Platform · Cost
Shopify Plus pricing,
end to end
The platform fee is published and it is the easy part. The number that decides whether a move is affordable is the whole cost of being on Plus — the licence, what the cards take, what the apps take, and what the move itself costs before any of it starts.
Every Shopify figure below is Shopify’s own published price, read on 18 August 2026. Everything they do not publish is named as unpublished rather than guessed at.
What Shopify publishes
| Plan / term | Per month |
|---|---|
| Advanced, annual billing | £259 |
| Advanced, monthly billing | £344 |
| Plus, three-year term | £1,800 |
| Plus, one-year term | £1,950 |
| Expansion store beyond the 9 included | £250 |
Shopify’s own published UK prices, read from shopify.com on 18 August 2026. Vendors change pricing without changing the page, so check before you sign.
The last row is the one most often modelled wrongly, and it runs in our favour to say so: the main store and 9 expansion stores are included in the platform fee. Only stores beyond that carry the per-store price, so for most merchants the honest figure in that line of a cost model is nothing.
The step most merchants are actually choosing is Plus on a three-year term against Advanced on annual billing: £1,800 against £259, so about £1,541 a month or £18,500 a year.
That is the licence and nothing else. It is also the only part of the comparison a merchant can do alone — every figure below it needs someone to produce a number, and two of them only Shopify can.
Whether the step is worth paying is a different question from what it costs, and it has its own page: what Plus gives you over Advanced, and when it is the wrong answer.
The entry price is not the price
Neither figure in that table is necessarily the one a merchant is quoted first. Shopify runs promotional entry pricing on Plus — a discounted rate for a fixed opening period, after which the account moves automatically to a full Plus plan on a one-year or three-year term at the standard rate. One such offer, seen on 15 August 2026, opened at £344 a month for two months.
That figure is worth holding against the table above, because it is already in it. £344 is Shopify’s own published rate for Advanced on monthly billing — so for the opening period a merchant on Advanced monthly pays exactly what they pay today, and the plan it converts into is £1,800 to £1,950.
None of that is hidden: the terms travel with the offer. It is simply the wrong number to build a business case on, and it is the number that arrives in the inbox. A promotion is also a commitment decision wearing a trial’s clothes — the thing being agreed at the end of two months is a year or three years, not a month.
The costs that are not on any plan page
Four of them, and together they are usually larger than the licence step. We have not put numbers against any of them, because none of these are published and an invented figure on a pricing page is worse than a gap.
The variable platform fee
Shopify describes a variable fee for larger or more complex business structures and publishes neither the threshold nor the percentage. If a business is near that size the real number comes from Shopify’s sales team and nowhere else — and it is the figure most likely to make the licence comparison wrong.
Card and transaction rates
These vary by region, by card type and by negotiated terms. On a high-volume merchant they move the annual total by more than the platform fee does, which means a licence-only comparison can point at the wrong answer entirely.
Apps
Subscription apps are the cost that arrives quietly. A stack assembled over years on a lower plan is rarely audited at the point of upgrade, and some of it is replaced by functionality Plus already includes. Worth counting before the move, not after.
The migration
A replatform is a project cost, separate from the licence and usually larger in year one. What a Magento or Adobe Commerce move actually involves is set out on its own page.
What a Magento or Adobe Commerce move involves, and what it costs is the migration half. Where the systems behind the store land is the systems reference.
Year one is the quotable number. Year two is the real one
A replatform quote covers the move. What it does not cover is the shape of the cost once the project ends: the licence continues, the integrations built during the migration have to be monitored and updated whenever either side changes, and the apps that were kept are still billing.
The pattern we are called into most often is a store that was migrated competently and then left. Nothing is broken in a way that raises an alarm; the stock drifts, the reconciliation moves to a spreadsheet, and the running cost of the platform quietly stops being the licence.
Which is why the honest version of this page ends by saying the licence is rarely the decision. It is simply the only part with a price on it.
Six questions to ask before signing
Each of these turns one of the unpublished costs above into a number. Asked before a contract they are ordinary commercial questions; asked afterwards they are renegotiations.
- 01 Does the variable platform fee apply to us, at what threshold, and at what percentage?
- 02 What card rates are we actually being offered, against what we pay today?
- 03 Which of our current apps are replaced by Plus functionality, and what do they cost us now?
- 04 Is the quoted monthly on a one-year or a three-year term, and what happens at renewal?
- 05 Is this quote promotional, how long does the opening rate run, and what is the rate it converts to?
- 06 Are we actually going to exceed the 9 expansion stores the fee already includes, and if not, why is a per-store cost in our model?
The diagnostic answers the ones that do not need Shopify in the room: what the operation actually needs, and whether the ceiling a merchant has hit is the platform at all. Frequently it is not, and that is the cheapest answer available.
Book the diagnosticTell us what is breaking
What the systems are doing now, and what you need them to do. We will tell you whether it is a platform problem or something cheaper.