Costs · Margins · The business of ecommerce
Every published price on one page: plans, domain, theme, apps and processing — assembled into three realistic budgets, from a $40-a-month lean start to a serious launch.
Ask “how much does a Shopify store cost” and you get two kinds of answers: Shopify’s own pricing page, which lists plans and nothing else, and affiliate blogs, which pad the number until their recommended tools fit in. This is the third kind: every line item, its current published price, and three budgets assembled from them.
| Line item | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Shopify Basic | $29/mo annual · $39/mo monthly | The plan most new stores start on |
| Shopify Grow | $79/mo annual · $105/mo monthly | Lower processing rates, more staff accounts |
| Shopify Advanced | $299/mo annual · $399/mo monthly | For stores that outgrow Grow |
| Intro promo | $1/mo for first 3 months | Current new-signup offer |
| Domain (.com) | ~$10.44/yr | At-cost registrar price; brand registrars charge $15–22 |
| Theme, free | $0 | Shopify’s own themes (Dawn, Horizon and others) |
| Theme, paid | $100–$500 one-time | Official Theme Store range; most popular themes $150–$400 |
| Apps | $0–$100+/mo | The wildcard — see below |
Lean start — about $360/year. Basic on annual billing, a free theme, an at-cost domain, zero apps. This is a real store that takes real orders. Its cost is $29 × 12 + $10.44 ≈ $359 a year. What you give up: built-in merchandising features, so you either live without them or add apps later.
Standard launch — about $900–$1,500 first year. Basic annual + a mid-range paid theme (~$300 one-time) + a small app stack ($20–60/month once you’re past the free tiers). The theme is the only one-time item in the whole budget, which changes how you should think about it: a $300 theme amortized over three years costs $8.30 a month — less than a single utility app.
Serious launch — $2,500+ first year. Grow annual ($948/year) + a premium theme + apps + email tooling beyond free tiers. At this level the plan upgrade usually pays for itself through lower processing rates alone once revenue clears a few thousand dollars a month — the crossover point depends on your volume, so run it against the current rates.
The plan is never the problem — the app stack is. Plans are flat and public; apps compound quietly. A $12.99 review app, a $19 bundle app, a $29 email tier and a $15 popup tool is $76 a month, or $912 a year — three times the cost of the paid theme that might have replaced two of them. Before adding an app, check whether a theme with that feature built in makes it redundant: theme features are one-time money, app features are forever money. (Disclosure of method, not advice: when we compare themes’ built-in features we use the official Theme Store listings — for example, the feature lists on UTD’s themes or any other vendor’s page state exactly what ships without apps.)
A working store costs $29 a month. Everything above that is a choice, and each choice has a visible price tag on a public page. The expensive stores are not the ones that picked paid tools — they are the ones that never listed their line items.
Basic plan billed annually ($29/month), a free theme, and a ~$11/year domain from an at-cost registrar. That is roughly $360 a year before payment processing fees, and it is a fully functional store.
A paid theme is a one-time purchase (typically $150–$400 in the official Theme Store) against a recurring gap in built-in features that free themes often fill with monthly apps. If a theme replaces even two $15/month apps, it pays for itself within a year — run that math for your own stack.
Processing rates depend on your plan and country and drop as you move up plans; Shopify lists the current rates per plan on its pricing page. Third-party payment gateways incur an additional Shopify fee on lower plans.
At the time of writing Shopify runs a $1/month promotion for the first 3 months on standard plans for new sign-ups, in addition to a short free trial.