Shopify Pricing: How to Choose the Right Shopify Plan
Glory-Anna Oshafi
Financial management is an essential aspect of running any business. Embedded into this, is checking to see that your business expenses never overshadow the profit you’re making.
If you’re looking to launch your e-commerce business on Shopify or change your Shopify pricing plan, finding the most suitable one for your budget and business needs will help ensure you don’t run at a loss. This entails reviewing the pricing options available, assessing your business needs, and then considering the features in each plan that best suit your needs.
It’s like a mix-and-match puzzle, but this guide makes it easy. You’ll learn how to identify what you need at a glance and match your business with the right plan.
Ready for smoother business operations on a suitable payment plan? Keep reading!
Understanding Shopify’s Pricing Structure
Let’s take a quick look at the options available to you as a Shopify business owner. This will give you an idea of what the platform provides and at which price.
An Overview of Shopify Plans
Shopify has a wide range of plans to cater to businesses per their operational level. With the different tiers available, you can upscale or downsize your business however it suits your budget.
Here’s the list of Shopify plans for all businesses:
- Shopify Starter ($5/mo)
- Basic Shopify ($39/mo)
- Shopify ($105/mo)
- Advanced Shopify ($399/mo)
- Shopify Plus ($2000/mo)
Key Features and Limitations of Each Plan
Every Shopify plan comes with a list of Key Features. Some of these features are only available on specific plans, especially if they’re higher up the pricing tier. Take a look at the features per plan:
1. Shopify Starter — Designed for social selling ($5/mo)
Key Features
- A simple online store to host up to 25 products
- A mobile point of sale
- Linkpop for your link in bio
- Access to Shopify apps
- Shopify order management
Limitations
- No web hosting and custom domain
- 5GB of storage only
The Shopify Starter plan lets you create a basic storefront and share your products easily across your social media platforms so you can jump right into selling.
2. Shopify Basic — Great for Solo Entrepreneurs ($39/mo)
Key Features
- Fully customizable online store
- Unlimited products
- Collaborator accounts
- 24/7 support
- Multiple Sales channel
- Headless storefront
- Standard analytics
- 10 inventory locations
- Up to 77% shipping discount
- Card rates start at 2.9% + 30¢ USD online, 2.7% + 0¢ USD in person
Limitations
- No additional staff accounts
- Basic Shopify app customization
The Basic plan is the entry-level plan. It allows you to launch a fully functional e-commerce store, complete with core features for smoother operations.
3. Shopify — Perfect for Small Teams ($105/mo)
Key Features
- Everything in the “Basic” Plan, plus:
- 5 additional staff accounts
- Up to 88% shipping discount
- Card rates start at 2.6% + 30¢ USD online, 2.5% + 0¢ USD in person
Limitations
- No 3rd-Party Calculated Shipping rates
This is the “original” Shopify offer. It comes with a few extra features in addition to what you’ll find on the Basic plan. It’s great if you work with a small team as a growing business.
4. Shopify Advanced — A Must-Try for Scaling Businesses ($399/mo)
Key Features
- Everything in the “Shopify” Plan, plus:
- Enhanced 24/7 customer support
- 15 additional staff accounts
- Added global customization for an extra $59/mo per market
- Custom Reports and Analytics
- 10x improved checkout
- Card rates start at 2.4% + 30¢ USD online, 2.4% + 0¢ USD in person
Shopify Advanced shares the same features as the Shopify Basic and Shopify Original plans. However, you’ll find a few extra features attached.
5. Shopify Plus — Unbeatable Value for High-Growth Businesses (from $2000/mo)
Key Features
- Organization settings
- Specialized apps and channels
- Customizable checkout
- API resources
- Unlimited staff support
- Permissions
- Expansion and Development stores
- Shopify POS Pro
- 100 Customizable Themes
- Markets, Locations, Integrations
- Shopify Plus Academy
This plan caters to high-volume, enterprise-level brands. It provides several key features beyond the regular Shopify plans’ capabilities. This YouTube video by Shopify provides more details about the above features:
Breaking Down the Shopify Plans
Now that you’re familiar with the features you’ll get on each of the plans, let’s examine how they’ll benefit you and your business.
