Shopify Fees and All of Its Expenses You Need to Know (2022)

Shopify is an extremely popular eCommerce platform that helps merchants set up and run an online store quickly. However, there is always a question when brands and businesses want to build their store: How much do Shopify fees cost to run an online store? 

As an owner, you should know everything about the costs and fees to run your business more effectively. Fortunately, we will cover as much as possible so that you won’t have to face any difficulties along the way.

Now then, let’s continue and find out more about these Shopify fees to run your eCommerce business!

What are Shopify Fees?

Shopify is also known as software as a service. In other words, you do not get to own a copy of the software but to pay a monthly subscription fee to use it. Additionally, Shopify offers pricing plans so that online merchants can choose from.

Besides these subscription fees, there are other types of fees coming from actions of business that you make through the platform. Those include:

• Transaction fees
• Shopify fees for processing
• Credit card fees
• Apps and themes purchases
• Shipping fees

We will help you cover all these Shopify fees as we continue down this topic. Now then, let’s take a quick look at the pricing plans, shall we? 

Shopify pricing plans, which one suits your business?

Currently, there are 3 pricing plans available that Shopify offers online merchants. They are:

• Basic Shopify: $29/month.
• Shopify: $79/month.
• Advanced Shopify: $299/month.

Besides these plans, Shopify also offers online merchants 2 additional pricing plans to cover all sizes of businesses.

• Shopify Lite: $9/month.
• Shopify Plus: negotiable, normally starts from $2000/month.

As you can see, these plans will give you the ability to decide which suits your business best, whether it is big or small. If you want to know about these additional plans, you can read Shopify Lite and Shopify Plus for more details. 

Shopify free trials

If you are a newcomer to eCommerce, you shouldn’t worry because Shopify gives you a free trial for 14 days.

During the trial, you can build your online store and experience all the features from Shopify. But once the trial is over, you will have to decide which plan among the 3 pricing ones to continue Shopify’s services.

At this point, you will not get any more trials or free plans. However, two weeks is surely enough to give you the best idea of how you are going to run your business.

Subscription fees for Shopify 

Subscription fees are sets of prices that you have to pay for using Shopify’s services for a period of time. And of course, the fee you pay depends on which plan that you choose for your subscription.

You can learn more about these Shopify plans for subscription, you can pay a visit to their website https://www.shopify.com/pricing.

• You can tell right away that both Shopify Lite and Plus are not listed in these plans. It is because they are meant for special purposes. Shopify Lite is a tool for someone who wants to sell on Facebook and has already had a website. 
• Meanwhile, Shopify Plus is a great solution for enterprises that handle a great number of visitors each month.

Each subscription fee varies in terms of features, shipping fees, payment fees, and equipment. Therefore, you should choose the right subscription plan as Shopify fees that fits your online store most. 

However, there is one more thing you will want to keep in mind. You shouldn’t forget to check out point of sales (or POS) tools coming with each pricing plan if you are thinking of opening a brick-and-mortar store. These tools can surely bring great experiences to your customers. 

You can read more about Shopify POS if you have interest in this topic. 

Transaction fees is another one among the Shopify fees

When you want to do an eCommerce business on Shopify, transaction fees are one of the first things you have to look into. Furthermore, all Shopify pricing plans have different transaction fees and they are charged by the company providing your online store service.

Keep in mind that you will have to pay Shopify fees for processing any order from your customers. On top of that, if you use an external payment method, there will be additional fees applied to each pricing plan. As a result, you will see 2%, 1%, or 0.5% for Basic Shopify, Shopify, and Advanced Shopify plans. 

However, you can avoid these transaction fees if you decide to use Shopify Lite or Shopify Payments, which is Shopify’s official payment processor. 

Shopify PayPal fees

There is no doubt that PayPal is a big online payment system with millions of active users around the world. Additionally, you can set up an account for free, and you can use 25 currencies from 202 countries.

Besides, if you are selling in the US, you will be charged 2.9% and USD 0.30 for the transaction. On the other hand, if you are selling outside of the US, you will then be charged 4% per transaction with an additional fixed fee based on the currency.

