What Shopify actually costs a $200k store (the full fee breakdown)

Shopify's pricing page shows one number. Your accountant sees five. If you run an established store — or you're deciding where to build one — here's the honest, added-up version for an Australian business, using Shopify's own published 2026 pricing.

Fee 1: The plan

• Basic: A$56/month (A$42 if you pay the year up front)
• Grow: A$149/month — where most established stores land
• Advanced: A$575/month
• Plus: A$3,700/month, on a 1–3 year commitment

All ex-GST. This is the number everyone budgets for — and it's usually the smallest line on the real bill.

Fee 2: Payments — and the third-party penalty

Shopify Payments charges 1.75% + 30¢ per online transaction on Basic (1.6% on Grow, 1.4% on Advanced). That's roughly market rate — Stripe charges about 1.7% + 30¢ to everyone. The catch is what happens if you use any other payment provider: Shopify adds a surcharge of up to 2% of every sale on Basic (1% on Grow) — on top of what your provider charges. It's not a processing fee; it's a fee for not using theirs.

Fee 3: The app stack — the quiet compounder

Out of the box, most stores add apps for reviews, bundles, subscriptions, SEO tooling, back-in-stock alerts, wholesale pricing. Industry migration research puts typical mid-market app spend at US$300–800 a month — and even lean stores rarely stay under US$100. Unlike a build cost, this never ends: it's rent, forever, and it usually grows as the store does.

Fee 4: The Plus wall

The features established brands eventually need — real B2B/wholesale price tiers, checkout customisation — are gated behind Shopify Plus at A$3,700 a month. That's A$44,400 a year, every year, before apps and before anyone does any marketing. For a hybrid B2C-plus-wholesale brand, this is the wall you hit right when the business gets interesting.

The worked example: a $200k/yr store

• Grow plan: A$1,788/yr
• Apps (a modest A$300/mo stack): A$3,600/yr
• Payment processing on ~$200k: ~A$3,600/yr (1.6% + 30¢ — you'd pay ~this anywhere)
• Total: roughly A$9,000/yr — of which ~A$5,400 is pure software rent

Nine thousand dollars a year, and not one of those dollars bought marketing, SEO, or a human looking at the business. Use a third-party payment provider on Basic and add another $2,000–4,000 in surcharges.

To be fair: what the rent buys

Convenience, and it's real. A solo founder can launch in a weekend with no developer, and the app ecosystem is unmatched. If that's your stage, Shopify is honestly a fine choice — we say so in our comparison. The problem is that the rent doesn't scale down as your need for convenience does. Established stores keep paying launch-stage prices for convenience they no longer use.

The alternative: own the store

A modern owned stack — a fast storefront, an open-source commerce engine, Stripe checkout — has no plan fee, no app subscriptions and no payment surcharge. You pay once to build it properly, then a flat care plan (ours starts at $299/month, humans included) instead of rent that scales with your ambition. Wholesale pricing, custom checkout, full speed control: included, because it's your code. On the numbers above, a Growth-band rebuild typically pays for itself against the rent inside the first couple of years — and after that, you own the asset.

Every figure here traces to Shopify's published Australian pricing or sourced industry research — and the full three-way comparison (Shopify vs WooCommerce vs owning it) is on the site, with the cases where each one genuinely wins.