TL;DR: The Shopify Starter plan is no longer available to new stores. Shopify removed it from the pricing page in August 2026 without an announcement, and its Help Centre now states plainly that it is closed to new signups. Existing Starter users keep it, but leaving is a one-way door. The cheapest way onto Shopify with a real storefront is now Basic at $39/month, or $29/month billed annually. The genuinely useful part of this story is that Starter charged 5% per online sale, which meant Basic was already cheaper for anyone selling more than about $1,620 a month. Most people who wanted Starter were better off without it.
What happened to the Shopify Starter plan
Shopify closed Starter to new merchants in August 2026. There was no press release. The plan simply disappeared from the pricing page, and the Help Centre was updated to say it is not available to new stores.
Starter was $5 a month. It gave you a checkout, product links you could share, order management, and basic analytics, but no storefront and no product pages. It was built for people selling through social media, messaging apps, and links rather than through a website.
Existing Starter merchants can keep using it. There is one catch worth knowing about, covered below, and it matters more than the price.
Why you still see $5 everywhere
Search this topic and most of what you find still describes a plan you cannot buy.
The three independent reviews currently ranking for this term all present Starter as a live option, with titles asking whether it is worth the $5. Major finance sites still list it in their pricing tables. None of them are being dishonest. They were written before August 2026 and have not been updated.
This is worth knowing when you research any Shopify pricing question. The platform changed several things in 2026, and a large share of published guidance predates those changes.
What the Starter plan actually cost
Here is the part almost every review of Starter left out, and it changes the conclusion entirely.
Starter charged 5% plus 30 cents on every online sale, and 5% on in-person sales. Basic charges 2.9% plus 30 cents online.
So Starter was $5 a month with a 5% cut. Basic is $39 a month with a 2.9% cut. The $34 difference in subscription buys you a 2.1 percentage point reduction in transaction cost.
The crossover was lower than anyone told you
Work out where those two lines meet.
You need $34 of savings to justify the higher subscription. At 2.1 percentage points, that takes $1,619 in monthly sales.
| Monthly sales | Starter total | Basic total |
|---|---|---|
| $500 | $30 | $53.50 |
| $1,000 | $55 | $68 |
| $1,620 | $86 | $86 |
| $3,000 | $155 | $126 |
| $5,000 | $255 | $184 |
Above roughly $1,620 a month, Starter was the more expensive plan. Not marginally. At $5,000 a month it cost $71 more than Basic while giving you no storefront.
That reframes the whole loss. Starter was genuinely the right choice for someone selling a few hundred dollars a month through Instagram links. For anyone with real volume it was already the wrong plan, and a lot of people were paying a premium for the privilege of not having a store.
If you were considering Starter and expected to clear $1,600 a month, its removal cost you nothing. It saved you money.
If you are an existing Starter user, read this first
You can stay on Starter. Shopify has not forced anyone off it.
But moving is a one-way door. Once you switch to another plan, you cannot switch back. Starter is closed to new stores, and that includes stores that used to be on it.
The practical advice depends on your volume. Under about $1,600 a month in sales, staying put is reasonable, and there is no deadline pressuring you. Above that, the 5% rate is already costing you more than Basic would, so the move is worth making on arithmetic alone rather than because of the deadline that does not exist.
What you should not do is upgrade casually to test a feature. That decision is permanent.
Shopify plans in 2026: what is actually available
| Plan | Monthly | Annual | Online card rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agentic | $0 | $0 | 2.9% + 30¢ |
| Basic | $39 | $29 | 2.9% + 30¢ |
| Grow | $105 | $79 | 2.7% + 30¢ |
| Advanced | $399 | $299 | 2.5% + 30¢ |
| Plus | from $2,300 | n/a | Negotiated |
Annual billing saves about 25%. Business and American Express cards carry higher rates on every plan, typically 3.5% + 30¢ on Basic.
Two things to know beyond the table.
Basic no longer includes staff accounts. The owner login is the only login. A second person in the admin means Grow at $105 a month. This is a 2026 change and it catches people who assume the old two-seat allowance still applies.
