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.
Shopify sells every plan at two prices, and the gap is remarkably consistent:
| Plan | Monthly billing ×12 | Annual billing ×12 | You save | Discount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $468 | $348 | $120 | 25.6% |
| Grow | $1,260 | $948 | $312 | 24.8% |
| Advanced | $4,788 | $3,588 | $1,200 | 25.1% |
A quarter off, at every tier, for a single decision made once a year. There is no feature difference, no support difference, nothing: the same product at two prices depending on how you pay.
Partly inertia: stores start on monthly during the trial-and-promo phase and never revisit it. Partly cash flow: $348 once feels heavier than $39 twelve times, even though it is smaller. And partly a rational reason: optionality. A store that might not exist in March should not prepay through December. The monthly premium is effectively an insurance policy against your own shutdown, priced at ~25% of the subscription.
The clean rule: the day you stop thinking of the store as an experiment is the day to flip the billing toggle. For a Grow-plan store, procrastinating on that toggle costs $26 a month, a full app subscription’s worth of nothing.
About a quarter cheaper at every tier: Basic $29/mo annual vs $39/mo monthly, Grow $79 vs $105, Advanced $299 vs $399 (checked July 15, 2026).
While the store itself is an experiment. If there is a real chance you close within months, monthly billing is insurance priced at ~25% of the subscription: expensive, but cheaper than a prepaid year you don't use.