What Shopify plan calculator means for a Shopify store

What you actually get

Shopify plan calculator adds the subscription and the card fees into one monthly bill for Basic, Grow, Advanced, and Plus. Higher plans cost more per month and, on Shopify’s published US rates, take a lower card rate.

The rates on the calculator are published US online rates, including Shopify’s extra fee when a third-party processor is selected. Your country, a yearly contract, or a negotiated Plus rate can differ. Before a plan change, compare the result with Shopify’s pricing page the same day.

The four names on the US pricing page are Basic, Grow, Advanced, and Plus. A development store is not a fifth bill. Yearly billing changes the subscription line, which is why the pricing page and the calculator can disagree until you check.

What it leaves out

The comparison uses published US online rates. Your country, Shopify Payments setup, or a negotiated Plus rate can differ.

The steps for a single pass are in how to run Shopify plan calculator.

The four plans the comparison is about

A Shopify plan comparison is about Basic, Grow, Advanced, and Plus. They are different subscriptions with different monthly costs and different published charges. The comparison does not pull your orders, and it does not decide that you have outgrown a plan. You bring the prices you read and the capabilities you actually need. The names are the names on the current pricing card, not nicknames from an older contract.

Starter sits outside that four-way comparison. It matters for one capability note later: thank-you and order-status extensions are on paid plans except Starter. Do not fold Starter into a casual ranking with Plus. If Starter is even on your list, you are asking a different question than 'which of the four should I type into a fee sheet.'

Subscription dollars go up as the plan goes up

Higher plans cost more per month than lower plans. That direction is the subscription fact. The dollar amounts are not frozen here, because they change, they differ by billing term, and Plus can be negotiated. Read the figures at https://www.shopify.com/pricing on the day you decide, and type those figures. A number remembered from a screenshot last year is not the subscription.

Plus is a much higher subscription than Basic, Grow, or Advanced. How much higher is a question for that same pricing page, the same day. This explanation will not invent a gap and then treat the gap as a rule. If a calculator asks for the monthly or yearly bill, the honest input is the figure you just read for the term you will actually sign.

Card rate direction, without a frozen rate

On published US online card rates, a higher plan takes a lower card rate than a lower plan. That is a direction, not a rate you should copy out of memory. The published rate is on the pricing page, for the country and the online card path it names. Outside the United States the card is different. A negotiated Plus contract can be different again.

Do not type a rate into a profit sheet, a ROAS hurdle, or this comparison unless you read it the same day for your country and your plan. No rate is printed in this explanation on purpose. A hardcoded rate would become a lie the moment Shopify changed the card or the moment your store was not on the US online card the sentence assumed.

The third-party processor extra fee

If you use a third-party payment processor, Shopify publishes an extra fee for that path. That extra fee is lower on higher plans. The size of the extra fee is on the pricing page, not in this note. It is a different line from the card rate you pay when Shopify is the processor. Mixing the two lines double-counts or under-counts, depending on which path you actually use.

Type the extra fee only on a sheet about the third-party path. A store that uses Shopify Payments and a store that uses an outside processor are not interchangeable in this slot. Say which path the sheet describes. If you have not chosen a path, leave the fee blank rather than averaging the two ideas.

Monthly billing and yearly billing are different invoices

Yearly billing and monthly billing do not present the same number, and the yearly figure is not something you should invent by multiplying a monthly figure. The pricing page shows the term. Compare the term you will sign. A monthly Basic figure set next to a yearly Advanced figure, with no conversion you label, is not a comparison.

Country changes the card. A yearly contract changes the subscription invoice. A negotiated Plus agreement can change both the subscription and the rates relative to the public page. Write those three qualifiers on the sheet: country, term, and whether Plus is the public card or a negotiated contract. A comparison that omits them looks more precise than it is.

No sales level where a higher plan wins

This comparison does not name a revenue level where upgrading pays for the subscription gap. Card-rate direction and subscription direction answer different questions. A lower card rate can reduce the fee on each card charge. A higher subscription increases the bill you pay even in a quiet month. Turning those two facts into a single sales milestone requires rates and volumes you must bring yourself, and even then country, term, and contract swing the result.

Do not add that milestone in the margin of the sheet. A milestone invented here would be a fake precision. If you later build your own spreadsheet with rates you read that morning, label it as yours, date it, and do not call it the calculator's answer. The calculator's answer is the lineup of costs and capabilities, not a winner at a sales figure.

Which checkout capabilities sit on which plans

Checkout UI extensions that run on the information step, the shipping step, or the payment step are a Shopify Plus capability. If the thing you want to build runs on those steps, the plan question is whether you are ready for Plus, not whether a card-rate gap is attractive. Thank-you and order-status extensions are available on paid plans except Starter. Branding through the checkout editor is available more broadly than those step extensions.

Those are capability facts, separate from the fee direction. A store can want a lower card rate and have no use for a payment-step extension. A store can need the payment-step extension and still need to read the Plus subscription the same day before calling the move reasonable. Do not collapse capability and price into one score.

Nothing about your orders is imported

The plan comparison does not read your order volume, your average order value, or your payouts. It cannot see whether you are near a threshold, and it should not be given a threshold to hunt. You may type a subscription figure you copied from the pricing page. You may note which checkout capability you need. You may not ask it to announce that Grow becomes correct at a particular monthly revenue.

If a fee belongs in a unit's profit, take the rate you read and type it on the profit sheet at /profit-calculator/ or inside the ROAS hurdle at /roas-calculator/. Keep that fee labeled with the plan name, the country, and the date you read it. The plan page is where you line the plans up. The unit page is where a single fee enters a single offer.

What you should be able to say afterward

After an honest pass you should be able to say: which plans you compared, the subscription figures you typed and the date you read them, whether the term was monthly or yearly, which country the card refers to, whether you are on the Shopify card path or a third-party path, and which checkout capability you need. You should also be able to say that you did not compute a revenue point where the dearer plan wins.

If you cannot say those sentences, you have a pile of plan names, not a comparison. The output is that set of sentences. A single word, 'upgrade' or 'stay,' without the sentences, is a mood. Moods are how stores land on Plus for a branding tweak the checkout editor already allowed, or stay on a plan that cannot run the payment-step extension they already promised a developer.

Keep fee math next door

Open /shopify-plan/ for the lineup. Open https://www.shopify.com/pricing the same day for the figures. Open /profit-margin/ or /profit-calculator/ only after you have a fee you are willing to type onto one unit. Open /roas-calculator/ if that fee changes contribution and you need break-even ROAS again. None of those pages should be asked to invent the sales level where the subscription gap is recovered.

A plan name is not a cost until you type the bill and the fee that belong to it. Basic, Grow, Advanced, and Plus are labels. The dollars and the capabilities are the comparison. Write the labels and the dollars you actually read, or write nothing numerical at all.

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