How Much Does Shopify Charge for a Sale?

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. The Core of Shopify Costs: Subscription vs. Sales Fees
3. Decoding Payment Processing Fees
4. The Impact of Transaction Fees (And How to Avoid Them)
5. Plan-by-Plan Fee Breakdown
6. Real-World Examples: Physical vs. Digital Sales
7. Increasing Profitability with Digital Upsells (The Tevello Advantage)
8. Hidden Costs to Consider (Apps, Themes, and Domains)
9. Strategies to Minimize Fees and Boost Margins
10. Why "Native" Matters for Your Bottom Line
11. Building a Community to Drive Recurring Revenue
12. Practical Steps to Launch Your Digital Powerhouse
13. Summary: Owning the Future of Your Shopify Store
14. Conclusion
15. Frequently Asked Questions

Introduction

Did you know that the global e-learning market is projected to reach a staggering $460 billion by 2026? While many traditional retail merchants struggle with rising shipping costs, storage overhead, and supply chain disruptions, a new wave of entrepreneurs is discovering how to maximize their margins by blending physical goods with high-value digital content. However, for any merchant building their empire on Shopify, the most pressing question often remains: how much does Shopify charge for a sale?

Understanding the fee structure of your e-commerce platform is not just about bookkeeping; it is a fundamental part of your business strategy. Whether you are selling a $20 artisanal candle or a $500 professional certification course, every percentage point taken at checkout impacts your ability to reinvest in your brand. At Tevello, our mission is to turn any Shopify store into a digital learning powerhouse, and we believe that transparency is the first step toward merchant empowerment. We want you to own your data, your brand, and as much of your revenue as possible.

In this guide, we will break down the complexities of Shopify’s pricing tiers, payment processing fees, and third-party transaction charges. We will also explore how savvy merchants are leveraging digital products and memberships to offset these costs and build more resilient, high-margin businesses. By the end of this article, you will have a clear roadmap for calculating your true costs and a strategy for keeping your customers exactly where they belong—on your own URL.

The Core of Shopify Costs: Subscription vs. Sales Fees

To accurately answer how much Shopify charges for a sale, we must first distinguish between the cost of "renting" the platform and the cost of "processing" the transaction. Shopify operates on a dual-cost model. First, there is the monthly subscription fee, which grants you access to the store builder, hosting, and administrative tools. Second, there are the variable costs that occur every time a customer clicks the "buy" button.

These variable costs are where many merchants find themselves confused. Depending on your settings, you may encounter payment processing fees, transaction fees, or both. It is vital to understand that while subscription fees are fixed, sales fees scale with your success. For a growing brand, the percentage taken from each sale eventually becomes a much larger expense than the monthly plan cost.

At Tevello, we advocate for predictable pricing without hidden transaction fees. We believe that as your business grows, your platform should not penalize your success by taking an ever-increasing cut of your hard-earned revenue. This philosophy is baked into our own model, where we offer a simple, all-in-one price for unlimited courses.

Decoding Payment Processing Fees

Payment processing fees are the costs associated with handling a credit card transaction. No matter which platform you use, these fees are nearly unavoidable because they are dictated by the credit card networks (Visa, Mastercard, Amex) and the banks.

On Shopify, these rates are determined by the plan you choose. As of the latest updates, the standard rates for online credit card transactions are:

• Basic Plan: 2.9% + $0.30 USD per transaction.
• Shopify Plan: 2.6% + $0.30 USD per transaction.
• Advanced Plan: 2.4% + $0.30 USD per transaction.
• Shopify Plus: 2.15% + $0.30 USD per transaction (though this can vary for high-volume enterprise accounts).

These percentages apply to the total transaction amount, including the product price, taxes, and shipping costs. This is a critical detail: if you sell a $100 product and charge $10 for shipping plus $8 in tax, Shopify (or your payment processor) calculates the percentage based on $118, not $100.

The Impact of Transaction Fees (And How to Avoid Them)

One of the most important distinctions in Shopify’s fee structure is the difference between processing fees and transaction fees. While everyone pays processing fees to move money from a customer’s bank to their own, Shopify charges an additional "transaction fee" if you choose not to use their proprietary gateway, Shopify Payments.

