What Shopify actually costs you in a year
The plan is the part everyone quotes. The extra fee on every order when you use your own payment gateway, and the app bill underneath it, are usually the bigger half. Put your numbers in and every line shows the sum behind it.
The plan, and the fee beside the plan
Basic
$39/mo
$468 a year, plus 2% of every order if you take payment through a gateway other than Shopify Payments.
Compare BasicGrow
$105/mo
$1,260 a year, plus 1% of every order if you take payment through a gateway other than Shopify Payments.
Compare GrowAdvanced
$399/mo
$4,788 a year, plus 0.6% of every order if you take payment through a gateway other than Shopify Payments.
Compare AdvancedYour bill, both ways
The eCrate column is here because it is the comparison we can actually make honestly — and it says so plainly when eCrate works out more expensive, which for a store on Shopify Payments with no apps it usually does.
What are you paying today?
On these numbers, moving to eCrate saves you
$4,054
per year
Shopify, today
- Shopify Basic plan$39/mo × 12
- $468
- Apps$300/mo × 12
- $3,600
- Third-party gateway fee2% of $240,000 yearly revenue
- $4,800
eCrate
- PlatformFree — no plan, no feature gates
- $0
- Apps$0 — the standard stack is built in
- $0
- Order fee2% of $240,000 yearly revenue
- $4,800
- Marketing email2k over the 3k/mo free tier × 12
- $14
- Media storage5 GB is inside the 10 GB free tier
- $0
- Landing pages$0 — you have none published
- $0
- AI store builder$0 — you have not used it
- $0
How this is worked out
- Shopify plan prices and third-party gateway fees are Shopify's published US month-to-month rates, last checked April 2026. Annual prepayment discounts are not applied.
- Card-processing rates are excluded from both columns — you pay your processor either way, whichever platform you are on.
- App spend is whatever you tell us you spend today. On eCrate, reviews, bundles, email, the CRM inbox, affiliate tracking and analytics are built in, so the comparable spend is usually lower.
- eCrate's order fee is charged on paid orders only. Refunded and cancelled orders are not billed.
What the fees actually are
What fees does Shopify charge?
Three things, and only the first is on the pricing page in big type. The monthly plan (Basic at $39, Grow at $105, Advanced at $399). An additional fee on every order — 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced — charged whenever you take payment through a gateway other than Shopify Payments. And the apps, which are not Shopify's fees at all but are the largest line on most merchants' real bill.
Does this include card processing?
No, deliberately, and neither does the eCrate column. Every merchant pays a card processor whichever platform they are on, so including it would add the same number to both sides and make the difference harder to read rather than easier.
What is the third-party gateway fee?
An extra percentage Shopify takes on each order when you do not use Shopify Payments. It is on top of whatever your own processor charges, so a merchant on Stripe or PayPal is paying twice — and it is the single line that most often decides which platform is cheaper.
How is eCrate different?
eCrate has no plan and no feature gates, and charges 2% of an order once it is paid, with no surcharge for bringing your own payment gateway. Reviews, bundles, email, the CRM, affiliate tracking and analytics are included rather than rented. Whether that is cheaper for you depends on your revenue against your app spend, which is exactly what the calculator above is for.
Shopify's published prices on this page were last checked in April 2026. We re-check them at least every 9 months, and this note says so when we have not.
- Shopify plan prices and third-party gateway fees are Shopify's published US month-to-month rates, last checked April 2026. Annual prepayment discounts are not applied.
- Card-processing rates are excluded from both columns — you pay your processor either way, whichever platform you are on.
- App spend is whatever you tell us you spend today. On eCrate, reviews, bundles, email, the CRM inbox, affiliate tracking and analytics are built in, so the comparable spend is usually lower.
- eCrate's order fee is charged on paid orders only. Refunded and cancelled orders are not billed.
Find out what your apps cost, too
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