How much a Shopify store costs in Canada in 2026

What does Shopify itself charge each month?

Every store pays for a Shopify plan. Shopify's Canadian pricing page (opens in a new tab) lists three plans for most businesses, Basic, Grow and Advanced, each with a pay-monthly price and a lower pay-yearly price in Canadian dollars. The table below copies them as Shopify published them when this guide was checked. As Shopify's billing overview (opens in a new tab) explains, paying yearly charges the whole year upfront in exchange for the lower monthly equivalent.

The higher plans add staff accounts, larger shipping discounts and live third-party shipping rates, and they lower the card rate on every online sale. If you take card payments through another provider instead of Shopify Payments, Shopify charges its own transaction fee on top of what that provider charges, and that fee also falls as the plan goes up. The same overview notes that card fees are not returned when you refund an order, so a refunded sale still costs its fee.

Themes and apps are separate bills. Free themes are made by Shopify. Paid themes come from third-party developers and are a one-time purchase: in the Shopify Theme Store they run from $100 USD (opens in a new tab) to $500 USD (opens in a new tab), and Shopify's theme help (opens in a new tab) says each one is licensed only to the store it was bought for and is a final sale. Apps carry their own subscriptions on their own billing cycle, so the real monthly figure is the plan plus every app you keep.

The plan is priced in Canadian dollars. Apps, theme purchases and domains are priced in US dollars and converted on your Shopify bill, so their cost moves with the exchange rate; the questions at the end have the detail. Two things on Shopify's pricing page are left out of the table: the introductory trial offer, which changes from time to time, so read its terms on the day you sign up; and Shopify Plus, which Shopify describes as for complex businesses and which Carrtel does not take on.

What setup, redesign, build and migration work costs

If you hire help, the work is the other half of the budget. Carrtel publishes its Shopify ranges in Canadian dollars. Each one is a typical project range; the final price is set against a written scope agreed before work begins, and GST is added where it applies. Every offer, with what it includes, is on the Shopify side of the pricing page.

A starter store is a first store on a proven theme: setup, payments, shipping, essential pages, product setup, mobile checks and launch support. A build is a storefront tailored to a growing brand, with custom work on the theme, key pages, and the product and collection structure. A migration is priced as one whole project, never an add-on, because it covers products and customers, a redirect for every old address, payments, shipping and launch checks. The WooCommerce to Shopify migration page shows what that involves for a store on WordPress.

Not sure which row you are in? The free Shopify store review looks at a live storefront and lists what is getting in the way. There is no login, no app to install and no email to give.

A worked first year: do it yourself, or a starter store

Here is one first year worked two ways, from the figures above only: Shopify's Basic plan paid yearly and a free theme, set up by you or as a starter store built for you. Both columns leave out what depends on your store: the fee on each card sale, the apps you add, a domain and tax.

The difference is the setup work. Doing it yourself costs time instead of money: choosing and setting up the theme, adding products, payments, shipping and the essential pages, and checking all of it on a phone before launch. Choosing a paid theme instead of a free one adds $100 USD (opens in a new tab) to $500 USD (opens in a new tab) once, in either column.

What moves the price up or down

Most of the distance between the bottom and the top of a range comes from a few things you can see before work starts.

Products and their data. A small catalogue with photos and descriptions ready loads quickly. A large catalogue with many variants, or descriptions still to be written, takes days of careful entry and checking. A complete product spreadsheet before work starts is the easiest saving there is.

Page designs. Each distinct template is design and build time: the home page, the product page, the collection page, a landing page for a campaign. Using the theme's own sections costs less than custom sections built from scratch.

Content. Photos, product copy, policies and an About page that are ready on the first day keep a project near the low end. Waiting on content stretches the schedule.

Connections to other systems. Live carrier rates, accounting, stock held somewhere else or a wholesale channel: anything that has to exchange data with Shopify is custom work, quoted after a short look rather than guessed.

Moving from another platform. For a migration, the count that matters is addresses. Every product, collection and blog post that Google knows needs a redirect, and customer records have to be checked on the new store before launch.

Apps. Each one is another monthly subscription on Shopify's bill, and often more code on every page. A store that needs fewer apps costs less every month.

What lowers the total: a proven theme used close to its design, a catalogue that is ready, and a phased launch, where the store opens with what it needs and adds the rest once it has sales to learn from.

Starter store, redesign or full build: which one do you need?

Start from where the store is today, not from the size of the budget.

No store yet, a manageable catalogue and a brand that a good theme can carry: a starter store. It gets you selling on a proven theme, and nothing stops you adding to it later.

A store that already sells but looks dated, works poorly on phones or has a confusing collection structure: a refresh or redesign. A Shopify store redesign works on the store you already have, so your products and customers stay where they are while the pages around them improve.

A growing brand whose products, options or page needs have outgrown a theme's defaults: a build, with custom sections and templates your team can edit afterwards.

A store on WooCommerce, Wix, Squarespace or another platform: a migration, priced as one project. One defined problem rather than a project, such as a broken section or an app conflict: a fix. Slow pages and a weak path to checkout: the conversion and performance sprint.

Each of these is described on Shopify store setup, redesigns and builds, with what it includes and how it runs.

Hourly rates versus a fixed scope

An hourly rate tells you the price of an hour, not the price of the job. When you pay by the hour, you carry the risk that the work takes longer than planned. With a fixed scope, the person quoting carries it, which is why a fixed price only means something next to a written list of what is included.

A useful written scope names the pages and templates that will change, the apps to add or remove, the data to import and who supplies it, what is billed by someone else (the Shopify plan, a paid theme, app subscriptions), how you approve the work before it goes live, and what happens if something breaks after launch.

Paying by the hour suits a small job whose size nobody can know yet, as long as it has a cap. For anything with a clear outcome, ask for a firm price. Carrtel quotes every Shopify job as a written scope with a firm price, and anything outside that scope is explained and priced before it goes ahead.

Hiring someone for theme changes or an app problem rather than a whole store? Hire a Shopify developer covers how that work is priced.

Questions about Shopify store costs in Canada