TL;DR: Shopify in 30 seconds
- Shopify is the most used store platform in Germany: around 100,000 active stores, and a May 2026 study puts it at almost 32 percent market share ahead of Shopware and JTL. Hosting, checkout, payments and the app store come from one provider.
- Prices dropped in 2026: Basic costs €27 a month, or €19 on annual billing, Grow €74 (€56), Advanced €384 (€289). On top come 1.9% + €0.25 per card payment through Shopify Payments.
- The fee trap: if you use Mollie, Stripe or Klarna directly instead of Shopify Payments, Shopify adds 2 percent of revenue. PayPal Express is exempt as long as Shopify Payments is active.
- A legally compliant German store needs four to six apps: legal texts, invoices, cookie consent, withdrawal button, delivery times. A realistic Basic store therefore costs €45 to €60 a month, not €19.
- Users praise the admin, the checkout and the app selection, but complain about chat-only support, frozen payouts in Shopify Payments and costs that grow with every app. Trustpilot shows 1.3 out of 5, but those are mostly consumers scammed by fake stores, not merchants.
- Our rating: 4.0 out of 5. The easiest route to a professional store, with points off for the third-party fee, the compliance apps and support.
- Try it yourself: test Shopify free for 3 days, then 3 months at €1 each, no credit card needed.
Almost every tutorial on building an online store opens with the same screenshot: the green Shopify logo and a button that says “Start for free”. The Canadian platform has shaped the beginner market so thoroughly that many founders no longer ask which store system to pick, only which plan.
Shopify promises a store that can take orders within an hour: choose a theme, add products, switch on payments, done. For the US market that is largely true. A store in Germany, Austria or Switzerland also needs an imprint, a withdrawal policy, unit prices, a cookie banner, proper invoices and, since June 2026, a withdrawal button, and Shopify only delivers part of that out of the box.
We looked at what a German Shopify store really costs in 2026, where the fees hide with PayPal, Klarna and Mollie, which apps you need for legal compliance, what merchants report in forums and review portals, and when Shopware, WooCommerce or a website builder is the better choice.
Our rating: 4.0 / 5
The easiest route to a professional online store: the best checkout in the business, an app store with more than 18,000 extensions, hosting and security included, and 2026 prices well below the level of previous years. Points off for the 2 percent fee on third-party payment providers, the many apps German stores need for legal compliance, the lack of an EU data location and a support that is chat-only now.
| Ease of use & setup | ★★★★½ 4.7 |
| Features & app store | ★★★★½ 4.6 |
| Checkout & payments | ★★★★☆ 4.4 |
| Value for money | ★★★½☆ 3.9 |
| Legal compliance in the DACH region | ★★★☆☆ 3.3 |
| Support | ★★★☆☆ 3.1 |
🔍 Rated with our 5-criteria framework – every score can be recalculated.
Not an affiliate link. We earn nothing from this recommendation.
What is Shopify?
Shopify is a hosted store system: you pay monthly and get software, hosting, security, checkout and payment processing from one provider. Unlike Shopware or WooCommerce you install nothing, maintain no updates and cannot break the server. The price of that convenience is that your store runs on Shopify’s infrastructure and follows Shopify’s rules, from the URL structure to payment processing.
The company was founded in Ottawa in 2006, among others by German-born Tobias Lütke, who still runs it. Shopify has been listed since 2015, on the Nasdaq since March 2025. The numbers are enormous for a software company: in fiscal year 2025 Shopify generated $11.6 billion in revenue, and goods worth $378 billion were sold through the platform. In the second quarter of 2026 revenue grew by another 34 percent. Shopify does not disclose how many merchants it has (“millions”); estimates range from three to five million active stores.
Germany has had an engineering and sales office in Berlin since 2019, Shopify Commerce Germany GmbH. Your contracting party as a merchant, however, is the Irish Shopify International Ltd. in Dublin, which also issues the invoices. According to Store Leads, a good 100,000 active German stores run on Shopify in September 2026. A study by the provider Uptain of 3,000 German stores from May 2026 puts Shopify at 31.7 percent market share, ahead of Shopware (25.7 percent) and JTL (14 percent). Well-known German brands on Shopify include Snocks, Purelei, Kapten & Son, KoRo and Ankerkraut.
