I run two Shopify stores — Kind Loom for bedding and My Dabba for gift boxes — so I see two bills every month, and I can tell you the plan price on the pricing page is the smallest part of the story. The costs that actually shape your budget are the ones nobody puts front and centre: transaction fees, payment processing, and the slow creep of apps. Here’s the honest picture so you can budget for what’s real.

The plan tiers, as a concept

Shopify sells its core plans in tiers — commonly a Basic entry plan, a mid Shopify plan, and an Advanced plan, plus enterprise-level Plus above that. Each step up lowers certain fees and adds features. Exact prices change and vary by currency and promotions, so always check Shopify’s current pricing rather than trusting a number in a blog post. One reliable lever: paying annually usually knocks a meaningful chunk off the monthly rate, so if you’re committed, the annual plan is the easy saving.

Transaction fees vs Shopify Payments

This is the detail that catches people. On top of your plan, Shopify charges a transaction fee on every sale if you use a third-party payment gateway instead of Shopify Payments. That fee is higher on lower plans and drops as you move up. The way to avoid it entirely is to use Shopify Payments as your processor — then that particular transaction fee goes away (you still pay the processing rate below). If you have a reason to use an outside gateway, budget for that extra percentage on every order.

Payment processing (the fee you can’t escape)

Whoever processes your card payments takes a cut — typically around a percentage of the sale plus a small flat fee per transaction, with online rates differing from in-person rates and higher rates for international cards. This isn’t a Shopify quirk; every platform has payment processing costs. What matters for budgeting is that it scales with revenue: the more you sell, the more this line grows in absolute dollars, even though it stays roughly proportional. Check the current rates for your plan and country, because they change.

The apps and themes that sneak up

Here’s where my real spread between “expected” and “actual” cost lives. Shopify’s core is lean on purpose, so you add apps to do things you assumed were built in — and most good apps are monthly subscriptions:

• Email/marketing and abandoned-cart flows
• Reviews and user-generated content
• Bundles, subscriptions, or custom product options
• Shipping, returns, or inventory helpers
• Loyalty, upsells, or landing-page builders

Individually they look cheap — a few dollars here, ten or fifteen there. Stack five or six and you can easily be paying more in apps than for the Shopify plan itself. My rule now: before I install anything, I ask whether it will pay for itself, and every quarter I audit and cancel the ones I stopped using. Themes are the other one — the free themes are genuinely good, but a premium theme is typically a one-time purchase in the low hundreds. It’s a real cost, just not a recurring one.

The smaller line items

• Domain — a yearly cost, whether through Shopify or a registrar.
• Email — a professional address on your domain is usually a small monthly fee.
• Currency conversion — if you sell in currencies other than your payout currency, there can be a conversion fee on those sales.

How I budget realistically

Instead of thinking “Shopify costs $X a month,” I budget in three buckets:

• Fixed monthly: your plan plus your recurring apps. This is predictable — total it honestly, apps included.
• Variable per sale: payment processing (and any transaction fee if you don’t use Shopify Payments). This scales with revenue, so I estimate it as a percentage of sales, not a flat number.
• Occasional: your theme, domain renewal, and the odd one-time app or design cost.

When someone asks what Shopify “costs,” the fixed plan is honestly the least interesting number. The apps are what surprise most new founders, and the per-sale processing is what grows as you succeed.

Keeping it lean

A few things that have kept my two stores affordable: pay annually if you’re committed, use Shopify Payments so you’re not stacking a transaction fee on top of processing, start on a free theme and only upgrade when there’s a clear reason, and treat every app like a subscription you must justify each quarter. If you want to run the real numbers for your own store, you can start on Shopify and check today’s pricing directly, since the figures move.

This is based on my own experience — not financial, tax, or legal advice. Rules, rates, and fees change, so confirm current details with official sources like the CRA and CBSA before you decide.