Shopify
All-in-one commerce platform for selling online, in person, and across social and AI channels.
By Shopify Inc. · HQ Ottawa, Canada · 4.5/5 verified-buyer score
Positioning guardrails
Best for
- Merchants who want one platform for online, in-person, social and AI-channel selling
- SMB to enterprise brands that need a fast-launching, low-maintenance storefront
- Retailers running physical stores and ecommerce on shared inventory
- Global sellers needing multi-currency, multi-market and duties handling via Shopify Markets
- Teams with limited engineering that still need custom checkout, apps and APIs
Ideal size: 1-200+ staff people · Solo sellers through global enterprise brands
Not for
- Businesses whose core need is a heavy back-office ERP or supply-chain suite rather than a commerce front end
- Companies that must keep payment processing entirely on an in-house stack
- Highly bespoke non-commerce web applications
- Organizations unwilling to accept subscription pricing plus transaction fees
Value metrics scorecard
Time-to-Value
About a week to first sale
~7 days to first production value
Total Cost of Ownership
$3,588/yr
Starts at $348 · Tiered monthly subscription (Basic, Grow, Advanced, Plus) billed monthly or yearly, plus card processing rates; no setup fees on any plan.
Implementation Friction
1/5
Engineering + admin effort required
Buyer Score
out of 5 · verified buyers
Full cost breakdown
Mandatory implementation fee
None
Seat tiers
Staff account limits: 5 on Grow, 15 on Advanced, unlimited on Plus.
Add-on costs
- POS Pro: +$89/month per location for advanced in-store tools
- Agentic: $0/month to sell in AI channels, card rates from 2.9% + 30c online
- Third-party transaction fees of 0.2%-2% when not using Shopify Payments
Company & support
Who is behind Shopify, and how your team gets help once it is live.
Company
- Founded
- Not recorded
- Headquarters
- Ottawa, Canada
How you get support
- PhoneEnterprise only
- EmailNot listed
- Live chatAll plans
- Support portal / ticketsNot listed
- Community forumAll plans
- Help centre / docsAll plans
- Dedicated account managerNot listed
- In person / on-siteNot listed
- Hours
- 24/7
- Response time
- Not stated
Shopify advertises 24/7 support with live chat on all plans; the Plus plan adds priority 24/7 phone support. Help Center and Shopify Community are self-serve.
“Not listed” means the vendor’s public pages don’t mention that channel, not that it is unavailable. Ask about it during evaluation.
Market position
Where Shopify sits against its closest alternatives. Pick any two of cost, speed, friction and buyer score, and up to 9 companies to compare.
Quadrant view
Typical annual cost × Time-to-value
The lines cross at the median of the solutions shown, so about half sit on each side of each line. A dashed ring marks an outlier pinned to the edge; hover for its value.
Companies on the chart 6 / 10
- Shopify
- Brandboom
- Recharge
- Owner.com
- Rebuy
- Postscript
Add or change companies
Up to 10 companies including Shopify. Listed closest first.
Stack fit signal
Compatibility with standard B2B ecosystems.
No supported MCP path today, so it cannot be driven from an AI client.
AI & MCP readiness
What Shopify ships in AI, and what it asks of your ecosystem.
AI features shipped
Sidekick is Shopify's built-in commerce AI assistant in the admin, included with plans (millions of tokens). Agentic Storefronts list products for sale in AI channels such as ChatGPT, Copilot and Meta, and Shopify publishes a Storefront MCP for agent builds.
In your ecosystem
- AI connection
- Not supported
- Model key
- Not recorded
- AI usage audit
- Not recorded
Compliance attestations
* IAPP AIGP certifies individuals, not products. It means named staff hold the credential — not that the platform does.
Bottom line
Shopify is an all-in-one commerce platform for selling online, in person, and through social and AI channels. Plans run from $29/month (Basic, billed yearly) to $2,300/month for Plus, with no setup fees. It bundles storefronts, checkout, payments, inventory, marketing, analytics and POS, backed by 13,000-21,000+ apps and public APIs. Case studies describe launches in days and enterprise replatforms in months, with SOC 2, SOC 3 and Level 1 PCI DSS compliance.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Shopify cost, and is there a free trial?
Basic is $29/month billed yearly ($39 monthly), Grow $79, Advanced $299, and Plus starts at $2,300/month on a three-year term. Shopify offers a 3-day free trial, then $1/month for three months. There are no setup fees, but card processing rates apply and add-ons such as POS Pro cost $89/month per location. Third-party transaction fees of 0.2%-2% apply if you do not use Shopify Payments.
How long does it take to launch on Shopify?
Most merchants add a product, pick a theme and start selling within days; hosting, a free SSL certificate and a custom domain are included. Replatforming a large enterprise store is a project of months: published case studies cite migrations ranging from 45 days to roughly 14 months depending on catalog size, markets and ERP integrations.
Does Shopify support B2B and wholesale selling?
Yes. Shopify B2B includes company profiles, catalogs (up to three on Basic, Grow and Advanced; unlimited on Plus), vaulted payment methods and discount controls. Flow automations can charge vaulted payment methods on fulfillment, due dates or invoicing, and case studies describe manufacturers and brands running DTC and wholesale from one platform.
What security and privacy certifications does Shopify hold?
Shopify states it is certified Level 1 PCI DSS compliant, and that stores powered by Shopify are PCI compliant by default. It has been issued SOC 2 Type II and SOC 3 reports. Its security page also points merchants to GDPR and CCPA guidance for designing compliant data handling.
How well does Shopify integrate with our existing stack?
Shopify exposes public APIs, Functions, Flow, Hydrogen headless tooling and an app store of 13,000-21,000+ commerce apps. Case studies describe ERP integrations with NetSuite and Odoo and custom apps built on Shopify APIs. Plus and Enterprise plans get substantially higher API rate limits and full data access for custom apps.