Shopify pricing plans seem simple at first. But once you consider all the plugins and marketing software you’ll need -you will realize how complicated it can get. Although my views on Shopify pricing are critical, I believe it’s a good website builder for beginners. It grows with you, but so do the costs.
When choosing the right ecommerce platform or ecommerce solution for your business, it’s also important to choose the right pricing plan, to make sure you’re not paying more than you need to but also have room to grow. How do you know which Shopify plan is right for you? We’ve done all the research so you can see the details of each plan to make the best decision for your business. Check out Shopify fees and pricing below:
How Much Does Shopify Cost?
Shopify pricing ranges from $5/month to $399/month, or more, if you opt for the enterprise plan. Simply choosing your Shopify plan based on price alone isn’t a good idea. You need to look deeper into each plan to see if it’s the right type of plan for you.
For a product to be worth it, it needs to have tools and features that will effectively allow your online business to grow and expand. That’s why it’s important to pay attention to the features each plan offers so you know when it’s time to upgrade as you scale in your Shopify pricing.
Discounts are available for committing to one or two years rather than a monthly plan, so make the most of your Shopify trial, and you’ll save even more.
Shopify Plans Available
Shopify pricing offerings vary in price and features, including the basic, mid-level, and advanced options. Each Shopify offering is enticing in its own right, but certain options will be more suitable for your business than others.
The way to narrow down the choices to the best one is to consider the included features and compare them to your business needs to see which is most suitable. Also, factor in your budget for this platform to make sure you can afford this payment each month or annually.
You could always downgrade.
How the Shopify Charges Plans Differ
The Shopify options differ concerning credit card rates, transaction processing fees, and features. While the basic plan may have the necessary features for small businesses, larger businesses may find that the advanced plan can fulfill their daily eco dealings more easily and efficiently. That’s why it’s important to properly review each plan.
Shopify Pricing Plans
Sale discounts are available for committing to one or two years rather than a monthly plan, so make the most of your Shopify trial, and you’ll save even more. If you do your research and like what you see with the platform, you won’t mind securing a one or two-year plan. With that said, before you lock yourself into a specific plan, be sure to take advantage of the free 14-day trial on Shopify. There’s no credit card fee required to try out this sale platform. All you have to do is enter your email address and accept to receive marketing communications from the platform provider.
Shopify Features and Plans
What’s Shopify Starter Plan?
This option is a simple one that includes a buy now button for quick purchasing. It’s a starter plan with affordable Shopify pricing plans for small merchants who want to sell on Facebook, promote products on their existing website, and have a simple way to accept credit card payments via Paypal.
It’s not a full online store with a shopping cart, but it will get the job done for people who only need a few buy now payment buttons on products on their blog. It works great if you already have a WordPress site and don’t need the shopping cart and other features.
With this plan, you can start your new business and not be overwhelmed by the additional features that some plans include. This basic plan offers a way to accept payment easily and provides business owners with an initial payment process for their startup. It’s important to note that when you choose a basic plan like this, you can save money that you might not have too much of if you are just starting in the industry.
What Businesses Can Benefit from Shopify Starter?
Shopify Lite is an excellent ecommerce store plan for small vendors and businesses that are just starting and need an easy way to accept payments with online transactions. Shopify Starter has core features that make it possible to complete the simple yet necessary tasks you need as an online vendor, including the following:
- Ability to sell products on Social Media like Facebook
- Add a “Buy Now” button
- Promote your products on your website
- Accept credit card payments
- A built-in card reader for in-person purchases
The Lite plan is easy to understand and is the perfect starter ecommerce plan for your small business with affordable Shopify pricing. Once you become more established and require additional online shopping tools, such as a shopping cart feature, you can upgrade to a higher, more comprehensive plan, which of course, will cost you more additional fees.
What Businesses Should Opt for a More Inclusive Shopify Plan?
Certain businesses should skip over the Shopify Lite option and choose a more expensive ecommerce plan, such as the Basic, Shopify, or Advanced. These businesses sell many different products, are larger, need a full shopping cart online tool for payments, and find an unlimited number of product features useful.
Sometimes the Lite plan just isn’t expansive enough to cater to the needs of the business. If this is the case, it’s a wise idea to explore the higher level options to find the right type of selling tool your business needs.
Shopify Basic: Great Pricing Plan for Testing the eCommerce Waters
This plan is $39/month and allows unlimited products, including digital products. Customers can register an account for quick and easy login should they decide to make another purchase later. It, however, lacks features such as:
- Support for gift cards
- Professional performance reports and the advanced report build
- Real-time carrier shipping
This is ideal for people who want a full website with blogging included, with which to add SEO on the same platform as their store. You’ll get a free SSL certificate to protect customer information, manual order creation, shipping labels, and 24 7 support. You won’t have to worry about storage on these plans.
If you commit to the annual plan, you’ll pay $26.10 a month for 10% savings. You’ll pay $23.20 monthly for 20% savings if you commit to the two-year plan. Reviewing these savings when considering how you want to set up your payments is good.
