Shopify Review 2026: Pricing, Fees and the Real Cost
Bottom line
Shopify removes the entire operations burden of running a store, which is worth real money. You pay for it in a monthly fee and a structural surcharge for using any payment processor other than its own.
Research-based — not hands-on tested. Our scores are editorial judgements compiled from vendor documentation, published pricing and independent user reports. How we review.
| Type | Hosted (SaaS) e-commerce platform |
| Best for | Merchants who want to sell, not to operate infrastructure |
| Pricing from | €29/mo Basic monthly, €22/mo billed yearly (Grow €82, Advanced €384, Plus from €2,100) |
| Card rates | Basic 1.9% + €0.25, Grow 1.8% + €0.25, Advanced 1.7% + €0.25 (Amex 1 point higher) |
| Third-party gateway fee | Basic 2%, Grow 1%, Advanced 0.6%, Plus 0.2% — on top of your processor’s own fee |
| Staff accounts | Basic none, Grow up to 5, Advanced up to 15, Plus unlimited |
| You manage | Nothing infrastructural — no hosting, updates, patching or backups |
TL;DR: Shopify is the default for a reason: it removes the entire operations burden of running a store, and the things that break on self-hosted platforms mostly cannot break here. You pay for that in two ways — a monthly fee that scales, and a structural penalty for using a payment processor other than Shopify’s own. Whether that penalty matters is the single biggest factor in whether Shopify is right for you.
What you are actually buying
You are buying the removal of a job. No hosting to choose, no updates to apply, no security patching, no backup strategy, no performance tuning, no PCI scope to think about. For a merchant whose competitive advantage is the product rather than the platform, that is close to the whole value proposition, and it is worth more than most build-versus-buy analyses credit.
The published plans are Basic at €29/mo (€22 billed yearly), Grow at €82, Advanced at €384, and Plus from €2,100/mo. Standard online card rates run 1.9% + €0.25 on Basic, improving to 1.7% + €0.25 on Advanced.
The third-party gateway fee, and why it decides the platform
This is the number to model before anything else. If you process payments through a provider other than Shopify’s own, Shopify charges an additional fee on the transaction — 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced, 0.2% on Plus. That is on top of whatever your processor charges.
For most merchants this is irrelevant, because using Shopify’s own payments is fine and often cheaper than the alternative. It becomes decisive in two situations:
- You have a negotiated processing rate that beats Shopify’s published one. A 2% platform surcharge will comfortably erase the advantage.
- Your market needs a payment method Shopify’s own payments does not carry. This is the common case in Europe and Latin America, where a local method can be the dominant way people pay. If you must bring your own processor to serve a market, you are paying the surcharge on every order in it.
Model this against your actual order volume and mix before comparing monthly plan prices. On a store doing meaningful revenue the gateway fee dwarfs the subscription, and it is the number that most often makes the “cheap” plan the expensive choice.
Where the ceiling actually is
Shopify’s constraint is not scale — it handles very large stores. It is control over the parts of checkout and data you do not own.
- Checkout customisation is bounded outside the top tier. If your business needs an unusual checkout flow, confirm it is possible before committing.
- Staff accounts are capped below Plus — Basic has none, Grow allows up to 5. A growing team can hit this before it hits any technical limit.
- Complex or unusual data models tend to get expressed through apps, and app subscriptions accumulate into a real monthly number nobody totals at the start.
The strategic version of the trade-off: on Shopify your store is a tenancy. That is a genuinely good deal — the landlord handles a great deal you would otherwise handle — but the exit is a migration, and the terms are theirs. The same question we ask of any platform applies here: know what leaving looks like before you need to.
Who it suits
- Good fit: merchants without technical staff, or with technical staff whose time is better spent elsewhere.
- Good fit: anyone who would otherwise be responsible for patching and backups and honestly will not do it.
- Weaker fit: stores with a negotiated processing rate or a market-critical local payment method requiring an external processor.
- Weaker fit: businesses whose differentiation genuinely lives in the storefront or checkout experience.
What we cannot tell you from the outside
Your app bill. It is the most under-forecast cost on this platform, because each app looks small and the total is only visible after a year of adding them. Before committing, list the functionality you need that is not native, price each app, and add it to the plan fee — that is your real monthly cost.
Sources: Shopify published pricing page, retrieved July 2026 (EUR pricing; figures vary by region and change). Verify current rates for your market before deciding.