Understanding Shopify Fees and Profit Margins in 2025

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Does Shopify Take a Cut of Every Sale?
3. The Three Layers of Shopify Costs
4. Breaking Down Shopify Pricing Plans
5. Payment Processing vs. Transaction Fees: Clearing the Confusion
6. Why These Fees Exist: The Cost of Infrastructure
7. Practical Scenario: The Coffee Roaster’s "Barista Basics" Course
8. How to Reduce Shopify Costs and Protect Your Margins
9. Scaling Your Business with Tevello
10. Success Story Spotlight: Native Growth on Shopify
11. A Checklist for Maximizing Your Shopify Margins
12. The Psychological Impact of Native Selling
13. Managing Growth Without Increasing Fees
14. Conclusion
15. FAQ

Introduction

Did you know that some digital creators lose as much as 15% to 30% of their revenue simply because they host their content on third-party platforms that charge "success fees" on every transaction? In the world of e-commerce, every percentage point counts, yet many merchants are often left scratching their heads when they see their monthly payouts. They find themselves asking: does shopify take a cut of sales? The answer is more complex than a simple yes or no. While Shopify provides the most robust infrastructure for modern commerce, navigating its fee structure—from payment processing to subscription tiers—is essential for any business owner looking to protect their bottom line.

The purpose of this blog post is to pull back the curtain on how Shopify charges for its services. We will break down the three layers of Shopify costs, compare the various pricing plans, and explain the difference between payment processing and transaction fees. More importantly, we will explore how you can optimize these costs by integrating digital products and memberships into your existing store. At Tevello, our mission is to turn any Shopify store into a digital learning powerhouse, and part of that mission involves helping you understand the financial mechanics of your platform so you can keep more of what you earn.

By the end of this guide, you will have a clear blueprint for choosing the right plan and leveraging the right tools to maximize your profitability. Our main message is simple: while Shopify does take a cut of sales through various fees, choosing the right configuration and a native integration for your digital assets can significantly increase your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) and secure your brand's financial future.

Does Shopify Take a Cut of Every Sale?

The short answer is yes, but the "cut" isn't a single, flat commission like you might find on an Etsy or an Amazon. Instead, Shopify’s fees are structured to cover the cost of maintaining a secure, high-performance environment for your customers. When you process an order, the fees you see generally fall into two categories: payment processing fees and transaction fees.

Payment processing fees are essentially the "toll" paid to the financial networks (like Visa, Mastercard, or American Express) to securely move money from a customer’s bank account to yours. Transaction fees, on the other hand, are fees Shopify charges if you choose to use a payment gateway other than their native solution, Shopify Payments.

Understanding this distinction is vital. If you use Shopify Payments, Shopify actually waives their additional transaction fees, leaving you only with the standard card processing rates. This is a strategic move by Shopify to encourage merchants to stay within their ecosystem, which provides better security and a more unified reporting experience.

The Three Layers of Shopify Costs

Running a successful online store requires balancing three distinct types of expenses. To accurately answer "does shopify take a cut of sales," you must look at the total cost of ownership.

1. The Monthly Subscription Fee

This is the fixed cost you pay to keep your store live. It ranges from a few dollars for the Starter plan to several hundred for the Advanced tier. This fee covers your hosting, SSL certificate, basic support, and access to the Shopify admin. It is the price of admission to the world's most scalable e-commerce platform.

2. Shopify Platform Transaction Fees

This is the specific "cut" that Shopify takes if you do not use Shopify Payments. If you prefer to use a third-party gateway like PayPal or a regional provider, Shopify adds a surcharge—typically between 0.5% and 2.0%—on top of whatever that provider charges you. We always recommend using Shopify Payments where available to eliminate this unnecessary expense.

3. Credit Card Processing Fees

Regardless of which platform you use, credit card companies always take a percentage. Shopify has negotiated competitive rates for its merchants. These fees are usually expressed as a percentage plus a flat cent amount (e.g., 2.9% + 30¢). As you move up to higher Shopify plans, these rates decrease, which can save high-volume merchants thousands of dollars per month.

Breaking Down Shopify Pricing Plans

Choosing the right plan is the first step in managing how much of a "cut" the platform takes from your revenue. Each tier is designed for a specific stage of business growth.

The Basic Plan ($39/month)

This is the entry point for most new entrepreneurs. It offers everything needed to launch, but it carries the highest transaction rates.

• Online Card Rate: 2.9% + 30¢
• Transaction Fee (if not using Shopify Payments): 2.0%
• Best for: New stores, side hustles, and low-volume testing.

The Shopify "Grow" Plan ($105/month)

Designed for businesses that have found their footing and are starting to scale. The lower card rates often make this plan cheaper in the long run once you hit a certain sales volume.

• Online Card Rate: 2.6% + 30¢
• Transaction Fee (if not using Shopify Payments): 1.0%
• Best for: Established brands with consistent monthly revenue.

The Advanced Plan ($399/month)

For high-volume sellers, the Advanced plan offers the best standard rates and professional reporting tools.

