Shopify backend—i.e., all the orders, customer data, and inventory data are in sync.

Here’s what you get when you upgrade to POS Pro:

Shopify’s POS Hardware

Shopify also offers a range of POS hardware that you can buy:

Third-Party POS

Unlike competitors like Wix, you can also use third-party hardware with Shopify POS. There’s one exception: You can only use a Shopify card reader (that costs $39-$49) with Shopify POS.

There are a lot of other POS systems on the market right now— for example: Square, Lightspeed, and Toast. POS systems will vary by region and industry (restaurants have different needs than retailers, for example).

Tip: A good way to save money is to buy used POS equipment.

One more cost you should be aware of when thinking about building a Shopify store is store customization and design cost.

Shopify has awesome themes and an easy-to-use customizer for basic changes. However, you’ll occasionally need to edit HTML and CSS code to make your website look like you want to.

You can either make the changes yourself or hire an expert to do it for you.

The professionals charge $50-$200 for basic theme customization.

Shopify development & designing experts listed on Shopify Experts

If you want a fully custom design, you may want to hire an agency. And a good agency will charge thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars for design & development. For example, SharmaBrands must have charged tens of thousands to MrBeast for creating the Feastables Shopify site.

Overall, Shopify developer charges are all over the place — from $20/hr to $200/hr. So, the designing and development costs depend on the scope of your project and who you hire.

Top-rated Shopify developers on Upwork

Shopify is the best ecommerce builder and one we recommend to most people looking for a scalable ecommerce solution. But building and managing a Shopify store can get expensive if you are on a shoestring budget.

So here are some cheaper (not better) Shopify alternatives:

To save plan costs

• Square Online: Square Online is the best free ecommerce website builder. It includes POS, curbside pickup, discounts, and many other features for free that competitors don’t. However, you’ll have to pay a competitive price to switch to a premium (which you’ll likely need to for using a custom domain name, if not anything else).
• WooCommerce: WooCommerce is a free-to-use WordPress plugin for ecommerce. It’s not like Shopify in that a website builder, hosting, SSL certificate, etc., aren’t included in the package. You have to buy them separately.
• Squarespace: Squarespace’s ecommerce plans start at $23/month, which is cheaper than Shopify. Plus, it is cheaper on the development and themes front. Check out Squarespace vs Shopify.

To save theme costs

• Squarespace: Squarespace has some of the most beautiful themes. And all of them are free to use. More on it here.
• Wix: Like we mentioned in Wix vs Shopify comparison: Unlike its regular templates, the ecommerce-specific Wix themes look nice & modern. And all of them are free with Wix plans.

To save development costs

• Squarespace: Squarespace has an easy-to-use drag-and-drop page editor. You can likely quickly make the site of your dreams with it — no coding required. More on it here.
• Wix: Wix also has a powerful drag-and-drop editor. You can make changes to your pages to the pixel, but this unstructuredness of the editor also makes it overwhelming for regular users.

To save transaction fee costs

• Squarespace: No third-party transaction fee cost on its Commerce plans.
• Bigcommerce: A solid but a bit complex Shopify alternative with no third-party transaction fees.

The above details are of the Shopify US/Global plans. Your Shopify plan fee can be cheaper depending on where you live/want to sell. Also, Shopify features may differ depending on the region. For example, Shopify India doesn’t have Shopify Payments.

Let’s look at Shopify plan pricing of countries we get the most visitors from (besides the US):

Shopify India:

• Starter: INR 399/month
• Basic: INR 1499/month
• Shopify: INR 5599/month
• Advanced: INR 22680/month

Key differences: Shopify India doesn’t have Shopify Payments or any third-party calculated shipping rates.

Shopify United Kingdom:

• Starter: GBP 5/month
• Basic: GBP 19/month
• Shopify: GBP 49/month
• Advanced: GBP 459/month

Key differences: Shopify UK charges a lower credit card processing fee: 2% + 25p for Basic users, 1.7% + 25p for Shopify users, and 1.5% + 25p for Advanced users.

Shopify Canada:

• Starter: CAD 7/month
• Basic: CAD 38/month
• Shopify: CAD 99/month
• Advanced: CAD 389/month

Key differences: You get up to 53% shipping discount on Canada post.

Shopify Australia:

The prices are the same as that of Shopify US.

Shopify Philippines:

• Starter: There’s no starter plan.
• Basic: USD 19/month
• Shopify: USD 49/month
• Advanced: USD 299/month

Key difference: Shopify Payments isn’t available in the Philippines.

How does Shopify compare to Etsy in pricing?

Etsy

Effective from 1st December 2022, these are Etsy charges:

• Pay a listing fee of 0.20 USD for each item you list for sale on Etsy.com or Etsy’s mobile apps.
• You will be charged a transaction fee of 6.5% of the price you display for each listing plus the amount you charge for delivery and gift wrapping. Also: If you sell from the US, the transaction fee will not apply to sales tax. If you sell from anywhere other than the US, the transaction fee will apply to the listing price (which should include any applicable taxes), postage price, and gift wrapping fee.
• Then, there’s an advertising bill for off-site Etsy advertising of 15% or 12% of your total transactions (depending on if you sold less or more than $10,000 worth of stock in the year).
• Fees are in addition to a free plan, or a paid plan costing $10 or $15/month.

Other fees:

• Etsy charges a monthly subscription fee of 15.00 USD for access to its Pattern tool.
• If you decide to list in a currency other than that of your payment account, you will be charged a 2.5% currency conversion fee on the sale amount to send funds to your payment account.

Shopify

• Basic Shopify, Shopify, or Advanced Shopify plans charge 2.9%, 2.6%, or 2.4% plus $0.30 (all plans) per transaction if you use Shopify payments, and an additional 2%, 2%, or 0.5% per transaction if you do not.

Key Takeaway: Shopify vs Etsy

Even if you only count the 6.5% total transaction fee, Etsy payment fees are at least 3.6 cents more expensive than Shopify’s per dollar spent – the extra fees and advertising bill make this even worse. With large-volume ecommerce stores, especially those working with tight margins, a Shopify plan will be more cost-effective than using Etsy.

Etsy does help bring an audience to craft or hobby producers who don’t need to sell a lot of their product, but if you’re working with large volumes and/or tight margins and lots of suppliers, that 5-8% quickly becomes an unacceptable cost.