7 questions every beginner will ask about Shopify

What is Shopify? You might have seen the name flying around Twitter but do you know what it is? Whether you’re a D2C newbie or working for an e-commerce multinational, we’ve put together this explanatory guide to show you the ins and outs of Shopify.

We’ll explain what Shopify is, from Shopify Starter all the way up to Shopify Plus. We’ll explain who’s using Shopify, what they’re using it for and why they’re using it. And we’ll look at how running a store on Shopify actually works, how it grows a business and how you can take the first step to a Shopify store of your own today.

What is Shopify and Shopify Plus?

Shopify is an SaaS platform for building e-commerce websites. Merchants pay a monthly fee in return for a software that builds scalable, sophisticated and high performance e-commerce stores. 

Shopify handles everything required for building an e-commerce website. The back-end technical stuff, front-end design, site hosting, customer information management, stock inventory, payment options - everything you can think of that’s part of the process of building, running and maintaining an online webshop, Shopify takes care of.

It’s what’s known as a monolithic structure, or an all-in-one e-commerce platform. Founded in 2008, Shopify has grown rapidly and is today indisputably the best e-commerce platform on the market. It’s ease of use and all-in-one approach are the most commonly cited reasons for it’s gargantuan success.

There are numerous subdivisions of Shopify, let’s run through them here:

Shopify Starter is the entry-level plan and replaces what used to be known as Shopify Lite. Starter merchants cannot build a full standalone store but can sell through social media (Instagram, TikTok, Facebook), existing websites, messaging apps, and embedded buy buttons. It’s aimed at side-hustlers and creators who want to test a product before committing to a full store.

Basic Shopify is the first ‘real’ Shopify option. It’s aimed at e-commerce newcomers and comes stacked with the most fundamental features for building a website and growing an online business. The key difference between Shopify Starter and Basic Shopify is Basic users can actually build a full, independent e-commerce website of their own.

Shopify is the core plan. The features between Basic and Shopify don’t change a great deal but on the Shopify plan they’re tailored towards larger, more established businesses. There are 20 available staff accounts, for example, rather than only 5. Detailed performance reports on sales, marketing, retail and customers are added, and country-specific domains and pricing percentages are available for businesses beginning to think about taking their first steps abroad.

Advanced Shopify continues this theme, tailoring features even more to businesses on the rise. Transaction fees drop further on this tier, detailed performance reporting becomes available, and merchants can set product-specific prices for different countries or regions.

Shopify Plus is the enterprise plan, aimed at high-volume merchants and brands operating across multiple markets. Pricing starts from €2,300 per month and transaction fees on Shopify Payments drop to the lowest rates on the platform. Plus unlocks higher API limits, unlimited staff accounts, expansion stores for multi-region setups, Shopify Flow automation, and access to advanced checkout customisation.

The mathematicians amongst you will have no doubt calculated that there’s a transaction tipping point at which an Advanced Shopify merchant spends more money in transaction fees than they would paying the higher monthly fee for Shopify Plus. We work it out to be €165k a month, or €2 million a year. Read our article on when you should switch to Shopify Plus for the full calculation.

Shopify is an SaaS platform.

Who uses Shopify?

As you’ve seen, Shopify’s price plans cover every stage of business development. From the side-hustler designing hand-made t-shirts in their bedroom and selling on Instagram to the multinational fashion house scaling into a new continent, Shopify has a solution.

So the answer is: everyone. Every business owner that wants an online store (and in 2022, we’d highly recommend every business to be present online) can find a Shopify solution for them.

We work solely with direct-to-consumer (or D2C) businesses and we encourage every prospective business owner to resist the retailer and build their own brand in the D2C model. Why? Because D2C is the best model for building a strong and sustainable business, and with Shopify you have all the tools at your disposal for success.

Selling products through retailers only ever results in a race to the bottom. The heavy-hitters like Amazon can always ask for a lower price so there’s simply no way to win. Focus instead on building a brand and an online presence. 

Shopify provides all the tools for building a unique e-commerce store that will stick long in the memory and keep customers coming back again and again.  

Let’s take a look at some successful D2C brands making the most of Shopify:

Patta: A Shopify store with a custom feature for selling one-off items via a raffle. Shopify can meet a business’ requirements no matter how unique they may be. Read more about our Patta projects below:

Read about our Patta project here.

Read about our Patta x Nike project here.

Filling Pieces: Built on our brand new Shopify 2.0 starter, the Filling Pieces store is a perfect example of everything that’s now possible straight out of the box.

Read about our Filling Pieces project here.

Veloretti: A true digital flagship store. Global scaling, beautiful aesthetics and the highest quality UX, all made possible by headless architecture on Shopify Plus.

Read about our Veloretti project here.

What can I do with Shopify?

With Shopify you can build and grow a business online. Starting from absolutely nothing, and with no previous experience developing websites, you can build a store to sell your products and establish your brand identity.

