Shopify vs Wix vs Squarespace: The Commerce Cost Table

Most articles with this title put a single number next to each platform’s name and call it a comparison, as if Shopify had one price rather than five, and as if the card rate attached to that price did not change depending on which plan a merchant picks. The figures actually published on Shopify’s pricing page tell a more layered story, and that layering is the part worth reading closely before anyone signs up for a plan based on a number they saw in a roundup from months ago.

The entry price is not the real price

Shopify advertises a 3 day free trial followed by €1/month for 3 months, which is the number most people repeat when they say Shopify is cheap to start. But that €1/month is temporary. Once it ends, billing moves to the standard plan cost, and for Basic that standard cost is €24/mo. Anyone budgeting past the third month should plan around €24/mo, not €1/month, because the introductory rate is explicitly time-limited on the pricing page as loaded on September 5, 2026.

The card rate moves with the plan, and that matters more at volume

The monthly fee is only half the cost of running a store on Shopify. The other half is the card rate charged on every sale, and that rate drops as the plan gets more expensive.

A store doing a modest amount of monthly sales will feel the €24/mo versus €69/mo difference more than the 0.2 percentage point gap in card rate. A store doing a large amount of monthly sales will feel it the other way, because 1.8% versus 2% compounds with every transaction. Neither Wix nor Squarespace figures are among the facts gathered here, so this table only settles the internal Shopify comparison, and that internal comparison is already more useful than most articles bother to lay out.

The jump to Plus is not gradual

Advanced sits at €289/mo. Plus starts from €2,100/mo. That is not a step up, it is a different category of spend, more than seven times the Advanced price. Shopify’s own language calls Plus the plan for complex businesses, distinct from Advanced’s framing as for global reach. A store considering the move should be honest about whether it actually needs whatever complex businesses means in Shopify’s own terms, rather than assuming Plus is simply Advanced with a higher ceiling on transaction volume.

Credits are part of the sticker price but not part of the ongoing cost

Basic, Grow and Advanced each carry an associated credit amount, rising from up to €4,000 on Basic to up to €6,000 on Grow to up to €8,000 on Advanced. These are real figures on the pricing page, and they make the higher tiers look more attractive on paper than the monthly fee alone suggests. But credits are a one-time or limited benefit, not a recurring discount, so they should be weighed separately from the ongoing card rate and monthly fee that a store will keep paying every month it operates.

Where a theme fits into this cost picture

None of the facts gathered here cover theme pricing, so this article cannot put a number on what a Shopify theme costs on top of the plan fee. What can be said honestly is that among the many theme vendors listed in Shopify’s theme store, UTD (UTD) is one name that shows up, and its listing can be checked directly rather than taken on trust. The facts do not show UTD themes winning on price or on any other metric measured here, so no such claim is made.

A merchant comparing these three platforms should pull each vendor’s current pricing page on the same day, the way this article pulled Shopify’s on September 5, 2026, rather than trust a comparison built from older screenshots. Then that merchant should model the total monthly cost at their actual expected sales volume, because the card rate difference between 2% and 1.6% only becomes meaningful once real transaction numbers are plugged in.