Shopify plan calculator: a worked Shopify study

How to read the four bills

Type a monthly revenue you are actually considering, and select the processor you use. The calculator builds one bill per plan from the published US online rates on the page: the subscription, plus card fees, plus Shopify’s extra fee if you are not on Shopify Payments.

Do not take a crossover point from a blog post. At low revenue the subscription is most of the bill, so Basic is often the smaller number. As revenue rises, the card-rate gap can outweigh the extra subscription. Plus can also be the right plan because you need checkout extensions, even when the fee math is close. Those are different reasons. Check both against Shopify’s pricing page, then run your figure in the plan calculator.

One invented comparison, with stand-in bills

This is one invented comparison so the lineup can be watched without pretending the dollars are Shopify's prices. Say you are lining up two plans and you type stand-in monthly subscriptions of 25 dollars and 250 dollars. Those stand-ins are not the prices on https://www.shopify.com/pricing. They are not Basic, Grow, Advanced, or Plus as quoted by Shopify. Replace them with figures you read the same day before you make a real decision. The gap between the stand-ins is 225 dollars a month. That gap is arithmetic on the stand-ins, not a quote.

No card rate is typed in this example. No third-party extra fee is typed. No order volume is typed. The example is allowed to talk about direction in words. It is not allowed to produce a sales level where the 250 dollar stand-in becomes the better bill. Hold that ban until the end.

What the 225 dollar gap does and does not say

In the example, the dearer stand-in costs 225 dollars more each month than the cheaper stand-in, regardless of orders. A quiet month still pays 225 dollars more. A busy month still pays 225 dollars more, and may also pay a different card, which this example has refused to invent. You cannot say the busy month 'covers' the 225, because you did not type a rate or a volume, and you should not borrow them.

Leave the gap as a gap. Do not divide 225 by a remembered fee difference. Do not ask how many orders at a made-up fee delta would equal 225. That question is the crossover this sheet is here to refuse. The 225 dollars is only 250 minus 25 on invented inputs.

A second pair for a yearly term

Yearly billing is not the monthly stand-in times twelve. For a separate illustration, say you type yearly stand-ins of 240 dollars and 2,400 dollars. Those are also not Shopify's yearly prices, and they are not a discount formula. The gap on this yearly pair is 2,160 dollars for the year. Notice that 2,160 is not 225 times 12. The yearly pair is a different pair, not a conversion of the monthly pair.

Do not put 25 next to 2,400 and subtract. Different terms. If a real decision is yearly, throw the monthly stand-ins out and read yearly figures from the pricing page. If the decision is monthly, throw the yearly stand-ins out. The example keeps both pairs only to show that mixing them is the mistake.

The same example asks for a payment-step extension

Now the invented storefront wants a checkout UI extension on the payment step. That capability is Shopify Plus. The stand-in gap does not answer whether to do it. If the dearer plan in your real reading is not Plus, it still cannot run that extension. If the dearer plan is Plus, you still replace 250 dollars with the Plus subscription you read that day, and you accept that the real figure is much higher than Basic, Grow, or Advanced. The stand-in must not be used as a stand-in for Plus in a live meeting.

The feature need survives even if you delete every dollar in the example. Payment step means Plus. The dollars only tell you whether you can face the subscription. They do not create an exception for a smaller plan that someone wishes had the same step.

The same example asks for a thank-you extension instead

Change only the capability. The invented storefront now wants an extension on the thank-you page, and does not want a payment-step extension. Thank-you and order-status extensions are on paid plans except Starter. Plus is not required by that sentence. Upgrading along the stand-in gap to chase a thank-you extension would buy a larger subscription for a capability a lower paid plan can have.

Put the capability back if you want the payment-step version again, and say so out loud. The example's point is that the capability sentence picks the eligible plans before the gap matters. A thank-you request and a payment-step request are not two ways of saying better checkout. They are different plan constraints.

The same example asks only for editor branding

Change the capability once more. The request is branding through the checkout editor, not a step extension and not a thank-you extension. That branding is broader than the Plus-only steps. The invented comparison should stop before anyone pays the 225 dollar stand-in gap for a change the current paid plan's editor might already allow. Check the editor on the plan you are on. Do not use this paragraph as a feature matrix beyond that statement.

Restore a clear label at the end of this step: the example has now tried three different capability sentences on one pair of stand-in bills. Only the payment-step sentence forced Plus. The dollars never decided the winner. That is the whole pattern.

Add the card direction in words, still without a rate

Say, as a direction only, that on published US online rates the dearer plan would take a lower card rate, and that a third-party extra fee would also be lower on the dearer plan. You still type no percentage. The direction does not eat the 225 dollar gap inside this example. It cannot, because a direction has no magnitude. Anyone who feels the direction 'probably covers it' is feeling a crossover they did not calculate.

If the store in the example is not on the US online card, even the direction may not apply. Write country unknown, and the direction comes off the sheet. A negotiated Plus contract would also take the direction off until the contract states the rate. The example has neither. So the example keeps the gap and loses the temptation.

A quiet month does not rewrite the gap

Say the invented storefront has a slow month and a busy month. The subscription gap is 225 dollars in both, on the monthly stand-ins. The busy month does not get a smaller subscription. It might get a different card total, which remains untyped. The slow month pays the full gap while card charges are few. Use that picture when someone tries to spread 225 across a heroic order count.

Still do not invent the order count. The moment you invent one, you will be tempted to invent a fee delta to match it. The discipline of this sheet is that both inventions are refused. The slow month is only a reminder that line one, the subscription, does not flex.

The note for this invented pair

The note lists monthly stand-ins 25 and 250, gap 225, yearly stand-ins 240 and 2,400, gap 2,160, and the sentence that none of these are Shopify prices. It lists three capability trials: payment step requires Plus, thank-you does not require Plus and is unavailable on Starter, editor branding is broader. It lists card direction in words only, country untyped, no crossover computed.

The note does not say upgrade, stay, or switch. A note that ends in a verdict has added something the inputs cannot support. The verdict belongs to a later day, on figures copied from the pricing page, with a named country and a named term. This note is a drill in what not to conclude.

Stop before the stand-ins escape

Do not paste 25, 250, 240, or 2,400 into a profit calculator as Shopify bills. Do not paste 225 into a cash forecast as your upgrade cost. Do not tell a developer the payment-step extension is affordable because the stand-in gap 'is only 225.' The real Plus subscription is whatever the pricing page says today, and it is much higher than the other public plans.

When the drill is over, open https://www.shopify.com/pricing and /shopify-plan/ and start a real note with real figures or with blanks. Leave this invented pair in the drill. Mixing drill dollars with a live capability promise is how a store commits to Plus on a number nobody ever published.

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