In case you are a seller selling goods through Shopify, you need to read this article for the following reasons:
- What are the Shopify Fees for an Online Store?
- What is the Shopify Fees Under Various Pricing Plans?
Are you planning to start an online store using Shopify? Have you been thinking of migrating to Shopify from your existing eCommerce platform? Whatever may be the case, you are convinced to sell online using Shopify and would be searching for Shopify fees or what it costs to start an online store with Shopify.
Shopify is one of the best eCommerce platforms that provide you with a bunch of features to set up and get going with your online business seamlessly. For instance, with Shopify, you get the flexibility to sell online through multiple sales channels. These include your online store, social media channels like Facebook and Instagram, selling through your own WordPress website by embedding the buy button, and so on.
Similarly, you can:
- set your online store within no time with Shopify’s drag-and-drop builder using free and paid store themes
- to enable popular payment methods and local currencies for a seamless checkout by customers using Shopify Payments
- avail the benefits of tools and sales insights to scale your online business
- see where you stand in terms of sales, orders, and target market to customize your offering, as well as marketing efforts,
- manage your business on the go with Shopify mobile app
- track your inventory at a centralized place so that you never lose out on a selling opportunity
- add more features to your online stores like dropshipping, WhatsApp Helpdesk and marketing, product reviews, etc with 6000 + Shopify apps, and much more.
However, all these functionalities can be availed at a cost. Shopify has various pricing plans and offers paid functionalities so that you grow your online business easily.
Let’s have a look at the Shopify fees or the cost of running a Shopify store.
Shopify Fees for an Online Store
The online store is one of the sales channels through which you can sell online using Shopify. However, in order to sell with an online store in Shopify, you must have a Basic Shopify or a higher plan.
Let’s have a look at the various pricing plans available to help you get an understanding of the Shopify fees to run your online store. But before that, let’s understand some of the basics associated with Shopify fees.
- setting up an account with Shopify is absolutely free. Thus, there are no setup fees
- you get a discount of 10% on annual plans and a 20% discount on biennial plans, provided you make the payments upfront
- you easily upgrade or downgrade the plans later
- there are no bandwidth fees. All the Shopify plans come with unlimited bandwidth at zero cost.
- you can try Shopify without providing any credit card details with its 14-day free trial
Various Shopify Plans Cost
Shopify offers various pricing plans, each meant to fulfill the requirements of various eCommerce businesses.
| S.No. | Features | Basic | Shopify | Advanced | Shopify Plus | Shopify Lite |
| Price | $29/m | $79/m | $299/m | Starting at $2000/m | $9/m | |
| Blog and an eCommerce website | Yes | Yes | Yes | (For features check Shopify Plus) | (For features check Shopify Lite) | |
| Display unlimited products | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Staff accounts with staff members having access to Shopify admin and Point of Sale (POS) | 2 | 5 | 15 | |||
| 24/7 Support | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Various sales channels like social media and online | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Access to inventory locations so that you can allocate inventory to warehouses, retail stores, and other places where you store your inventory | Up to 4 | Up to 5 | Up to 8 | |||
| Gift cards | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Free SSL certificate | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Discount codes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Abandoned cart recovery | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Facility to segment customers | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Ability to send automated emails with either template or customized workflow | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Unlimited contacts | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Shipping discount (gives you competitive shipping rates from USPS, UPS, or DHL Express) | up to 77% | up to 88% | up to 88% | |||
| Ability to print shipping labels with a standard printer | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Shopify POS lite through which you can accept payments from customers physically at pop-up stores markets, fairs, etc | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Ability to define geographic locations to help customers know that you are providing a local experience across regions | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Allocate custom domains for every market and redirect customers to the right market based on their geographic location | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Provide region-specific language to customers for a more personalized experience | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Easily calculate import taxes and duties at the checkout | – | – | Yes | |||
| Set customized prices as per the market in which you are selling your goods | – | – | Yes | |||
| SSuo | Suitable for | new eCommerce business with a few in-person sales | Growing business selling online or in-store | Scaling business that has advanced reporting needs | ||
| Manual order creation | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Reports | – | Standard | Advanced | |||
| Third-party calculated shipping rates that display the calculated rates with your account or third-party apps at the check-out | – | – | Yes | |||
| USPS | USPS Priority Mail Cubic Pricing | – | Yes | Yes |
Shopify Payments vs Third-Party Payments
Shopify Payments is the easiest way in which you can accept payments from your online customers. As mentioned above, this comes as a feature in your Basic Plan. All you need to do is simply turn it on and you are good to go. However, this is available only in specific locations. You need to check the countries in which you sell and plan to sell online to use Shopify Payments. To know if your region is eligible for Shopify Payments, check Supported countries and Regions for Shopify Payments.
For instance, the United States is eligible for Shopify Payments. Let’s see what are benefits that you get if you use Shopify Payments.
- No or zero transaction fees
- Provide region-specific payment methods to customers on checkout
- Fraud analysis
- Automatically convert prices into your customers’ local currency for better conversions.
Transaction Fees
In Case You Choose Shopify Payments
There is zero transaction fee if you choose to accept payments with Shopify Payments.
In Case You Choose Third-Party Payment Merchants
In case your country is not eligible for Shopify Payments you may have to go for third-party payment merchants. You can choose to go for third-party payment merchants even if you are eligible for Shopify Payments.