• Online Card Rate: 2.4% + 30¢
• Transaction Fee (if not using Shopify Payments): 0.5%
• Best for: Stores processing over $15,000–$20,000 per month.

Shopify Plus (Starting at $2,300/month)

The enterprise solution for global brands. Plus merchants negotiate custom rates and have access to advanced automation. While the monthly cost is high, the per-transaction savings for multi-million dollar brands are massive.

Shopify Starter ($5/month)

This plan doesn't give you a full online store. Instead, it provides a "Buy Button" and checkout links for social media. It’s a great way to test a single digital product, but it lacks the brand-building power of a full storefront.

Payment Processing vs. Transaction Fees: Clearing the Confusion

A common point of frustration for merchants is seeing two different fees on a single order. Let’s clarify why this happens.

Imagine you are selling a $100 digital course. If you are on the Basic plan and use a third-party gateway, you might pay $2.90 + 30¢ to the gateway provider, and then an additional $2.00 (2%) to Shopify as a transaction fee. In this scenario, your total "cut" is $5.20.

However, if you switch to Shopify Payments, that $2.00 transaction fee disappears. You only pay the card processing fee. This is why we emphasize seeing how the app natively integrates with Shopify. When your entire stack—from physical goods to Tevello-powered courses—uses the same native checkout, your financial reporting becomes streamlined and your fees are minimized.

Why These Fees Exist: The Cost of Infrastructure

It can be tempting to view these fees as a "tax" on your hard work, but they represent a massive investment in your business’s stability. When you pay Shopify’s card rates, you are paying for:

• PCI Compliance: Keeping your customers' sensitive data safe is a multi-million dollar responsibility that Shopify handles for you.
• 99.99% Uptime: Your store stays open during Black Friday, even when traffic spikes by 1,000%.
• Fraud Protection: Shopify’s built-in AI flags suspicious orders before they cost you money.
• Continuous Innovation: The platform is constantly updated with new features, SEO improvements, and social media integrations.

Practical Scenario: The Coffee Roaster’s "Barista Basics" Course

To understand how to offset the "cut" Shopify takes, let's look at a real-world example. Imagine a merchant selling premium coffee beans. For every bag sold, they have to pay for the beans, the roasting process, the packaging, and the shipping. After all those costs and Shopify's fees, their margin might be 20%.

If this merchant uses Tevello to create a "Barista Basics" video course, the math changes entirely. Once the course is filmed, there are no "COGS" (Cost of Goods Sold). There are no shipping boxes or postage fees. By offering this $50 course as an upsell at checkout, the merchant increases their Average Order Value (AOV).

Because they are using Tevello’s flat-rate plan that supports unlimited members, their only variable cost is the standard Shopify payment processing fee. There are no "per-student" fees or extra transaction percentages from the app. This digital product becomes a high-margin engine that pays for the merchant's entire Shopify subscription and then some.

How to Reduce Shopify Costs and Protect Your Margins

While you can’t eliminate fees entirely, you can be smart about how you manage them. Here are five actionable steps to keep more profit in your pocket:

1. Always Use Shopify Payments: This is the easiest way to instantly save 0.5% to 2.0% on every sale.
2. Audit Your Apps Monthly: Many merchants pay for dozens of small apps that have overlapping features. Consolidating your needs into a single ecosystem can save hundreds of dollars.
3. Upgrade When the Math Works: If your monthly sales are high enough, the savings from the lower credit card rates on the "Shopify" or "Advanced" plans will actually be greater than the increase in the monthly subscription cost.
4. Offer Annual Subscriptions: For digital products and memberships, annual billing reduces the number of transaction fees (the 30¢ flat part of the fee) and improves your cash flow.
5. Avoid "Success Fees": Some course platforms take a percentage of every student you enroll. Tevello does not. We believe you should keep 100% of your earnings, which is why we offer predictable pricing without hidden transaction fees.

Scaling Your Business with Tevello

At Tevello, we believe merchants should own their customer data and brand experience. This philosophy extends to how we handle fees. We created a solution that keeps customers on your own URL, ensuring a seamless journey from browsing to learning.

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

Unlike other platforms that might charge you more as your community grows, our Unlimited Plan stays at $29.99 per month. This plan includes all the key features for courses and communities, such as:

• Unlimited courses and students.
• Unlimited video hosting and bandwidth.
• Native community features including social feeds and member directories.
• Drip content scheduling to keep students engaged over time.
• Comprehensive quizzes and progress tracking.

By choosing a native Shopify integration, you ensure that your digital products live directly alongside your physical stock. This creates a "Unified Login" experience, which drastically reduces customer support friction. When a customer buys a physical product and a digital course, they don't need two accounts on two different websites. They stay on your store, under your brand, which builds long-term loyalty and increases Customer Lifetime Value.

Success Story Spotlight: Native Growth on Shopify

The benefits of staying native on Shopify go far beyond just saving on transaction fees; it’s about creating a cohesive brand that customers trust.

