Shopify: Overview of the Fees for the Most Popular Store System for Online Merchants

How high can the costs for your Shopify store system be? That depends on whether you can implement what you need for your online presence in the standard version. And, of course, whether the store will pay for itself in the long run. A very cheap store system that can’t cater for what it needs to sell your products or services online can turn out to be pretty expensive. In the case of Shopify, it’s not enough to just look at the monthly license cost. There are also transaction fees, which vary depending on the type of Shopify subscription. In this post, we’ll take a closer look at the costs for the different Shopify subscription plans.

In 2007, Shopify’s fee structure took its current form: The company replaced a high sales commission with a monthly payment model, and transaction costs were greatly reduced. This made Shopify much more attractive for a large portion of online merchants and contributed to its great success. And true to the motto “Never change a winning team”, nothing has changed in the basic features of Shopify’s fee structure after that.

It should be noted that Shopify only exists as a cloud solution. Therefore, when comparing it with other providers, keep in mind that costs for servers, hosting, and all services related to this are included in the fees. The advantages of cloud hosting include a comparatively short time from setup to go live and easy scalability due to high server performance. In addition, you do not have to worry about the technical aspects of hosting.

The costs for Shopify are different depending on the plan. The three main plans that allow you to create an online store are Shopify Basic, Shopify (regular) and Shopify Advanced. There is also the enterprise plan Shopify Plus for very large projects, as well as Shopify Lite, a solution for implementing buy buttons and using point of sale (POS) payment systems. The price for Shopify Plus starts at around $2000 per month and is negotiated in detail with each company depending on their project needs and size.

Shopify prices also include the costs for extensions, apps and plugins. An example of a paid plugin is magnalister. You can use it to turn your store into a full-fledged e-commerce platform. This means that you can use magnalister to sell directly on online marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, OTTO Market, Cdiscount and many more.

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Table of Contents

The Shopify pricing model: A detailed overview of Shopify fees

Which of the Shopify plans fits your business?

Other costs in Shopify: Apps, templates, plugins or IT related

Multi-channel sales with magnalister for Shopify

A conclusion concerning the Shopify fees

The Shopify pricing model: A detailed overview of Shopify fees

The three primary subscription options are Basic, Shopify and Advanced. There is also the Shopify Plus plan -the enterprise version-and Shopify Lite. The latter is not comparable to the others, as you cannot create an online store with it. Therefore, we won’t go into more detail about it in this post. Shopify Lite currently (as of October 2022) costs $5 per month.

Shopify has many payment service providers “on board” and groups them together under the name Shopify Payments. When using “Shopify Payments” providers, there are no flat, additional transaction fees respectively “Shopify Payments fees”. However, Shopify passes on the costs of the respective payment providers to online merchants in varying amounts, even with Shopify Payments – depending on the type of subscription.

In the Basic subscription, the percentage charges are about 0.3% higher than in the Shopify subscription. And in the Shopify subscription, the percentage charges are about 0.2% higher than in the Advanced subscription. The fact that they are percentage charges means that your total charges will depend on your sales volume. You can see the Shopify fees (as of October 2022) in detail in the table below. In this example we have used the payment methods available across Europe.

The below table helps to compare Shopify Plans fees depending on payment provider and subscription type in Europe:

We would like to illustrate a little more clearly what the cost differences mean in concrete terms. From about $15,000 in sales per month, the cost of the basic price for the Shopify Basic plan, plus the percentage levies, is likely to be higher than the cost in the Shopify subscription. This is because the percentages you give up for the transactions then roughly exceed the $50 difference that lies between the basic fee for Basic and Shopify. And from about $100,000 in sales, the cost of the basic price in the Shopify subscription, plus the percentage charges, is likely to be higher than the cost in the Advanced subscription. Then the percentage charges for the transactions roughly exceed the difference between the basic fee for Shopify (regular) and Shopify Advanced.

Simply put, it’s worth it from a purely financial standpoint:

• Basic up to a monthly turnover of about 15,000 USD
• Shopify (regular) up to a turnover of about 100,000 USD per month
• From then on, Advanced is worthwhile

Of course, this only refers to the pricing as such. Since different features become available with each of the different plans, a change for other reasons can also be worthwhile. We will go into this further below.

In addition, the Shopify monthly cost can vary depending on how many customers use which payment method. And for providers that don’t offer Shopify Payments, the difference is even greater. Then the transaction fee is added to the Shopify fees of the providers: +2% for Basic, +1% for Shopify, +0.5% for Advanced and +0.15% for the Shopify Plus plan.

All this is summarized again in the overview table:

All das finden Sie noch einmal zusammengefasst wieder in der Übersichts-Tabelle:

Which of the Shopify plans fits your business?

In the previous section, we focused exclusively on the actual Shopify fees. But there may be other reasons why a more expensive plan may be worth your while.

