Shopify · audited 20 Sep 2026
The tag says nineteen.
The till says one sixty‑nine.
ShelfAudit prices Shopify the way a shop floor does — not by the number printed on the shelf, but by what rings up at the end of the month once processing, per-order fees, apps and the theme have all been scanned.
The shelf, at standard rates
Standard published rates, checked 20 Sep 2026. Shopify was separately showing a promotional $19/mo on Basic and $54/mo on Grow the same day — see the plan pricing breakdown for which one you are likely to be charged.
Same store, four tags, four tills
- StarterTag $5Till $229
- BasicTag $29Till $169
- GrowTag $79Till $211
- AdvancedTag $299Till $423
Why one platform, and why only the money
ShelfAudit covers Shopify and nothing else. That is a deliberate narrowing. Shopify pricing has enough moving parts — five plans, four processing rates, a gateway penalty, premium and international card surcharges, promotional rates that change by country — that treating it as one row in a comparison table guarantees you get it wrong. So we gave it a whole site.
The method comes from retail. A shelf tag is a claim; the till is the evidence. Anyone who has worked a shop floor knows the two disagree more often than they should, and that checking them is somebody's actual job. We do that job for one software subscription: read what Shopify says a plan costs, then work out what a store of a given size genuinely pays once processing, per-order fees, apps and the theme have gone through.
What we do differently
- Every figure carries a date. Shopify's advertised prices move, vary by region and vary by session. A price without a timestamp is a rumour.
- The arithmetic is shown. When we say a store pays $169 a month, the four numbers that make it up are on the page so you can substitute your own.
- Promotional rates are labelled as promotional. We plan against standard rates and treat a discount as a bonus, because that is the only way a budget survives contact with a renewal.
- Estimates are called estimates. Where sources disagree — app counts, for instance — we give the range and say so rather than picking the most quotable number.
Start here
If you are deciding whether to be on Shopify at all, the Shopify review is the long answer, with the verdict, the fee table and the cases where the platform is the wrong tool. If you are already committed and want to know which tier you should be on, Shopify pricing, plan by plan has the crossover arithmetic — including why the popular advice to upgrade at $8,000 a month does not survive contact with a calculator.
Everything else lives in the shelf notes: what the app drawer really costs, what themes run to, what you can and cannot change about the checkout now that checkout.liquid has been retired, and the jobs Shopify handles badly enough to be worth knowing about before you commit a catalogue to it.
We are not affiliated with Shopify. Some outbound links earn a commission if you buy, which changes nothing about the numbers — the arithmetic would be the same if the programme did not exist.
Latest shelf notes
GuideThe Shopify Agentic Plan: $0 a Month, and One Unpublished Fee
Shopify's newest plan sells your catalogue through AI assistants with no subscription at all. The structure is genuinely interesting; one of its three fee layers is not published anywhere.A-0111 SEPT 2026
GuideShopify Checkout: What You Can Still Change in 2026
checkout.liquid is gone for everyone now. Here is what replaced it, what any plan can still customise, and which capabilities are locked behind Plus.A-0207 SEPT 2026
GuideThe Shopify URL Structure Problem, and What to Do
Shopify hardcodes /products/ and /collections/ into every store and generates duplicate paths for the same item. What that costs you and which fixes actually work.A-0302 SEPT 2026
GuideWhat Shopify Is Bad At: Six Honest Limitations
Shopify is excellent at selling things and mediocre at several jobs people buy it for anyway. The constraints worth knowing before you commit a catalogue.A-0429 AUG 2026
7.8