Shopify review 2026: real costs, card fees and what you can take with you

What Shopify is and who it’s for

Shopify is a hosted ecommerce platform. You pay a monthly fee, and Shopify runs the store, the checkout, the hosting and the security updates for you. The company, Shopify Inc., was founded in 2006 and is based in Ottawa, Canada.

Everything in Shopify is built around selling. Products, inventory, checkout, payments and in-person sales come first. Pages and a blog are included, but they are supporting players.

It is also one of the biggest platforms on the web. W3Techs data from October 2026 shows Shopify running 5.4% of all websites and holding 7.8% of the market among sites that use a known content management system.

Our verdict: if your website is mainly a store, Shopify is the safe default. If your site is mainly pages, articles or a portfolio with a handful of products, you will pay for store tools you do not use, and there is no free plan to fall back on.

Plans and what they really cost

Shopify has no free plan. According to the Shopify pricing page, new stores get 3 days free, then pay $1 a month for 3 months. After that you move to a regular plan.

The card rates are Shopify Payments rates for US stores. In-person rates are lower: 2.6%, 2.5%, 2.4% and 2.3%, each plus 10¢, on Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus.

The plans also differ in who can log in. Basic has no staff accounts, so only the owner can use the admin. Grow includes 5 staff accounts, Advanced 15 and Plus unlimited. Basic, Grow and Advanced allow 10 inventory locations; Plus allows 200.

Two naming notes. Grow is the plan Shopify used to call “Shopify.” And Starter, a cheaper plan for selling through product links and social media, is closed to new stores. Shopify’s help center says you cannot switch back to Starter once you leave it.

The third-party gateway fee

A payment gateway is the service that moves money from your customer’s card to your bank. Shopify Payments is Shopify’s own gateway, and the pricing page lists the extra Shopify fee only for third-party providers. For most US stores, that makes Shopify Payments the cheaper path. Our glossary explains transaction fees in more detail.

A 3-year cost example

Here is a small US store on Basic, billed yearly. It sells $3,000 a month online ($36,000 a year) at an average order of $50, which is 720 orders a year. It uses Shopify Payments, a .com domain bought at an outside domain registrar, and one Google Workspace email inbox.

Notice that the card fees cost more than the plan. That is normal for any online store, but it is the part a “$29 a month” headline leaves out. The example also ignores the $1-a-month trial months.

Three things can push this number up:

• Paying monthly. Basic at $39 billed monthly comes to $1,404 over 3 years, which is $360 more than paying yearly.
• A third-party gateway. On Basic, Shopify’s 2% fee on $36,000 is $720 a year, or $2,160 over 3 years, before the outside provider’s own fees.
• Apps. Many Shopify App Store apps charge a monthly subscription. Shopify does not publish a typical spend, so we left apps out of the total. Budget for them anyway.

Is Grow worth it for the lower card rate? Grow costs $50 a month more than Basic on yearly billing, or $600 a year. Its online rate is 0.2 percentage points lower, so the rate alone only covers the difference above $300,000 a year in online sales. Most small stores that upgrade do it for the staff accounts, not the rate.

Domain prices may rise a little too. Verisign’s wholesale .com fee goes from $10.26 to $10.97 a year on November 1, 2026, and registrars usually pass that on. To try your own numbers, use our website cost calculator.

What you can build

Design and themes

Every store starts from a theme in the Shopify Theme Store, which has free and paid themes. Theme code can be edited on paid plans. That code is Liquid (Shopify’s own template language) plus HTML, CSS and JavaScript, so a developer can change almost anything about the look.

Pages and blog

Shopify includes a blog and standard pages. They cover what most stores need: an about page, shipping and return policies, and a blog for news, guides or recipes. If publishing content is the core of your business, a content-first platform will feel roomier.

The store

This is where Shopify is strongest. You can sell online and in person from one system, add staff accounts on Grow and up, track stock across inventory locations, and use the built-in international commerce tools. For anything missing, the Shopify App Store has thousands of apps.

SEO

Products have their own search fields (the title and description Google may show), and those fields are included when you export products. Shopify also creates a sitemap for you and has URL redirects in the admin, which helps when you move an existing site onto Shopify.

AI features

Sidekick is Shopify’s AI assistant, and it comes with your plan. Shopify says “features and usage limits vary by plan.” It can help with store design, photo editing, product copy, domain setup, marketing, discounts, email campaigns, inventory alerts and reports.

Shopify’s changelog shows steady updates: a fullscreen mode in December 2025, payments and web-performance data in January 2026, and the ability to create customers and companies in February 2026. Shopify Magic, the AI content and image tools, is now marketed together with Sidekick.

What happens when you leave

The image detail is the one that catches people. The Shopify help center article on exporting products says the CSV holds image URLs, not the images. Those URLs stop working if the store closes, so save your images before you cancel.

If you think you might leave one day, set yourself up now:

1. Register your domain at an outside registrar and connect it to Shopify. Moving it later is then a DNS change, not a transfer.
2. Export products, customers and orders on a regular schedule, and keep a folder of original product photos.
3. Keep a list of your product and page URLs so the next platform can redirect them.

Our step-by-step guide to leaving your website builder covers the full move.

Gotchas

• Outside payment providers cost extra. A third-party gateway adds a 0.2% to 2% Shopify fee on top of the provider’s fees (Shopify pricing page).
• Basic is a one-person plan. It has no staff accounts (Shopify pricing page).
• Product exports leave images behind. The CSV only lists image URLs, and they die when the store closes (Shopify help center).
• Starter is gone for new stores. It is closed to new sign-ups, and existing stores cannot switch back to it (Shopify help center).
• Apps add monthly costs. Many apps are subscriptions on top of your plan. Shopify does not publish a typical total, so add them up before you commit.
• No free plan. After the trial you are on a paid plan from $29 a month billed yearly (Shopify pricing page).

Who should pick Shopify, and who should not

Pick Shopify if:

• Your website is mainly an online store, and sales are how you measure it.
• You sell online and in person and want one system for both.
• You expect to grow and will want apps, staff accounts and integrations later.

Look elsewhere if:

• Your site is mostly content or a brochure for a service business with no products.
• Your budget is very small. There is no free plan, and the cheapest plan open to new stores is $29 a month billed yearly.
• You must use a specific outside payment gateway. The extra 0.2% to 2% fee adds up fast.

Alternatives worth a look

• Squarespace vs Shopify: a better fit if design and content matter as much as the store.
• Wix vs Shopify: for small catalogs where an all-round builder may be enough.
• Best website builders for online stores: our full shortlist for selling online.
• Self-hosted WordPress: the option with the most ownership. We build on WordPress every week, and it scores 10 out of 10 for leaving, but you run the hosting and updates.

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