A Shopify tier is a small part of the bill. A real store in Czechia turning over 300,000 CZK a month lands at roughly 8,000 to 10,500 CZK a month, because transaction fees pile on top of the tier and so do paid apps for things that count as basic locally: cash on delivery, compliant local invoices, parcel pickup points, feeds for the local price comparison engines. Shopify is outstanding at checkout conversion and cross border selling. What you pay for is everything that makes it behave like a local platform, and that surcharge exists in every market Shopify did not build for first.
Comparison table
The facts in one place first. Figures as of July 2026.
| Scenario (300,000 CZK/month turnover) | Tier | Payments | Apps | Total / month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A: Shopify Payments (Basic) | 670 CZK | ~7,000 CZK | ~730 CZK | ~8,400 CZK |
| B: local gateway on Grow | 1,830 CZK | ~6,000 CZK | ~730 CZK | ~8,560 CZK |
| C: local gateway on Basic | 670 CZK | ~9,000 CZK | ~730 CZK | ~10,400 CZK |
Tiers from Shopify's official price list (monthly billing, verified 4 July 2026), other lines are indicative estimates. Assumes 200 orders a month. The payments line covers the gateway fee plus any Shopify surcharge for an external gateway.
The pattern behind one country's numbers
Every global platform is excellent in the markets it was designed around and expensive everywhere else. The extra you pay outside that core is what I call the localisation tax, and it does not appear on any pricing page. It shows up as a stack of apps, each solving something local merchants treat as table stakes.
Czechia is a good place to measure it, because the local expectations are specific and easy to name. Customers still pay cash on delivery in large numbers. Most parcels go to pickup points rather than home addresses. Invoices have to carry statutory identifiers to count as tax documents. And a large share of traffic comes from two domestic price comparison engines, Heureka and Zboží, roughly the role Google Shopping plays elsewhere but with their own feed formats. None of those four is native on Shopify.
All amounts below are in Czech crowns exactly as published, and I am deliberately not converting them. An exchange rate would be a number I made up. Read the ratio instead: what share of the bill is the tier, and what share is everything else.
What the tiers themselves cost
According to its own Czech price list, Shopify offers four tiers there. Basic costs 670 CZK a month, or 499 CZK a month paid annually. Grow comes to 1,830 CZK, annually 1,370 CZK. Advanced is 9,510 CZK, annually 7,130 CZK. And Plus starts at 2,100 euros a month, roughly 52,500 CZK, with no annual option offered at all. Paying annually saves around 25 percent elsewhere in the range.
One thing caught my eye. The cheap entry tier Starter, which Shopify used to sell for a couple of hundred crowns a month, quietly disappeared from the Czech line up. The cheapest way in is now Basic at 670 crowns, so the bar moved up.
The tier is the minority of a local merchant's monthly bill, though. The rest is carried by two other items: transaction fees and paid apps for local functions. Their sum is what turns a cheap looking Basic into an expensive setup.
Transaction fees and the penalty for your own gateway
Shopify Payments is available in Czechia and pays out in crowns and euros. On Czech and European cards it takes 1.9 percent plus 6.50 CZK per order on Basic, 1.8 percent on Grow, 1.6 percent on Advanced and from 1.3 percent on Plus. American Express and international cards run higher, around 2.9 percent. Pay through Shopify Payments and Shopify asks for no further transaction fee.
The catch sits elsewhere. Shopify Payments does not handle cash on delivery or local payment methods the way a domestic gateway does, so plenty of merchants end up on a local one anyway. Comgate and GoPay are the two that matter in Czechia, the local equivalents of a Stripe or an Adyen with the domestic bank buttons and cash on delivery attached. And for not using Shopify Payments, Shopify charges a surcharge: 2 percent extra on Basic, 1 percent on Grow, 0.6 percent on Advanced and just 0.2 percent on Plus. That is on top of what the gateway itself takes.
In practice, a merchant who needs cash on delivery pays for payments twice, once to the gateway and once to Shopify. On Basic, where the surcharge is 2 percent, the cost of taking money roughly doubles. This mechanism is not Czech, incidentally. It applies wherever the local payment habit is not something Shopify Payments covers.
