What Percent of Sales Does Shopify Take?

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. The Three Layers of Shopify Fees
3. Breaking Down the Subscription Tiers
4. The Role of Shopify Payments
5. Hidden Costs and Variable Expenses
6. Strategic Thinking: When to Upgrade Your Plan
7. The Margin Revolution: Digital Products and Courses
8. Maximizing Profit with Tevello
9. Real-World Success: Scaling Without Fee Fatigue
10. Actionable Checklist: How to Reduce Your Shopify Costs
11. Building for the Future: Ownership and Control
12. Analyzing the Math: A Real-World Comparison
13. Final Thoughts on Platform Fees
14. Frequently Asked Questions
15. Conclusion

Introduction

Did you know that there are currently more than 1.7 million merchants selling their products using Shopify? It is a staggering number that speaks to the platform’s dominance in the e-commerce world. However, for many of these entrepreneurs, a recurring question lingers in the back of their minds as they review their monthly statements: "What percent of sales does Shopify take?" While launching a store is easier than ever, understanding the complex web of subscription fees, payment processing rates, and transaction penalties is essential for maintaining a healthy bottom line. Many new creators enter the market focused solely on inventory costs and marketing spend, only to be surprised by the "hidden" percentages that eat into their margins.

The purpose of this blog post is to provide a definitive, transparent breakdown of Shopify’s fee structure as we head into 2025. We will explore the different subscription tiers, dissect the nuances of credit card processing, and explain how to avoid unnecessary transaction fees. Beyond the basics, we will also discuss how to optimize your business model for maximum profitability—specifically by incorporating high-margin digital products like online courses and memberships. At Tevello, our mission is to turn any Shopify store into a digital learning powerhouse, and part of that mission involves helping you keep as much of your hard-earned revenue as possible. By the end of this guide, you will have a clear blueprint for calculating your real costs and strategies to scale your business without losing your shirt to platform fees.

The Three Layers of Shopify Fees

To answer the question of what percent Shopify takes, we must first understand that Shopify does not simply take a flat percentage of every sale. Instead, the cost of doing business on the platform is built like a three-layered cake. Each layer represents a different type of fee that applies under specific circumstances.

1. The Monthly Subscription Fee

This is the fixed cost you pay just to keep the lights on. Whether you sell one item or ten thousand, this fee remains the same. Shopify offers several tiers, from the Starter plan for those selling on social media to the Advanced and Plus plans for enterprise-level operations. Choosing the right tier is a balancing act between the monthly cost and the per-sale rates offered at higher levels.

2. Payment Processing Fees (Credit Card Rates)

This is where the "percentage of sales" question usually starts. Every time a customer uses a credit card to buy something from your store, a fee is charged to cover the cost of processing that payment. These rates are determined by your Shopify plan. If you are on a lower-tier plan, you pay a higher percentage per sale. As you move up to more expensive monthly plans, these credit card rates decrease.

3. Shopify Transaction Fees

This is perhaps the most misunderstood part of the pricing structure. This fee is separate from credit card processing. Shopify only charges this "transaction fee" if you choose to use a third-party payment gateway (like PayPal or Stripe) instead of the built-in Shopify Payments system. These fees range from 0.5% to 2% and are designed to encourage merchants to stay within the Shopify ecosystem.

Breaking Down the Subscription Tiers

Understanding the percentages requires looking at the specific plans Shopify offers. The platform has designed these tiers to scale with your business, but the "sweet spot" for your store depends entirely on your monthly sales volume.

The Basic Plan: Best for New Businesses

The Basic plan is the most common starting point for new merchants. It provides all the essential tools to launch an online store, including an unlimited number of products, 24/7 support, and two staff accounts.

• Monthly Cost: Approximately $39 USD (billed monthly) or $29 USD (billed annually).
• Online Credit Card Rate: 2.9% + 30¢ USD per transaction.
• Third-Party Transaction Fee: 2% (if not using Shopify Payments).

While this plan has the lowest monthly commitment, it has the highest per-sale percentage. For a new store, this is usually acceptable, but as your sales grow, that 2.9% can become a significant expense.

The Shopify Plan (Grow): Best for Scaling

Often referred to as the "Grow" plan, this mid-tier option is intended for businesses that have found their footing and are seeing consistent monthly sales. It offers more professional reports and five staff accounts.

• Monthly Cost: Approximately $105 USD (billed monthly) or $79 USD (billed annually).
• Online Credit Card Rate: 2.6% + 30¢ USD per transaction.
• Third-Party Transaction Fee: 1% (if not using Shopify Payments).