If you use a third-party gateway like PayPal, Stripe, or Authorize.net, Shopify adds a percentage on top of what that provider already charges you. These fees are:

• Basic Plan: 2.0%
• Shopify Plan: 1.0%
• Advanced Plan: 0.5%

For example, if you are on the Basic plan and use an external processor that charges 2.9%, your total fee for a sale would be 4.9% + $0.30. This is a significant blow to your margins. To avoid this, most merchants use Shopify Payments, which waives these extra transaction fees.

We believe merchants should own their brand experience, which is why we built our solution to use a unified login that reduces customer support friction. By staying within the Shopify ecosystem and using Shopify Payments, you not only save on transaction fees but also provide a seamless checkout experience that customers already trust.

Plan-by-Plan Fee Breakdown

To truly understand how much Shopify charges for a sale, you need to look at the specific tiers and how they cater to different stages of business growth.

The Starter Plan

For $5 per month, the Starter plan is designed for social selling. It doesn't give you a full online store, but rather a simplified product page. The transaction fee here is a flat 5% if using Shopify Payments. This is a high variable cost, making it suitable only for very low-volume testing or hobbyists.

The Basic Plan

At $39 per month, this is the most popular starting point for new businesses. While the 2.9% + $0.30 processing fee is standard for the industry, the 2.0% third-party fee makes it very expensive to use anything other than Shopify Payments.

The Shopify Plan

Priced at $105 per month, this plan is the "sweet spot" for growing businesses. The processing fee drops to 2.6%, and the third-party fee drops to 1.0%. If you are doing more than $5,000 in monthly sales, the savings in processing fees often justify the jump from the Basic plan.

The Advanced Plan

At $399 per month, this tier is for established brands. With processing fees at 2.4% and third-party fees at 0.5%, the Advanced plan is all about volume. It also offers advanced reporting and the ability to calculate third-party shipping rates at checkout.

If unifying your stack is a priority, start by a simple, all-in-one price for unlimited courses.

Real-World Examples: Physical vs. Digital Sales

The nature of what you sell dictates the impact of Shopify's fees. Let's look at two different scenarios to see how these percentages play out in the real world.

Scenario A: The Physical Goods Merchant

Consider a merchant selling luxury organic coffee beans. A bag of beans sells for $30.

• Cost of Goods Sold (COGS): $12
• Shipping & Packaging: $8
• Shopify Fee (Basic Plan): $0.87 + $0.30 = $1.17
• Total Profit: $8.83

In this case, the Shopify fee represents about 13% of the actual profit. Every time shipping rates go up or bean prices fluctuate, that $1.17 becomes more painful.

Scenario B: The Hybrid Merchant with Tevello

Now, imagine that same coffee merchant uses Tevello to offer a "Home Barista Masterclass" as a digital upsell. They sell the same $30 bag of beans but offer a $20 video course as an add-on.

• Physical Sale Profit: $8.83
• Digital Sale Price: $20
• Digital Sale COGS: $0
• Digital Sale Shipping: $0
• Shopify Fee on Digital Part (Basic Plan): $0.58 + $0.30 = $0.88
• Total Profit from Transaction: $27.95

By adding a digital product, the merchant nearly triples their profit on a single customer interaction. Because Tevello offers digital products that live directly alongside physical stock, the customer never feels like they are leaving the store. The merchant pays the standard Shopify processing fee on the $20, but because Tevello charges 0% transaction fees, the merchant keeps the rest. This is a powerful way to increase Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) without adding to the physical workload.

Increasing Profitability with Digital Upsells (The Tevello Advantage)

One of the most effective ways to mitigate the impact of Shopify's sales fees is to shift your product mix toward items with higher margins. This is where the "digital learning powerhouse" concept comes into play. When you sell a physical product, your profit is squeezed by COGS, shipping, and transaction fees. When you sell a digital product through Tevello, the COGS and shipping are eliminated.

We’ve seen incredible results from merchants who adopt this model. For instance, consider how one brand sold $112K+ by bundling courses with their physical craft kits. By generating revenue from both physical and digital goods, they were able to maximize the value of every visitor that Shopify's platform helped them attract.

