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Do you want to learn about Shopify annual plan pricing? If yes, then you are on the right page.
Shopify is often ranked the best e-commerce platform. But one Shopify question I get every time is ‘is there an annual Shopify payment plan?’, and the answer is yes.
While most Shopify vendors prefer monthly billing, the platform provides a yearly plan that comes with a 10% discount. The deal is that you need to pay for a year upfront to enjoy this discount.
In this Shopify yearly plan review, you will learn every detail you need to know, including the features and fees attached to each plan.
Let’s dive into this Shopify annual plan review.
What is Shopify?
Shopify is a versatile e-commerce store builder that lets anyone build a fully-functional online store, without any technical skill. The platform operates on a web browser, so you don’t have to download any software to use it.
Shopify is feature-packed, it provides tools and features that help you manage your e-commerce business efficiently. You also don’t need to pay for hosting, it’s already included in every plan.
To use Shopify for your e-commerce business, you need to subscribe to a plan, which could either be monthly, yearly, etc. Before I start this Shopify annual plan review, let me explain the other fees involved.
Understanding Transaction Fees and Credit Card Fees
In this Shopify yearly plan review, you will notice that every plan includes transaction fees and credit card fees. This might confuse you so let me quickly make it clear.
The credit card rates are charged by the credit card company when a purchase is recorded, so Shopify has no control over it. While transaction fees are fees charged by Shopify with each transaction whenever you use an external payment gateway.
But if you use Shopify’s own payment processor called ‘Shopify payments’, you don’t have to pay any transaction fee.
Now that you are clear on how transaction fees and credit fees work, let’s proceed with the Shopify annual plan review.
Shopify ‘Lite’ Annual Plan
The ‘lite’ plan, at $9 per month is Shopify’s lowest plan. However, it doesn’t allow you to build a fully-functional, standalone online store. You can only use it to sell on existing websites, sell on Facebook, or use it as a backend for a physical store.
The ‘lite’ plan lets you sell on an existing website by providing you with a snippet of code you can add to your site. Once you add this code, every detail of your products—descriptions, prices, images—will be uploaded, including a Shopify ‘Buy Button’. Also, you can manage your products from Shopify’s interface.
This plan also simplifies selling on Facebook by allowing you to upload your products to your Facebook shop with a few clicks. The only drawback with selling on Facebook is that you can’t sell digital products – this might change in the future.
Lastly, the ‘lite’ plan enables you to use Shopify as a backend for your physical store through its point-of-sale (POS) feature. Meaning you can use it as a solution for processing payments and managing inventory for a physical store.
Note: If you prioritize the POS feature more, you are better off with the ‘Shopify POS Pro’ addon ($89 per month) as it allows you to enjoy more sophisticated point-of-sale features.
Shopify ‘Lite’ Plan Features
- Selling on existing websites
- Selling on Facebook
- Using Shopify as a backend for a physical store
- Limited customer support (no phone call)
Pricing
- Yearly fee – $97.2
- Online credit card rates – 2.9 percent + $0.30
- Online AMEX credit card rates – 3.9 percent + $0.30
- In-person credit card rates – 2.9 percent
- External transaction fees – 2.0 percent
Related: Shopify for Artists (Review)
‘Basic Shopify’ Annual Plan
The ‘Basic’ plan, at $313.2 per year, is the cheapest Shopify plan for creating a standalone online store, with no external support. Unlike the lite plan, basic Shopify lets you build your store on a domain name of your choice (for example, store.com), and you can also enjoy every feature on the ‘lite’ plan.
You can leverage any theme from the Shopify theme store to design your site from scratch without any core coding. Currently, there are over 90 themes to choose from, and they cost anywhere from $0-$180. Using a theme saves you the time and money you could have wasted coding your site.
The ‘basic’ plan also allows you to have access to a blogging feature, which is vital for content marketing. This means you can create blog content to promote your products. This feature isn’t accessible with the ‘lite’ plan.
Additionally, users on the basic plan can enjoy the abandoned cart recovery functionality. This is used for tracking shoppers that added products to the cart but couldn’t complete their orders before leaving the checkout. So you can send them follow-up emails to convince them to finalize their shopping.
