Shopify Pricing 2024: Which Plan Should You Choose?

Shopify has three core plans: Basic, Shopify, and Advanced. When billed annually, Shopify’s pricing ranges from $29 to $299 per month – you can save 25% when paying for a yearly subscription instead of monthly.

While Shopify doesn’t have a free plan, there is a brief three-day free trial. This doesn’t give you much time to become familiar with the platform and all of its tools and features, but you can get your first month for $1 with Shopify’s introductory deal.

Short on time? Get a quick overview of Shopify’s plans below:

There are additional costs to consider, such as templates and transaction fees, but I’ll unpack those later.

Shopify scores poorly in our value for money testing because of its expensive plans and short free trial. This is one of the weakest scores from the 16 website builders we tested – Wix and Squarespace easily outperform Shopify when it comes to price. In fact, GoDaddy is the best value ecommerce website builder overall, so consider reading our GoDaddy Ecommerce Review if affordability is a key factor for your website.

We compared the minimum standard features you’d expect from an ecommerce plan, such as built-in marketing tools and SEO, and noted the price you’d need to pay. Shopify grants businesses all of these features from its cheapest plan which costs $29 per month, but a lot of these essential features are available at a cheaper price point with other builders. For example, you can start selling with Squarespace for $23 per month.

That said, Shopify is a dedicated ecommerce website builder, offering unparalleled sales features – its starting prices are naturally higher because of this. Plus, Shopify is constantly rolling out new features and improving existing tools, evident in its recent bi-annual Shopify Editions Summer ’24 and Winter ‘24. Our video review covers Shopify’s features, pros, and cons in more detail:

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The other major website builders, such as Wix, offer both website building and ecommerce plans – the cheapest plan usually lacks ecommerce features, unlike Shopify which provides these from the start.

So, if you run a rapidly growing online store and need the features and functionality to support that, Shopify’s price point is worth it.

Let’s take a closer look at each of its plans.

Shopify’s Basic plan, costing $29 per month (billed annually), is the first of three core plans and the most popular option, according to Shopify. I recommend the Basic plan if you’re running a smaller business that needs room to grow since it gives you a great foundation of features to work with as you scale.

You can expect the following standard features on Shopify’s cheapest plan:

• Unlimited products
• A customizable checkout experience to help cater to the needs and habits of your customers
• Up to 77% shipping discount
• 10 inventory locations
• Standard analytics so you can monitor your website’s performance and traffic
• 24/7 support through its AI-powered live chat assistant – I got a response to my query within 10 seconds!
• Localized features such as site translation to help you sell globally
• Multichannel selling so you can connect your online store to marketplaces and social media, like TikTok – I recommend using the Shopify Marketplace Connect app to simplify this process
• Discount codes 
• Abandoned cart recovery
• Security features, including a free SSL certificate and fraud analysis detection
• Automations for marketing and ecommerce functions to streamline workflows
• Shopify Tax supports business owners by automating sales tax calculations and generating reports for you

Who Do I Recommend the Basic Plan For?

This plan is ideal for smaller businesses finding their feet online. If you’re only selling a couple of products, you won’t need to shell out for a Shopify plan because the $5 Starter plan will likely be enough or you could opt for a cheaper website builder. But, if you’re selling a good handful of products already and you’re pursuing long-term growth, Shopify’s Basic plan will set you up with the essentials and there’s a lot of room to scale within this initial plan.

The Shopify plan costs $79 per month (billed annually) and is more suitable for businesses that manage extensive inventories and have established footholds in the market. In addition to what’s included with the Basic plan, the Shopify plan provides further support for expanding online stores:

• Up to 88% shipping discount, a considerable uplift from the Basic plan
• 5 staff accounts – a useful feature for businesses of scale with multiple employees
• Shipping insurance if using Shopify’s native payment solution, Shopify Payments – get up to $200 coverage with every Shopify Shipping label
• USPS discounts for shipping products

Who Do I Recommend the Shopify Plan For?

I recommend choosing the Shopify plan if your business is seeing substantial growth over time. It’s a good stepping stone of a plan – a middle ground between Shopify’s cheapest plan, which supports new merchants, and the high-growth businesses that Shopify’s Advanced plan caters to.

The most expensive Shopify plan is the Advanced plan, starting from $299 per month (billed annually). The Advanced plan goes the extra mile to support very large businesses by providing even more features than its predecessors, including:

• Custom reports and analytics so you can filter Shopify’s data to show exactly what you need to look at
• Enhanced 24/7 chat support meaning your business can get rapid help during urgent situations
• Up to 15 staff accounts – when comparing to the Shopify plan, the difference in staff accounts allowance is a good indicator of the size of the business each plan supports
• Third-party calculated shipping rates
• 10 times the checkout capacity of other plans to better support your online store during busy shopping periods – Shopify merchants had a record-breaking Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend in 2023

Who Do I Recommend the Advanced Plan For?

The Advanced plan is best for businesses at the top of their game – for the expensive price point, I recommend choosing this option if you’re seeing a very high sales volume every month since you’ll need the additional power to support your online store.

However, Shopify’s three core plans aren’t your only options. Shopify also provides alternative plans at varying price points for sellers who don’t need a fully-built website, as well as industry-leading businesses.

