Platform · Cost
Shopify Plus pricing,
end to end
The platform fee is published, and it's the easy part. What 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 costs before any of it starts.
Every Shopify figure below is Shopify’s own published price, read on 8 September 2026. Anything Shopify doesn't publish is named as unpublished rather than guessed at.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 8 September 2026. Shopify can change its prices at any time, so check before you sign.
Read the last row carefully: the main store and 9 expansion stores are included in the platform fee. Only stores beyond that carry the per-store price, so unless you run more than that, the figure in that line of a cost model is nothing.
The step you're likely choosing between 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's the licence and nothing else. It's also the only part of the comparison you 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 separate question, with its own page: what Plus gives you over Advanced, and which ceiling you've hit.
The entry price isn't the price
The first figure you're quoted may be neither of those in the table. 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.
Hold that figure against the table above, because it's already in it. £344 is Shopify’s own published rate for Advanced on monthly billing, so if you're on Advanced monthly you pay exactly what you pay today for the opening period, and the plan it converts into is £1,800 to £1,950.
The terms travel with the offer. It's the wrong number to build a business case on, and it's the number that arrives in the inbox. A promotion is also a commitment decision in a trial’s clothes: what you're agreeing to at the end of two months is a year or three years, not a month.
The costs that aren't on any plan page
There are four, and none has a published price, so each is quoted against your actual requirement.
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 your business is near that size, the real number comes from Shopify’s sales team, and it can change the licence comparison.
Card and transaction rates
These vary by region, by card type and by negotiated terms. At high volume they move the annual total more than the platform fee does, so a licence-only comparison can point at the wrong answer.
Apps
Subscription apps are the cost that arrives quietly. A stack built up over years on a lower plan often goes unaudited at the upgrade, and Plus already covers some of it. Count them before the move, not after.
The migration
A replatform is a project cost, separate from the licence. What a Magento or Adobe Commerce move 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. It doesn't cover 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.
Take a store that was migrated competently and then left. Nothing breaks 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.
So the licence is rarely the decision. It's just 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're ordinary commercial questions. Asked afterwards, they're renegotiations.
- 01 Does the variable platform fee apply to us, at what threshold, and at what percentage?
- 02 What card rates are we 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 going to exceed the 9 expansion stores the fee already includes, and if not, why is a per-store cost in our model?
The systems review answers the ones that don't need Shopify in the room: what your operation needs, and whether the ceiling you've hit is the platform or the systems behind it.
Start the systems reviewTell us what you need
What the systems are doing now, and what you need them to do. We'll tell you whether it's a platform problem or something cheaper.