However, this will come at an extra cost. Apart from the credit/debit card rates mentioned above, you will also be charged transaction fees. This is unlike Shopify Payments, where there are zero transaction fees if you choose to accept payments by the same on your online store.
The following are the transaction fees charged in case you choose to go with third-party payment merchants under various plans.
| Transaction Fees – Third-Party Payment Merchants | |||
| Particulars | Basic | Shopify | Advanced |
| Transaction fees when not using Shopify Payments (or using third-party payment merchants) | 2.0% | 1.0% | 0.5% |
Credit Card Rates
The credit card fees will be charged separately and is over and above the monthly plan fee, that is $29, $79, and $299 respectively in the case of Basic, Shopify, and Advanced plans.
The following are the charges for credit card fees that you would be required to pay in the case of the Basic Plan. These will be billed in the currency that you choose.
| Credit/Debit Card Rates | |||
| Particulars | Basic | Shopify | Advanced |
| Online credit card rates | 2.9% plus 30¢ CAD | 2.6% plus 30¢ CAD | 2.4% plus 30¢ CAD |
| In-person debit or credit card rates | 2.7% plus 0¢ CAD | 2.5% plus 0¢ CAD | 2.4% plus 0¢ CAD |
POS Pro For Managing In-store Business in Multiple Locations
Additionally, if you have physical stores in multiple locations and want them to be integrated with your Shopify account, you will have to upgrade to POS (Pro). Accordingly, this cost will be over and above the plan cost.
| POS Pro | |||
| Particulars | Basic | Shopify | Advanced |
| Shopify POS Pro cost per location. Upgrading to POS Pro gives you the functionality to choose locations for quicker workflows, staff permissions, and high-end inventory tools | $89 USD/mo | $89 USD/mo | $89 USD/mo |
Buying Custom Domain: Shopify Vs Third-Party
A custom domain can be availed only with the paid Shopify plans. Accordingly, once you set up your online store with one of the paid Shopify plans, you are assigned a unique My Shopify web address.
Say you entered your store name ‘Startrek’ while you signed up with Shopify, it will automatically allocate you a unique Shopify website address such as startrek.myshopify.com. (your-store-name.myshopify.com).
Let’s say you want a custom domain instead of this default web address assigned to you by Shopify. You can either purchase the domain from Shopify or go for a third-party domain provider.
Buying Custom Domain From Shopify
You can buy a custom domain using Shopify’s domain name generator. It is difficult to determine the exact price of buying a custom domain from Shopify. This is because the cost depends on the Top Level Domain (TLD) extension that you happen to select. TLD is the last section of your domain name or the section that comes after the dot. For example, in www.shopify.com, ‘com’ is the TLD.
TLDs are both generic and country-specific. The common and high level generic TLDs include .com, .net, .org, and .gov. However, due to the non-availability of these TLDs due to increased domains already being taken, businesses also use .io, .co, etc.
Country-specific domains, on the other hand, include .au, .sg, etc specific to a particular country you plan to take the domain for.
Benefits of Buying Custom Domain From Shopify
- Free SSL certificate that gets created automatically the moment you buy a custom domain from Shopify
- Set up your domain and manage all of your domain settings in one place from the Shopify admin itself. This is not the case if you use a third-party domain provider for purchasing the custom domain.
Drawbacks of Buying Custom Domain From Shopify
- Shopify does not give you email hosting services. This means you have to link a third-party email hosting service with your Shopify-manage domain.
- Just in case you want to deactivate your Shopify account for some reason, you will have to transfer your domain to another domain provider. This is because a custom domain is only available with a paid plan. Therefore, you need to transfer your domain with another domain provider before deactivating your Shopify account.
Cost of Buying Custom Domain From Shopify
Custom domains bought from Shopify typically start at $11 USD per year. However, as mentioned earlier, the cost is subject to change depending on the TLDs you happen to choose.
Since the domains are valid only for a year, you need to renew them each year for which you need to pay the renewal charges.
The following is a screenshot that contains an estimated price for various domain options available for a particular shop anime using the Shopify domain generator.
Cost of Buying Custom Domain From a Third-Party Domain Provider
You can buy the custom domain from a third-party domain registrar. Some of these include Bluehost, GoDaddy, Network Solutions, etc. Now, before choosing a domain registrar, ensure that you keep in mind the following things:
- period for which the domain is being registered
- easy domain transfer without extra cost
- checking the domain expiration policies
- list of add-on services being provided like email hosting, email marketing services, website builders, etc
- hidden costs and fees
- add-on pricing
Here’s a snapshot of the price charged by Bluehost for a custom domain.
Buying Paid Themes
Shopify uses ‘Dawn’ as the default theme for its online store. You have the option of continuing with the same theme or using a theme of your choice from the Shopify Theme Store.
The store has both free and paid themes that can help you design your store the way you want to. Here’s a snapshot of some of the paid themes available at Shopify Theme Store.
Buying Paid Applications
Much like the theme, there are a host of free and paid applications that you can choose from to enhance the features of your online store.
For instance, applications like Buy Botton channel, Shopify Email, Product Reviews, Google Channel, Facebook Channel, etc are free to install.
However, there are certain applications that offer additional features in their paid plans. Some of the popular paid applications on the Shopify App Store include Point of Sale, Whatsapp Helpdesk + Marketing, DSers AliExpress Dropshipping, etc.
The paid plans of Whatsapp Helpdesk + Marketing are as follows:
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