Consider the gardener and author Charles Dowding. By migrating over 14,000 members and reducing support tickets, his team was able to focus on content creation rather than technical troubleshooting. By unifying a fragmented system into a single Shopify store, they eliminated the confusion of customers having to manage multiple logins across different platforms.

Another incredible example is Crochetmilie. This brand mastered the art of how one brand sold $112K+ by bundling courses with physical products. Their success comes from strategies for selling over 4,000 digital courses natively, proving that you don't need to redirect your customers to a third-party site to build a thriving educational business. By keeping customers at home on the brand website, these brands ensure that every marketing dollar spent brings a visitor to a platform they fully control.

A Checklist for Maximizing Your Shopify Margins

To ensure you aren't letting profit slip through the cracks, use this checklist to evaluate your store’s current setup:

• Payment Gateway: Are you using Shopify Payments? If not, is there a legal or regional reason that justifies the extra 0.5%–2% transaction fee?
• Plan ROI: Have you calculated if your monthly sales volume justifies an upgrade to the next Shopify tier for lower card rates?
• Shipping Discounts: Are you taking full advantage of Shopify’s negotiated shipping rates (up to 77% off for Basic, 88% for Grow)?
• Digital Upsells: Do you have at least one digital product (like a PDF guide or a mini-video course) that has zero fulfillment costs?
• App Consolidation: Are you using a native tool like Tevello that provides video hosting, community, and courses for one flat fee, or are you paying for three separate services?
• Transaction Fee Audit: Are you paying any "success fees" or per-user fees to third-party software providers? (Remember, Tevello charges 0% transaction fees).

The Psychological Impact of Native Selling

One often overlooked aspect of the "cut" Shopify takes is the "indirect cost" of customer friction. When you use a third-party platform for your courses, your customer is often redirected to a different URL (e.g., yourbrand.externalplatform.com). This break in the customer journey can lead to:

• Lower Conversion Rates: Customers get nervous when the URL changes during or after a checkout.
• Increased Support Tickets: "I bought the course but I can't find the login" is the most common complaint for non-native setups.
• Weakened Brand Authority: Staying on your own URL makes you look like a professional, established enterprise.

By start your 14-day free trial and build your first course now, you can experience firsthand how a native integration eliminates these invisible costs. You can build your entire curriculum and community structure before ever paying a cent, ensuring the fit is perfect for your brand.

Managing Growth Without Increasing Fees

As your business grows, many software companies try to "grow with you" by taking a bigger piece of your pie. They introduce "tiers" that penalize you for being successful. We believe that's the wrong way to treat a partner.

Our Unlimited Plan is designed specifically for those who want to scale without limits. Whether you have 100 students or 100,000, your price with Tevello remains $29.99 per month. This allows you to accurately forecast your expenses and focus your budget on what actually moves the needle: marketing and content quality.

When you combine Shopify’s reliable infrastructure with Tevello’s fixed-cost model, you create a business that is both predictable and highly profitable. You stop worrying about "does shopify take a cut of sales" and start focusing on how much value you can provide to your community.

Conclusion

Understanding the financial landscape of e-commerce is essential for any merchant who wants to move from "surviving" to "thriving." While Shopify does take a cut of sales through its subscription plans and payment processing fees, these costs are the foundation of a secure, scalable business. By using Shopify Payments and choosing native integrations, you can minimize these "tolls" and maximize your margins.

Adding digital products and memberships is the ultimate strategy for offsetting platform costs. With no shipping fees and zero cost of goods sold, digital content allows you to leverage Shopify’s powerful checkout without the overhead of physical inventory. At Tevello, we are committed to providing you with the tools to do exactly that, without the burden of transaction fees or complicated pricing structures.

The most successful merchants are those who own their data, protect their brand experience, and keep a close eye on their margins. By reviewing the Shopify App Store listing merchants install from, you can take the first step toward turning your store into a digital learning powerhouse.

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

FAQ

Does Shopify take a cut of my sales if I sell digital products? Yes, Shopify applies the same payment processing fees to digital products as it does to physical goods. These fees depend on your Shopify plan (e.g., 2.9% + 30¢ on the Basic plan). However, if you use Tevello to deliver those digital products, Tevello itself charges 0% transaction fees, meaning you only pay the standard Shopify processing rates.

Can I avoid the extra 2% transaction fee on Shopify? Absolutely. The best way to avoid the additional "third-party transaction fee" (which is 2% on the Basic plan) is to use Shopify Payments as your primary payment gateway. When you use Shopify Payments, Shopify waives this extra platform fee entirely.

How much does it cost to add a course or membership to my Shopify store? With Tevello, you can start with a 14-day free trial to build your curriculum. After the trial, we offer a simple, Unlimited Plan for $29.99 per month. This flat fee includes unlimited courses, students, and video hosting, with no hidden success fees or per-user charges.

Do I need a separate website to host my online courses? No. In fact, we recommend against it. By using a native Shopify integration like Tevello, your courses live directly on your Shopify store. This allows your customers to use their existing Shopify account to access their digital content, keeping them on your brand’s URL and improving your conversion rates.