Shopify on video
This English tutorial from June 2026 walks through the whole setup from account to first test order: theme, products, payments, shipping and the admin. Prices shown are the US ones, the German figures follow below:
Video: Kevin Stratvert (step-by-step Shopify tutorial, June 2026)
The plans at a glance
Shopify offers four plans in Germany plus two special cases. The former entry-level “Starter” plan at €5 is no longer available to new stores, and the middle plan has been called “Grow” instead of “Shopify” since April 2025. New is the “Agentic” plan at €0, which lets you sell products in AI channels such as ChatGPT without a store of your own. These are the German prices in September 2026:
| Plan | Monthly | Yearly (per month) | Online card fee | Third-party fee | Staff accounts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | €27 | €19 | 1.9% + €0.25 | 2% | none |
| Grow | €74 | €56 | 1.8% + €0.25 | 1% | 5 |
| Advanced | €384 | €289 | 1.6% + €0.25 | 0.6% | 15 |
| Plus | from €2,250 (1-year term) | from €2,100 (3-year term) | negotiable | 0.2% | unlimited |
| Agentic | €0 | €0 | from 1.9% + €0.25 | – | AI channels only, no store |
All plans include unlimited products, hosting, SSL, the checkout, 10 inventory locations, more than 200 reports, Shopify Email with 10,000 emails a month, Inbox, Flow automations and the AI assistant Sidekick. Amex and international cards cost about 1.7 percentage points more in every plan, Klarna through Shopify Payments 4.99% + €0.35. The POS Pro add-on costs €79 per location. Plus costs €2,100 only on a three-year contract, otherwise €2,250.
Two details only show on a second look: Basic has had no additional staff account since early 2026, so anyone working with a partner or an agency shares one login or pays for Grow. And the annual discount is no longer a flat 25 percent: it is 30 percent on Basic and 24 percent on Grow.
The most important features
Themes and editor. Since May 2025 Shopify builds on the “Horizon” theme system: ten free themes, nested blocks up to eight levels deep, and an editor in which you drag sections around and let the AI generate blocks from a text prompt. Paid themes cost $100 to $500 once and are only charged when you publish. Anyone who wants to go deeper ends up in Shopify’s template language Liquid, which is the line between clicking and coding.
Checkout and Shop Pay. The checkout is Shopify’s strongest argument. It is a single page, remembers the last payment method used since August 2026, and with Shop Pay returning customers pay in one click because their data is stored with Shopify. Shopify advertises 15 percent higher conversion than other platforms, a figure from Shopify’s own study. What you may change in the checkout is limited on Basic through Advanced: logo, colours, fonts, fields. Custom apps in every checkout step and the Checkout Components released in June 2026 are Plus-only.
Shopify Payments. The in-house payment processing covers Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Maestro, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Shop Pay, Klarna, iDEAL, Bancontact, EPS, TWINT and recently USDC in Germany. Payouts arrive in euros after three business days at the earliest, daily, weekly or monthly as you choose. SEPA direct debit, Sofort and Giropay are missing. A chargeback costs €15, refunded if you win the dispute. Foreign currencies are converted with a 2 percent surcharge.
Sidekick and Magic. The AI assistant Sidekick sits in the admin, has spoken German since March 2025, and can create discounts, build customer segments, pull reports and change themes on command. Since the Winter ’26 edition it makes proactive suggestions (“Pulse”) and writes small apps. Magic generates product copy, removes image backgrounds and drafts replies in Inbox. Do not trust it blindly with data, though: in the community, merchants documented invented item numbers and Flow variables in 2026, and Shopify offers no setting against it. All of it is included in every plan; the pricing page speaks of “millions of tokens”.
App store. More than 18,000 apps in May 2026, up from around 12,000 a year earlier. Some of them are mandatory for German stores, more on that below. For marketing, upselling and reviews the choice is larger than on any other system, and many niches have apps by German developers with German support; we have tested PaymentHero, for example.
Shipping with DHL. Since May 2025 you buy DHL parcel labels directly in the admin, since February 2026 also the small parcel up to 1 kilo. This only covers domestic shipping, pickups cannot be booked, and according to a DHL spokesperson there are no special rates below list prices. For international parcels, Hermes or DPD you still need a tool like Sendcloud. DHL Express has been in early access since August 2026.