Shopify Starter: When Simplicity Meets Efficiency
On this plan, you can create product pages without a website. It’s ideal for businesses looking for a simple solution to help them sell on socials.
On Shopify Starter, add photos and descriptions through the Starter theme, then get a shareable link that contains your product information. With this at your fingertips, you can quickly sell your products on social media, via email, messengers, and other social communication platforms.
Don’t worry about the checkout process, Shopify handles it on their end. You’ll also get a Shopify admin page where you can manage orders and view sales reports all at $5/mo plus 5% transaction fees for non-Shopify Payments.
Basic Shopify: For New and Growing Businesses
Basic is the cheapest monthly website plan that Shopify offers. It handles the backend technicalities like Hosting and Security and also offers you a default domain name. It costs about $39/mo and charges 2% for external payment processing. Additional fees for Apps, Email Hosting, and a Custom Domain name also apply.
On this plan, you get a customizable website editor with about 20 themes you can choose from. It also allows you to share an unlimited number of products with 1,000 inventory locations. You can market your products better on this plan with 10,000 free emails monthly, customer segmentation, and abandoned cart recovery tools. You can also host a blog on this plan.
This is one of the best plans for newbies in the e-commerce industry who need an online store. But if you already have an established business with a small team, it may also be a good fit.
Shopify: The Standard Plan for Expanding Businesses
Shopify (the Original Plan) is similar to the Basic plan, however, you get better sales and customer reports and lower transaction fees. It’s an extensive solution that takes you deeper into your marketing and analytics efforts.
It costs about $105 monthly and 1% for external payment processing. As with the Basic plan, you’ll also need to pay for additional expenses. You can upgrade from Basic to this plan if your business grows to need additional staff accounts.
The features enable you to improve your sales by using the report tools to understand your customers better, and the marketing tools to run campaigns effectively.
Advanced Shopify: For Scaling Your Operations
Amazing news! Your business is expanding rapidly, now what?
Shopify’s Advanced plan is designed to help you scale your efforts and operations. If you envisage handling a lot of transactions, then you can start looking at the Advanced plan. It costs $399 monthly but not without reason.
With this plan, you can access better automation tools and customized reports, and you only need to pay 0.5% on external payment processing. It contains everything in the Shopify (Original) plan, plus 15 additional accounts.
Well-established brands will find this plan useful for their operations especially if you work with a variety of markets and want to explore features like currency conversion, website translation, regional domains, etc.
If you’re choosing this plan, ensure that you have a higher sales volume or average order value to adequately cover your subscription without running at a loss.
Shopify Plus: Enterprise Solutions for Large Businesses
This is an enterprise-level category that provides solutions at a more advanced level, different from the other Shopify plans. It focuses on catering to brands that function at an organizational scale. There are no fixed prices on this plan, but the prices start from $2000.
To use this plan for your enterprise (brand with multiple stores), you’ll need to contact a Shopify sales representative to create a custom figure.
On this plan, you get about 100 customizable themes, 9 expansion stores, an organization-level admin, a team to help with your store launch, automated workflows, unlimited staff accounts, and so many other cool features.
The top selling point of this feature is that you can run multiple stores or sub-brands under one roof. No need to create multiple accounts for each store.
How to Decide Which Shopify Plan Is Right for You
You now have a good idea of what to expect when you choose any of the Shopify plans, but how can you decide which one is the perfect choice?
These three steps will make it clearer:
Assessing Your Business Needs
The type of needs your business has determines which of the price tiers you should go for. You can ask yourself questions like:
- What features are essential for my business?
- Would I need to build customized apps or require app integrations?
- Do I only need inventory management and a shareable link?
- Will my business soon expand to a large enterprise with smaller brands attached?