Build As mentioned previously, Shopify provides everything to build an e-commerce website. If you’ve never done it before you can use their templates to drag-and-drop a website of your design. If you want something a little more spectacular you can enlist skilled designers and developers to build something from scratch.

Grow Shopify’s best feature is its scalability. You can begin on Basic Shopify, selling only two products with a handful of transactions each month, and effortlessly scale all the way to Shopify Plus, selling hundreds of products in thousands of transactions. 

During this trajectory, nothing about the way you run your Shopify store will change. From the back-end product inventory, to customer data reports, to front-end UX design - everything remains the same. Other e-commerce platforms require close to an entire store rebuild for a business to successfully scale but not Shopify.

Mobile-first Mobile is no longer a trend. It’s the dominant channel for e-commerce sales and Shopify stores are built with that in mind. They’re not mobile-friendly, they’re mobile-first.

Integrations Integrate a vast number of apps and software to make your website distinct and memorable. From scrolling animations to intricate real-time product viewers, you really can build anything on the Shopify platform.

Headless development Shopify gives you the front and back-end all in one. But in some situations it’s advantageous to introduce a new front-end system. This is called headless development and is welcomed by the Shopify platform.

How much does Shopify cost?

There’s no set cost to a Shopify store. The cost depends largely on which plan you’re on so let’s start there before looking at some hidden extras.

Shopify Starter: €5 per month.
Basic Shopify: €36 per month.
Shopify: €92 per month.
Advanced Shopify: €344 per month.
Shopify Plus: from €2,300 per month.

These are the headlines. Quite interesting but the real decisive stuff comes afterwards. 

Transaction fees when using Shopify Payments (rates shown for European cards on a standard DTC setup):

Shopify Starter: around 1.9% + €0.25.
Basic Shopify: around 1.7% + €0.25.
Shopify: around 1.6% + €0.25.
Advanced Shopify: around 1.5% + €0.25.
Shopify Plus: custom rates, typically below 1% + €0.25.

Non-European and international cards carry higher fees, typically 2.9% + €0.25 on the lower plans and dropping on Plus. Check Shopify’s pricing page for the exact rates that apply to your country and card mix.

Transaction fees when using third-party payment providers (Adyen, Stripe, Mollie, and so on), applied on top of the provider’s own fees:

Shopify Starter: 2.0%.
Basic Shopify: 2.0%.
Shopify: 1.0%.
Advanced Shopify: 0.5%.
Shopify Plus: 0.15%.

As you can see, the monthly fee only tells half the story and it’s important for all Shopify merchants to know how much they’re spending on transaction fees. At some point on each plan it makes financial sense to step up and embrace the benefits of the reduced fee.

On top of these your monthly costs will include any fees from apps integrated into your Shopify store. There are thousands of Shopify apps and it’s likely that you’ll be using at least one or two of them so always keep that in mind when calculating costs. Head to the Shopify apps store to get an idea of how much you can expect to pay.

Web design with Shopify

Designing your Shopify store is easy. Well, it can be easy. Or it can be very intricate and complicated. It’s up to you.

If you’re a newbie and want to build a website yourself, with no prior development or design experience, you can. If you’re looking for a digital flagship store that jumps off the screen and immerses customers in your brand, that’s also possible.

Shopify caters to all levels of experience and expertise.

Themes are Shopify’s design templates (we’ll look at them in more detail below). There are tonnes to choose from, some are free and others cost roughly between €95 and €170.Our advice: if you’re choosing to build your store yourself, don’t be cheap when choosing your theme. You never get a second chance to make a first impression and all that. But it’s true. Customers will judge your store in an instant and if they don’t like what they see, they’re sure to click their way out just as quickly.

But if you can afford it, we’d highly recommend hiring expertise to design and build your Shopify store. The difference a team of skilled designers and developers can make is far more than solely aesthetics. UX design is fundamental to conversion. We’ve been shopping online for so long now we have collective expectations about the way shops should look, the way things should be laid out, how long pages should take to load and much more. If your store doesn’t meet these expectations, customers will either not purchase or not return. Or both.

And if you’re going down the professional route, the store design is only the first step. From there it’s paramount that you optimise in line with findings from your customer data. Data teams are essential to successful e-commerce in 2022, searching for design features to modify and tweak. They give their findings to designers, who update accordingly and the process begins again with the search for the next optimisation.

Web design on Shopify is as simple or as detailed as you want to make it. But keep in mind that for continued growth and success, design is more than simply making a store look nice.

Shopify’s best feature is its scalability.

Using templates on Shopify

Shopify templates (or themes) are for the e-commerce beginner. They’re each professionally designed and it’s possible to build a very successful online business using nothing but these themes.

Choosing a theme is an important decision to make, as each one is tailored to slightly different customer needs and tastes. Some are more visually-based whereas others focus on content and SEO. Some tell long and detailed product stories, whereas others display numerous products in a logical and easily ordered manner.

