Shopify costs between $29 per month and $2,300 per month to build an online store, depending on your business size and sales volume.
For more advanced features, like staff accounts, shipping rates, and lower transaction fees, you’ll need to pay for the Grow ($79 per month) or Advanced ($299 per month) plans. For a basic checkout link for social sellers and online creators, the Starter plan at $5 per month is also an option, although it does not allow you to create a full-feature online store.
Shopify does not have a free plan, but it does offer a special deal that gets you access to the platform for $1 per month for the first three months, acting as a low-commitment starting option to test out the website builder.
Key Takeaways
- Starting price: The most affordable Shopify plan costs $29 per month if you opt for a one-year contract and $39 per month when billed monthly.
- The other pricing plans — Grow ($79 per month), Advanced ($299 per month), and Plus ($2,300 per month) — offer more advanced features for larger online stores.
- Shopify transaction fees range from 2.4% + 30¢ to 2.9% + 30¢, depending on which pricing plan you sign up for.
- Shopify does not offer a free plan, but it does offer a special deal of $1 per month for the first three months, which is essentially a long-term free trial.
- Shopify is more expensive than competitor website builders, with its starting price and enterprise-level plans costing more than the industry average.
How Much Do Shopify Pricing Plans Cost?
Shopify has four pricing plans for full-feature online stores, Basic, Grow, Advanced, and Plus, as well as the Starter plan for creators and social sellers. Here’s a breakdown of how much they cost, what kind of features are available, and what kind of transaction fees you can expect:
| Plan | Price (1-year contract) The price per month you'll pay if you choose to be billed annually | Price (1-month contract) The price per month you'll pay if you choose to be billed monthly | Staff accounts | Reporting | Gift cards | Online credit card rates | In-person credit card rates | Transaction fee if not using Shopify Payments | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | | | | | |||||
| Starter | Basic | Grow | Advanced | Plus | |||||
| $5/month ($1 for first 3 months) | $29/month ($1 for first 3 months) | $79/month ($1 for first 3 months) | $299/month ($1 for first 3 months) | $2,300/month ($399 for your first month) | |||||
| $5/month ($1 for first 3 months) | $39/month ($1 for first 3 months) | $105/month ($1 for first 3 months) | $399/month ($1 for first 3 months) | N/A | |||||
| 1 | 2 | 5 | 15 | Tailored | |||||
| Basic | Basic | Standard | Advanced | Bespoke | |||||
| | | | | | |||||
| 5% + 30¢ | 2.9% + 30¢ | 2.7% + 30¢ | 2.5% + 30¢ | Bespoke | |||||
| 5% | 2.6% + 10¢ | 2.5% + 10¢ | 2.4% + 10¢ | Bespoke | |||||
| 5% | 2% | 1% | 0.6% | Bespoke |
Why Trust Us? Our Research Methodology
After conducting an initial exploration to identify the most relevant, popular, and established tools in the market, we put them through their paces with hands-on testing to see their real strengths and weaknesses. In this case, we put 16 website builder products to the test across 398 areas of investigation.
Based on years of market and user needs research, we’ve established a website builder testing methodology that scores each product in six core categories of investigation and 33 subcategories. This covers everything, from customer feedback to design, ease of use, and more.
Shopify Basic Plan: Features and Costs
The Shopify Basic plan costs $29 per month billed annually or $39 per month billed monthly. It allows for unlimited products, but only one user can access the platform.
The Shopify Basic plan is expensive for a starting plan. Other top-tier solutions like Squarespace ($16 per month) are more affordable and still allow you to create an online store, although not for unlimited products.
We found a wide range of effective email marketing templates available with Shopify. Source: Tech.co testing
Shopify Grow Plan: Features and Costs
The Shopify Grow plan costs $79 per month billed annually or $105 per month billed monthly. It allows for up to five users and adds competitive shipping discounts from DHL Express, UPS, and USPS.
It’s best to upgrade from the Basic plan to the Grow plan once you’ve exceeded around $5,000 in sales, because the lower transaction fees will offset the higher monthly subscription cost.
We found that generating a gift card was easy with Shopify. Source: Tech.co testing
Shopify Advanced Plan: Features and Costs
The Shopify Advanced plan costs $299 per month billed annually or $399 per month billed monthly. It allows for up to 15 users and adds third-party calculated shipping rates for customers.
The Shopify Advanced plan is expensive. It’s the most expensive standard ecommerce website builder plan across our research, with premium options like Wix only getting as high as $159 per month at its most expensive.
The Shopify App Store allowed us to expand our site with additional functionalities and third-party integrations. Source: Tech.co testing
Shopify Plus Plan: Features and Costs
The Shopify Plus plan is a custom plan that requires businesses to reach out to get a quote, but prices start at $2,300 per month. There is also no monthly option — you’ll have to sign up for a three-year contract.
Shopify Plus is designed for enterprise-level businesses with more than $750,000 in annual revenue. There’s no set price, as you have to call up and get a quote directly from Shopify.
The Shopify sales dashboard helps users track products sold. Source: Tech.co testing
Does Shopify Have a Free Plan?
Shopify does not have a free plan, and it has a very short three-day free trial.