Benefits of Shopify Basic
There are many benefits to choosing the Shopify Basic plan. Your Basic plan will accommodate your business needs from no transaction fees with Shopify payments to unlimited file storage. Here are some of the other benefits of this Basic plan:
- Two staff accounts
- Unlimited products
- Discount on shipping rates
- Fraud analysis
- 24/7 support
Even though Shopify Basic is a lower-level sale plan, this doesn’t mean you won’t have access to beneficial features. With Shopify Basic, you have basic features at a low price. Once you review this, you’ll know it’s a good option. Especially when you look at each feature of the Basic plan and apply it to your business to make sure it all fits nicely and allows your company to run as smoothly and efficiently as possible.
What Businesses Need Shopify Basic?
The Shopify Basic option will be better suited for some businesses over others. The type of business that will find this plan to be a suitable platform has many products, may operate on a smaller business model scale, has a small front office staff, and benefits from 24/7 support.
Shopify Pricing: “Shopify Plan”
The Shopify plan is the most popular plan of the bunch. With a price of $105/month, this plan offers advanced features well worth the price of this platform. The features greatly increase when you move up from the Basic plan to the Shopify plan.
The Benefits of Shopify
In addition to everything included with the Basic plan, the Shopify plan also includes the following beneficial features:
- Support for gift cards
- Professional reports
- Abandoned cart recovery
- Lower credit card rate
- Lower transaction fees
- Five staff account options
- Better Shopify
- And a ton of other bells and whistles
In addition to the benefits noted above, many people opt for this plan because it makes it easier to get contact information from people who don’t finish their orders via the abandoned cart recovery. The abandoned cart saving functionality provides a way to target individuals who may have wanted to use the buy button but forgot or were still up in the air regarding the online purchase.
Meta-analysis of 24 studies reveals that an average of 67.89%, or two out of every three of your prospects who add products to their cart, won’t actually complete their purchase. Let’s break that down to show how it affects your bottom line. This will show you how investing in the Basic plan may be the best move for your business and help to convert “maybe” shoppers into actual customer purchases.
Understanding How Abandoned Cart Recovery Benefits Your Business
Here’s a fact problem to consider when appreciating the benefits of abandoned cart recovery: Assume that you have a total of 100 customers per month. Each order averages $50 and equates to $5,000 a month in sales.
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As for customers who aren’t quite sold yet on purchasing your products, consider you have an additional 200 customers who began the process of purchasing items and added them to their virtual cart. The transaction stopped there.
When you consider the number of potential customers with the average of $50 per customer order listed above, that’s $10,000 extra that you don’t have in your pocket each month. So, when you look at the extra $50 you need to spend to bump your plan up from the Basic to the mid-level plan, that monthly price to use Shopify payments doesn’t seem that costly, does it? And you may want to contact them with discount codes or extra savings to pique their interest.
What Businesses Benefit from the Shopify Plan?
This plan is ideal for businesses that have been operating for a while but not at large company status yet. This plan is best for those businesses that plan on scaling quickly and doing so in an effective manner.
You should consider the amount of revenue your business brings in every month to determine if this specific plan is worth the monthly cost and offers you the inclusions that you need for your business.
For example, if your store makes more than $5,000 monthly in revenue, you’ll want to sign up for this offering. This specific plan offers lower transaction fees if you have an external payment gateway and a higher sales volume. Also, with the benefit of an abandoned cart recovery tool, you can improve sales easily.
You still won’t get the advanced report builder, but you’ll get support for gift cards, professional reporting, and the coveted abandoned cart recovery feature.
If you commit to the Shopify Pricing annual plan, you’ll pay $94.50 a month for 10% savings. If you commit to the two-year plan, you’ll pay $84 a month for 20% savings.
Shopify Pricing: Advanced Shopify Plan
For $399/month, you get everything from the advanced Shopify plan, plus the advanced report builder and real-time carrier shipping. Both of these features will help you to take your business to the next level.
With real-time carrier shipping, you’ll see the shipping cost being automatically calculated, thanks to the third-party shipper. This takes the guesswork out of the shipping and payment process and makes it easy to calculate total costs.
The advanced reporting feature gives you access to professional business reports and lets your developers customize your reports to suit the individual needs of your business.
Benefits of Shopify Advanced
With the advanced Shopify plan, you’ll find that your selling tasks are made much easier and more accurate. This plan will help your business to stay organized, whether you need a customized full report on recent sales or a calculation of shipping costs for your customers. The Advanced plan will work wonders for your business if you own a high-volume business where documentation is carefully constructed and time is short.
Is Shopify Advanced Worth the Cost?
When comparing the $399/month plan of Shopify Advanced with other plans and thinking of all that you can do with a Shopify Advanced plan to improve your business, you’ll likely find that this plan is worth the money. This is especially true if your business is a high-volume one with payments that need to cater to the specialized requests of customers quickly and efficiently. When considering the cost, look at your monthly income to ensure that this almost $400 a month will be affordable and able to be put to good use.