These include but are not limited to:

• More employee accounts (admins or other agents)
• More inventory locations
• More detailed reporting
• The need for a breakdown of the actual shipping costs charged during checkout
• Selling in multiple countries

With the Advanced plan you have up to 15 employee accounts and up to 8 inventory locations, whereas the Basic plan only features 2 employee accounts. With the Basic subscription you also get only a basic form of reports. With the Shopify (regular) subscription you get standard reports and with the Advanced subscription you get advanced reports. So the question you should be asking is how much do you want to base your monitoring on Shopify itself. There is the option of using alternative tools. However, only with the Advanced subscription you can see actually charged shipping costs – also from third-party providers.

In addition, more advanced automations only become available in the Advanced plan. This also allows you to automate various tasks that you would normally have to perform manually. With the help of workflows, for example, rules can be created with which certain actions follow certain events (triggers). An example would be to organize customers based on order value or to assign a “tag”, for example a customer group, when a certain order value is reached. You could also automatically email a newsletter subscriber a 10% voucher for their next purchase when their order is over $200.

Shopify Advanced also allows you to inform customers about customs fees and import taxes before they checkout – if you sell internationally, this could be a relevant feature for you. For that purpose, the Advanced subscription also allows you to set different prices for products and their variations specifically for each market.

Differences in the various Shopify plans compared

Other costs in Shopify: Apps, templates, plugins or IT related

In addition to the costs described so far, Shopify charges certain fees that you should keep in mind. These may include the ones incurred for using templates. There are many free templates in Shopify. But if your store needs to meet certain requirements in terms of design, it may be worth investing in a paid, more flexible template. Perhaps there is a need to attract more customers, scale the store through optimization, or make shipping smoother. Apps can help with all of the above – sometimes for free, but often for a fee. For Shopify, there are apps in an incomparably large number.

In some cases, it may also be advisable to involve developers or designers in your project. Before you spend a lot of time searching for solutions to certain technical or design problems in vain, this can be a more effective option. Nevertheless, you should calculate the price for this support, for example in the form of a Shopify agency, before committing to anything.

Multi-channel sales with magnalister for Shopify

Our multichannel plugin magnalister is very easy to activate in Shopify (and many other store systems). So if you want to increase your reach by adding multiple online marketplaces to your store, it will certainly be helpful. Both sales and management can then be orchestrated centrally from your Shopware backend.

In other words, you can use magnalister to bundle the sale of products and the management of all subsequent processes on multiple online marketplaces in one place – your shopware backend. Retailers who do not yet use the magnalister interface can test the plugin fully and free of charge for 30 days and then continue to use it for a small pricing. You can integrate the following marketplaces into your store system:

• Amazon
• eBay (worldwide)
• Etsy
• METRO marketplace
• Kaufland
• Hood.com
• Check24
• Ricardo
• Idealo
• Cdiscount

In addition, you can use magnalister to tap into international Amazon marketplaces. The following marketplaces are already available for magnalister:

• Amazon Netherlands
• Amazon UK
• Amazon USA
• Amazon Canada
• Amazon Austria
• Amazon Italy
• Amazon France
• Amazon Spain
• Amazon Australia
• Amazon Singapore
• Amazon Poland
• Amazon Sweden

So magnalister will be worth your while if you want your business to grow and have an interest in selling internationally.

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A conclusion concerning the Shopify fees

Shopify can be used to meet many different business requirements. Very small and small businesses can get started quickly thanks to the Shopify Cloud and the low entry-level rate. As we have seen in this article, the store system becomes more expensive with increasing turnover. From about $100,000 monthly turnover, the advanced version is worthwhile. In terms of growth, it’s beneficial that Shopify’s servers are designed for scalability, which means you don’t have to worry about your site having down time during peak traffic. For very large projects, it is best to consult Shopify – in this case, the Shopify Plus plan might be the suitable solution.

Furthermore, the Advanced subscription is especially worthwhile if you want to sell internationally and when an entire team needs access to the backend. Also, if you operate many different inventory locations, want to automate your store and benefit from advanced reports, the $299 per month are worth it.

It is important to account for the potential costs of external support for design or technical issues and the prices of Shopify apps as well as other extensions when picking the suitable plan for you. The number of Shopify apps is growing every day. These naturally increase the possibilities with the popular cloud store system. magnalister is one of the proven solutions for multichannel sales in that regard. It allows you to increase your reach in an efficient and simple way – by tapping into the most significant online platforms.

The most important core features of magnalister at a glance:

• Product upload: Upload products to marketplaces
• Price synchronization: Prices are matched fully automatically or individually (per marketplace)
• Inventory synchronization: Always up-to-date stock levels between store and marketplaces
• Automatic order import: Import and manage marketplace orders
• Attribute matching: Match product variations and features with marketplace attributes
• Order status matching: Automatically match order status (e.g. “shipped” or “canceled”) with marketplaces
• Interface customization: Customize the plugin via so-called hook points as you desire
• Invoice upload: Upload your own invoices or invoices generated by magnalister to marketplaces

Test magnalister in a 30 day free trial. Beyond Shopify, the plugin can be used with Shopware, Magento (Adobe Commerce and Magento 1), WooCommerce, Gambio, xt:Commerce and many other store systems.

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We hope with this article we were able to give you an insight into Shopify fees. Should you want to calculate the expected costs in your specific use case, Shopify cost calculators are an easy way to find estimates online. We wish you the best of luck!