Shopify Review

Is Shopify worth it?

Shopify charges a monthly plan price plus payment processing, and you pay separately for anything outside the plan, such as apps and themes. The plan prices are $25, $65 and $399 a month billed monthly, or $19, $49 and $299 a month billed yearly, with Plus from $2,300 a month.

Whether it is worth it depends on how much you sell and how you take payments. If you use Shopify Payments, Shopify's help center says no third-party transaction fee applies, but we could not verify Shopify Payments' card rates from its pricing page, so check them before you decide. If you use another payment provider, Shopify adds a third-party fee of 2% on Basic and 1% on Grow.

Worked example: with $5000 a month in sales through a third-party gateway, the Basic third-party fee is $100, so Shopify's own charges are about $125 a month on Basic (monthly billing) or $115 on Grow. Grow starts to pay for itself over Basic at roughly $4,000 a month in third-party gateway sales.

It may not be worth it if you only sell in person and want the simplest terminal setup: compare Square and Clover in our fee guides. It is also a poor fit if you need to know your total card processing cost up front, because Shopify's card rates were not on the pricing page we read.

Who Shopify suits, from its published features

• Merchants who want one platform for an online store, in-person sales, and social and marketplace selling: all are listed on the Basic plan's feature list.
• Sellers who want hosting, a custom domain and SSL included: the feature list names unlimited web hosting, a custom domain name and a free SSL certificate.
• Small teams: Grow lists up to 5 staff accounts and Advanced up to 15, while Plus lists unlimited.
• Stores with wholesale customers: Basic lists up to 3 B2B catalogs, and Plus lists unlimited B2B catalogs.
• Merchants who want marketing tools built in: the list includes email campaigns, pay-per-send SMS, abandoned checkout recovery, discount codes and gift cards.