Shopify Plus: Enterprise Level
When you choose the Shopify Plus plan, you are taking your business to an enterprise level. The sales platform you’ll have access to with Plus is completely scalable. This plan varies in price, with monthly amounts starting at $2,000. With the Plus plan, you can create your platform as you see fit and include features that are specifically tailored to your company.
Differences Between the Plus and Lower-Level Advanced
Jumping approximately $1,600 in price between the Advanced and Plus plans, you are right to know what additional features make this extreme increase in price worth it. The following includes the additional features you’ll receive with the Plus plan:
- A dedicated support team to help you with the platform launch
- Priority-level support, 24/7
- Additional and extensive access for your development team for customization purposes
- Two additional clone storefronts for globalization purposes
Shopify Point of Sale
The Shopify Point of Sale (POS) system is extremely helpful for many types of businesses and selling situations. When you have a POS system on your side, you can rest easy knowing that the sales transactions will get carried out quickly and correctly every time. The POS plan is useful for pop-up selling and retail locations.
What Shopify POS Offers
When you add the POS to your sales platform, you are opening up a wealth of sales options. With the system, you gain access to the following features and inclusions:
- Sell your products from anywhere
- Accept any type of payment
- Boost your client base
- Sell more goods
- Manage your inventory
- Multi-channel selling options
- Advanced checkout features
Does Your Business Need a Shopify POS System?
You may be wondering if a Shopify system is right for your business. In order to zone in on a correct answer, ask yourself the following questions:
- Do I sell from multiple physical locations?
- Do I need access to credit card processing on the go?
- Can I afford the extra cost?
- Will the inventory management feature help me with staying organized?
- Do I want to grow my business?
Chances are that the answers to the previous questions, especially the last one, are a resounding “Yes!” If so, it’s a wise idea to look further into this and see if this system will help bring your sales needs together nicely.
Shopify Pricing: Additional Costs
Shopify App Store
Apps are available to add features that aren’t native to Shopify. While many apps are available for free, there are quite a few that require additional costs. By the time you consider those and what they bring your monthly total to, it may be worth it to compare Shopify to BigCommerce or Volusion to make sure it meets your needs at the most affordable rate.
You’ll need add-ons for features like:
- Product search – on all plans
- Subscriptions/Recurring billing – on all plans
- Personalized products – on all plans.
- Real-time shipping/tracking – only required for the Shopify plan. It’s not an option for Basic and is included with Advanced.
- Reward Points – on all plans
- Upselling & Cross-selling- on all plans
- Google Trusted Stores- on all plans.
- eBay sync- on all plans
If you want to add upselling, you could use Smart Upsells. After a seven-day free trial, you’ll pay up to $34.99/month. It works by monitoring what’s in your customer’s cart and deciding whether or not to show an upsell. When it does, a pop-up will display, prompting them to add another item to the cart.
If you need subscriptions or recurring billing, you could use ReCharge. That will cost an additional $19.99 to your monthly Shopify bill.
Adding a customer support service helpdesk
- It could cost you $19 or $60 per month, depending on which app you choose.
There are a ton of awesome features you can add to create a truly robust Shopify store with a great marketing platform and customer service support. But it certainly doesn’t come cheap. (Example of popular Shopify stores)
Domain Name and Email Hosting
A domain is not included with any Shopify plan. You can buy a domain through Shopify for $15 per year or redirect or transfer one of your existing domains to your Shopify store.
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Email accounts are not included. You are free to set up an unlimited number of email addresses, but you are required to manage them yourself through your own email hosting provider.
Shopify Credit Card Transaction Fees (Shopify Payments Fees)
Shopify does not charge transaction fees; however, there are fees associated with merchant processing (by payment processors) – regardless of the merchant you choose. If you opt for Shopify Payments in the United States, you’ll pay 2.9%+30 cents on the Basic Shopify plan, 2.5%+30 cents per transaction on the Shopify plan, and 2.25%+30 cents per transaction on the Advanced Shopify plan. Pricing varies slightly in other countries. Shopify Pay is a good option to consider.
Choosing Your Shopify Pricing Plan
Shopify is one of the best platforms out there, and for a good reason. But, it can get expensive, fast. Add-ons can add upfront costs. You can easily sell on Amazon, but you have to pay a percentage of each transaction unless you’re willing to pay a monthly revenue fee for unlimited sales. Plus, you don’t get a personalized storefront at your own domain.
Before you settle on Shopify as a sales channel platform for your ecommerce businesses, you should review this tool and compare it with others in the same category. Here are some of Shopify’s competitors and information on each one to help you with your review research:
Shopify Pricing With Marketing
- Basic $29/month
- Bold Recurring Orders: $20/month
- Bold Upsells: $20/month
- Yotpo: $29/month
- Klaviyo: $25 /month
Shopify Comparisons
FAQs
The Bottom Line For Your Small Business
So basically, running my ecom store costs about $120 a month. No matter what ecommerce software you use, I’d recommend a good app.
Shopify is a great platform for businesses, both small and large. In fact, it’s one of our best-rated website builders for ecommerce. Especially if you are dropshipping. Make sure you study the Shopify pricing features chart and try it if it meets your needs. You can always start a trial to check things out and then decide if you want to set it up all the way.
