Costs · Margins · The business of ecommerce
Same platform, same features, two prices. The arithmetic of Shopify's billing modes, and the one honest reason to keep paying monthly.
We counted every theme listed free in the official Theme Store — all 24, by name — and traced where the free tier ends and the app bills begin.
Four plans, two billing modes, a third-party payment surcharge that quietly quadruples between tiers — the full price sheet, read line by line from Shopify's own page.
We pulled the published plan prices of ten of the most-installed Shopify apps. A modest four-app stack runs about $88 a month — more per year than three mid-range paid themes.
Registrars advertise year one and earn on year two. A comparison of what a .com actually costs across four popular registrars over five years.
A month-by-month model of a first-year store built from published benchmarks: revenue ramp, fixed costs, and where the break-even month lands.
Shipping rates, ad costs, processing fees and two quieter figures that will decide Q4 margins.