Shopify Starter: $5 – For Side Hustles

If you’re not looking to build an entire website, Shopify Starter lets users sell across social media platforms and messaging apps, such as Instagram, TikTok, and WhatsApp. The plan costs just $5 per month (billed annually), making it considerably cheaper than Shopify’s primary options.

I recommend Shopify Starter for entrepreneurs testing out new products or people selling as a side hustle.

Shopify Starter comes with Shopify’s standard order management tools, sales analytics, and access to Shopify’s app market.

However, there are limitations to such an affordable plan. Your online store will be stripped back to product pages, a contact page, and a checkout page. It’s worth upgrading to the Basic plan if you’d like to fully customize your online storefront and unlock additional tools, such as blogging and discounts.

Shopify Plus: From $2,300 – For Industry Giants

Used by titans of industry, such as Mattel and Sony, Shopify Plus is ideal for incredibly successful and high-growth businesses. It provides scalable and customizable solutions for businesses, including expert strategy guidance and technical support from Shopify.

Pricing starts from $2,300 per month and the plan is available for either a one-year or three-year subscription – businesses can arrange to get in touch with Shopify to find out more.

Enterprise: Custom Pricing – For Limitless Business Growth

Similar to Shopify Plus, Shopify’s Enterprise plan targets businesses leading their industries and markets – but with custom pricing. With the Enterprise plan, businesses simply unlock further tools for innovation so they can create a plan to support their business needs.

Shopify isn’t a cheap website builder – its plans are expensive from the start. Still, the blow to your budget is softened by access to Shopify’s impressive ecommerce features and robust product backend. Unfortunately, there are additional costs to consider before choosing a Shopify plan which can quickly increase your overall spend.

Premium Templates

At the time of writing, Shopify has 13 free templates to choose from. In comparison, all of Wix’s 900+ templates are free to use. Shopify’s premium themes range between $140 to $450 – this is a one-off cost, but a pricey add-on when combined with your Shopify plan.

Paid Apps

You can improve Shopify’s built-in features by paying more for third-party apps from Shopify’s app store. With over 8,000 apps to choose from, such as Printify to support print-on-demand selling, and Linktree to simplify sharing links online. It’s not surprising that select apps can request an additional fee. For example, Linktree’s premium plans start from $5 per month.

Domain Name

You’ll also have to shell out for a custom domain name if you want your online store to have a professional look. With Shopify, this can cost around $15 per year for a .com domain name.

Transaction Fees

One of the most considerable additional costs relates to customers shopping with your store. If you’re using Shopify Payments, the website builder’s in-house payment processor, then you’ll face the following credit card rates depending on your plan:

While you can choose from over 100 third-party payment processors, such as Stripe or PayPal, I recommend using Shopify Payments to keep these credit card rates as low as possible for each online transaction.

You’ll also be able to remove transaction fees when using Shopify Payments – without Shopify Payments, each transaction will incur both transaction fees and credit card fees.

The transaction fees differ depending on your plan – the Basic plan charges 2%, the Shopify plan charges 1%, and the Advanced Shopify plan charges 0.6%.

Shopify is expensive, especially in comparison to other website builders, like Wix and GoDaddy. However, there are a few ways to save money when choosing to build an online store:

• Sign up for an annual plan rather than paying monthly – you can save 25% if you choose a yearly subscription
• Use Shopify Payments to avoid transaction fees – you’ll still need to pay credit card fees, but Shopify’s in-house payment solution removes any additional third-party transaction fees
• Use a free theme instead of a premium template – I particularly love Shopify’s free template, “Crave”, because of its modern, bold, and colorful look
• Get your domain name from a different registrar – Shopify’s .com domain costs around $15 per year, whereas GoDaddy costs $11.99 for the first year

Shopify recently launched a Total Cost of Ownership calculator as well, helping businesses compare ownership costs (such as platform and operating fees, like apps and maintenance). This is a great way to see how Shopify can help your online store minimize its expenses and boost sales.

Through our research process, we carried out over 200 hours of testing and data collection across seven primary categories – one of which is value for money. To determine whether a website builder’s plans are worth spending your money on, we examine:

• The quantity and quality of features available for the price you pay
• The average cost of a website builder’s plans
• Whether there’s a free trial or free plan available to test things out
• Whether a website builder offers the minimum standard features, such as SEO, and at what price point are these features available

We then award each ecommerce website builder, like Shopify, a score out of five based on its performance in the value for money category.

To recap, Shopify is the best ecommerce website builder on the market in 2024 and it offers three core plans to help set up and grow your business online. These range from $29 to $299 per month (billed annually) – get started for just $1 for the first month.

Because it’s an expensive entry point for small businesses, I recommend Shopify for established online stores with extensive inventories.

Start on Shopify’s $29 per month Basic plan, which lets you sell an unlimited number of products, and then upgrade as your business grows so you can unlock advanced features, such as shipping insurance.

There will be plenty of additional costs to take into account, such as custom domain names and third-party apps, meaning Shopify isn’t ideal for businesses with a limited budget. Shopify is for businesses with long-term goals in mind – you’ll be given the tools and infrastructure to help grow your business and sales over time.