Shopify is excellent at getting a shop on the internet.
It is less excellent at staying cheap once you are actually selling.
You start on Basic. Then there’s a cut of each card payment. Then the theme can’t do the thing a customer asked for, so you add an app. Then another. Then a theme change is a specialist job. By year three a lot of owners are paying more than it would have cost to build the shop once.
If Shopify still fits, stay. A shop that needs every app in the store, or a team that lives in Shopify all day, is not who this page is for.
Stay if this is you
- You’re testing whether anyone will buy. $39 a month to find out is rational.
- You need the huge app library more than you need to own the shop.
- You sell a lot of simple products and the theme already does the job.
- You’d rather not think about hosting, ever.
That’s a real Shopify customer. Don’t leave for ideology.
Leave when every sale is paying rent
The apps are the product. Reviews, subscriptions, better search, a gift note — each one is another monthly line.
The theme is a trap. A small change needs someone who speaks Shopify’s language. You’re renting a shop you can’t reshape.
Customers feel the page. A slow product page on a phone is a lost sale. Themes are built for everyone, so they carry everyone else’s features.
Leaving would hurt. You can export a spreadsheet. You can’t export the shop. Starting again is the lock-in.
What you get instead
A shop built around how you actually sell. Customers pick the options that are real for you — size, stone, fabric — and pay. Confirmations go out. The catalogue is yours to update. Stripe takes the card; nobody takes a second cut for the privilege of using the shop.
Carrara Collective is the worked example: a Sydney stone furniture maker. Customers choose the model, the size, and the stone, then pay. No monthly shop platform. No slice of every piece.
When the week needs more — a staff view of orders, Xero updating when the money lands — that’s a portal and a connection, added to something you already keep. Not another app.
The money, simply
Shopify Basic is $468 a year before extras. Advanced is $4,788 a year before extras. Apps and theme work sit on top.
A shop you keep is usually $2,000–$6,000 once, then $20–$40 a month to host. Against Basic, the fees often catch up around year four. Against Advanced, around year one.
The quieter saving is the hours not spent hunting apps and waiting on theme quotes.
Already on Shopify?
We can bring the products and the customers. Tell us how an order actually happens. If the honest answer is stay, you’ll hear it.