Using a third-party payment gateway adds a surcharge on top of whatever that gateway charges: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced. Shopify Payments avoids it entirely.
There is also a 3-day free trial with no card required, followed by a promotional $1 a month for three months on Basic, Grow, or Advanced.
The Agentic plan is $0 and is not what it looks like
Shopify launched a plan called Agentic in spring 2026 at $0 a month. Guides recommend it constantly as the Starter replacement. That is wrong, and the reasons are worth spelling out.
It has no storefront and no product pages. You upload a catalog and Shopify syndicates it into AI assistants: ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity, and the Shop app. There is no site for anyone to visit.
It was built for merchants who already sell elsewhere. The intended user runs a store on WooCommerce, BigCommerce, or Magento and wants AI distribution without migrating. If you have no store at all, it gives you a sales channel with nothing behind it.
The $0 is not the whole price. Shopify’s supplemental terms for Agentic Storefronts disclose a separate “Agentic Storefronts Fee” charged per channel on top of payment processing, and the rate is not published anywhere public. You pay 2.9% + 30¢ in card processing plus an amount you cannot look up before signing.
Availability is narrower than the marketing suggests. The full plan requires a US-based store selling to US customers in dollars. ChatGPT and Copilot are the exception and reach US buyers regardless of where the store is.
It is also early. OpenAI launched an Instant Checkout integration in September 2025 and discontinued it in March 2026, which is a reminder that these channels are still being rebuilt as they go.
None of that makes Agentic a bad product. For an established brand on another platform, free AI distribution is an easy yes. As the answer to “I wanted the $5 plan”, it does not fit, and the guides suggesting otherwise have not read the terms.
What Starter included, and what it never did
Worth being precise about, because a lot of the nostalgia around the plan is misplaced.
What you got. A Shopify checkout, shareable product links you could drop into a bio or a message, order management, basic sales analytics, access to the Shopify app store, and a simple product catalog.
What you never got. A storefront. No homepage, no product pages, no collections, no domain, no theme. Starter was a checkout attached to links, not a shop.
You also could not add POS Pro, the retail add-on. Starter was excluded from it entirely.
That limitation is why comparisons between Starter and Basic were always slightly false. They were not two tiers of the same product. One was a payment mechanism for people selling somewhere else, and the other was an online store.
Anyone whose plan was “start on Starter, upgrade to Basic later” was describing two different businesses, not two stages of one.
How to move off Starter without losing anything
If the arithmetic says you should move, the mechanics are straightforward, but there are three things to handle in order.
Export your customer list first. Do this before changing anything. Customer data is yours and it is the asset that does not regenerate.
Check your links. Starter’s shareable product links are what your social bio, messages, and any printed material point at. Moving to Basic gives you real product URLs, and the old links need updating everywhere you have used them.
Plan the switch for a quiet week. You will be building a storefront from nothing, since Starter never had one. That is a real setup job, not a toggle. Our step-by-step launch guide covers the sequence.
Then upgrade, knowing it is final. Because Starter is closed to new stores, this is the point of no return. Make it once you have the storefront roughly ready, not before.
One thing that carries over cleanly: your products, orders, and customers all stay in the same Shopify account. You are changing plan, not migrating platforms.
Why Shopify removed it, and what it signals
Shopify has not explained the decision, so this is reading the shape of it rather than reporting a reason.
Starter sat awkwardly in the lineup. Priced at $5, it attracted people who wanted a cheap Shopify, then charged them 5% per sale, which meant the plan quietly punished anyone who succeeded on it. Removing it makes the pricing page simpler and pushes every new merchant into the storefront product Shopify actually sells.
The Agentic plan arriving at the same time points the same direction. Shopify appears to be splitting its offering into a real store at $39 and up, and a distribution channel at $0 for merchants who host elsewhere. The $5 middle ground, a Shopify checkout without a Shopify store, no longer fits either half.
For anyone planning around Shopify’s pricing, the useful takeaway is that the cheap entry tier is gone and nothing suggests it is coming back. Budget from $39, or from $3 if you use the trial and promotional period first.
