You have picked Shopify, or you are close to it, and someone has asked the obvious follow-up: “Fine, but what will it cost us every month?” The plan price on Shopify’s website is the easy part to find. The rest of the monthly bill only shows up after a few weeks of trading, when the app charges, the gateway deductions and a card statement in a foreign currency start arriving.
This post works out your Shopify monthly cost in India line by line, so you can estimate it before you launch rather than discover it afterwards. We deliberately leave out figures. Shopify, app developers and payment gateways change their rates, and a number copied into a blog post goes stale quietly. What does not change is the shape of the bill, and that is what you need to plan around.
Shopify monthly cost in India comes in two kinds
Before listing anything, split the bill in your head into two columns.
- Fixed charges arrive whether you sell one order or a thousand: the Shopify plan, most app subscriptions, and anything you have spread across the year, such as a domain or a theme.
- Per-order charges rise and fall with sales: the payment gateway’s cut, any Shopify transaction fee for using an outside gateway, shipping, and some apps that bill by usage.
This split matters more than any single number. A new store with few orders mostly feels the fixed column. A busy store feels the per-order column, and that is usually where a plan upgrade or a gateway change starts to make sense.
The line items, one at a time
1. The Shopify plan
This is the subscription that keeps your store online. Shopify lists its plans and their current prices on its pricing page, and the figure you see there can depend on your country and on whether you pay monthly or yearly. When you compare plans, look at the features you will actually use, such as staff accounts, reports and the transaction fee attached to each plan, not only the headline price.
One thing to note down: the plan price is charged for as long as the store exists. If you pause selling for a season, the store does not become free. Shopify does offer ways to pause a store, but the terms of those options are on Shopify’s side, so read them before you assume a quiet month costs nothing.
2. Apps
Most stores add a few apps from the Shopify App Store: product reviews, COD order confirmation, a courier integration, a WhatsApp button, perhaps invoices. Many are billed monthly and appear on your Shopify bill rather than as separate payments. Some have a free tier with limits; some charge more once your order count crosses a threshold.
Apps are where monthly costs creep. Each one looks small on its own. Five of them, each installed to solve a problem that came up once, add up to a meaningful line. We go through which apps tend to earn their place in our post on which paid Shopify apps a new store actually needs.
3. Payment gateway charges
Your gateway (Razorpay, PayU, CCAvenue, Cashfree and others) takes a fee on each successful online payment. That fee is set in your agreement with the gateway, it varies by payment method, and gateways in India usually show GST on their own fee in their invoices. This line is per-order and it does not come from Shopify. It is deducted before the money reaches your bank, which is why many owners never see it as a “bill” at all.
4. Shopify’s own transaction fee
Shopify’s in-house payment service is not offered to Indian stores, so Indian sellers connect an outside gateway. Depending on your plan, Shopify can charge its own fee on orders processed that way, on top of the gateway’s fee. The rate depends on the plan and is listed on Shopify’s pricing page. We explain how the two fees stack on a single order in our breakdown of Shopify payment fees.
5. Domain
A domain is usually billed yearly, either by Shopify if you bought it there or by your registrar. Divide it by twelve for your monthly figure. It is small, but it belongs on the list because a missed renewal takes the store offline under its own name.
6. Theme
Free themes cost nothing. A paid theme from the Shopify Theme Store is generally a one-time purchase, not a subscription, so spread it over the months you expect to keep it. If a developer customises the theme, that is part of the build cost, not a running cost.
7. Email
Shopify runs your store, not your mailboxes. Addresses like orders@yourbrand.in need a separate email service such as Google Workspace or Zoho, billed per user. Shopify’s own marketing email tool is a different thing; it sends newsletters, it does not give you an inbox.
8. Shipping
If you use a shipping aggregator, its charges are per shipment and billed by that company. They are not Shopify costs, but they sit in the same monthly picture and are often the biggest per-order line for low-price products.
