Shopify Pricing and Plans 2023: Which Plan Should I Pick?

Among online retail options for small business, Shopify is a contender for best small-business e-commerce platform. What was once a robust option for selling products online has blossomed into a solution that includes web hosting and in-store point-of-sale (POS) systems.

You’re likely to find a Shopify plan that fits your business needs, but you’ll want to compare each plan’s features and pricing to determine which works best for you. Here’s a rundown of available plans, features and pricing.

Shopify is an e-commerce-focused platform that helps online businesses sell their products. Businesses can create e-commerce websites on Shopify that offer seamless buying portals for customers, and the platform also supports selling through other marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay and Instagram.

Shopify has also branched out into brick-and-mortar businesses, offering mobile card readers, its own POS software and inventory management. What started as a simplified way to sell online has now become a full-scale merchant solution for small businesses and individual entrepreneurs.

Shopify's plans include four non-enterprise options and one enterprise-level tier. Each plan has a set of features that cater to different types and sizes of businesses and comes with its own pricing structure.

Plan comparison

Shopify Starter

Shopify Starter is a great option for businesses that are just getting started with selling online and costs $5 a month, with transactions starting at 5%. The Shopify Starter plan includes basic features, including:

• Accepting credit cards in person and online.

• Adding purchase links on existing websites.

• Managing inventory.

• Accepting gift cards.

• Unlimited product pages.

• Contact page.

• Shopping cart for multiple purchases.

While this plan doesn’t provide you with an online store, you can add purchase links to your existing website to make it easy for customers to checkout on desktops and mobile browsers. Popular website hosts that work well with Shopify include Squarespace, Weebly, Wix and Wordpress. You’ll also have access to simple features, like managing online orders, inventory and customer profiles. As Shopify’s cheapest plan, it is best for small businesses that are looking for minimal options and an easy setup to sell online.

Basic Plan

Basic Shopify is designed to help burgeoning small businesses that need to do more than just sell online but might not need the full slate of features. This plan costs $29 per month and includes:

• A customizable online store.

• Unlimited product listings.

• Up to 4 inventory locations.

• 2 staff logins.

• Customer segmentation to filter by feature.

• Marketing automation.

• Alternative sales channel support outside of the Shopify ecosystem.

• Shipping discounts and shipping label printing.

• Support for international market management, including currency conversation and translation.

With this plan, online purchases are 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction, and in-person purchases are 2.7% fee per transaction.

» MORE: What is a POS?

Shopify Plan

The middle-tiered Shopify Plan is geared toward medium-sized businesses with a more robust set of e-commerce needs. At $79 per month, this plan incorporates the features from the lower-priced subscriptions along with additional benefits. These include:

• Up to 5 inventory locations.

• 5 staff accounts.

• Standard reporting options.

• A shipping discount up to 88%.

• UPSP Priority Mail Cubic pricing.

These features can boost businesses that are growing and need more insight into their sales, expansion for more locations and shipping support. Online transactions have a 2.6% plus 30 cents processing fee, and in-person transactions come with a 2.5% processing fee.

Advanced Plan

At $299 per month, Shopify’s Advanced plan builds on the lower-tiered plans to offer the most features for larger businesses that don’t consider themselves at the enterprise level — those that need advanced insight into sales, are handling a lot of shipping, have a larger employee base and need full assistance for international sales. In addition to what the previous tiers offer, this plan includes:

• 15 employee logins.

• Up to 8 inventory locations.

• Advanced sales and performance reports.

• Third-party shipping calculations that show customers what they’ll pay in real-time.

• Automations for workflows and tasks.

• Tax estimates and custom market pricing for international sales.

The Advanced Shopify plan charges 2.4% plus 30 cents for online transactions and 2.4% for in-person purchases.

Shopify Plus Plan

Finally, if you’re a high-volume multichannel seller, you might want to opt for Shopify Plus. This plan is built for enterprise businesses and offers several features for high-volume businesses, including:

• Additional permissions to further restrict what employees can and can’t access.

• International payment processing in multiple currencies and languages.

• 3D modeling of online store products.

• Automated workflows to simplify processes.

• Scheduling for sales.

Shopify also advertises that customers who use this plan can work with Shopify Plus Certified Apps and Partners to get the most out of their system. Pricing for this plan — from the monthly subscription fee to transaction fees — is quote-based, depending on your sales volume.

Shopify offers a free 14-day trial for new customers with their Starter, Basic, Shopify and Advanced plans. A trial is currently unavailable for Shopify Plus.

The trial lets you build a store to try out different features and determine how well the platform will work for your business. But you can’t start selling until you sign up for a paid plan. And the trial doesn’t automatically sign you up after 14 days: if you don’t choose a plan before the trial ends, your store is paused and you aren’t charged anything until you sign up for a paid plan at a later date.

A version of this article was first published on Fundera, a subsidiary of NerdWallet.