The wider pattern is worth watching too. Basic losing its staff accounts in 2026 and Starter disappearing are both quiet reductions at the bottom of the range, made without announcements. Neither showed up in most published guides for months.
Who the Shopify Starter plan was actually right for
It helps to be clear about who lost something here, because the answer is a narrower group than the reaction suggests.
You lost a good option if you sell a handful of products through Instagram, TikTok, or WhatsApp links. You turn over a few hundred dollars a month, you have no interest in running a website, and you specifically wanted Shopify’s checkout rather than a payment link. That person had a genuinely well-fitted $5 product and now has nothing equivalent.
You lost nothing if you wanted a storefront. Starter never had one. Every guide that framed it as “the cheap way to start a Shopify store” was describing something the plan could not do.
You were saved money if you expected to grow past $1,600 a month. The 5% rate would have quietly cost you more than Basic while giving you less.
That middle group was the largest, and it is why the removal generated less genuine disruption than the headlines imply. Most people searching for the Shopify Starter plan wanted a cheap online store, and Starter was never that.
The honest summary: a well-designed product for a small audience was retired, and a much larger audience was being mis-sold it by third-party guides that did not read the fee schedule.
If you are in the first group, the alternatives below are where to look. Everyone else should skip to Basic and use the trial.
Shopify free alternative: what to use if $39 is too much
If Basic is genuinely out of reach, the honest answer is that Shopify no longer has an entry-level tier and you should look elsewhere for now.
Selling a handful of products through social links. This is what Starter did, and the closest replacements are outside Shopify. Payment links from Stripe or PayPal, or a lightweight storefront on Square Online or Big Cartel, both of which have free tiers.
Testing whether a product sells at all. A marketplace answers that faster and cheaper. Etsy charges $0.20 to list. TikTok Shop and eBay both let you start without a subscription. You give up brand control and pay a commission, but you find out whether anyone wants the product without a monthly bill.
Committed to Shopify but cash-constrained right now. Use the 3-day trial plus the $1 a month promotional period. That gives you roughly three months of a working store for about $3, which is enough time to make a first sale before the real price arrives in month four.
Genuinely want free forever. Ecwid and Square Online both have free plans with real storefronts. They are more limited than Basic and you will likely outgrow them, but they cost nothing and they do have product pages, which the Agentic plan does not.
The thing to avoid is paying for a plan tier you do not need because a comparison article told you it was cheaper. Run your own numbers the way the crossover table above does.
What about the Shopify free trial 90 days offers?
You will still find pages promising a Shopify free trial 90 days long, and occasionally 120 days or six months.
None of these are current. The trial is 3 days with no credit card, followed by $1 a month for three months on a paid plan. The longer trials existed in the past, mostly through partner or developer channels, and the pages promoting them have not been updated.
If a site is offering you a 90-day trial through a link, treat it the same way you would treat the pages still selling you a $5 Starter plan.
FAQ
Availability questions
Is the Shopify Starter plan still available?
Not to new stores. Shopify removed it from the pricing page in August 2026 and its Help Centre states it is closed to new signups. Existing Starter merchants keep access.
Can I get back on Starter if I upgrade?
No. Moving from Starter to another plan is permanent. Because the plan is closed to new stores, a store that leaves cannot return.
What is the cheapest Shopify plan now?
Basic, at $39 a month or $29 a month billed annually. The Agentic plan is $0 but has no storefront and carries an undisclosed per-channel fee.
Cost questions
Was Starter actually cheaper than Basic?
Only below about $1,620 a month in sales. Starter charged 5% per online sale against Basic’s 2.9%, so the higher rate overtook the $34 subscription difference at that point.
How much does a Shopify store really cost to start?
Around $3 for the first three months using the trial and the $1 promotion, then $39 a month, plus card processing at 2.9% + 30¢ and whatever apps you add. Our full cost breakdown covers the rest.
Do Shopify plans include staff accounts?
Basic does not. The owner login is the only one. Grow at $105 a month is the first tier with staff accounts, which is a 2026 change from the previous allowance.
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