How to use Shopify plan calculator

The pass

Monthly revenue and how you take payment. Open Shopify plan calculator and do it in this order.

1. Use the monthly revenue you expect next month if you are about to scale, not last year’s average.
2. Select the way you actually get paid. Shopify Payments and a third-party processor are different bills, because Shopify adds a fee when you do not use Shopify Payments.
3. Compare the combined subscription plus card fees. The plan with the higher subscription can still be the smaller bill once the card rate dominates.
4. Check the same inputs against Shopify’s current pricing page before you switch. Yearly billing, your country, and a Plus contract are all reasons the calculator can differ from your invoice.

The mistake that wastes the pass

Switching because a plan name sounds like the next stage. Run the revenue you expect, then read the bill.

How you know it worked

The revenue is the month you are about to have, the processor is the one you use, and you have looked at Shopify’s pricing page the same day.

Read the pricing page the same day

Open https://www.shopify.com/pricing on the day you will type anything. Copy the subscription for the term you will sign, for each plan you are actually considering. Write the date next to the copy. If you cannot open the page, do not type a subscription from memory. A blank with today's date is more honest than a precise bill from last spring.

Capture the country the page is showing. A page opened on the wrong country storefront will hand you the wrong card. If you operate in more than one country, you need more than one reading or an explicit note that you only priced one of them. Do not average countries.

Lock the billing term before you compare

Choose monthly or yearly first. Then read both plans on that term. If you want to see the other term, make a second pair. Do not subtract a monthly figure from a yearly figure and call the difference a savings. Convert only if you write the conversion, and even then prefer the figures the page already printed for the term.

Say which term the contract would be. A yearly term is a commitment, not just a smaller-looking number. If cash cannot tolerate the yearly invoice shape, you are comparing monthly figures, and the yearly column should be marked out of scope rather than used as a tease.

Keep three money lines separate

Line one is the subscription. Line two is the card rate on the processor path you use, read that day, not memorized. Line three is the third-party processor extra fee, and only if that path is yours. Higher plans cost more on line one. On published US online rates, higher plans cost less on line two. The extra fee on line three is lower on higher plans. Write those directions in words if you are not ready to type the figures.

Do not merge the three lines into a single 'Shopify cost.' The subscription is paid regardless of orders. The card follows charges. The extra fee follows the third-party path. A merged number hides which line would move if you upgraded and which line would move if you changed processors. The how of an honest sheet is the refusal to merge them.

Replace every remembered rate

If a profit sheet or a hurdle already contains a card rate, check whether anyone can point to the pricing page on a named day. If they cannot, delete the rate and mark the fee incomplete. Do not replace it with a rate from this explanation. This explanation does not contain one. The replacement is the page, read again.

When you type the rate you just read, write the plan name, the country, the path, and the date in the same cell note. 'Grow, US online, Shopify card path, read this morning' is a usable label. '2-something percent, I think' is not a label you should round into a real input. If the published figure has several parts, type the parts the page actually lists. Do not simplify them into a single number you like better.

Handle Plus as its own reading

Read the public Plus subscription the same day if Plus is in the conversation. Expect it to be much higher than Basic, Grow, or Advanced. Type what you read. If a salesperson or a contract offers different figures, those figures are a second reading, labeled negotiated, dated, and not mixed into the public column.

Do not back into a Plus price from a lower plan plus a multiplier you invented. Do not spread the Plus subscription across an assumed order count to make it look like a per-order fee, then compare that per-order fee with a card rate. That is a crossover in disguise. If you want per-order thinking, do it in your own sheet, with your own volume, and do not call the result a property of Plus.

Write the capability before you write the bill

List the checkout behavior you need in one sentence. Example shapes, not a catalog of your store: 'extension on the payment step,' 'extension on the thank-you page,' 'branding in the checkout editor.' Then write the plan constraint next to it. Payment, shipping, and information step UI extensions: Plus. Thank-you and order-status extensions: paid plans except Starter. Editor branding: broader than those step extensions.

If the sentence is 'make checkout better,' you are not ready to compare plans. Narrow it until a developer could say whether it needs a step extension. Many requests die at this step and correctly stay on the current plan. That is a successful use of the comparison, not a failed upgrade.

Country and contract as required fields

Write the country whose published rates you are using. If your selling country and your Shopify account country are not the same idea, stop and find out which one the pricing page is using for the card. Guessing the US online card for a store the US card does not cover will make a higher plan look more attractive, or less, for a fee you do not pay.

Write whether any plan in the list is negotiated. If none are, write public card. Future you, and anyone you hand the sheet to, should not have to infer that Plus was a hope. A blank contract field gets filled by optimism. Fill it with the word public until a contract exists.

Stop before any volume milestone

Do not divide a subscription gap by a card-rate gap. That division wants to become a revenue level where the higher plan wins. Leave it undone. If a stakeholder demands it, hand them the dated rates and the dated subscriptions and let them build a sheet they sign. Your filled comparison stops at the lineup.

Check the note for a sales volume where the higher bill is said to be recovered. Delete that volume. It is crossover language. The allowed closing sentence is: these are the bills I read, these are the capabilities I need, and I am not computing a sales level. If the stakeholder upgrades anyway, the decision is theirs, on their sheet, with their name.

Read the sheet back in plain sentences

Read aloud: the plans, the term, the country, the subscription figures and the day you copied them, the path, the capability, and the statement that no revenue winner was calculated. If a figure has no day, remove it. If a capability has no plan constraint, look it up before you leave it in. If Plus is described as 'a bit more,' replace that with the figure you read or with the words much higher, confirmed on the page.

Then ask whether the sheet would still make sense if sales next month were half of this month. If the entire argument was card savings at a heroic volume, the sheet is a crossover even if you avoided the phrase. Add the quiet-month subscription as a sentence so the bill is visible without volume.

File it where the fee will be reused

Put the dated rate, if you typed one from the page, where the next profit sheet and the next break-even ROAS will find it. A plan comparison that never updates the unit sheet leaves the old fee in the hurdle. The person who updates the unit should see the plan name and the date, and should refuse any rate older than the last pricing change they know about.

Re-read https://www.shopify.com/pricing when the plan actually changes, not only when you first considered it. The how is incomplete until the live plan and the live fee in the unit sheet are the same plan. /shopify-plan/ is the lineup. The unit tools are where a stale fee does damage.

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