Hidden fees are everywhere, except at Shopify!

Every reliable ecommerce solution on the market today charges a variable transaction-type fee, in one form of the other.  Often times these fees are hidden to consumers until you get a surprisingly high bill at the end of the month.  For example, we've recently read a lot of horror stories about surprise "excess bandwidth charges" found on monthly bills from other ecommerce platforms.  The cost you could pay for excess bandwidth is almost never listed on any ecommerce provider websites, there's often nothing you can do to reduce these charges, and, worst of all, you can be charged for excess bandwidth even if you don't sell a single item.

Other providers hide transaction fees under their credit card processing system terms and conditions, calling them "Fraud Score" fees, "Gateway Access" fees, "Monthly Statement" fees, "Monthly PCI Compliance" fees, or something even more exotic.  Some even charge "Early Termination" fees when you get fed up and decide to leave for another company.

Shopify's fees are fully transparent

What differentiates Shopify from other ecommerce companies is that we are entirely transparent about our pricing:  

    On lower end plans, Shopify charges a small 1-2% transaction fee.  This fee is clearly listed on the signup page and on the pricing page.  On upper end Shopify plans there is no transaction fee.

Simple isn't it?  There are no hidden fees or bandwidth charges - in fact unlimited bandwidth is offered on all Shopify plans.

Why do some plans include transaction fees?

Simply put, a transaction fee incentivizes us at Shopify to help you sell more products.  Every store that gets created is assigned a "Shopify Guru."  This Guru's job is to help answer any questions you may have, tell you about how to best use Shopify, and to help your store be successful.  Unlike other ecommerce platforms, Shopify doen't just set you up with a website and a shopping cart and forget about you.  Your Guru sticks around and helps you out, giving you marketing advice, sharing tricks they've heard from other stores, and so on.

Remember: Once your store becomes successful, you can easily upgrade to a higher end Shopify plan that doesn't include transaction fees.