Markets, taxes, dropshipping. Selling in local currencies is included from Basic, and the free Translate & Adapt app translates the store into two languages automatically. Duties at checkout have been calculated in all plans since February 2025 for 0.5 percent of the order. For EU VAT, new stores have used Shopify Tax since May 2026, which pulls the destination country’s rates once you enter your OSS registration. Dropshippers find DSers, Zendrop, Spocket and CJ in the app store, and Shopify Collective, which lets you sell other Shopify merchants’ products in the same country, has been available in Germany since September 2025.
What Shopify really costs
The €19 in the ads is the subscription price on annual billing. A German store also needs legal texts, proper invoices, a cookie banner and, since June 2026, the withdrawal button. Apps handle that, and apps cost money. This is what a realistic beginner store looks like in September 2026:
| Item | Example | Cost per month |
|---|---|---|
| Shopify Basic | monthly / yearly | €27 / €19 |
| Domain | .de via Shopify or external, €9 to €15 a year | approx. €1 |
| Theme | Horizon free, paid themes $100 to $500 once | €0 |
| Legal texts | IT-Recht Kanzlei interface or Händlerbund | from approx. €10 |
| Invoices | Sufio from $7, invoice numbers, ZUGFeRD | approx. €6.50 |
| Cookie consent | Consentmo or Pandectes, free to $9 | €0 to €8 |
| Withdrawal button | EU Widerrufsbutton free, Widerruf Manager $12 to $27 | €0 to €11 |
| Reviews | Judge.me Free | €0 |
| Total before payment fees | approx. €45 to €60 |
Then come the payment fees, and this is where Shopify turns out cheap or expensive. A worked example: 100 orders of €50 each, so €5,000 in monthly revenue. Through Shopify Payments on the Basic plan you pay 1.9% + €0.25, which is €120. If everything runs through PayPal Express, you pay PayPal’s fee of about 2.49% + €0.35, roughly €160, but nothing extra to Shopify. If you use Mollie or Stripe as your main provider instead, Shopify’s 2 percent comes on top of their fee, €100 a month for nothing in this example. And Klarna through Shopify Payments costs more than double a card payment at 4.99% + €0.35; on €5,000 of pure Klarna revenue that would be €285.
Upgrading to Grow almost never pays off because of the fees, by the way: the 0.1 percentage point difference only recovers the €47 surcharge from €47,000 in monthly card revenue. You buy Grow for the five staff accounts, the shipping discounts and the reports.
Without Shopify Payments you pay twice
Shopify charges a fee on revenue that runs through third-party payment providers in every plan: 2 percent on Basic, 1 percent on Grow, 0.6 percent on Advanced, in addition to what Mollie, Stripe, Unzer or Klarna charge themselves. The fee is only waived when Shopify Payments is activated, in which case PayPal Express and manual methods such as bank transfer are free as well. Anyone who cannot get Shopify Payments, because of their industry or because the account was suspended after a review, pays extra permanently.
How prices have changed
Shopify’s prices go up and down. Until the end of 2022 Basic cost €27 a month; in January 2023 Shopify raised it to €36, the middle plan went from €79 to €105, and existing merchants paid the new rates from April 2023. That level held until at least the end of 2025. At some point in the first half of 2026 Shopify lowered the German prices back to €27, or €19 on annual billing, Grow to €74 and €56. The company did not announce it; comparison sites show the new figures from May 2026. At the same time the card fee dropped from 2.1% + €0.30 to 1.9% + €0.25. New is also a credits programme: new merchants get 1 percent of their Shopify Payments revenue back as credit on the invoice during the first six months, capped at €3,500 on Basic, paid out only from $1,000 in revenue, and all of it lapses if you cancel. A store making €5,000 a month gets €50 back that way, almost the subscription price.
Less pleasant: in January 2026 the first merchants appeared in the Shopify community who could no longer add a staff account on Basic, and there is still no official announcement. And the Starter plan at €5 that many blogs still mention is no longer available to new stores.
Prices in Austria and Switzerland
Shopify prices per country. In Austria Basic costs €32 a month or €24 yearly, Grow €92 or €69, the card fee is 2% + €0.25, but Klarna is much cheaper than in Germany at 2.99% and EPS costs 1.75%. In Switzerland you pay CHF 29 or CHF 21 for Basic, CHF 79 or 59 for Grow, the card fee is almost a full percentage point higher than in Germany at 2.95% + CHF 0.30, and TWINT costs 1.75%. Shopify Payments is available in both countries, in Switzerland with payouts in CHF or euros.
