Shopify had grown to be one of the most popular eCommerce site builders with one of the most discussed business models called dropshipping. But then, Shopify actually does more than that. With Shopify, anyone can start and launch their first eCommerce store almost instantly without any technical knowledge or experience. To start, you can claim the free trial before deciding on a Shopify plan pricing and start paying.
But the next question shall be, which plan is most suitable for you?
Here, we will be comparing different Shopify plan pricing to help you decide which plan to start. We will dive deep and see the difference between each Shopify plan and see what it can offer.
To get started on this Shopify plan comparison, there are 3 standard plans with 2 additional plans, lite, and Plus. We will be focusing on the standard plan of, Basic Shopify, Shopify, and Advanced Shopify.
Shopify Plan Pricing: What It Cost To Start A Store
Shopify Basic Plan costs $19/month. The Shopify plan is $49/month. The Advanced Shopify Plan is $299/month.
You may click on the image and check it out for a detailed features comparison. Else, continue reading our post here to find out more.
Basic Shopify Plan ($19 Per Month)
I will start with the basic plan and move to the more advanced plan below. For anyone who is just started, or wants to use Shopify for the first time, you should start on this plan. Keep your platform cost low, so you can have more budget for marketing. You can always upgrade later when your business grows.
This is the cheapest package out of all the Shopify pricing plans. But it is packed with all the features you need to get a store started.
Complete Online Store
An online eCommerce store is a website that your customers visit. It is like your physical storefront where you have all the products displayed in different sections so your customers can shop. And for a website, it\’s comprised of various pages that display your products, your terms and conditions, refund policies, and more.
One thing I really like about Shopify is how it can keep your huge product catalogues managed in a good manner.
With the basic package, you can use any of the free themes. In fact, you don’t need a paid theme to start. A free one does the same good work for a new store. All you need to do now is to choose a free one and start designing your store.
Compared to other website builders you need to figure out how many columns and elements are for each row, everything is pre-built in Shopify. You will just need to select the row design you need and add it to the page.
You can also modify the colour schemes so the borders and website background will match your brand’s colours.
Not only that but there is also a product section in the main dashboard where you can create and manage all your products.
You can add different information, product images, pricing, and even categorize the product. So it\’s all separated under different collections, where you can upload your items for sale in different groupings.
Not only that, but the Shopify store also comes with a blog function where you can create some text content for your products. It can be a review post, tutorial guide, or some other posts showing how to get the most benefit from using your product.
You can always categorize the blogs where similar posts will be under the same sections to ease your customer to check it out.
Unlimited Products
In most cases, there are some limitations to the basic plan compared to the advanced plan. For this Basic Shopify plan, you can also post unlimited products on your store. No limitation.
The reason why some platforms do this is that every single product uploaded to your store will eat up its server storage and bandwidth. This will increase their cost and hence, the basic plan payment may not be enough to cover their cost.
It can slow down the web host’s services. The thing is, they will charge you more money if you want to put up a bigger store.
However, Shopify doesn’t do this. Even with the Basic plan, you can upload as many products as you want. This feature is great for entrepreneurs who have large inventories.
You can post and test more products with the basic store now. This is great for fashion stores that have a lot of design variants and inventory like a clothing store. You won’t be charged based on how many designs with different colours.
Other e-commerce platforms will typically limit you to 50 products. They will then force you to move up to a higher tier or plan if you want to sell more than that.
The problem with that kind of setup is that you haven’t even sold anything and they might charge you more.
Shopify Sales Channels
A sales channel is where you can display and sell your products. Of course, we want to sell it at more places to increase the visibility of our product.
So, what makes this feature interesting?
If you want to sell on social media or other platforms, you have to create an account for that social media and then upload all the products and descriptions on that platform.
Apart from the social page, your consumers can also browse your products through the Messenger app or even Amazon. Just integrate your Shopify store with your Amazon account, and you can start selling the product on Amazon too.
Here are all the sales channels you can use:
- Amazon
- Facebook Messenger
These are the basic ones, but of course, you might want to expand to other sales channels with the apps.
Shopify Apps
The basic Shopify store is great as an eCommerce store. It is a general store for all business owners. Hence, Shopify will not load too many features on it as it will slow down other business owners that don’t need the features.
Instead, Shopify provides a huge amount of both free and paid apps for you to add to the features you need in your store.
For example, a few that I think are very important would be :
- Product Review App
- Abandon Cart Recovery
- Email marketing
- Sales Funnel & upsell app
- Exit Pop up
All these are important to capture your potential visitors, convert them better, and increase your average cart value. One thing good about these apps, they don’t care which plan you subscribed to. Basic and Advanced Shopify plans will enjoy the same free and paid features. And the monthly subscription for paid apps will be the same.
Shopify Staff Accounts
A staff account is the account of someone who will help you manage your website. If you have someone in your team that helps with the admin work, fulfilment, or customer service, you need to have an account for them. But of course, based on their work, you want to limit their rights.
For the Basic Shopify pricing plan, you can add two staff accounts including your account, which is the administrator account.
With a staff account, you can add a trusted employee to manage your store. The employee can do almost everything that you can do, with the exception of changing passwords, changing your financial or payment methods, and other critical aspects of your business.
Your staff can upload products, change the product information and make adjustments to the look and feel of your website.
Your staff can also publish blog posts, or update pages that contain your shipping rates, terms and conditions, and refund policies. Staff members can also process customer orders.
You can hire someone from the other side of the world and they can access your store’s admin page from anywhere.
24/7 Support
Had you ever got the frustration with getting bad or no support when facing a problem? Especially if you are new to the business, you will definitely have a lot of questions about your store. Here’s come the professional support from a Shopify expert.
Maybe you are stuck somewhere but don’t know why. It can be advice on setting up shipping rates, changing theme colours, adding a domain name, or even changing the margin.
