Shopify Prices: All Shopify plans presented and compared to other store systems

Shopify is a well-known store solution that is used by many companies. However, one question always comes up for merchants here: How much does Shopify cost? How high the Shopify costs per month are, we show you in this blog.

Shopify offers different pricing models (Shopify Pricing Plans). Depending on your store size and needs, you can choose the right plan for you.

If you decide to switch from one Shopify package to the next, you can do it in no time and without any risk. Things get more complicated when you are at the very beginning and don't yet know exactly which Shopify pricing plan you should choose.

To make this decision a little easier for you, we would like to address this very issue in this blog post. Learn below when you should consider switching between the different Shopify plans and when even an enterprise solution can be worthwhile.

Shopify plans at a glance

All Shopify pricing models offer significant advantages over e-commerce competitors. For example, no additional server costs, server maintenance costs, web space, etc. are necessary.

Shopify - monthly costs: The provider offers a total of 6 pricing models, which we will discuss in more detail below.

1. Shopify Plan: Shopify Basic

Shopify Basic is, as the name suggests, a simple basic framework, which is, however, fully functional. It currently costs €36 per month, making it the cheapest among the popular Shopify fee plans. In addition to that, merchants using Shopify Payments can expect to pay 2.1% (+ €0.30) in credit card fees. If external payment providers are used, there is a transaction fee of plus 2%.

You do not need to rent a web space or server, as it is included in every Shopify price. For the domain, you can rent one from Shopify itself or connect an external one from providers like Namecheap, Checkdomain and 1&1 to your store. Also included in the pricing plan are emails to your customers, such as order confirmation or shipping confirmation.

A blog is already standard today and very important for SEO. This is also already included in this affordable pricing model. SSL, i.e. accessibility via HTTPS (encryption), is also already included - so there is no need for a paid certificate. You want to offer discounts to your customers? You can easily create them via Shopify, attach conditions to them and make them available to your customers. You are also able to use this basic Shopify plan with up to 2 user accounts.

2. Shopify Plan: Shopify

The Shopify plan currently costs €105 per month with 1.8% (+ €0.30) credit card fee. There is a 1% fee when using external payment providers. Of course, all features of the Basic Shopify plan are included. Additionally, a fraud analysis is offered starting with this plan. This will show you if Shopify classifies an order as risky or spam.

A great new point in this Shopify plan is the function to sell gift vouchers. These differ from discount codes in that the latter are generated by you, the store owner, yourself. For this, you specify the conditions and the value, which is then applied to the purchase. With gift vouchers, on the other hand, the customer buys a voucher and selects the amount from the values you offer. He gets an individual voucher code sent to him after the purchase and can use it or give it away. You surely know these vouchers from Amazon, Zalando or other big sellers.

Also, in this plan you can see professional reports about the activity of users. How many users were on my site? How many customers added something to the shopping cart? And how many of them actually made a purchase? All of this will become clearer starting with this mid-priced Shopify plan. This Shopify plan is usable with up to 5 employees.

3. Shopify Plan: Shopify Advanced

Shopify Advanced currently costs €384 per month with 1.6% credit card fees (+€0.30). In addition, there is a 0.5% sales fee when using external payment providers. Shopify Advanced can already be used much more extensively with 15 users. In addition to the functions listed so far, some new features are added here. Reports and analytics are expanded and more accurate. You can see more details about the usage and visits to your website or store. Of course, this will also help you to be more responsive to the needs and obstacles that may occur. The more comfortable the customer feels on your website, the more likely he is to buy. He stays longer in the store and possibly finds items he did not intend to buy. This way you increase the sales rate and the satisfaction of your customers. Only in this pricing model you have the possibility to calculate the shipping costs individually, based on the shopping cart.

4. Shopify Plan: Shopify Starter

As promised, we'll also go into a more uncommon pricing of Shopify - the Shopify Starter plan. This Shopify plan gives you the opportunity to create a store within a few clicks. All that is needed is an image and a description of your product or service and you're ready to go. The sale is designed for social media with this Shopify plan (for example, via linkpop page). This package currently costs only 5 € per month and is therefore the cheapest Shopify pricing model.

5. Shopify Plan: Shopify Plus

Shopify Plus is the most professional and complex plan from Shopify - this is also reflected in the price. The monthly fees are individual and are regulated with Shopify in separate contracts with you. Shopify Plus costs merchants 0.40% of their net sales and starts at a minimum of 2300 USD per month.

This plan is worthwhile for very high sales, among other things, but also if they place great value on customization. Shopify Plus offers many options to customize your store. For example, in the other plans you cannot edit the checkout or only to a limited extent, whereas Shopify Plus offers extensive access to it. Of course, you use all the features of the other pricing models here, but you can customize a lot of things to suit you and your brand.

With Shopify, many functions can be solved via app from the App Store. With Shopify Plus, on the other hand, you can additionally program many functions and thus save the monthly fees for an app. Would you like to know more about Shopify Plus? Then contact us - we will be happy to advise you, set up your store for you and take care of further programming, consulting and support.