To choose the right template for your site you first need to know your core customer. What are they looking for in an e-commerce website? What do they need to know about your product and what’s the easiest way for them to find the information they’re looking for?

With information like this at hand, it becomes easier to decide on a theme. Be sure to check what your theme looks like on a mobile device and prioritise this over desktop. E-commerce is a mobile industry and the majority of your customers will arrive via mobile.

5 key benefits of using Shopify

To recap, let's look at 5 benefits of using Shopify to build an e-commerce website.

1. Shopify is the best e-commerce platform in the world.

It doesn’t get more simple than that does it? When you consider the price, the features, functionality, ease of use, scalability, hosting, the app store and every other conceivable metric, Shopify comes out above all contenders. Shopify merchants can build their platforms safely in the knowledge that they’ve chosen the leading and most forward thinking software, every feature of which is tailored towards growing their business.

2. Shopify Unite.

Forward thinking. That’s a key characteristic in e-commerce. Shopify Unite is the platform’s annual conference at which they unveil updates and new features. They’re not content with being the best of the best, they’re always looking for ways to improve the platform with new technologies.Unite 2021 was about as explosive as it gets with the announcement of Hydrogen and Oxygen, sections everywhere, new functionality for metafields and more. For all the info, read our analysis of the conference here.

3. Scalability.

Shopify’s best asset. Scale from 1 product to 100,000 products and nothing on the Shopify back-end changes. No site rebuild required, nothing changes in the hosting. Everything smooth and easy just how we like it. Shopify merchants can dream big without the nightmares on other e-commerce platforms.

4. Performance.

Strong store performance is essential to successful e-commerce. Nothing turns customers away quicker than a slow website and Shopify sites are as fast as they come. Shopify is hosted all around the globe so no matter where you’re based, your store will benefit from the same high standards.And with Shopify Hydrogen and Oxygen now in play, Shopify stores can be built on React for even greater speeds.

5. Headless e-commerce.

Shopify have embraced headless technology with open arms. For international brands that are scaling around the world, headless is a viable solution for building a Shopify store that’s flexible enough to accommodate customers in numerous countries.

Frequently asked questions about Shopify

What is Shopify and how does it work?

Shopify is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform for building and running online stores. Merchants pay a monthly subscription and Shopify handles the technical stack: hosting, checkout, payments, security, inventory, and customer data. You manage products, pricing, marketing, and design through a web-based admin, and Shopify serves the store to customers at high performance across desktop and mobile.

How much does Shopify cost in 2026?

Shopify has five plans. Shopify Starter is €5 per month for social and chat commerce. Basic Shopify is €36 per month, Shopify is €92 per month, and Advanced Shopify is €344 per month. Shopify Plus starts from €2,300 per month for enterprise merchants. Each plan has its own transaction fee structure, ranging from around 1.9% + €0.25 on Starter down to below 1% + €0.25 on Plus when using Shopify Payments with European cards. On top of the subscription, budget for apps, a theme licence, and any agency fees for design and development.

Is Shopify good for beginners with no coding experience?

Yes. Shopify is built so non-technical founders can launch a store without touching a line of code. Themes handle design, drag-and-drop editors handle layout, and the Shopify App Store covers functionality like reviews, subscriptions, and shipping. The platform is the default recommendation for first-time DTC brands because it shortens time-to-launch and keeps operational complexity low as the business grows.

What is the difference between Shopify and Shopify Plus?

Shopify Plus is the enterprise tier. It unlocks higher API limits, dedicated launch engineers, unlimited staff accounts, expansion stores for multi-region setups, automated workflows via Shopify Flow, and access to advanced checkout customisation. The platform runs on the same infrastructure as standard Shopify but is priced and configured for high-volume merchants, typically those doing €2M+ per year in GMV or operating across multiple markets.

Can I migrate an existing store to Shopify?

Yes. Shopify supports migrations from WooCommerce, Magento, Lightspeed, BigCommerce, and most legacy platforms. Products, customers, orders, and content can be imported through native tools, third-party apps, or a partner agency. Most migrations take between six weeks and five months depending on catalogue complexity, integrations (ERP, PIM, OMS), and whether redirects and historical SEO equity need to be preserved. Enterprise migrations to Shopify Plus typically run longer due to custom checkout and content requirements.

Do I own my store and data on Shopify?

Yes. You own your product data, customer data, order history, and content. Shopify acts as the software provider: the platform is licensed, not the business running on top of it. Data can be exported at any time via the admin or the Admin API, and merchants retain full rights to migrate off Shopify if requirements change. This is a meaningful distinction from marketplace models like Amazon, where the platform controls the customer relationship.

Is Shopify secure and compliant for taking payments?

Yes. Shopify is Level 1 PCI DSS compliant, the highest standard for handling payment card data. Every store is issued an SSL certificate by default, and Shopify Payments includes automated fraud analysis on every order. For brands operating in regulated markets, Shopify offers additional controls for GDPR compliance in Europe, CCPA in California, and tax automation via Shopify Tax in supported regions.