Shopify is one of the best ecommerce platforms on the internet today, with its affordable plans and easy to design templates, setting up a website has never been easier. Founded in 2004 in Ottawa Canada, Shopify has made its impact in the digital space. Now while this might sound great it’s important to understand which Shopify pricing plan works best for your needs. In this blog we will go over the five different pricing tiers and each of their features.
The five Shopify pricing tiers are as followed Lite, Basic Shopify, Shopify, Advanced Shopify and Shopify Plus. Now if you’re a new business just starting out then the basic Shopify plan should be enough, and as your business grows you can always upgrade to a better package with more storage and more features.
Below is the breakdown of each Shopify pricing plan as well as the Shopify fees you can expect to pay per transaction on your site. When you start your 14 day free trial on Shopify you will get a staging site that will look similar to “xyz.myshopify.com”, this is subdomain until you sign up for a paid account or let your trial runout. I don’t encourage you too, you should just create the website that you’ve been thinking about. Once you commit to joining a paid account you can buy a domain name on Shopify for about $13 a year.
Shopify allows you to pay monthly, yearly or biennially (2 year plan). If you are just starting out you may want to start paying month to month because then you can cancel at any time if you don’t like it. If you chose to pay annually you will receive a 10% discount and if you chose to pay biennially you will get a 20% on your plan.
I would only recommend a yearly plan if your finances allow it, you are migrating an existing website, or you have had past success with Shopify. Please note that if you chose the annually plan and pay in full, you cannot be reimbursed. However, if you are new to owning your own business or launching your first website than the monthly plan is your best bet, because things can change and it’s nice to know you aren’t locked into anything.
Here is a quick overview of the Shopify pricing plans:
Lite Plan (not a full website): $9 per month + 2.9% and 30¢ per online transaction + 2.7% and $0 per in person transaction
Basic Shopify Plan: $29 per month + 2.9% and 30¢ per online transaction + 2.7% and $0 per in person transaction
Shopify Plan: $79 per month + 2.6% and 30¢ per online transaction + 2.5% and $0 per in person transaction
Advanced Shopify Plan: $299 per month + 2.4% and 30¢ per online transaction + 2.4% and $0 per in person transaction
Shopify Plus Plan — pricing starts around $2000 per month with a ceiling of $40,000 a month + 1.6% and 30¢ per online transaction.
The Shopify Lite Plan
The Lite plan is the cheapest plan on the platform at just $9 a month. This plan is not really an ecommerce store per say but will allow you to sell products on Facebook, a blog, or existing website. The best part is that you will be able to accept credit card payments and add buy buttons to the sites mentioned above.
This plan also allows you to send messages via Facebook Messenger for customer support or just to let your customer know their product has been shipped. With Shopify Lite you can keep track of your inventory and for such a cheap cost you can see if the digital marketing space is something you want to pursue without burning a hole in your pocket.
The price and fees is $9 a month + 2.9% and $.30 per transaction online.
Is this Shopify pricing plan best for you?
Shopify Lite was designed to help people sell items once in a while. Because it’s made to add ecommerce functionality to existing blogs, websites, and social media pages it’s definitely the most affordable option but is not meant for scale.
This plan is ideal for individuals who occasionally sell products online while giving them the ability to accept credit cards at a fairly low fee. Shopify Lite can easily be installed on most web hosting platforms.
The Basic Shopify Plan (recommended to start)
The Basic Shopify Plan is the best bang for your buck when you first launch an online business. With its super friendly interface and thousands of themes to choose from, making the perfect website has gotten so much easier.
With the Basic Shopify Plan you can create discount codes for your customers, upload an unlimited amount of products, and also receive fraud analysis tools to make sure your orders are legitimate.
Some of the other benefits include a free SSL certificate which makes your website an https:// domain, 24/7 support, the ability to print shipping labels, unlimited file storage, and my personal favorite, abandon cart recovery.
This is my favorite feature because you can send a personalized email to anyone that goes to your website and adds something to their cart and doesn’t complete their order. You can send them an email with an additional 10% off coupon to help them return to your store and convert.