The reduction from 2.9% to 2.6% might seem small, but on $10,000 of monthly sales, that 0.3% difference saves you $30—nearly a third of the monthly subscription cost.

The Advanced Plan: Best for High-Volume Stores

The Advanced plan is for established businesses that require in-depth reporting and the lowest possible transaction rates. It includes 15 staff accounts and the ability to calculate third-party shipping rates at checkout.

• Monthly Cost: Approximately $399 USD (billed monthly) or $299 USD (billed annually).
• Online Credit Card Rate: 2.4% + 30¢ USD per transaction.
• Third-Party Transaction Fee: 0.5% (if not using Shopify Payments).

For high-volume merchants, the Advanced plan is often a mathematical necessity. The savings in credit card fees quickly outweigh the higher monthly subscription price once a store clears roughly $20,000 to $25,000 in monthly revenue.

The Role of Shopify Payments

If you want to minimize what percent of sales Shopify takes, the single most effective move is to enable Shopify Payments. We always recommend this to our merchants because it simplifies the financial stack and removes the additional 0.5% to 2.0% transaction fee that Shopify otherwise levies on every sale.

Shopify Payments is powered by Stripe, but it is integrated directly into your Shopify admin. This means you can track your payouts and orders in one place. By using the native payment gateway, you are only responsible for the credit card processing fee associated with your plan.

However, there is a catch. Shopify Payments is not available in every country. If you are operating in a region where it isn't supported, you will be forced to use a third-party gateway, which means you will likely pay both the gateway's fee (e.g., PayPal's 3.49% + 49¢) and Shopify’s transaction fee (e.g., 2% on the Basic plan). This can result in Shopify and its partners taking upwards of 5-6% of your gross sales before you even account for the cost of goods sold.

Hidden Costs and Variable Expenses

Beyond the standard percentages, there are other factors that influence the total "cut" Shopify and its ecosystem take from your business. It is important to look at these variable expenses when calculating your true Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

App Subscriptions

Most successful Shopify stores rely on apps for everything from SEO and email marketing to upselling and course management. These apps usually come with their own monthly fees. While these aren't "Shopify sales percentages" in the literal sense, they are part of the "platform tax" you pay to operate on Shopify. We believe merchants should own their customer data and brand experience, which is why we focus on all the key features for courses and communities within a single, streamlined app to keep your overhead manageable.

Currency Conversion Fees

If you sell internationally, Shopify charges a currency conversion fee (usually around 1.5% to 2% depending on the region). This is applied when a customer pays in their local currency and the funds are converted to your payout currency. This is another small percentage that can quietly erode your margins if you have a global customer base.

Domain and Email Hosting

While Shopify provides the platform, you still need to pay for your custom domain (usually $14–$20 per year) and potentially a third-party email hosting service like Google Workspace. Again, these are fixed costs, but they contribute to the total investment required to maintain your store.

Strategic Thinking: When to Upgrade Your Plan

Many merchants stay on the Basic plan for too long, fearing the jump to $105 or $399 per month. However, there is a clear "break-even" point where upgrading actually puts more money back into your pocket.

Let’s look at a practical scenario. Imagine you are on the Basic plan ($39/mo) with a 2.9% credit card fee. If your store is doing $20,000 in monthly sales, you are paying $580 in credit card fees plus your $39 subscription, totaling $619.

If you upgrade to the Shopify (Grow) plan ($105/mo), your rate drops to 2.6%. On $20,000 in sales, you pay $520 in credit card fees plus the $105 subscription, totaling $625. In this case, you are only paying $6 more per month to gain access to significantly better reporting and more staff accounts. Once your sales hit $25,000, the Grow plan becomes cheaper than the Basic plan.

Applying this same logic to the Advanced plan, the break-even point against the Grow plan usually happens around $100,000 in monthly sales. At that volume, the 0.2% difference in credit card rates (2.6% vs 2.4%) results in $200 of savings, which covers a large portion of the subscription price jump. If unifying your stack is a priority, start by a simple, all-in-one price for unlimited courses.

The Margin Revolution: Digital Products and Courses

When people ask "what percent of sales does Shopify take," they are usually worried about their profit margins. For physical product sellers, margins are often thin—typically 10% to 30% after accounting for manufacturing, shipping, storage, and platform fees. If Shopify and the credit card companies take 3% to 5% of the gross sale, that can represent a huge chunk of your actual profit.

