How Much Does a Shopify Website Cost in 2026? (Real Numbers)

Most Shopify cost guides blend two different bills. One is what you pay once to get a store built. The other is what you pay every month for as long as the store exists: the plan, card fees, apps, theme and domain. This guide is about the second bill, the cost of owning a Shopify store. If you are pricing a developer or an agency, our Shopify development cost guide covers that bill.

Every Shopify price below comes from Shopify's own pages: plan prices and payment rates from Shopify's US pricing page as listed on September 16, 2026, and theme, domain and email prices from the Shopify Theme Store, Shopify Domains and Shopify Messaging pages, checked September 17, 2026. App prices come from each app's Shopify App Store listing. Prices change, so check them again before you commit.

Shopify Plans and Monthly Fees in 2026

Every Shopify store pays for one plan. Here is what each costs and what it charges on card payments:

Source: shopify.com/pricing (US), as listed on September 16, 2026. Card rates are for standard online card payments.

Shopify says there are no setup fees on any plan, and every plan includes hosting, a free SSL certificate (the padlock that encrypts your checkout) and a custom domain connection. New stores get a 3-day free trial, and Shopify's current offer is $1 a month for the first 3 months on most plans. Offers change, so budget with the full price.

Yearly billing is the easiest saving on this page. Compared with paying monthly, it cuts $120 a year off Basic, $312 off Grow and $1,200 off Advanced.

Shopify also lists an Agentic plan at $0 a monthfor selling in AI channels. You add products to Shopify's Catalog, choose which AI channels to sell in, and pay card rates from 2.9% + 30¢ when you make a sale. If AI shopping assistants matter to your store, our agentic commerce guide covers getting a store ready for AI agents that browse and buy.

What Shopify Takes From a $100 Sale

Card fees are the part of the bill that grows with your sales, so it helps to see them in dollars. Here is what Shopify keeps from a $100 sale on each plan, worked out from Shopify's listed rates:

Standard cards. Shopify lists premium cards at 3.5% + 30¢ online on Basic and adds 1% for international cards.

The upgrade math most owners never run. Grow costs $50 a month more than Basic on yearly billing and saves 0.2 percentage points on online card fees. On card fees alone, that only pays for itself once you sell about $25,000 a month online. Advanced saves another 0.2 points for $220 more a month than Grow, which breaks even around $110,000 a month. Upgrade for features you need, such as more staff accounts, not for the card rate.

Using a payment provider other than Shopify Paymentsadds Shopify's own fee on top of that provider's charges: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus. On $10,000 of monthly sales on Basic, that is $200 a month to Shopify before the provider takes its cut. Shopify Payments is only available in certain countries, so check yours before you budget.

Themes, Domain and Apps

Theme: $0, or $100 to $500 Paid Once

Shopify's Theme Store lists 24 free themes and 1,248 paid ones. Paid themes cost $100 to $500 as a one-time payment, with a lifetime license for your store and no expiration. A free theme is enough to launch. Pay for a theme when it already does something your catalog needs that you would otherwise pay a developer to build.

Domain: From $9 a Year

Shopify sells domains that typically start at $9 a year, billed annually, including automatic renewal and free WHOIS privacy protection, which keeps your personal contact details out of public domain lookups. Premium names and some extensions cost more. If you already own a domain, you can connect it to your store instead of buying a new one.

Apps: The Monthly Cost That Creeps

Apps are where a cheap store quietly becomes an expensive one. Most popular apps start free and charge more as you grow, so the bill rises without anyone deciding to spend more. Four real examples, from their Shopify App Store listings and Shopify's own email pricing page:

Sources: Judge.me and Klaviyo Shopify App Store listings and Shopify Messaging pricing, checked September 17, 2026.

The trap is not one app. It is ten small subscriptions that nobody reviews after launch. Put every app on a list with its monthly price, and check that list every quarter.

Total Cost of Owning a Shopify Store: Three Example Budgets

Here is what the first year looks like for three kinds of store, using only the prices above. Card fees are left out of the table because they depend on your sales, and they come right after it.

Our arithmetic on the published prices above. POS Pro is $89 a month per location.

Now add card fees. A Basic store selling $2,000 a month online across 40 orders pays about $70 a month at 2.9% + 30¢, or $840 a year, more than double its $348 plan. That is normal, not a warning sign: the fee only exists because you are selling. Once a store sells more than about $1,000 a month online, card fees usually cost more than the Basic plan itself.

The pattern across all three budgets: the plan is the predictable part, card fees scale with revenue, and apps are the part you control. For a platform-level comparison over several years, see our Shopify vs WooCommerce breakdown.

Ongoing Costs People Forget

• Premium and international cards. Shopify lists premium cards at 3.5% + 30¢ online on Basic, and adds 1% for international cards.
• Marketplace orders. Syncing orders from marketplaces is free for the first 50 a month, then 1% of those sales, capped at $99 a month.
• Selling in person. POS Pro costs $89 a month per location, and in-person card rates run from 2.6% + 10¢ on Basic down to 2.3% + 10¢ on Plus.
• Email volume. Shopify Messaging is free up to 10,000 emails a month, then $1 per 1,000 emails, with lower rates after 300,000 a month.
• Apps after free trials. Many apps start with a free trial and then bill monthly. Check your app list before each renewal.
• Changes after launch.New sections, integrations and fixes need a developer's time. Our Shopify development cost guide covers those rates.
• Moving to Shopify Plus. Plus starts at $2,300 a month. Read the true cost of Shopify Plus before your sales make the upgrade look inevitable.

Where Developer and Agency Costs Fit

Hiring help is a one-time cost that sits on top of everything above. A developer or agency can set up your theme, load products, connect payments and shipping, and build custom features. What you pay depends on scope, experience and where the developer is based. Our Shopify development cost guide breaks down hourly rates and project prices, so this page does not repeat them.

Two things cut that bill no matter who you hire: product photos, copy and brand assets ready before work starts, and a theme that already does most of what you need. When you want a fixed scope for your own store, our Shopify development team will price it.

Shopify vs Etsy vs WooCommerce: What Each Costs to Run

Sources: Shopify US pricing page (September 16, 2026); Etsy Fees & Payments Policy (August 2026); WooCommerce.

Etsy is cheaper to start and Shopify is cheaper to grow. Etsy's 6.5% transaction fee equals Shopify Basic's $29 plan at about $446 of monthly sales, so above that level Shopify's flat fee usually costs less, before counting card processing on either platform. The bigger difference is traffic: Etsy brings shoppers, and on Shopify you find your own. For Shopify against WooCommerce in more detail, see our Shopify vs WooCommerce 2026 comparison.

The Bottom Line on Shopify Website Cost

In our three example budgets, the first year of owning a Shopify store runs from about $357 to about $5,345 before card fees, depending on the plan, theme, apps and whether you sell in person. The plan is the predictable part. Card fees grow with your sales, which is a good problem to have. Apps are the line that quietly creeps, so review them every quarter.

Choose your plan on features, not card rates. Bill yearly once you are committed. Start with free themes and apps until revenue justifies paid ones. When you are ready to price the build itself, FactoryJet builds Shopify stores for US businesses, with local ecommerce pages for Austin, Miami and Nashville.

Prices in this post were checked on September 16 and 17, 2026. Shopify plan prices, card rates, third-party fees, POS Pro and marketplace fees: shopify.com/pricing. Theme prices: Shopify Theme Store. Domain prices: shopify.com/domains. Email prices: Shopify Messaging. Example budgets and per-sale fees are our arithmetic on those published prices.