Should you build your online store on Shopify? Usually, yes

Bizer · 2026-10-01

On 1 October 2026, Shopify's pricing page listed its Basic plan at $39 a month billed monthly, or $29 a month billed yearly, with online card payments through Shopify Payments at 2.9 percent plus 30 cents. Those are the two numbers most small stores will pay. Plan names and prices have changed since this page first ran, and they will change again, so check Shopify's own pricing page before you decide.

The short answer: if you sell physical products and you ship them, Shopify is the safe default. It is not the cheapest option and it is not always the right one.

What Shopify costs you, month by month

As listed on 1 October 2026, monthly billing first and yearly billing second:

Basic: $39, or $29 a month billed yearly. Online cards 2.9 percent plus 30 cents.
Grow: $105, or $79 a month billed yearly. Online cards 2.7 percent plus 30 cents.
Advanced: $399, or $299 a month billed yearly. Online cards 2.5 percent plus 30 cents.
Plus: from $2,300 a month, for large merchants.

Work out a real month. A store on Basic doing $5,000 in sales across 100 orders pays $145 in percentage fees, $30 in per-order fees and the $39 plan. That is $214, or a little over 4 percent of sales, before apps.

Apps are where the bill grows. Reviews, subscriptions, wholesale pricing, better shipping rules: many of these are separate monthly subscriptions from other companies. Add up every app's price before you install it, and uninstall the ones you stop using.

The fee that catches people out

If you use a payment processor other than Shopify Payments, Shopify charges its own transaction fee on top of that processor's: 2 percent on Basic, 1 percent on Grow and 0.6 percent on Advanced, per the same pricing page. On the $5,000 month above, that is another $100 for the privilege of using someone else's processor.

So treat Shopify Payments as part of the package. If you have a strong reason to use another processor, such as an existing merchant account with a better rate, run the arithmetic first. The Shopify help center explains how the third-party fee is charged.

When Shopify is the right call

You sell products that go in a box, and you expect to keep adding them.
You do not want to think about hosting, security updates or a broken plugin at 9 at night.
You want your in-person sales and online sales in one inventory count.
You may want to sell on other channels later and would like that to be a setting, not a project.

The real thing you are buying is not features. It is not being the person responsible when something breaks.

When it is the wrong call

You sell services. A plumber, a tutor or a salon needs booking or quotes, not a cart. Shopify can be bent into that shape, and you will fight it the whole way.

You sell five things a few times a month. A payment link from your card processor, or a simple store from the company that already runs your point of sale, will do the job without a monthly plan.

You already have a WordPress site that gets traffic. WooCommerce adds a store to the site you have, and you keep the search ranking you have built. You take on the maintenance in exchange.

You want to own everything. On Shopify you rent. You can export your products, customers and orders, but your theme and your app setup do not move with you. For most small stores that is a fair trade. Know you made it.

What does it cost you to leave?

Less than you fear and more than nothing. Product and customer data export as spreadsheets. Your URLs will change on another platform, so plan redirects or you lose search traffic you earned. The realistic cost of switching is a few weeks of someone's attention, which is why it is worth choosing deliberately the first time.

What is uncertain

Shopify's pricing page now says every plan can sell "in AI chats", alongside online and in person. How much small stores will actually sell through AI assistants is not clear as of October 2026, and we would not pay for a higher plan on that promise alone.

The other unknown is your own volume. The plan tiers make sense at different sales levels, and the right one depends on numbers you will only have after a few months. Start on Basic, billed monthly. Move to yearly billing once you know you are staying, and move up a plan only when the lower card rate saves more than the higher fee costs.

Whichever platform you choose, the checkout matters more than the platform. What separates a store that sells covers that part.