Shopify plans explained: which one to choose for your store

Current plans and where to check prices

Shopify's main plans are Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus. The first three are signed up for directly from the admin; Plus is an enterprise plan with its own contract. Prices change fairly often and vary depending on whether you pay monthly or yearly, so we do not quote figures here: the up-to-date reference is always shopify.com/pricing.

Something worth being clear about from the start: design, the theme editor, Online Store 2.0, metafields, discounts, collections and SEO work the same on every plan. A store on Basic can look and load exactly like one on Advanced. What you pay for when you move up is management capabilities and better terms, not a better-looking store.

What every plan includes

Every plan includes the online store with unlimited products, Shopify checkout, Shopify Payments where available (including Spain), real-time and custom reports, selling in several markets with Shopify Markets, store translation and local currency pricing.

The standard plans also share the same inventory location limit: Basic, Grow and Advanced allow up to 10 locations according to Shopify's pricing page. In other words, having two warehouses and three physical stores does not by itself force you to upgrade.

• Online store with unlimited products
• Shopify checkout and Shopify Payments
• Shopify Markets, translation and local currency
• Real-time and custom reports
• Up to 10 inventory locations

What changes between Basic, Grow and Advanced

The first difference is the team. Basic includes no additional staff accounts, Grow includes 5 and Advanced 15. If several people need to log into the admin with their own user and permissions, Basic quickly falls short. Sharing one account among several people is a bad idea for security and because you lose the record of who changed what.

The second is card processing fees with Shopify Payments: the higher the plan, the lower the fee per transaction. That difference is what makes a higher plan cheaper overall than a lower one beyond a certain sales volume. Run the numbers with your real revenue and the rates published on Shopify's website.

Here is one way to reason about it: multiply your monthly card revenue by the fee difference between two plans and compare it with the difference in monthly price. If the savings on fees exceed the extra subscription cost, the higher plan is cheaper for you even if you use none of its features. Redo the math every few months, because if the store grows, the break-even point arrives sooner than you think.

The third is shipping. Grow adds discounts on shipping rates, and Advanced includes real-time rates calculated by third-party carriers using your own accounts. Advanced also lets you customize the store by region within Markets, which is useful if you sell in several countries with different catalogs or content.

When Shopify Plus makes sense

Plus is the plan for high-volume businesses or for needs the other plans do not cover. According to Shopify's pricing page, it includes full checkout customization, unlimited B2B catalogs (the other plans allow up to 3), up to 200 locations, unlimited staff, additional stores at no extra cost, higher API limits, bot protection and custom user groups.

In practice, the three most common reasons to move to Plus are: needing to modify the information, shipping and payment steps of the checkout; selling B2B with many price lists or terms per customer; and managing several stores (by country or by brand) from one organization. If none of those three applies, Advanced is usually enough.

Plus also changes your relationship with Shopify: the contract is different, support is prioritized and access to new features often comes earlier. For a brand with high online revenue and an in-house ecommerce team, those advantages weigh as much as the features. For a store that is just starting out, they are cost without return.

How to decide without overbuying

Start with what you need today and over the next few months, not with what you might need someday. Changing plans in Shopify is instant and does not affect the store: no migration, no theme change, no data loss. Upgrading when you need to is more sensible than paying in advance for features you do not use.

These questions usually settle the choice in five minutes:

• How many people need their own admin access?
• How much do you take per month in card payments? Compare fees by plan
• Do you need real-time rates from your carrier?
• Do you sell in several countries with different content per region?
• Do you need to change the checkout beyond branding?
• Do you sell to businesses with many price lists or catalogs?

Common mistakes when choosing a plan

The most frequent one is signing up for Advanced or Plus thinking the store will be faster or rank better. It will not: speed depends on the theme, apps and images, and SEO on structure and content. The plan has no effect on either.

The second is staying on Basic with a sales volume that already justifies Grow on the fee difference alone. And the third is installing apps to cover something the higher plan includes natively, such as carrier-calculated rates. Before paying for a monthly app, compare its cost with the plan difference.