Costs · Margins · The business of ecommerce
This article settles which Shopify plan actually pays for itself at which sales volume, because the usual advice to just start on Basic and upgrade later ignores that the transaction fee, not the monthly fee, is what moves with your revenue.
Most merchants pick a Shopify plan by looking at the monthly fee and stopping there, which is exactly backwards, because the monthly fee is the smallest lever in the equation once you’re actually selling anything. The transaction rate attached to each plan moves with every sale you process, and the staff account and shipping limits attached to each plan constrain how the business runs day to day, so the number on the pricing page is only the entry cost, not the real cost.
Shopify’s pricing page lists Basic at €24 per month, Grow at €69 per month, Advanced at €289 per month, and Plus starting at €2,100 per month. Right now Shopify is also running a promotion: a 3 day free trial followed by €1 per month for 3 months, which applies as a discount layered on top of whichever plan a new merchant picks, not as a plan of its own. Once that promotional window ends, billing reverts to the plan’s normal rate. So the €1 figure is real but temporary, and it shouldn’t be confused with the ongoing cost of running the store.
Basic starts card rates at 2% + €0.25 EUR. Grow drops into the 8% + €0.25 EUR bracket. Advanced sits at the 6% + €0.25 EUR bracket. These rates apply per transaction, so they compound with sales volume in a way the flat monthly fee never does. A store processing a high number of transactions each month is paying that rate on every one of them, which means the plan with the lower transaction rate can offset a higher monthly fee once volume is high enough, even though Shopify’s own pricing page does not publish a specific breakeven transaction count.
| Plan | Monthly fee | Transaction rate bracket | Staff accounts | Notable feature |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | €24 | 2% + €0.25 EUR | not listed above Basic’s own tier | Built-in AI assistant, millions of tokens |
| Grow | €69 | 8% + €0.25 EUR | up to 5 | Earn up to €6,000 in credits |
| Advanced | €289 | 6% + €0.25 EUR | up to 15 | Live 3rd-party shipping rates, tailor store by region |
| Plus | from €2,100 | not listed above | not listed above | Everything in Advanced, built for complex businesses |
Advanced’s jump to 15 staff accounts, up from Grow’s 5, is a hard operational limit rather than a soft suggestion: a store that needs more logins than the plan allows has to either restrict access or upgrade, full stop. The same is true of live third party shipping rates, a feature Shopify lists specifically under Advanced and not under Basic or Grow, so a merchant relying on real-time carrier quotes at checkout has no lower-tier substitute for it.
Shopify lists escalating AI credit allowances alongside each plan: up to €4,000 with Basic, up to €6,000 with Grow, and up to €8,000 with Advanced. These numbers rise in step with the monthly fee, which suggests they’re priced as a proportional perk rather than an independent reason to upgrade. A merchant weighing plans by credits alone would end up making the same decision they’d make by looking at the monthly fee, since the two scale together.
Where UTD’s themes sit within the broader Shopify theme market is a separate question from plan choice, since theme selection and plan selection are independent decisions; UTD (UTD) is one of many vendors listed in Shopify’s own theme store at themes.shopify.com/themes?q=utd. The numbers in this article, taken from Shopify’s own EUR pricing page as loaded on September 5, 2026, describe plan tiers only and say nothing about which theme runs on top of them.
A merchant under roughly the transaction volume where Basic’s 2% + €0.25 EUR rate outweighs the €24 to €69 monthly gap should stay on Basic, and anyone hitting Grow’s staff or shipping ceilings should read Advanced’s €289 per month against the specific limit they’re hitting, not against the monthly fee alone.
It is a promotional price layered on top of a real plan, not a separate tier. Shopify's pricing page states the offer as a 3 day free trial followed by €1 per month for 3 months, after which billing reverts to the plan's normal rate. So a merchant who signs up under this offer and picks Basic will pay €1 per month for the promotional window and then €24 per month once it ends. The offer does not change the transaction rates or feature limits tied to whichever plan you choose.
Basic is listed at €24 per month and Grow at €69 per month on Shopify's pricing page. Grow also carries a lower card transaction rate bracket, 8% + €0.25 EUR versus Basic's 2% + €0.25 EUR starting rate, and raises the staff account allowance to 5. Which plan costs less overall depends on transaction volume and staff needs, not just the sticker price.
Advanced is €289 per month against Grow's €69 per month, so it is a large jump in fixed cost. What you get for it includes up to 15 staff accounts instead of 5, live third party shipping rates, and the ability to tailor the store by region. A merchant who needs more than 5 staff logins or depends on live carrier shipping quotes at checkout has a concrete reason to move up; a merchant who doesn't need either is paying €289 per month for headroom they aren't using.
Plus is built for complex businesses, per Shopify's own description, and its price starts at €2,100 per month, a level far above Advanced's €289 per month. Shopify states Plus includes everything in Advanced plus additional capability aimed at that complexity. The gap between €289 and €2,100 is wide enough that the decision to move up usually isn't about a single feature but about outgrowing the operational limits of Advanced altogether.
Shopify lists AI-related credits attached to each plan: up to €4,000 in credits mentioned alongside Basic, up to €6,000 alongside Grow, and up to €8,000 alongside Advanced. These credits scale with the plan tier, so they are a secondary factor layered on top of the base monthly fee and transaction rate rather than a reason to choose a plan on their own.