This is why we advocate for a hybrid business model. At Tevello, we believe in the power of an all-in-one ecosystem where physical products, digital courses, and community engagement live side-by-side. By adding digital products to your Shopify store, you can dramatically increase your overall profit margins because digital goods have virtually zero "cost of goods sold" (COGS) and no shipping fees.

Consider a merchant who sells premium coffee beans. Selling a bag of beans requires sourcing, roasting, packaging, and shipping. The margins are tight. However, if that same merchant uses Tevello to offer a "Mastering the Pour-Over" video course for $49, that sale is almost pure profit. Shopify still takes its 2.6% or 2.9% credit card fee, but because there are no physical costs associated with the course, the merchant keeps the remaining 97%.

Our "Native Shopify Integration" ensures a seamless checkout experience using the payment gateways the merchant already trusts. This means the customer can buy a bag of coffee and the digital course in a single transaction, and they never have to leave your site. This keeps the customer on your own URL, rather than redirecting them to a third-party platform that might charge its own "success fees" or transaction percentages.

Maximizing Profit with Tevello

While Shopify provides the foundation, Tevello provides the tools to turn your store into a high-margin powerhouse. We are committed to transparency, which is why we reject the complicated tier structures found in other digital product apps. We know that as a business owner, you need predictable costs to scale effectively.

Our pricing is simple: The Unlimited Plan costs $29.99 per month.

One of the biggest "hidden" costs in the e-learning world is the "success fee"—a percentage of every course sale that the platform takes on top of credit card fees. We believe you should keep what you earn. Tevello charges 0% transaction fees. Whether you sell $100 or $100,000 worth of courses, our fee remains a flat $29.99 per month.

This flat-rate model is essential for avoiding per-user fees as the community scales. Other platforms might start cheap but then charge you more as you add more students or upload more videos. With our Unlimited plan, you get:

• Unlimited courses and students.
• Unlimited video hosting and bandwidth.
• A unified login that reduces customer support friction for your members.
• Full community features, including social feeds and member directories.
• Drip content scheduling and interactive quizzes.

By leveraging digital products that live directly alongside physical stock, you are not just selling a product; you are building a brand. This increases Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) and creates recurring revenue stability that physical products alone often struggle to provide.

Real-World Success: Scaling Without Fee Fatigue

To see the impact of choosing the right platform and fee structure, we only have to look at success stories from brands using native courses. For example, many creators have struggled with fragmented systems—using one platform for their physical shop and another (like Teachable or Thinkific) for their courses.

Take the case of a merchant like Charles Dowding. By unifying a fragmented system into a single Shopify store, he was able to streamline his operations significantly. This wasn't just about saving on subscription costs; it was about migrating over 14,000 members and reducing support tickets by having everything under one roof. When your customers don't have to manage multiple logins or navigate different websites, they are much more likely to buy again.

Another example can be seen in how brands converted 15% of challenge participants into long-term community members. By using Shopify’s robust marketing tools alongside Tevello’s native learning environment, these brands create a "flywheel" effect. The physical product brings the customer in, and the digital community keeps them there, driving repeat purchases and building long-term brand loyalty.

Actionable Checklist: How to Reduce Your Shopify Costs

If you are concerned about what percent of sales Shopify takes, follow this checklist to optimize your expenses:

1. Audit Your Payment Gateway: If Shopify Payments is available in your country, enable it immediately. This is the fastest way to drop your transaction fees to 0%.
2. Calculate Your Upgrade ROI: Take your total monthly sales and multiply by the percentage difference between your current plan and the next tier. If the savings are greater than the subscription price increase, upgrade today.
3. Use Annual Billing: Shopify offers a 25% discount if you pay for your subscription annually rather than monthly. This is an easy way to lower your fixed costs.
4. Consolidate Your Apps: Review your monthly app spend. Are you paying for three different apps that could be replaced by one? For those selling digital content, comparing plan costs against total course revenue is vital. Switching to an all-in-one solution like Tevello can often replace multiple expensive subscriptions.
5. Monitor Your Chargebacks: While not a "fee," chargebacks can cost you $15–$25 each on top of the lost sale. Use Shopify’s built-in fraud analysis to flag high-risk orders before you fulfill them.
6. Analyze International Sales: If you have a high volume of international customers, consider setting up local "markets" in Shopify to optimize currency conversion and localized pricing.

Building for the Future: Ownership and Control

At the heart of the "Shopify fees" debate is the concept of ownership. When you sell on a marketplace like Amazon or Etsy, those platforms take a massive cut (often 15% to 30%) and they own the customer relationship. You don't get the customer's email address, and you can't easily market to them again.

