Shopify app costs: what client stores really pay each month

A Shopify plan price is rarely what a client store really costs. Apps add monthly subscriptions, usage charges and one-off fees, some on Shopify’s bill and some not. Here is how agencies can count them and explain them to clients.

When a client asks “what does my shop cost each month?”, the honest answer on Shopify is “your plan, plus your apps, plus fees on orders”. The plan is easy to quote. The apps are where the surprises live, because they are bought one at a time, by different people, often during a busy launch.

This article explains how Shopify app charges work, how to count them for every client store, and how to stop them eating into your margin. It belongs to our series on platforms for client stores; start with the best ecommerce platform for agencies for the full checklist.

How do Shopify apps charge merchants?

Shopify’s help centre describes three kinds of app charge:

• Subscription charges for using an app every month, such as a monthly plan. They appear on the merchant’s regular Shopify bill.
• Usage charges that change with how much the app is used. They also appear on the Shopify bill, sometimes next to a subscription from the same app.
• One-time charges for a specific service or feature. These come on separate bills, not with the subscription.

Some apps don’t bill through Shopify at all. Shopify says these external charges aren’t displayed on the Shopify bill, and uninstalling the app in Shopify doesn’t stop them: the merchant has to cancel with the developer directly. Those are the charges most likely to be forgotten.

The App Store labels help, but read them carefully. “Free” means free. “Free plan available” means there is a free tier, usually with limits. “Free to install” tells you that installing costs nothing, not what using it costs. “Free trial available” means a charge starts when the trial ends.

Why app costs creep up

No single app is expensive. The cost comes from how many there are and how they are bought:

• Launch rush: apps for reviews, upsells, pop-ups and shipping are added in the last week before launch, and nobody writes them down.
• Overlap: two apps do the same job because a staff member installed one without knowing about the other.
• Usage growth: an app priced by orders, emails or products costs more as the shop grows, which is good news for sales and bad news for the budget.
• Leftovers: uninstalling stops future billing cycles, but Shopify notes that a charge already generated may still appear on the next invoice, and refunds for app charges are up to the developer, not Shopify.

For an agency, the risk is that the client blames you. They agreed a monthly fee with you, then see a much larger total on their card statement. The same is true of fees on orders, which we cover in Shopify transaction fees.

How to audit a client store’s apps

Do this when you take on a Shopify client, and again every three months. It takes under an hour per store.

1. List every installed app in the store’s admin, with who installed it and when.
2. Find each charge on the last three Shopify bills: subscription, usage and one-time. Ask the client for any app invoices that came by email from developers.
3. Note what each app does in one line, and mark any two that overlap.
4. Mark the essential ones: the apps the shop would break without, such as payments, shipping or tax.
5. Remove the rest with the client’s agreement, cancelling externally billed ones with the developer.
6. Write down the monthly total, so you can quote it next to your own fee.

Before a client closes or moves a Shopify store, check which apps bill outside Shopify. Shopify’s help centre says that on deactivation all apps are uninstalled and pending charges are charged, but external subscriptions need cancelling with each developer.

How should agencies price apps for clients?

There are two clean ways to handle app costs, and one messy one.

• Pass them through, openly. The client pays apps directly, and your proposal lists them with today’s total. Simple, but the client sees a growing list of bills.
• Include them in your monthly plan. You pay for the apps and charge one price. The client likes it; you carry the risk when usage grows. Review your price every year.
• The messy one: nobody decides, apps pile up, and the client discovers the total on their own.

Whichever you choose, it should be written into how you package your monthly service. Our guide to how to charge clients monthly for an online store covers what to include, and agency margin maths shows how a cost you don’t control can shrink what you keep. If you’re not sure who should be billed for what, read who pays whom on Shopify, Wix and white-label platforms.

How DripFunnel handles this

On DripFunnel, the things many Shopify stores add an app for are part of the store itself. Depending on the plan, a store includes:

• Discount codes and automatic offers, including customer-group offers and single-use codes.
• Abandoned-cart reminder emails.
• Size charts, product specifications, highlights, FAQs and badges.
• Rich product pages with A+ content, customer groups, supplier accounts, and reports you can export.
• AI that designs the whole storefront from a plain description, with a preview on desktop, tablet and phone before anything goes live.

As a partner in our white-label programme, you decide which of these each of your plans includes, up to DripFunnel’s maximum, and set one monthly price for the client. The console shows what you keep on every price. There is no app bill growing in the background, and DripFunnel takes no fee on your clients’ orders. More than 75 partners across the globe already run client stores this way. To see what the client sees, read what your clients see and what you control.

To be fair to Shopify: its app store is far larger than anything we offer. DripFunnel has no app store yet; a store owner can add an app from an install link the developer gives them, and apps can only read the store’s data. If a client depends on a specialised app, check with us before you move them. When you are ready, our plan for moving client stores from Shopify walks through the steps, and DripFunnel vs Shopify compares the two in detail. Then talk to us about becoming a partner.

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