Are Your Shopify Apps & Plugins Costs Starting to Add Up

Shopify is one of the more popular online shopping cart and ecommerce solutions. Shopify makes it pretty easy to set up an online commerce store. However, their platform can get quite costly. This is especially true if you use paid apps and plugins.

If your Shopify apps and plugin costs are getting quite high, you need to figure out if the service is actually a good bargain. Likewise, if you’re thinking about signing up for Shopify, you should have a good idea of what the total costs will be beforehand.

In this article, I’ll help you review how much Shopify plugins and apps could cost you. Keep in mind, however, your own personal usage will have a big impact on costs. Before jumping into the app and plugin costs, let’s briefly review Shopify’s subscription costs and transaction fees as these will have a big impact on your total costs.

Shopify’s Subscription and Transaction Fees Can Be Quite Expensive

Shopify offers many great benefits and is relatively easy to use. However, Shopify is also one of the most expensive ecommerce solutions in the market. Like most shopping carts, Shopify charges monthly subscription fees:

A quick look at Shopify’s subscription fees.

In and of themselves, these fees aren’t all that exorbitant. In fact, they are very similar to the subscription fees that PayKickstart charges. However, Shopify also charges transaction fees. For online credit card sales, you’ll have to pay 2.9 percent plus 30 cents per transaction if you use their basic plan.

Shopify also charges a transaction fee that is added onto the fees charged by your payment processor. For the basic plan, these fees weigh in at 2 percent. You won’t have to pay a transaction fee, however, if the customer uses Shopify pay.

PayKickstart doesn’t charge transaction fees, although many online payment processors do charge their own fees. If you select the right payment processor, like EasyPayDirect, you may end up paying less in fees. EasyPayDirect just 2.39 percent plus .29 cents per sale.

With the lower processing fees and 0 percent transaction fees, you may save a lot of money with PayKickstart. And we haven’t even gotten into the extra costs for using apps and plugins. Let’s take a look at those.

Shopify Apps and Plugins Can Get Quite Costly As Well

Shopify offers a lot of great apps and plugins that you can use to expand the functionality and convenience of their platform. Many of these apps could improve the performance of your ecommerce store or other website. Unfortunately, these apps and plugins can get quite costly.

Let’s say you want to manage your affiliate marketers through Shopify. Affiliate marketing is one of the most effective sales strategies in the world generating 170 million transactions per year. You can use apps like Affiliatly to track links and affiliate marketers right through Shopify but it’ll cost you $16 per month.

How about data analytics? These days, just about every competitive ecommerce store is data driven. With data, you can optimize your sales funnel, discover issues with your checkout page that are leading to high abandonment rates and much more. You can install data reporting tools, like “Better Reports” but you’ll often have to pay extra. Better Reports, for example, costs $19.90 per month.

Example of a Better Reports report.

One of the most effective strategies for increasing sales is to upsell products directly in the shopping cart. At PayKickstart, we’ve found that by using one-click upsells, our clients have been able to more than double their revenues! You can start upselling with Shopify, but the apps can get quite pricey. The “Bold Upsell” app, for example, costs $9.99 per month.

Another great strategy to drum up additional sales is to send emails to customers who have abandoned their shopping cart. Sometimes, the customer simply forgets about the would-be purchase. By nudging them, you might be able to drum up another sale. You can use the Abandoned Cart Order Recovery app, but that’s going to cost you $8 per month.

In total, the above apps will cost about $56 dollars per month. And we consider the above apps to be a sort of bare minimum. Just about every ecommerce store should be using data, affiliate marketing, upselling, and email to increase sales.
Add in the monthly subscription fees and you could quickly be paying $100 or more per month. On top of that, you’ll also be shelling out transaction fees, which could get even costlier still.

Figuring Out Your Fees

The above is a simple thought experiment. The tools we looked at are some of the basic, minimum features and tools that we believe most ecommerce stores should have. However, you may need more tools and features in practice.

When calculated how much Shopify really costs you, you can start by looking at the apps you’re currently using. However, that’s probably not enough. You should also consider apps that you should be using. Take upselling, for example. If you’re not upselling, you should be.

If you haven’t yet selected a shopping cart, consider all of the features you’ll need. You can start with the apps we mentioned above and then expand from there. Find the tools that you think you’ll need to succeed, then calculate the actual Shopify subscription, app, and plugin costs.

Conclusion: If Costs Are Adding Up, Switch to a Lower Cost Solution Like PayKickstart

When we set out to build PayKickstart, we decided early on that we wanted our shopping cart to be a fully featured solution right out of the box. PayKickstart offers numerous tools to our premium customers at no extra charge, including one-click upsells, data reporting tools, and a shopping cart abandonment tool.

We also don’t charge transaction fees. You keep what you sell. Instead, we charge a single, affordable monthly subscription fee that is very comparable to Shopify’s. You don’t have to worry about fine print, as we’re very upfront with our costs.

Your success is our success. We provide these features because we know they’ll help you increase sales. In turn, we’re confident that you’ll become loyal, dedicated customers who will stick with us for years to come.

Michael Harbone

Michael Harbone is an experienced copywriter, writing professionally since 2017. He has written for multiple digital marketing companies gaining the reputation for writing engaging, concise articles one which received an award from Upcity.

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