A worksheet you can fill in
Copy this table into a spreadsheet and fill the last column from each provider’s own page or invoice. That is the honest way to get your number.
| Line item | Billed by | Fixed or per-order | Where to find today’s figure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify plan | Shopify | Fixed | Shopify pricing page |
| Paid apps | Shopify bill, on behalf of each app | Mostly fixed, some usage-based | Each app’s listing in the App Store |
| Gateway fee | Your gateway | Per-order | Your gateway agreement and dashboard |
| Shopify transaction fee | Shopify | Per-order | Shopify pricing page, by plan |
| Domain | Shopify or your registrar | Yearly, spread monthly | Renewal notice |
| Paid theme | Theme developer, via Shopify | One-time, spread monthly | Theme Store listing |
| Business email | Email provider | Fixed, per user | Provider’s pricing page |
| Shipping | Courier or aggregator | Per-shipment | Aggregator rate card |
For the per-order rows, multiply by a realistic order count for a slow month and for a busy month. You will end up with a range, not one number, and that range is far more useful for planning than a single optimistic total.
What you pay Shopify every month vs what leaves your account
The amount on your Shopify invoice is easy to mistake for the whole answer. It is only part of it. Your Shopify bill covers the plan, apps billed through Shopify, Shopify’s transaction fee and a Shopify-bought domain. The gateway fee, shipping and email arrive from other companies. To see your real Shopify monthly cost in India, add both sides together.
Two practical details catch people out:
- Currency. Check which currency your Shopify bill is charged in. If it is billed in a foreign currency, your bank or card issuer may add its own conversion or foreign transaction charge, which appears on your card statement and not on Shopify’s invoice.
- Tax on the bill. Look at how tax is shown on your Shopify invoices and whether your GST details are recorded in billing settings. Your accountant will want those invoices; ask them how to treat the charges. That is general information, not tax advice.
What changes the number
Once the store is running, these are the levers that actually move the monthly total, roughly in order of how often they matter:
- Order volume. More orders means more gateway and transaction fees. At some point a higher plan with a lower transaction fee can work out cheaper overall. Do that maths with your own numbers before upgrading.
- App count. Every app you add is a recurring line. Every app you stop using and forget to uninstall keeps billing.
- Payment mix. If many customers choose cash on delivery, your online gateway fees fall, but COD brings its own costs through the courier and through returned parcels.
- Billing cycle. Shopify’s pricing page shows whether paying for a year in advance changes the plan rate. It can help cash planning, but it ties you in.
- Staff and features. Needing more staff accounts or particular reports can push you up a plan, even when sales have not grown.
Mistakes to avoid when budgeting
- Budgeting only the plan. The plan is the one figure everyone looks up and the one least likely to surprise you.
- Treating free trials as free. Many apps start with a trial. Put a reminder in your calendar for the day it ends and decide then whether the app has earned its fee.
- Ignoring the slow month. Fixed costs do not shrink when sales do. Work out what a quiet month costs you, because that is the month that tests your margin.
- Mixing build cost with running cost. What a developer charges to set up the store is a one-time project cost. The guide on shopify website development cost in india covers that side, and it is worth keeping the two separate in your accounts.
How to check your real figure after the first month
Estimates are useful; actuals are better. After your first full month of trading:
- Download your Shopify bill and list every line on it, including app charges.
- Download your gateway’s settlement report and total the fees and the tax on those fees.
- Add your courier invoice, your email bill and one-twelfth of your domain.
- Divide the total by the number of orders. That cost per order is the figure that tells you whether your pricing works.
Repeat this every quarter. It gets quick once you know where the reports are, and it is the only reliable way to spot an app that has quietly moved to a higher tier or a fee that has changed.
If you are still deciding between platforms, the running cost is the biggest difference between them, and our WooCommerce and Shopify comparison for Indian sellers walks through that trade-off.
Where we fit
If you want a store set up with only the apps it needs and a clear note of what each recurring charge is for, that is part of how we approach Shopify store builds. Either way, fill in the worksheet above before you choose a plan. The number you write down today is the one you will be glad you checked.
Next in this series: Shopify Apps Worth Paying For in a New Store