Furthermore, digital products offer recurring revenue stability. Instead of a one-off sale where you pay a fee and then have to find a new customer, you can create a membership community. This builds brand loyalty and ensures that even if Shopify's transaction fees remain constant, your cost of customer acquisition (CAC) drops over time.

Other merchants have found success by generating over €243,000 by upselling existing customers. These retention strategies that drive repeat digital purchases are the key to long-term sustainability in e-commerce.

Hidden Costs to Consider (Apps, Themes, and Domains)

When calculating how much Shopify charges for a sale, you must also account for the "ecosystem costs." While Shopify provides the foundation, most successful stores require additional tools to function at a high level.

1. Paid Themes: A professional theme can cost between $150 and $350. While this is a one-time fee, it's an upfront investment that needs to be amortized across your early sales.
2. App Subscriptions: The average Shopify store runs 6 to 10 apps. These monthly costs can range from $5 to $500+. This is why we created Tevello as an all-in-one ecosystem—to prevent "app fatigue" and keep your costs predictable. Our Unlimited Plan includes all the key features for courses and communities without forcing you into expensive tiers.
3. Domain Names: A custom domain typically costs $14 to $40 per year.
4. International Conversion Fees: If you sell to a customer in the UK but your store is based in the US, Shopify charges a 1.5% currency conversion fee. If you are on the Basic, Shopify, or Advanced plans, an additional 1% fee often applies to international credit cards.

By keeping customers at home on the brand website, Tevello helps reduce the need for external landing page builders or separate hosting for your educational content, further consolidating your overhead.

Strategies to Minimize Fees and Boost Margins

While you cannot change Shopify's base processing rates, you can certainly optimize your business to ensure you are keeping the largest possible slice of the pie.

Use Shopify Payments

As mentioned, this is the easiest way to instantly save 0.5% to 2.0% on every sale. Unless you have a specific, high-risk business reason to use an external processor, Shopify Payments is the gold standard for cost-efficiency.

Focus on High-Margin Digital Goods

The math is simple: a 2.9% fee on a product with a 10% margin is a massive expense. A 2.9% fee on a digital product with a 95% margin is negligible. By integrating courses or memberships, you are effectively "diluting" the impact of your overhead.

Encourage Annual Billing

If you offer memberships or subscriptions, encourage customers to pay annually. This reduces the number of "flat fees" ($0.30) you pay over the course of a year. Instead of paying twelve $0.30 fees, you pay one. For a store with thousands of members, this adds up.

Leverage Tevello's Unlimited Plan

Many learning management systems (LMS) charge you per student or per course. This means as you become more successful, your costs skyrocket. We believe in a flat-rate plan that supports unlimited members. Whether you have 10 students or 10,000, your Tevello cost stays at $29.99 per month. This allows you to scale your community avoiding per-user fees as the community scales.

Optimize for Native Integration

Redirecting customers to third-party platforms for digital content often leads to abandoned carts and customer service headaches. By seeing how the app natively integrates with Shopify, you ensure that the customer stays within your ecosystem, increasing the likelihood of future purchases and lowering your overall support costs.

Why "Native" Matters for Your Bottom Line

At Tevello, we are obsessed with the concept of "Native Shopify Integration." But why does this matter when discussing how much Shopify charges for a sale?

When a customer buys a course on a third-party platform, they are often redirected to a different URL. They have to create a new login, deal with a different interface, and often, the merchant loses access to that specific data. This fragmentation is a conversion killer.

By keeping the customer on your URL, you maintain full control over the brand experience. You can use Shopify's built-in marketing tools, like Shopify Email or Segments, to target these students for future physical product launches. This synergy creates a "flywheel effect." Your digital courses drive interest in your physical products, and your physical products provide the perfect audience for your digital courses.

When you install Tevello from the Shopify App Store today, you aren't just adding a feature; you are adopting a business model that prioritizes your ownership and your margins.

Building a Community to Drive Recurring Revenue

If you only sell one-off products, you are on a "hamster wheel" of sales. You pay a fee to Shopify, you ship the product, and you start over from zero the next day. A community or membership model changes this dynamic entirely.