On the Basic Shopify Plan, all you have to do is to click on the “Contact Us” button on Shopify’s website and you will be given the option to self-diagnose your problem.
You can only be serviced via email or via chat. Generally speaking, the agents that support you are very helpful and knowledgeable about any type of concern you throw at them.
Basic Shopify Plan Discount Codes
As an entrepreneur, you want to give your customers the best deals or at least something that feels like the best deal in terms of value. But the problem with many e-commerce stores is that this process is too difficult to implement.
Shopify had made it easy for you to give discounts to your customers through the discount code features.
You can create different types of discount codes, based on total order value, buy X free X, or free shipping discount. Everything is within the selections box only.
You can also control when the number of coupons created and promotion periods coupon to have a cutoff date for your promotions.
And once they make a purchase, all they have to do is enter the code and the discount will be applied automatically.
One limitation of the discount code in Shopify is that it can’t be stacked. What this means is that customers cannot use multiple codes at the same time.
Abandoned Cart Recovery
There are times when customers decided to buy, but due to some reason, they need to settle other stuff and left your page. It is very important to follow up with them and remind them about the product selected. Compared to convincing a new customer, this group of audience is more likely to complete the purchase with a simple push.
We call this feature abandoned card recovery. For customers that already add the item to their cart, fill up their contact details at the checkout page. We are able to track and follow up with them.
With the Basic Shopify plan, you can take advantage of this because you can send personalized emails automatically to the customers who abandoned their shopping carts within a certain timeframe.
In this email, you can offer them more reasons to buy from you. It can be a one-time discount, quantity break discount, or some urgency like limited stock or limited time offer.
You can create a discount code specifically for this scenario.
The Shopify Plan ($49 Per Month)
This one is a mid-tier plan that Shopify offers. You will get everything in the Basic Shopify plan here but of course, with more features.
One of the clear differences is in the staff accounts. You are getting 5 instead of 2. This is good as when you upgrade to this plan, you should expect to have a bigger business and more staff to handle all the orders.
Here are the additional features you can get in the Shopify Plan that are not available in the Basic Pan.
Shopify Gift Cards
If you do not know yet, there are physical cards that you can give to a person and that person will go to the shop to make a purchase using that card. With Shopify you can also do this but, there is no physical card.
This is a good way for your existing loyal customer to share your business or product with their friend in terms of gift cards.
You can also create it and send it to your customer as a gift. He will just need to share it with their friends to get X amount of discount for their next purchase. And you can have a cap such as Buy X amount to claim the Y amount on the gift card.
In the process, the customer may add some things to his cart that he will pay for out of his pocket.
Professional Shopify Reports
Reporting is an important aspect of every online business. Data is king in online business. It is like the GPS for your business to know where to focus and optimize.
You want to know information such as, what products sell more, where your customers are from, how much the average sales per day, and what is the revenue per day.
The cost of Shopify in this tier takes this feature into account. You need data to be able to make informed decisions about your business.
Here are the things you can view in the reports.
- Track sales specific to a particular product
- See buying trends
- Check sales records by month or by season
- Create reports you can use to prepare taxes
- See how many customers visited your website
- Check customer demographics by country
- Have a view if you have repeat customers
- Compare sales from first-time customers against repeat customers
Advanced Shopify Plan ($299 Per Month)
This is the last plan, and it cost a lot more! Over 3 times the mid-tier plan.
If you get this plan and pay the Shopify pricing fees, you will get everything from the Basic and Shopify Plan. You can add up to 15 staff accounts to this plan.
Advanced Report Builder
Like what was mentioned in the above Shopify plan, you can now create customized reports based on your requirement. You can modify the format and data of the reports you need.
You can also ask your staff members to do this report for you. They can show you pie charts that will make it easy for you to assess your store’s health.
You can create different reports for different departments that focus on different parameters and they can run anytime to get the latest report.
Third-Party Calculated Shipping Rates
In the Basic and Shopify plans, you need to configure the shipping rates, including the locations manually. This is a part where most beginners missed out. Getting the store launched but the customer is unable to complete the purchase because the shipping to their country is not configured properly.
For example, if you have different warehouses worldwide and you are serving different countries. You will need to create several shipping rates in the backend of your Shopify store to reflect it.
With this feature, now you can show your customers the different shipping rates from different shippers like UPS, FedEx, or others.
Your customer will choose the shipping company, and the only thing you have to do is to print the shipping label from your home.
This is extremely helpful, provided that you are shipping your own products.
But if you are dropshipping your product, you will not need these features as you don\’t handle the shipping yourself.
Shopify Plus Plan
Some say that the cost of the Plus Plan is $2,000 per month. While this may be true, Shopify actually has varying prices for this plan. You will need to contact them and discuss your requirement for them to tailor the plan for you.
This plan is best used by big enterprises with global businesses and a big team.
Shopify Plan Lite ($9 Per Month)
While this is not the standard plan, Shopify does offer the Shopify Life Plan which varies from country to country.
With this, you will use Shopify to manage your product, but not the online store functions. You will be managing your product on Shopify but selling on different places like social media or your blog.
With Shopify Lite, you get features to view reports, issue gift cards, and split bills, among others.
Summary – Shopify Plan Pricing Wrap Up
When it comes to starting your eCommerce store, I always advise you to start with the $19 plan, and leverage the free trial. It is free anyway, so just leverage it and start making sales. And for the upgrade, just do it anytime when you need it. There are no limitations to the upgrade.
Now, it\’s my personal commitment and offers to you. If you are planning to start a Shopify store, and you are buying it through my link here which is an affiliate link. You are going to pay the same price, and I will get paid the commissions for this site to survive.
I will help you with setting up the store and provide some insights on how to get your business to start running and getting sales.