A small dropshipping store on Shopify Basic costs about $69 a month before card fees ($39 plan plus a $29.89 app stack), but card fees at 100 orders of $50 push the all-in figure to about $244. At every size modelled here, card processing is 70 to 85 percent of the bill; the plan and the apps are the minor part. The sections below show the arithmetic for three stores, so you can swap in your own order count.
The three profiles and their assumptions
- Average order value $50 (our assumption). Orders per month 100, 500 and 2,000, the volumes of the app cost dataset; that means $5,000, $25,000 and $100,000 of monthly sales.
- Plan: Basic $39, Grow $105, Advanced $399 on monthly billing, from a third-party USD guide because Shopify’s own page showed euros from the research location (official EU prices: Basic 28, Grow 78, Advanced 384 a month). Yearly billing is $29, $79 and $299.
- Apps: the dataset’s stacks. Dropshipping starter (DSers Advanced, ReConvert Growth, Judge.me free, GemPages free) $29.89; Upsell-heavy brand (AfterSell Post-Purchase, Loox, PageFly Builder) $58.99 at 500 orders and $358.98 at 2,000, where Loox switches to its Unlimited plan.
- Card fees: Shopify Payments at 2.9% + $0.30 on every order. Shopify’s own blog gives 2.5% to 2.9% + 30 cents online depending on plan, without naming which plan pays which; third-party guides (tech.co, GemPages, Costbench) put Basic at 2.9%, Grow at 2.7% and Advanced at 2.5%. We use 2.9% on every plan as an assumption, which overstates card fees for Grow and Advanced (profile B by 0.2 points, 0.2% of $25,000 = $50; profile C by 0.4 points, $400).
- Excluded: ads, product cost, shipping, domain, theme, taxes, email (Shopify Email is free up to 10,000 a month, see the email comparison).
Calculation
| Attribute | A: new dropshipper | B: mid-size | C: large |
|---|---|---|---|
| Orders per month | 100 | 500 | 2,000 |
| Sales per month | $5,000 | $25,000 | $100,000 |
| Plan (monthly billing) | Basic 39.00 | Grow 105.00 | Advanced 399.00 |
| Apps | 29.89 | 58.99 | 358.98 |
| Plan + apps | 68.89 | 163.99 | 757.98 |
| Card %, 2.9% of sales | 145.00 | 725.00 | 2,900.00 |
| Card fixed, $0.30 x orders | 30.00 | 150.00 | 600.00 |
| Card fees total | 175.00 | 875.00 | 3,500.00 |
| All-in | 243.89 | 1,038.99 | 4,257.98 |
| All-in as share of sales | 4.88% | 4.16% | 4.26% |
| Card fees as share of the bill | 71.8% | 84.2% | 82.2% |
Check: A is 68.89 + 175.00 = 243.89; 243.89 / 5,000 = 4.88%. C’s apps jump from 58.99 to 358.98 because Loox’s per-300-orders formula would cost more than its Unlimited plan at 2,000 orders (dataset method note).
What changes the number most
- Which processor you use. On Shopify, an outside gateway adds a fee on top of the gateway’s own: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced, 0.2% on Plus (Shopify pricing page and our fee guide). On profile A, 2% of $5,000 is $100 a month.
- Yearly billing. It cuts $10, $26 and $100 from A, B and C (39-29, 105-79, 399-299).
- Apps priced by volume. The $300 jump in C is one app.
- Promotions. Shopify’s offer is 3 days free then a promotional monthly price for 3 months; none of that is in the table.
Reading it
Do not budget the plan fee and stop. Before ads and product, a store selling $5,000 a month keeps roughly 95 cents of each dollar after Shopify costs, according to this model. Use break-even ROAS to see what ads must return after those costs, Shopify vs WooCommerce cost for the platform alternative, and how much it costs to start dropshipping for the one-off costs.
What we could not verify
US plan prices are from a third-party guide, corroborated by other third-party price lists; Shopify’s own US pricing page was not readable from the research location (it showed euros). Shopify’s US card rates by plan were not readable; the 2.9% + $0.30 figure is a labelled assumption at the top of the range Shopify’s blog gives. App prices are monthly list prices from App Store listings, 28 Sept 2026.
Method: researched from Shopify’s pricing page, App Store listings and our stacks dataset; checked 2 Oct 2026. All totals are our arithmetic.