6. Shopify Plan: Commerce Components

As of early 2023, Shopify offers a sixth pricing plan: Commerce Components by Shopify (CSS). This is the next tier after Shopify Plus, designed for large international retailers with annual revenues of at least €500 million. Unlike Shopify Plus, an all-in-one solution, CSS grants users access to individual Shopify components, such as the checkout and a completely new back-office management for enterprise retail. In addition, Commerce Components offers no API limits, 40,000 checkouts per minute, higher product variant limits, and new advanced features. New ways to customize a storefront and new technology partnerships with third-party vendors can also be targeted with this plan. This gives enterprise retailers more flexibility and more control over data, brand identity and customer relationships. Pricing for this solution is dependent on the retailer's requirements and therefore has not been publicly communicated to date.

Shopify Prices: When is it worth switching to the next plan?

As you could already read, the sales fee gets lower depending on the pricing plan. The Advanced Shopify plan now costs only a quarter of the sales fee compared to the Basic Shopify pricing model and Shopify Plus has no transaction fee at all. First and foremost, the features play an important role, of course, but the costs are not to be neglected for you as a merchant either. Therefore, we have also taken a closer look at these:

When is the upgrade to the Shopify plan (€105) worth it?

In our experience, an upgrade from Shopify Basic to the Shopify plan is worthwhile from around €10,000 in sales per month.

Since the transaction fees are reduced on the next higher plan, the total cost of running the store under the Shopify Basic plan and the Shopify plan equalize in the end. Considering the increased functionality of the Shopify plan, such as the ability to sell gift certificates, the upgrade is worth it.

When is it worth upgrading to Advanced Shopify (€384)?

In our experience, an upgrade to Shopify Advanced is worthwhile from €25,000 in monthly sales.

The total costs for operating an Advanced Shopify store and a Shopify store differ only slightly in the end with high monthly sales. In this case, the extended analyses, user numbers, and additional functionalities clearly speak for an upgrade.

When is it worth switching to Shopify Plus?

The financial framework usually doesn't play the biggest role when switching to Shopify Plus, but the possibilities opened up by the enterprise commerce platform. For example, Shopify Plus allows you to have multiple stores that are connected to each other. This is useful, among other things, if you want to offer different currencies or products per store.

Likewise, we as developers and you as a store owner have so many new and great possibilities that this often displaces the financial aspect and makes a calculation unnecessary. Since individual contracts are concluded, a blanket calculation of fees is not possible here, or only to a limited extent. Shopify - and also we - are happy to help you here, however.

Shopify Plus prices compared to other providers

Shopify Plus is the enterprise version of Shopify and thus the Shopify plan that is the most highly priced.

However, compared to other enterprise store systems, Shopify Plus shines not only with its feature set and excellent service. The costs also turn out to be comparatively low, especially if you consider them for a longer period of time.

In our research, we found out the project costs for the Shopware, Spryker, Salesforce, commercetools, and Adobe platforms and compared them with our empirical values from the numerous Shopify Plus projects we have already had the pleasure of supporting. In doing so, we not only compared the one-time project costs, but also looked at how much euros the ongoing costs amount to per year (with two developers and a turnover of 20 million euros). In order to make the right platform choice for the future, it was also important to know what the costs would be in 5 years for each store system. You can see the results in the graphic below.

Shopify Plus scores well in the direct comparison both in terms of the one-off project costs (approx. €100,000) and the running costs per year (approx. €50,000) and the total operating costs over five years (approx. €350,000).

Only Shopware and Adobe Commerce Cloud appear to fall within a similar price range at first glance. However, a closer look reveals that:

• the one-time costs are 50% higher for Shopware and 100% higher for ACC than for Shopify Plus,

• the running costs per year are 60% higher for Shopware and 120% higher for ACC, and

• the total cost of ownership in 5 years is almost 60% higher for Shopware and 100% higher for ACC.

For Spryker (€300,000 | €200,000 | €1.3 million) and Salesforce Commerce Cloud (€475,000 | €200,000 | €1.47 million), an even significantly higher budget is required. From our list, the use of commercetools is the most expensive for retailers at € 650,000, € 200,000 and € 1.65 million.

Why is that?

Shopify Plus compares favorably to Shopware, Spryker, and others not only in terms of one-time costs, but also in terms of ongoing costs. This is due to various aspects, for example, updates and backups, which happen without your intervention in the cloud system - you do not have to move to new versions and pay for them. Shopify Plus support is also part of the service and does not have to be paid for, as is the case with Shopware, for example. You don't have to budget for hosting and server reliability with Shopify - all of that is taken care of for you and is worth it especially if you have high traffic on your site.

Conclusion: Switch Shopify plan, or not?

The financial aspect is of course a big point when switching to another Shopify plan, but the functionality also plays an important role. So if you haven't generated the appropriate revenue yet, but would still like to sell gift vouchers, for example, or use features of the higher plans, a switch is definitely recommended even before that. By the way, all Shopify pricing plans include server, web space, SSL certificate, notification emails to you and your customers, CMS for product maintenance, collections, customer management, customer accounts, and much more.