Shopify is different. While they take a small percentage, you own the brand, the data, and the relationship. This is why we are so passionate about our "Native Shopify Integration." We don't want to be another third-party platform that pulls your customers away. We want to install Tevello from the Shopify App Store today and turn your existing store into a powerhouse.

By keeping customers on your domain, you improve your SEO, increase trust, and ensure that every marketing dollar you spend builds your asset, not someone else's. When you combine the reliability of Shopify’s checkout with the high-margin potential of digital courses, you create a business that is not just profitable, but sustainable and sellable in the long run.

Analyzing the Math: A Real-World Comparison

To illustrate the difference between a physical-only store and a hybrid store using Tevello, let’s look at two merchants, both doing $10,000 in monthly sales on the "Shopify" (Grow) plan.

Merchant A (Physical Goods Only):

• Sales: $10,000
• Shopify Subscription: $105
• Credit Card Fees (2.6% + 30¢ on 200 orders): $320
• Cost of Goods (40%): $4,000
• Shipping & Packaging: $1,500
• Net Profit: $4,075

Merchant B (Hybrid: $5k Physical / $5k Digital with Tevello):

• Sales: $10,000
• Shopify Subscription: $105
• Tevello Subscription: $29.99
• Credit Card Fees (2.6% + 30¢ on 200 orders): $320
• Cost of Goods (Physical only): $2,000
• Shipping & Packaging (Physical only): $750
• Net Profit: $6,800.01

Merchant B makes $2,725 more profit on the exact same amount of revenue. This is the power of the digital model. By diversifying your revenue streams, you make the percentage that Shopify takes much less relevant to your overall success. You are no longer fighting for pennies on every physical shipment; you are building a high-margin digital library that pays dividends every month. You can verify this potential by seeing how the app natively integrates with Shopify to support these hybrid models.

Final Thoughts on Platform Fees

The question of "what percent of sales does Shopify take" is an important one, but it shouldn't be the only one you ask. Instead, ask: "What value am I getting for that percentage?" Shopify provides the world’s most secure checkout, lightning-fast hosting, and a suite of marketing tools that would cost thousands to build from scratch.

When you look at the fees as an investment in infrastructure, they become much easier to digest. The key is to manage those fees proactively—by choosing the right plan, using Shopify Payments, and increasing your margins through digital products.

We are here to support you in that journey. Whether you are migrating a large community or just starting your first course, our team is dedicated to providing a robust tool that amplifies your existing efforts. You can start by building your entire curriculum during our 14-day free trial, ensuring everything is perfect before you pay a cent.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Shopify take a cut of my shipping costs?

Yes, Shopify's credit card processing fee is applied to the total transaction amount, which includes the cost of the products, shipping, and any applicable taxes. If you are on the Basic plan and a customer pays $100 for a product and $20 for shipping, Shopify’s 2.9% fee will be calculated on the full $120.

Can I use my own payment processor to save money?

You can use third-party gateways like PayPal, Authorize.net, or Amazon Pay, but Shopify will charge an additional transaction fee (0.5% to 2% depending on your plan) for not using Shopify Payments. In almost all cases, it is more cost-effective to use Shopify Payments unless you have negotiated extremely low rates with a private merchant bank.

How do I stop Shopify from taking a percentage of my digital product sales?

Shopify will always take a credit card processing fee for any sale made through its checkout. However, you can avoid paying additional platform fees or "success fees" by using Tevello. Unlike other course platforms that take a percentage of every sale, Tevello charges a flat monthly fee with 0% transaction fees.

Is the Shopify transaction fee the same as the credit card fee?

No. The credit card fee is charged by the bank/processor to handle the money. The transaction fee is a separate charge from Shopify that only applies if you don't use Shopify Payments. If you use Shopify Payments, the transaction fee is 0%.

Conclusion

Understanding what percent of sales Shopify takes is the first step toward building a more profitable e-commerce business. By choosing the right plan for your volume, leveraging Shopify Payments to eliminate transaction fees, and keeping a close eye on app expenses, you can ensure that your platform costs remain a manageable part of your overhead. Remember that as your business grows, the math changes; don't be afraid to upgrade your plan to access lower rates that will save you thousands in the long run.

The most powerful way to offset platform fees and protect your margins is to incorporate digital products and community engagement into your store. By moving beyond a physical-only model, you can transition into the high-margin world of online learning, where you keep the vast majority of every dollar earned. At Tevello, we are proud to offer a solution that empowers you to do just that, with a flat-rate plan that supports unlimited members and a 100% native experience.

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