What Shopify costs for a European store

Basic is €32, Grow €92 and Advanced €384 a month (excluding VAT; about a quarter less when paid annually). Shopify Plus is the enterprise plan from €2,100 a month. Add integrations at tens of euros – realistically, running a typical store comes to roughly €60–250 a month.

It depends whether you have given Shopify a valid VAT number. With one, Shopify charges no VAT and you account for the invoice under the reverse charge – for a fully VAT-registered business the net effect is zero. Without one, Shopify has to treat you as a consumer and adds VAT, which you cannot reclaim. Businesses in Ireland are charged Irish VAT either way. This is not tax advice; check it with your accountant.

Nothing from revenue. You pay only for payment processing, a cost you meet on every platform: through Shopify Payments 2% (Basic), 1.7% (Grow) or 1.5% (Advanced) plus €0.25 per transaction on the eurozone price list. American Express and international cards cost about a point more. Bank transfer carries no Shopify fee. Rates vary by market, so check the ones for your country.

Usually not. With an outside gateway you pay twice – the gateway’s own fee plus Shopify’s surcharge by plan (2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced). Through Shopify Payments there is no surcharge. I only set up an outside gateway where there is a concrete reason for it, such as a payment method your market cannot do without.

No. There is no product limit on any Shopify plan, Basic included.

Yes, if you intend to stay. Annual billing is about a quarter cheaper – Basic comes to €24 instead of €32 a month, Grow to €69 instead of €92. It also lowers the point at which Grow pays for itself on card rates, to around €15,000 a month in card sales. But feel free to start monthly and switch once you know it works.

Yes. Three days free with no card, then €1 a month for three months. It is not a demo but a fully working store, so you can try what matters for your markets: connecting a carrier, a feed for price comparison sites, or invoicing.

For features, mostly – and in the eurozone, past a certain volume, for the rate as well. Grow’s card rate is 0.3 points below Basic, which covers its higher fee from about €20,000 a month in card sales (€15,000 on annual billing). Advanced needs roughly €146,000 a month (€110,000 annually). Below those levels you move up for professional reports, staff accounts or Advanced’s custom report builder, not for savings.

In the eurozone the plans are billed in euros and Shopify Payments pays out in your store currency. Outside the eurozone Shopify may bill in local currency, so check the pricing page for your country. Apps in the App Store are often priced in US dollars and converted, so that part of the bill moves slightly from month to month.

Not hidden, but two items are often missing from the budget: apps for integrations at tens of euros a month, and VAT if you have not given Shopify a VAT number. You pay the apps and the plan directly to Shopify and the app developers, not to me – I take no markup on either.

From nothing to a few hundred euros a month, depending on what you need. The ecosystem has more than 16,000 apps and plenty of the basics are free. I only recommend paid ones where they pay off, and I always say upfront what they cost per month.

There are enough free themes to start with. A paid one from the official Theme Store is a one-off cost, typically a few hundred dollars, not a monthly item. I treat a theme as the base I build a custom design on – not as a finished solution that makes your store look like a thousand others.

The subscription, yes – those two cost nothing to install. But a real store on either pays for hosting, a premium theme, paid plugins or modules and developer time for updates and security, so for a comparably equipped store the monthly totals converge. The comparisons go through it line by line, including where the other platform wins.

I open the account as a Shopify Partner, so you pay no plan while I build. When the store is finished I transfer ownership to you – you receive an email, confirm it, choose a plan and enter your billing details. From then on the account is yours and you pay Shopify directly, not through me.

Standard plans run month to month, so there is no notice period. You can export products, customers and orders, the domain is yours and so is the theme code. It is not painless – page and blog content only comes out through the API and redirecting addresses is extra work – but nothing holds you there except that it works.

A build is priced by scope, not from a list: a simpler store in the low thousands of euros, a complex custom one in the low tens of thousands. This page is mainly about the running cost of the platform – the full detail on a custom build is on the service page.