[Comparing Shopify plans] What are the differences between each plan? Features? Fees?

I've been researching Shopify and I'm wondering what the differences are between their pricing plans? What are the features? What are the fees?

There are many different plans, but it is hard to understand because there are so many different things written on them. Here, we will explain the different plans depending on the price.

Also, I think it would be hard to understand if you looked too closely, so instead of looking at the finer details, you can see the differences on the official website, and I would like to focus on the important points to keep in mind when explaining which one you should choose for actual use.

If you just want to see the conclusion, click here to jump to the conclusion!

There was a major change in the plan on January 24, 2024 !
This article has not yet been updated or revised in this regard, so please check it against the official Shopify version.

What kind of pricing plans are available?

Price Comparison

First, let's look at what pricing plans are available.

There are three main plans, as well as two other plans: a "low-cost plan where you just sell" and a "super premium plan," for a total of five plans as of March 2023.

We'll explain the other two later, but first let's compare the three basic plans using official data.

The card fees shown are for VISA and MASTER. JCB and AMMEX are a little more expensive, so please check the official website for more information.

The key point to look at here is the degree to which the reduction in fees contributes to the monthly fee.

In terms of credit card fees, the difference is only 0.15% with the higher plan, so if you sell 1 million yen per month, that comes to a difference of 1,500 yen, so you can see that there isn't much difference in the fees here.

On the other hand, external payment fees can differ by up to 1.5%.

External payment fees are fees charged when using a payment service other than Shopify's official payment service, "Shopify Payment ." For example, if you use "convenience store payment," "mobile carrier payment," "Paypay payment," "AmazonPay," etc., these fees are charged by Shopify in addition to the fees for each service .

If you do a simple calculation, if you have external payments of 1 million yen per month, there will be a difference of 15,000 yen, so you will be able to recover a fair amount. In particular, even the middle standard will be 1% lower, so if you sell 1 million yen, the standard will be 10,000 yen lower , so it is more profitable than the basic.

Differences other than price

Looking at the differences between the plans on the official website, we will compare those that are different from the basic plan. The problem here is that the official website may list features that are not supported in Japan . In some cases, they will be supported in stages, but generally support starts in North America and Europe, and not yet in Japan. Be careful, as some features may be listed as "supported."

Among these, the two biggest features that are particularly worth comparing are "Reports" and "E-commerce Automation." I'll go into more detail on these two later, so first I'll explain the rest.

Staff Accounts

The difference between staff accounts is expressed in numbers, but the main difference is how many administrative staff accounts you can register.

Staff accounts can be set to have different permissions to manipulate the store. For example, a staff member can be set to "not see customer information, but can register products." Since detailed settings are possible, it is better to manage the permissions of each staff member more carefully in larger stores!

Owners are not counted as staff , so you should think of them as having a quota of "number of people + 1 person."

If you have multiple bases or outsource your warehouse and want to give staff authority to warehouse staff as well, you may not have enough staff if you use the basic plan.

That would be one of the factors to consider.

Third-party calculated shipping rates

This plan is only available with the Advanced Plan. It would be convenient if you could use it, but unfortunately it is not usable in Japan.

There are certain delivery companies that can do this calculation, and the companies that can handle it are

• UPS
• USPS
• Canada Post
• FedEx

These are the four companies. Well, as you can see, they are not well known in Japan. "Yamato", "Sagawa" and "Yu-Pack" are not supported at all, so even if it is possible to use it for each plan, you can't actually use it at all, so be careful!

Customs and import tax calculator

This is also something that is unlocked with the advanced plan, but I feel like this is also something that is hardly used in Japan.

This system is only applicable when the delivery method is the DDP method, and the main carriers that support it are slightly more expensive international courier companies such as FedEx and DHL. Since we have not actually collaborated with them, we cannot give a definitive conclusion, but it is highly likely that it cannot be used.

When actually sending from Japan to overseas, your options will likely be to "entrust it to an external warehouse" or "use a Japan Post app," so this is another factor you don't need to think too much about when thinking about your plan.

Reports

The official page's plan description simply says "Report" and doesn't explain what "Standard" means, but if you search the help page you'll find it. (However, the information on the help page is a little outdated.)

The table on the help page also includes an explanation for the Shopify Lite plan, but since the Lite plan has now been discontinued, it is not included.

The Standard plan comes with "standard" features, so can you see that a lot of stuff has been omitted in the Basic plan?

This is one of the major differences in functionality between Shopify plans that you should consider first. As you can see, with the Standard plan and above, the rest of the features below the "Order Report" are unlocked. Among these, the "Sales Report" and "Customer Report" are particularly excellent .

I apologize for attaching an image, but this is the data that can be obtained from each one.

The accuracy of this report is extremely high, and with the standard plan or above you can make full use of it to manage your store.

How successful was this discount initiative?
"Is there anything we can do for customers who only buy from us once?"
"What kind of benefits would you give to loyal customers?"

They will show you an analysis to help you think about measures such as these. It would cost quite a bit to ask another company to collect this kind of data, but if you set it to standard with Shopify, anyone can get it . I think you can get some data with other cart systems, but Shopify's accuracy is really extremely high, so the more your sales increase, the more important functions you will get automatically if you use the standard version or above.

If you go for the Advanced plan or higher, you will also get a "Custom Report". You can extract the data you need for the period you need , so it is a very effective method for those who want to thoroughly analyze . It can be used for plans that cost more than 30,000 yen per month, but you will probably only want to thoroughly market your business when your monthly sales exceed 5 million yen , so if you have sales of that size, the investment will be well worth it.

In the beginning, you can get a lot of data without customization, so I think whether or not you have the standard version makes a big difference in analytical ability.

Either way, this report is a powerful tool. I think it's a pretty essential feature for anyone running a serious e-commerce website.

E-commerce Automation

As the name suggests, it is a feature that allows you to automate various things. It is also called " shopify FLOW ".

This is an app that can be used with the Standard plan or above, and its features are truly amazing.

If you want to know more, please refer to the article above, but it's all going to be automated . Everything is going to be automated .

For example, you could do things like "When a customer's cumulative purchase amount exceeds 100,000 yen, they will be given a royal customer tag" or "When a product is added, all staff will be notified."

Furthermore, the apps that can be linked are not limited to Shopify apps, but can also be linked to external apps .

It is possible to do things like "update product information → write the updated information to a spreadsheet," and the much-talked-about ChatGPT can already be linked to external parties, expanding the possibilities for its use.

It's difficult to explain in detail as you can automate so many different things.

With just this one function , the possibilities of an EC site are expanding to infinity, and the strength of Shopify stands out even just by being able to use it. It's an amazing feature that allows you to implement things relatively easily that would cost hundreds of thousands of yen if you were to create a system from scratch without using a platform, and it's not possible to do so on other platforms (specialized knowledge is required to set up difficult things).

Another benefit of automation is that it helps to "create time for people." Even if you do 15 minutes of work every day, that's 5 hours a month, right? If you convert 5 hours into an hourly rate, it will cost at least 7,000 yen. The price difference between Basic and Standard is only about 5,000 yen, so it will easily pay for itself.

This is such a killer feature that it's worth using Shopify just for this feature .