Choosing the Right Shopify Plan: From Basic to Plus

By Claire. A Hobart wine merchant called us in January torn between staying on Shopify Basic and upgrading to Advanced. He was paying around AUD 51 a month, but transaction fees on his external payment gateway were eating thousands a year. We ran the numbers together on a video call: at his volume, moving to the Shopify plan saved him around AUD 380 a month after the higher subscription. The decision wasn’t obvious until we looked at his actual costs. Shopify plan choice is a maths problem dressed as a marketing one, and the right answer is rarely the cheapest sticker price.

The Shopify plan tiers in 2026

Shopify currently offers five main plan tiers, with AUD pricing (verify current pricing on shopify.com.au, because rates change):

• Shopify Starter: around AUD 7 per month. Sell through social channels and messaging apps, no full online store. For social-first sellers only.
• Basic Shopify: around AUD 51 per month. Full online store, two staff accounts, basic reporting. The entry point for serious merchants.
• Shopify (the “Grow” plan): around AUD 132 per month. Five staff accounts, professional reports, lower transaction fees and processing rates.
• Advanced Shopify: around AUD 517 per month. Fifteen staff accounts, custom reporting, lowest processing rates on the standard tier, third-party calculated shipping.
• Shopify Plus: starts around USD 2,300 per month (roughly AUD 3,500). Enterprise tier with Checkout Extensibility, B2B, Functions, Launchpad, Flow, and dedicated support.

Annual billing knocks roughly 25 per cent off, which is usually worth taking if you’re committed to Shopify for the year.

Transaction fees: the hidden tax

If you use Shopify Payments, you don’t pay transaction fees on top of processing rates. If you use any other payment gateway (Stripe, eWay, Braintree, even an alternative like Pay.com.au), Shopify charges an additional transaction fee on every order: 2 per cent on Basic, 1 per cent on Shopify, 0.5 per cent on Advanced, and effectively 0.15 per cent on Plus. This compounds dramatically.

A merchant doing AUD 500,000 a year through an external gateway pays:

• AUD 10,000 in transaction fees on Basic.
• AUD 5,000 on Shopify.
• AUD 2,500 on Advanced.
• AUD 750 on Plus.

This is before factoring in the actual processing rates. On Shopify Payments, those rates also step down by plan: roughly 1.75 per cent + 30c on Basic, 1.6 per cent + 30c on Shopify, 1.4 per cent + 30c on Advanced for domestic cards. On serious volume, the rate differential alone justifies an upgrade.

Triggers to move from Basic to Shopify

The upgrade from Basic to the Shopify plan usually pays for itself once you cross roughly AUD 12,000 to AUD 15,000 a month in revenue, driven by the lower processing rate and transaction fee. Other triggers:

• You need more than two staff accounts (Basic caps at two; Shopify allows five).
• You want professional reports (revenue by traffic source, behaviour reports, marketing attribution).
• You’re selling through more than one or two retail or pop-up locations.

Triggers to move from Shopify to Advanced

Advanced is genuinely a step up in cost and the value is narrower. It typically makes sense when:

• You’re doing AUD 100,000+ a month and the processing rate difference is meaningful (often $1,000+ a month saved).
• You need third-party calculated shipping rates (Australia Post live rates with negotiated discount, FedEx, DHL accounts).
• You need custom reporting that the Shopify plan’s reports don’t cover.
• You’re scaling the team and need fifteen staff accounts with role-based permissions.

Many merchants skip Advanced entirely, going straight from Shopify to Plus when complexity warrants. That’s often the right call.

Shopify Plus: what you actually get

Shopify Plus is a real step change, not just a more expensive Shopify. The features that justify the price:

• Checkout Extensibility: customise the checkout with Shopify Functions and UI extensions. On non-Plus plans, you can’t meaningfully modify checkout. On Plus, you can add custom validation, custom payment logic, and bespoke UI in safe, sandboxed ways.
• B2B on Shopify: native wholesale catalogues, customer-specific pricing, net-terms payments, company hierarchies. Eliminates the need for a separate wholesale platform for many merchants.
• Shopify Functions: serverless customisations for discounts, shipping, payment customisation, delivery customisation. Replaces a lot of the script-tag-based hacks of the previous era.
• Shopify Flow: workflow automation across orders, customers, inventory, and fulfilment. Free on Plus, comes pre-loaded with many useful templates.
• Launchpad: scheduled events (product launches, sales) with automated theme changes, price changes, and inventory releases.
• Dedicated Merchant Success Manager and priority support.
• Up to 200 SKUs per product, expanded API rate limits, more sales channels.

The honest answer on Plus: most merchants under AUD 5 million annual revenue don’t need it. Most merchants over AUD 10 million benefit. Between those, it depends entirely on what features actually solve a real problem in your business. B2B alone is often enough.

The total cost of ownership calculation

Plan choice isn’t just sticker price. Include in your calculation:

• Monthly subscription (with the annual discount applied).
• Processing rates (the difference between plans on Shopify Payments).
• Transaction fees (if you’re on an external gateway).
• App costs: some apps are free on Plus that are paid on lower tiers, and vice versa.
• Theme and customisation: Plus opens up Checkout Extensibility, which can replace several apps.
• Implementation work to move plans (modest if staying on the same theme, larger if rebuilding for new features).

For most merchants, a 30-minute spreadsheet exercise is enough to make the decision objectively. Our guide on maximising web development ROI covers the broader framing.

Don’t overpay for plan features you won’t use

The flip side is real too. We’ve seen merchants on Shopify Plus who use none of the Plus features and would be perfectly served by the Shopify or Advanced plan. The premium pays off only when you’re actually using Checkout Extensibility, B2B, Functions, or Flow. If your store is a clean DTC operation with a standard checkout and no wholesale, ask honestly whether Plus is earning its keep.

Plan changes are reversible (mostly)

You can upgrade or downgrade plans through your Shopify admin in a few clicks, and the pro-rata billing is handled automatically. The exception is Plus: it’s a separate contract negotiation, typically annual, with custom terms. Downgrading from Plus mid-contract is possible but requires conversation with Shopify and may involve termination charges depending on your agreement.

If you’re considering Plus specifically, get quotes. The published price is a starting point. Most merchants with real volume negotiate something better, particularly during launch promotions and annual renewals.

Choose based on your business, not someone else’s

The right plan is the one whose maths works for your revenue, whose features remove real friction from your operations, and whose ceiling is high enough that you’re not constantly bumping into limits. Don’t pick Plus because a competitor uses it. Don’t cling to Basic out of habit if the maths says move. Review your plan every 12 months and adjust as the business grows.

If you’d like a hand modelling your plan-change ROI, scoping a Plus migration, or building out the Plus-only features that justify the upgrade, our Sydney development team works across all Shopify tiers including Plus. Start a project to model your numbers, or have a look at our full services list and our piece on Sydney websites that outperform templates.