Therefore, Shopify Payment will become a great choice as it can reduce most of your transaction fees.

Shopify credit card fees

Credit card fees are something that you will want to look into when starting an eCommerce business. They are also what your payment gateway provider charges, depending on what your customers used to purchase.

In  this case, this kind among the Shopify fees will base on your Shopify plan with the below rates for an online credit card: 

• Basic Shopify: 2.9% and 30 cents.
• Shopify: 2.6% and 30 cents.
• Advanced Shopify: 2.4% and 30 cents.

In addition, here are the rates for an offline, or in-person, credit card for each Shopify plan:

• Basic Shopify: 2.7%.
• Shopify: 2.5%.
• Advanced Shopify: 2.4%

More importantly, these fees are calculated based on each transaction, not the item. It also means that if a customer purchases many items from your Shopify store in one transaction, you will be charged only once.

Shopify fees for processing

It is the fees that you will pay Shopify for processing all your store’s transactions and you will get the revenue in return.

To make it simple, processing fees are the combination of transaction fees and credit card fees.

Therefore, you won’t have to worry about these processing fees if you can work with Shopify payments. As we move on to the next section, you will see why opening an online store on Shopify can be a bit costly.

Shopify fees for domains, themes, and apps

Here are some of the costs that you will come across sooner or later when you are using Shopify. Domains, themes, and apps are what you will need to build and prepare for your online store. 

Domain fees

You can get a great advantage of free hosting while using Shopify. However, it is not the case for domains.

Nonetheless, you can purchase a domain with the price of $13 per year via Shopify. Or, you can just redirect one of your existing domains to your new Shopify store. 

Themes fees

When you subscribe to any of the 3 Shopify pricing plans, you can select or purchase a theme for your online store. At the moment, you can choose one theme among 10 free and 71 paid ones to beautifully decorate your Shopify store.

Shopify themes are well-known for their stunning designs and compatibility with each screen size. Moreover, you can configure a theme to make it look perfectly fit for your online store.

Therefore, free Shopify themes are always a good choice when you are starting a new online store on this platform. After that, you can figure out more about what you would need from a theme to add up in your Shopify fees.

Apps fees

One more great benefit from Shopify that you can use to crank up your store’s functionality is Shopify apps. Additionally, you can take advantage of these apps to make your online store run smoothly and effectively.

You can find all the apps you need in the Shopify App Store and you are usually required to pay monthly Shopify fees to use those apps. Moreover, there are paid apps and Shopify free apps to help online merchants run their stores better. 

However, you need to keep track of how much you are spending as these app fees add up quickly.

Shipping label fees for Shopify fees 

One of the benefits you can get from any Shopify plan is that your shipping labels are printed for free. Furthermore, you can get a different discount rate with each plan:

• Basic Shopify: the discount rate is up to 64%.
• Shopify: the discount rate is up to 72%.
• Advanced Shopify: the discount rate is up to 74%.

Taxes

This is another thing that you want to consider among the Shopify fees when you want to build an online store. Therefore, you should check with your city and country policy to see if a business license is required. Besides, this will decide whether you have to pay taxes for your revenue or not.

In case you are required to pay sales tax, you will have to get a reseller sales tax certificate to start your business. At this point, you will normally need an application and a nominal fee.

Shopify payment fees

Shopify payments is an official payment method from Shopify to help process your transactions from customers. What’s great about it is that you will be able to have all transaction fees removed while using it.

Moreover, this is the credit card fee that has been mentioned in the above section. And, you can consider it to be an additional fee to your online store. Therefore, you can pay only credit card fees instead of paying both credit card fees and transaction fees with Shopify payments.

More importantly, Shopify payments will not cost you anything extra. Additionally, the credit card rates are lower than other third-party payment processors such as PayPal.

Final thoughts 

All the expenses above are what you should look into and consider for Shopify fees when building an online store. By learning all the essentials, you can build your Shopify store effectively and start making more profit on one of the biggest eCommerce platforms.

Now then, it’s time to prepare yourself and your online store for joining the eCommerce business. Good luck!