By assessing the types of needs you have (or will have) and looking for which of the plans carry the features you need, you can identify the right plan for your business.
For instance, if you have a new business you only run on social platforms, you may not need a website with a custom domain. This means a Starter plan is a suitable choice. But if the business quickly expands to require more checkouts in a day, you may upgrade to the Shopify original plan.
Calculating the Costs: Subscriptions, Transactions, and Additional Fees
Shopify Plans are not free. Each plan comes with a subscription fee, transaction fee, and additional expenses that rack up at the end of the month. Whether you’re paying a yearly sum at once or plan to split payments monthly, calculate the potential amount you’ll pay.
- Does the cost of the plan match your budget?
- Is it higher, lower, or around the same range?
- Will it affect your profit margin?
- If you choose a plan that matches your budget, will you need to upgrade it soon because you need more features?
Consider all the above questions and use your answer to guide your choice. Remember, it’s important to anticipate future growth as you choose. Don’t choose a low-priced plan when you’ll need a plan with higher features soon.
Planning for Growth: When to Upgrade Your Plan
Picture a 5-year-old child in baby clothes. Ridiculous, isn’t it?
That’s what it looks like when brands outgrow their plan and continue to struggle to operate with those plans. As your brand grows you must be forward-thinking. Plan toward scaling as it grows.
How would you know you’re getting ready for an upgrade?
Certain signs consistently pop up like:
- Performance bottlenecks
- Absent essential features
- Running out of storage or inventory limits
- Significant and consistent sales increase
- Increased product ranges, etc
If you don’t upgrade your plan, many of the above signs can reduce your business efficiency, causing multiple business downtimes, customer churn, customer dissatisfaction, etc.
Juphy AI: Your Partner in Maximizing Shopify’s Potential
With any plan you eventually choose, you must find ways to maximize your operational expenses so that you can get maximum value out of your money. One such way is by installing Juphy AI, which has the ‘Built for Shopify’ badge.
How Juphy AI Complements Your Shopify Plan
Selecting your Shopify plan is just the beginning. What really transforms your online store is integrating it with Juphy AI. What sets Juphy AI apart isn’t just its technology but how it changes the game for you and your customers. With ChatGPT-4 at its core, Juphy AI does more than just automate responses—it understands and interacts in a way that feels more human.
Juphy AI is a free-to-install chatbot tool that works like a round-the-clock sales representative. Juphy AI is always on standby to attend to website visitors and customers, suggest products, guide and educate them about items, answer their questions, and even provide details about shipping and returns.
Integrating Juphy AI on your Shopify store is a quick way to boost sales and 10x your revenue and conversions, helping you make back your operational costs in no time – all without having to switch between dashboards. Ready to scale your earnings up to 10x? Set up Juphy AI for free in one click.
Conclusion
Choosing the right plan on Shopify largely depends on your business needs and budget. There are 5 plans available to cater to your business’s current level. To choose, select one that matches your needs and falls within the range of your budget.
The lowest plan on the list is the Starter plan at $5/mo, while the Basic plan is the most popular at $39/mo. If you’re scaling to an enterprise-level business, Shopify Plus may be what you need.
Juphy AI syncs seamlessly with any of the Shopify plans and helps you boost your revenue so that you can make your operational fees back in a short time.
Key Takeaways
- Shopify plans vary and cater to businesses at every level. They include Starter ($5/mo), Basic ($39/mo), Shopify ($105/mo), Advanced ($399/mo), and Plus (custom pricing).
- Every plan has specific features and some limitations. The higher up the tier you go, the more features you have access to, and the larger the operational needs the plans support.
- Choose your plans carefully by assessing how the plan’s key features support your business needs and goals.
- Consider the costs involved like subscription fees, transaction fees, and additional expenses before committing to a plan.
- Plan for growth by upgrading your plan before you outgrow its limitations. Watch out for the signs that indicate this.
- Work with Juphy AI to boost your sales and revenue 10x, increase your business profits, and maximize operational expenses.