What the localisation tax actually buys
Shopify does not issue Czech invoices that qualify as tax documents on its own. You solve it with an integration, typically Fakturoid or Sufio, paid separately. Cash on delivery is missing natively altogether: it needs a paid app at roughly 10 EUR a month depending on volume, and it gets added to the order after submission as a separate line item, which tangles the invoice too.
Pickup points, meaning the Packeta, PPL, DPD and Balíkovna networks that most Czech shoppers actually choose, are limited inside the checkout on tiers below Plus, and apps often bolt them on after purchase instead. Feeds for Heureka, Zboží or the fashion engine Glami are not there either: Shopify handles Google and Facebook, so a feed for a domestic comparison engine is another paid app. And automatic translation is free for two languages only.
Put together, almost everything that is ordinary or legally required in that market is either bought as an app or runs as a second class process after the order. That is the tax. Swap the names and the same list appears in Poland, Hungary, Brazil or anywhere else with strong local rails.
A worked total on 300,000 CZK a month
Take a store turning over 300,000 CZK a month with an average order of 1,500 CZK, so roughly 200 orders. The table below shows three ordinary setups and every one of them lands at 8,000 to 10,500 CZK a month in real cost.
What interests me is how the bill is composed. For a smaller store, transaction fees can eat 60 to 85 percent of the monthly cost. And the perverse result is that the cheapest tier, Basic with a local gateway, comes out the most expensive of the three, because the 2 percent surcharge for an external gateway stacks on top of the gateway's own cut.
Where Shopify objectively leads
Let us be fair. Shopify probably has the best converting checkout in the world. Shop Pay can lift purchase completion by tens of percent against an ordinary guest checkout. Its themes score well on Core Web Vitals and premium ones often do the job of several paid apps.
It is strong on cross border selling too. Shopify Markets handles currencies, translations, duties and local payment methods from one admin, which is a serious advantage for expansion. Add the enormous App Store and infrastructure you never have to think about.
If your priority is global expansion and maximum checkout conversion, and you do not mind assembling and paying for local functions, Shopify is a top choice. The weakness is not platform quality, which is high. It is the price of localisation.
When a local all in one wins instead
This gap is exactly what a local all in one platform aims at. In Behio, cash on delivery, invoices that qualify as tax documents, pickup points, feeds for Heureka and Zboží and support in the local language are native parts of the product rather than paid apps. The invoicing module sits inside the platform, including export into Pohoda XML, the accounting format a large share of Czech businesses need.
Behio also takes no percentage of turnover and does not penalise you for choosing a payment gateway. You pay a subscription for capacity, meaning products, team, languages and AI credits, plus whatever gateway you pick. When turnover grows, the cost does not climb with it the way transaction fees do.
Shopify stays stronger on checkout conversion and international expansion. For a store selling mostly at home, though, a platform built for that home market tends to be cheaper and simpler to run. The general lesson holds wherever you are: price the local rails before you compare tiers.
The verdict
Shopify is globally first rate at checkout conversion, themes and cross border selling. A merchant outside its core markets pays a localisation tax, though: cash on delivery, compliant invoices, pickup points and comparison engine feeds all arrive as paid apps, and payments often get charged twice over. On 300,000 CZK of monthly turnover the real cost works out at roughly 8,000 to 10,500 CZK a month. If you sell mainly in one local market, a platform built for it, where invoicing, cash on delivery, feeds and local language support are included and nobody takes a slice of turnover, usually costs less. Behio does that for Czechia and Slovakia. Wherever you are, do the same sum before you sign.
Common questions
On 300,000 CZK of monthly turnover the real cost comes to roughly 8,000 to 10,500 CZK a month. The fixed tier is a small part of that. Most of it goes on transaction fees and paid apps for local functions such as cash on delivery, invoices and comparison engine feeds.
Yes, since 2026, with payouts in crowns and euros. It does not handle cash on delivery or local payment methods the way domestic gateways such as Comgate and GoPay do, though, so many merchants use a local gateway anyway and Shopify charges a surcharge for it.
Not natively. Invoices that count as tax documents come from a paid integration such as Fakturoid or Sufio, and cash on delivery needs a paid app that adds it to the order after submission as a separate line item.
Not natively. Shopify handles Google and Facebook feeds, but Heureka, Zboží or Glami, the comparison engines that drive a large share of Czech ecommerce traffic, need a paid app. Local platforms usually include those feeds in the base product.
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