With community features like member directories, social feeds, and profiles, you turn a transaction into a relationship. Recurring revenue from memberships provides the stability that every e-commerce business needs to weather market fluctuations. And since Tevello offers these features within the Unlimited Plan, you don't have to worry about your costs increasing as your community grows.

Stable, predictable costs allow you to plan for the future with confidence. You can calculate your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and compare it against a much higher Lifetime Value (LTV) because you know exactly what your platform costs will be month-over-month.

Practical Steps to Launch Your Digital Powerhouse

If you are currently only selling physical products on Shopify and are concerned about the "cut" the platform takes, follow these steps to diversify and protect your margins:

1. Identify Your Expertise: What do your customers ask you about most? If you sell gardening tools, create a course on "Successful Seed Starting."
2. Audit Your Shopify Plan: Ensure you are on the tier that matches your volume. If your monthly sales are high enough that the 0.3% difference between Basic and Shopify plans covers the $66 price jump, upgrade immediately.
3. Install Tevello: Take advantage of our 14-day free trial. You can build your entire curriculum, set up your community, and organize your drip content before you ever pay a subscription fee.
4. Bundle and Upsell: Create a "digital + physical" bundle. Offer the course for free with high-ticket physical items, or offer it as a one-click upsell in the cart.
5. Monitor Your Analytics: Use Shopify's native reporting to see how your digital products are impacting your overall profitability.

Summary: Owning the Future of Your Shopify Store

Understanding how much Shopify charges for a sale is about more than just knowing the numbers; it's about knowing how to work the system to your advantage. While the base fees of 2.9% + $0.30 are a reality of modern commerce, they don't have to define your profitability.

By leveraging the power of digital products, you can transform your Shopify store from a simple retail outlet into a comprehensive learning ecosystem. This shift allows you to move away from low-margin physical struggles and toward a high-margin, recurring revenue model where you own the customer relationship, the data, and the brand experience.

At Tevello, we are here to support that journey. We believe in 0% transaction fees, 100% merchant ownership, and a simple, flat-rate pricing model that empowers you to scale without limits. You’ve already done the hard work of building a brand on Shopify; now it’s time to unlock its full potential.

Conclusion

Navigating the landscape of Shopify fees requires a strategic mindset. While every sale carries a small cost for processing and platform maintenance, the real value lies in how you maximize the revenue from every customer who visits your store. By integrating high-margin digital products, courses, and memberships, you effectively offset the cost of doing business and build a more sustainable, profitable brand. Remember, at Tevello, we want you to keep 100% of your earnings from your courses—no hidden success fees, no percentage of sales, just one clear price of $29.99 per month for everything you need.

To build your community without leaving Shopify, start by reviewing the Shopify App Store listing merchants install from.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Shopify take a cut of my digital course sales if I use Tevello?

Shopify will charge its standard payment processing fee (e.g., 2.9% + $0.30 on the Basic plan) because the transaction goes through Shopify’s checkout. However, Tevello itself charges 0% transaction fees. Unlike other platforms that take a percentage of every sale, we believe you should keep 100% of your course revenue.

How do I avoid the extra 2% transaction fee on Shopify?

The most effective way to avoid the additional transaction fee (which ranges from 0.5% to 2% depending on your plan) is to use Shopify Payments as your primary payment gateway. When you use Shopify’s native gateway, these extra fees are waived entirely, leaving you only with the standard credit card processing rates.

Can I sell both physical products and digital courses in the same Shopify cart?

Absolutely. One of the greatest advantages of Tevello’s native integration is that it allows for a unified checkout experience. A customer can have a physical item, like a set of paintbrushes, and a digital item, like a "Watercolor for Beginners" course, in the same cart. They pay once, and Tevello automatically grants them access to the digital content immediately after purchase.

Is the $29.99 Tevello plan really unlimited?

Yes. Our Unlimited Plan is designed to be simple and transparent. For $29.99 per month, you get unlimited courses, unlimited students, and unlimited video hosting and bandwidth. We also include all of our community features, drip content scheduling, and quizzes in this single plan. There are no hidden tiers or "per-user" charges.