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Basic Plan Features
- A fully functional Online Store
- Selling an unlimited number of products
- Two staff login accounts
- Multiple sales channels
- 24/7 support via phone, email, and live chat
- Discount code creation
- A free SSL certificate
- A blog
- Abandoned cart recovery
- Gift cards
- Point of sale (POS) features
- Ability to print shipping labels
- Discounted shipping rates
- Fraud analysis
- Up to 64% savings on shipping from USPS, UPS, and DHL
Pricing
- Yearly fee – $313.2
- Online credit card rates – 2.9 percent + $0.30
- Online AMEX credit card rates – 3.9 percent + $0.30
- In-person credit card rates – 2.9 percent
- External transaction fees – 2.0 percent
‘Shopify’ Annual Plan
‘Shopify’, at $853.2 per year, is the second most popular Shopify plan. The plan is perfect for small businesses and also suitable for medium-sized businesses. With this plan, you can enjoy every feature of the previous plans, and you will also have access to professional reporting and lower transaction fees.
Although the basic Shopify plan comes with a reporting feature. But just like its name, the report is pretty basic. If you prefer professional reports of activities happening on your online store, the Shopify plan lets you enjoy that.
The report summaries you can enjoy with this plan include marketing reports, sales reports, customer reports, and retail sales reports. You can also leverage a free tool like Google Analytics to get more insights on your store’s traffic alongside the reports.
And if you want more sophisticated reports, you should see the plan after this one.
Shopify Plan Features
- Every feature on the ‘Basic’ plan
- Five staff login accounts
- Generate professional reports
- Up to 72% savings on shipping from USPS, UPS, and DHL
Pricing
- Yearly fee – $853.2
- Online credit card rates – 2.6 percent + $0.30
- Online AMEX credit card rates – 3.6 percent + $0.30
- In-person credit card rates – 2.5 percent
- External transaction fees – 1.0 percent
Related: Shopify for Restaurants Review
‘Advanced Shopify’ Annual Plan
The ‘Advanced’ plan, at $3,229.2 per year, is Shopify’s most expensive plan for mid-size businesses. While this plan is expensive, it attracts cheaper transaction fees and credit card fees, you can also enjoy tons of admirable features to help grow your e-commerce business. However, advanced report building and the shipping rate calculator are what make this plan unique compared to the previous ones.
Even though there is a professional reporting tool on the ‘Shopify’ plan, it doesn’t allow you to generate custom reports. The advanced Shopify plan allows you to tweak your data and generate in-depth reports you need for growing your business. There are a lot of metrics, dimensions, and filters to choose from, to help you create the perfect reports.
The shipping rate calculator helps you generate the cost of shipping products to your customers in real-time; you don’t have to do it manually. This is done through an app from the Shopify app store.
Advanced Shopify Features
- Every feature on the ‘Shopify’ plan
- 15 staff login accounts
- Advanced report building
- Real-time shipping calculator
- Up to 72% savings on shipping from USPS, UPS, and DHL
Pricing
- Yearly fee – $3,229.2
- Online credit card rates – 2.4 percent + $0.30
- Online AMEX credit card rates – 3.4 percent + $0.30
- In-person credit card rates – 2.4 percent
- External transaction fees – 0.5 percent
Related: Shopify for Photographers (Review)
Shopify Plus Plan
The biggest and most expensive Shopify plan is ‘Shopify Plus’. The plan pricing starts at $2000 per month, depending on your monthly sales. The idea is that the more sales you are making, the more resources and tools you will need to power your business. Unlike previous plans, this package is aimed at big enterprises making voluminous sales every month.
There are lots of benefits to enjoy with this plan. For example, every Shopify plus merchants are assigned individual success managers to work with them to grow their businesses. The managers are also responsible for introducing the latest tools and resources merchants could leverage to ease their business operations.
There are tons of Shopify plus benefits, including store cloning, access to the Shopify ‘flow’ tool for automating tasks, script editor, multiple staff accounts, high-level security, and many more. If you are curious to know more about Shopify plus and how much it will cost, I recommend that you read this: Shopify for Enterprise Pricing.
Shopify Annual Plan Free Trial
For most online vendors, Shopify is the best e-commerce platform, considering the plethora of features it provides for managing an online store. Yet, before choosing a Shopify annual plan, you should try the platform for free to understand how it works.
Shopify offers a 14-day free trial that allows you to explore the platform and get a better insight into how it can help you manage and grow your business. You can sign up for a free trial with only your email address and no credit card is required.
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Conclusion on Shopify Yearly Plan Review
If you have the budget, it’s better to subscribe to a Shopify annual plan since you will enjoy a 10% discount. The discount alone is sufficient to run other operations of your e-commerce business.
Just remember that you need to make the payment upfront. Once you finish your 14-day free trial, you will be asked to pick a plan to keep your store active, this is where you should pick a Shopify yearly plan that meets your needs.
Good luck!.
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