Shopify pricing plans explained: Finding your true cost in 2025

So, you’re ready to start an online store. That’s fantastic. But before you get lost picking themes and designing logos, let’s talk about the one thing that can quietly make or break your new business: the actual cost.

Shopify is the go-to platform for millions of online sellers, and for good reason. It’s powerful, user-friendly, and can grow with you. But figuring out the Shopify pricing isn’t as simple as just looking at the monthly subscription fee. That number is just the starting line.

Once you factor in transaction fees, the cost of essential apps, and the often-overlooked expense of customer support as you grow, the total picture can look a lot different. This guide is here to walk you through all of it, so you can pick the right plan, budget smartly, and understand how your costs will change as your business takes off.

What is Shopify?

In simple terms, Shopify is an all-in-one platform that gives you everything you need to set up a shop and sell your products online. It’s the foundation of your e-commerce business. You get a website builder (with plenty of drag-and-drop features), a system for processing payments called Shopify Payments, tools to help with marketing, and a massive App Store to add pretty much any feature you can imagine.

The whole platform is built on a tiered pricing model. The idea is that you can start small and then move up to more powerful plans as your business grows, from a side-hustler selling on Instagram to a massive global brand.

A full breakdown of Shopify pricing plans

Alright, let’s get down to the details. The first cost you’ll run into is the monthly plan itself. Choosing the right one really depends on where your business is at today and where you see it going in the near future.

Core Shopify pricing plans at a glance

The three main plans you’ll likely be considering are Basic, Shopify, and Advanced. There are a couple of other specialty plans, Starter and Shopify Plus, which we’ll cover in a bit.

Here’s how the three core plans stack up against each other.

The Shopify Starter plan

• Price: $5/month.

• Who it’s for: This plan isn’t for building a full-fledged online store. It’s really for people who want to sell through social media, email, or messaging apps. It gives you simple, shareable product links that lead to a Shopify Checkout page. If you’re an influencer who wants to sell a few products to your followers or just want to test an idea without building a whole website, this is for you.

• The catch: You get what you pay for. Customization is next to none, and you don’t get a real storefront. Think of it as a launchpad, not a long-term home for a serious brand.

Shopify Plus: The enterprise-level plan

• Price: Starts at $2,300/month (on a 3-year term), so it’s a serious commitment.

• Who it’s for: This is Shopify’s enterprise-level plan. It’s built for high-volume businesses and large brands that need more power, control, and support. If you’re processing thousands of orders and have a large team, this is the territory you’ll be in.

• What you get: You unlock some seriously powerful features. This includes a fully customizable checkout, more API access for custom integrations, dedicated support, a wholesale channel for B2B sales, and up to nine "expansion" stores for selling in different countries or currencies. You also get advanced automation tools like Shopify Flow to streamline your workflows.

The hidden costs: Transaction fees and the app ecosystem

Okay, so you’ve picked a monthly plan. Unfortunately, your spending doesn’t stop there. To get the true cost of running your store, you have to look at the fees that come with every single sale and the tools you’ll inevitably need to run your business well.

Understanding transaction fees

Every time a customer clicks "buy," you’re going to pay a fee. These fees come in a couple of different forms, and it’s important to understand how they work.

• Shopify Payments vs. Third-Party Gateways:

  • Shopify Payments: This is Shopify’s own payment processor (it’s powered by Stripe). If you use it, Shopify waives their own transaction fee. You’ll only pay the credit card processing rate, which gets lower as you upgrade to a more expensive plan. Shopify is pretty clearly nudging you to use their own system, and for most businesses, it makes complete financial sense.

  • Third-Party Gateways: Let’s say you want to use a different payment provider, like PayPal or Authorize.net. You can, but Shopify will charge you an extra transaction fee on top of what that provider is already charging you. This fee is 2% on the Basic plan, 1% on the Shopify plan, and 0.6% on the Advanced plan. For most people, this makes using an external gateway a much more expensive route.

Budgeting for the Shopify App Store

Shopify is great right out of the box, but you unlock its real power through the App Store. Think of it like your smartphone; it’s the apps that make it truly useful. Functions like email marketing, customer loyalty programs, advanced product reviews, and especially customer support often come from third-party apps.

Many of these apps have their own monthly subscription fees, and they can add up faster than you’d think. It’s not uncommon for a growing store to need a handful of these apps to compete. It’s easy to see how this can stack up; a few essential apps, and suddenly you’re looking at an extra $50, $100, or even $200 a month on top of your plan.

This detailed video explains how to choose the right Shopify plan based on your business needs, covering features and pricing.

How your Shopify plan impacts customer support costs

Here’s a growing pain many new store owners don’t see coming. As your business grows and you upgrade your Shopify plan, your order volume will naturally increase. More orders mean more customers, which inevitably means more customer questions. It’s a great problem to have, but it comes with its own costs.

That simple contact form on your website won’t cut it for long. Soon you’re drowning in emails asking, "Where’s my order?" or "What’s your return policy?". This is where you hit a scaling problem. The traditional solution is to hire more support agents, but that gets expensive fast.

Many support apps you’ll find in the Shopify store also have pricing models that seem to punish you for growing. They often charge per agent or, even worse, per support ticket. This means your support costs can spiral unpredictably, rising right alongside your sales.

A smarter way to handle this growth is with AI. Instead of your support costs going up in a straight line with your ticket volume, an AI agent can handle the flood of common, repetitive questions for a predictable price. Think of all the time spent answering "Where’s my order?". An AI can handle those instantly, 24/7.

For stores on Shopify, this means using an AI tool that can plug directly into your backend. For example, an AI like eesel AI connects right to Shopify and your helpdesk to automate those simple queries. This frees up your human agents to deal with more complex issues that actually require a human touch, keeping your customers happy and your support costs sane. Plus, its pricing is based on interactions, so you won’t get hit with a surprise bill after a busy month, unlike tools that charge per agent or per resolution.

An illustration of how eesel AI integrates with Shopify to automate customer support queries and manage costs effectively.

Choosing the right Shopify pricing plan for your business

So, to wrap it all up, picking a Shopify pricing plan is about more than just that monthly sticker price. You have to look at the whole picture: the transaction rates (and the very strong push to use Shopify Payments), plus the money you’ll need to set aside for the apps that will help you grow.

My advice? Start with the plan that fits where you are right now, which for most new stores is the Basic plan. But keep an eye on the future. Know when it makes sense to upgrade, which is usually when the lower transaction fees on the Shopify or Advanced plans will save you more than the increase in the monthly subscription cost.

And as you map out that growth, don’t let customer support become a surprise expense that eats into your profits. By planning ahead and bringing in an AI agent, you can scale your support just as efficiently as you scale your sales. eesel AI offers a powerful, self-serve platform you can set up in minutes. You can even run a simulation on your past support tickets to see exactly how much time and money it could save you before you commit.

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