Shopify’s ad says $29 a month. Here is what a real store on that plan actually pays once it is open for business, itemized, no exaggeration.
The Real Monthly Bill
| Cost | At $3,000/mo in sales | At $5,000/mo in sales |
|---|---|---|
| Base plan (billed monthly) | $39.00 | $39.00 |
| 2% third-party transaction fee | $60.00 | $100.00 |
| SEO app (a real one, not the free tier) | $29.99 | $29.99 |
| Email marketing (past the free tier) | $20.00 | $20.00 |
| Reviews app (paid tier) | $15.00 | $15.00 |
| Total | $163.99 | $203.99 |
App and fee figures sourced directly from Shopify’s own pricing page and the listed apps’ own App Store pages, checked August 13, 2026.
It is fair to concede what Shopify gets right. Themes are a one-time purchase, $100 to $420, not a subscription, with free updates. Abandoned-checkout recovery is included free on the Basic plan. Those are real points in its favor and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
What is not fair is the $29 number itself. That is only the rate if you pay a full year up front. Billed monthly, the same plan is $39, before any of the above.
The Part That Costs More Than Money
Shopify’s own Terms of Service reserve the right to “suspend or terminate your Account… for any reason, without notice and at any time.” When that happens, your store goes offline the same day, with no refund. What you get to keep afterward is a CSV of your product and customer data, not a working copy of the site, because Shopify’s theme system only runs on Shopify’s own servers.
That is the real trade-off, not the monthly number. Cheap to start, and if you ever need to leave, there is no cheap way to do it. I wrote up the full three-year comparison, real numbers on both sides, here.
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