However, Shopify does offer a special deal that allows you access to any paid plan for $1 per month for the first three months. This essentially acts as a low-commitment extended free trial, allowing you to test out the platform for 90 days for only $3.
Check out our guide to free website builders to learn more.
Is Shopify Good Value For Money?
Shopify is one of the most expensive website builders on the market, but the value is clearly there for businesses that want to sell online.
Given its robust tools for larger businesses, including additional staff accounts and inventory management, Shopify’s value lies in its ability to scale with your online store, particularly given its ability to sell unlimited products across all paid plans.
There are better solutions out there when it comes to value, though. Hostinger, for example, costs only $12.99 per month and still offers a lot of the ecommerce functionality you need for an online store.
Square Online is another viable option at a low price, as it allows you to create an online store for free, charging only transaction fees when you actually make a sale.
There are a lot of options if you’re looking for low cost, but when it comes to value, Shopify is a clear choice for those larger businesses that take selling online seriously, or at least want to in the future.
What Is Shopify Starter?
The Shopify Starter plan, which starts at $5 per month, is a basic online selling tool that allows creators and social influencers to add basic checkout links to social accounts and messaging apps.
The Shopify Starter plan does allow you to add unlimited products like the other pricing plans, but it does not allow you to create a full-featured online store with its website builder platform. Instead, you build a very basic checkout link, allowing you to add product descriptions and an image, and that’s it.
While the Shopify Starter plan is affordable, it comes with 5% transaction fees, which are much higher than other pricing plans.
Shopify’s Starter plan lets you sell on various social media channels, including Instagram and TikTok. Source: Shopify
What Are the Hidden Fees With Shopify?
The monthly subscription cost of Shopify is not the only charge you can expect to incur when building an online store. There are other hidden fees associated with the platform that can impact your monthly bill.
- Custom domain: A custom domain for your online store will cost $10-$20 per year, while cloud hosting can cost between $5-$30 per month, depending on the size of your online store.
- Themes: Shopify provides many free online store templates, but the Online Store 2.0 themes costs a one-time fee of $200-$500.
- Apps: Third-party integrations with Shopify for functionalities like SEO and loyalty programs can cost an additional $5-$300 per month.
How much are Shopify transaction and credit card fees?
All ecommerce website builders have transaction fees when it comes to making sales. With Shopify, the transaction fees are less expensive when you pay for the more expensive pricing plans.
Here’s a breakdown of how much transaction fees cost across different payment categories and pricing plans.
| Starter | Basic | Grow | Advanced | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Online | 5% + 30¢ | 2.9% + 30¢ | 2.7% + 30¢ | 2.5% + 30¢ |
| In person | 5% | 2.6% + 10¢ | 2.5% + 10¢ | 2.4% + 10¢ |
| Third-party | 2% | 2% | 1% | 0.6% |
All credit card transactions will incur either the online or in-person transaction fees. If you use payment providers like PayPal, you will incur the third-party transaction fees as well.
For example, if you’re on the Basic plan and make a $100 online sale, you’ll have to pay $3.20 (2.9% + 30¢) for the online credit card fee and an additional $2 for the third-party. That’s $5.20 per sale going to Shopify.
However, you can avoid the third-party payment provider fees if you use Shopify Payments, the native payment system built into the ecommerce website builder.
How We Evaluate Website Builders
We take our impartial research and analysis seriously, so you can have complete confidence that we’re giving you the clearest, most useful product recommendations. Here are the metrics by which we evaluated website builders like Shopify.
Our main testing categories for website builders are:
- Website features: The capabilities and functionalities offered by a website builder, e.g. blog functionality, SEO capability, and marketing capacity.
- Design functionality: The aesthetic appeal and visual layout of a website created using a website builder. It encompasses aspects such as page templates and customizable themes.
- Customer satisfaction: External customer opinion. This is the feedback and ratings given by customers who have used a particular website builder — the market position and reputation a website builder holds.
- User experience: How user-friendly and intuitive a website builder is for people with varying levels of technical expertise.
- Value for money: The balance between the cost of a website builder and the benefits it provides. It considers factors such as pricing plans, subscription models, and available features.
- Help and support: The assistance and resources available to users when they encounter issues or need guidance while using a website builder.
When it comes to calculating a product’s final score, not all testing areas are weighted evenly, as we know some aspects matter more to our readers than others, which are simply “nice to have”. After hundreds of hours, our process is complete, and the results should ensure you can find the best solution for your needs.
At Tech.co, we have a number of full-time in-house researchers, who re-run this testing process regularly, to ensure our results remain reflective of the present day.
Verdict: Is Shopify Worth It?
Shopify offers a lot of features, some serious power, and in-depth inventory tools to get your business going. You’ll be able to get your store set up, be able to monitor how you’re doing, and make quick changes, whether you’re a small business or a larger company.
The ecommerce website builder also stands out for its range of third-party integrations, which can be added to dramatically expand the functionality you need. For this reason, yes Shopify is worth it if you’re an established business that’s serious about increasing sales.
Shopify is moderately expensive, though, especially if you want to unlock more advanced capabilities like custom reports. This makes Shopify less suitable for newer businesses with tighter margins, unless they’re only planning on selling via social channels through Shopify’s Starter plan.
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