The price and fees is $29 a month + 2.9% and $.30 per transaction online. This is $20 more a month than the Lite plan but the additional benefits and physical store give you so much more flexibility to scale your business.
Is this Shopify pricing plan best for you?
This plan is ideal for anyone that wants to create their own personal website. Whether that is to start your own brand or to start a dropshipping business, Shopify has the solutions you need to start.
This plan is great because at just under $1 a day when you do the math, you can create a beautiful website and upgrade your plan as your business grows. This package is ideal for anyone starting out as well as any small to medium size business.
The Shopify Plan (recommended)
The Shopify plan is one of most popular options and for good reason too. Although the monthly price is a little more expensive than the Basic Shopify plan at $79, it offers so many other key benefits. The first benefit is the fee per transaction is lowered to 2.6% of the transaction and $.30 per sale.
In this plan you will still receive all of the same features as the basic plan with the ability to create unlimited products, discount codes, fraud analysis, and cart abandonment. You will also gain access to selling gift cards to your store (which are great, especially around the holidays), professional reports, and the ability to add up to 5 staff accounts/admins.
Is this Shopify pricing plan best for you?
This plan is great for a growing business and one that plans to scale quickly. If your website brings in more than $5,000 per month, this plan makes the most sense since the transaction fees drop and give you a way to add extra income by selling gift cards that people may forget to use. The Shopify fees also decrease on external payments such as PayPal from 2% on the basic plan to 1% on the Shopify plan.
The Advanced Shopify Plan
The Advanced Shopify plan is $299 a month +2.4% per online transaction and $.30. For external payments such as PayPal and Amazon Payments the Shopify fee is .5%. This plan offers all of the same benefits as the Basic and Shopify plan but include advanced report builder and third-party calculated shipping rates.
The Advanced Shopify pricing plan is great because of its never ending storage, you can upload as many videos and images as you would like to your website. You can still add as many products as you like and for better traffic results and engagement on your website, you can create custom videos. The abandoned cart recovery feature is still unlimited, the ability to sell gift cards and the ability to calculate shipping rates are all unlimited as well on this plan.
The Advanced Shopify plan allows you to have 15 admin users and the Shopify shipping discount rate is the best compared to the other 3 plans. The Shopify shipping discount feature allows you to offer a discounted rate on express shipping which you can compare between USPS, UPS, and DHL.
Is this Shopify pricing plan best for you?
The Advanced Shopify Plan is best for larger companies who do over $10,000 a month in sales. It’s ideal for any business that ships a lot of products because of the express shipping discount the plan offers. With the advanced report builder you can test and project future revenues and orders. Again for a large business you will be saving money because the Shopify fees decrease both for credit cards processed on Shopify and external payments.
The Shopify Plus Plan
The Shopify plus plan is the highest and best package they offer. This is usually for larger brands and requires a custom quote from the Shopify team. Depending on how many features you would like and storage you will need, this will determine how much you pay a month.
This is a highly customized plan so I won’t be talking too much about it, you will have to talk to Shopify to determine what type of support you need. One of the key perks is that you don’t have to pay for any transaction fees as well as all of the great features the other plans have.
Is this Shopify pricing plan best for you?
This plan is the perfect fit for huge companies or organizations that generate over $1,000,000 annually. This plan helps manage your orders and helps automate the process which is ideal for a large team.
Conclusion
Well this concludes my blog on the Shopify pricing plans and fees. Depending on the size of your business, revenue, and size of your team will determine on the plan you will need. If you are just starting out I highly recommend the Basic Shopify or better because the Lite plan in my opinion won’t help you utilize all of the features on Shopify, it takes more than a buy button to generate real revenue.
Feel free to leave a comment below on which plan you are using or thinking about using. If you are currently using Shopify post the link to your website below and I’ll let you know what you can add to improve your website and traffic. For anyone who hasn’t joined Shopify just yet, you can start your 14 day free trial today!