Making Shopify compliant: the Germany checklist
Shopify is a Canadian platform with a German interface, not a German store system. Much of what Shopware or a WooCommerce installation with Germanized handles out of the box has to be configured or added via app on Shopify. Here is what is native and where you need an app:
| Requirement | Included in Shopify | What you have to do |
|---|---|---|
| “Order with obligation to pay” button | yes | change the text under checkout content; the default is “Pay now” |
| Prices incl. VAT + shipping notice | yes | tick the box in the tax settings |
| Unit price (PAngV) | yes, per variant | only weight, volume, length; “per piece” via metafield |
| Small business exemption (§ 19 UStG) | yes | switch taxes off, add the notice to the theme yourself |
| Imprint, terms, withdrawal policy, privacy policy | only the pages | texts from IT-Recht Kanzlei, Händlerbund, eRecht24 or Trusted Shops via app |
| Delivery time on the product page | no | metafield or app |
| Withdrawal button (§ 356a BGB, since 19 June 2026) | no | Shopify points to return rules in the customer account; an app such as EU Widerrufsbutton or the Händlerbund withdrawal manager is safer |
| Cookie banner under GDPR and TDDDG | partly | Shopify’s banner only controls Shopify’s own trackers; a consent app for Meta pixel, Google and apps |
| Invoices under § 14 UStG, GoBD | no | Order Printer uses order numbers; Sufio, Easy Invoices or your accounting tool (sevDesk, Lexware) take over |
| GPSR manufacturer details | no | create metafields or use an app like GPSR Kit |
| Accessibility (BFSG) | basics | themes are not automatically compliant; micro-enterprises under 10 employees are exempt |
| EU VAT, OSS | yes (Shopify Tax) | enter the OSS registration, filing happens externally |
On data protection the picture is sober: Shopify processes European customer data through its Irish entity, the servers sit with Amazon in the USA, Google Cloud in Canada and a Dutch provider. There is no EU-only data centre; Shopify relies on the EU standard contractual clauses. In 2022 the data protection authority of Rhineland-Palatinate prohibited a merchant from using Shopify’s US content delivery network; Shopify has improved since, but the underlying issue of US servers remains. For most stores that is defensible, but it has to be stated in the privacy policy.
What works well day to day
Setup really is as fast as Shopify claims. Create an account, pick a theme, add three products, activate Shopify Payments: after an hour you can place a test order. The admin is fully in German, so is the help centre, and the mobile app handles orders, chats and stock changes on the go. Anyone who has ever updated WordPress plugins notices the difference immediately: there is nothing to maintain.
The checkout deserves its reputation. Address, shipping and payment on one page, Apple Pay and Google Pay without configuration, Shop Pay for repeat buyers. In the reviews, checkout conversion is the most frequently named reason why merchants moved from WooCommerce or a website builder. Together with Shopify Payments you have payments, payouts and chargebacks in one place, without a contract with a payment service provider.
And Shopify grows with you. The store you start today for €19 can serve five employees, three warehouses, a physical shop with POS and sales in ten countries in three years, on the same backend. Snocks and Purelei took exactly that route. That Sidekick now handles discounts and reports from a single sentence mainly saves time for those who only open the admin once a week.
Where the limits are
Costs grow with the apps. €19 sounds cheap, but every function beyond the standard is an app with its own subscription. German legal texts, invoices, withdrawal, bundles, pre-orders, reviews, a returns portal: with ten apps you quickly reach €100 to €150 a month and have to check after every theme update whether everything still works together. Apps by German providers often bill in dollars, too.
Support is chat-only. On Basic, Grow and Advanced there is no phone and no email support, only the AI search and the chat, around the clock but not guaranteed in German. Shopify calls nobody back on any plan. In the German community, merchants have reported since mid-2025 that chats are closed without a solution and that the “continue conversation” option has disappeared; one user writes that the EMEA support team was cut in favour of AI. That is not officially confirmed, but the pattern in the reviews is unmistakable.
Shopify Payments can lock you out. Shopify may hold back payouts when its risk system flags an account, for example ten percent of revenue for 120 days or fixed amounts, and the notice arrives by email without a contact person. Anyone who carries on without Shopify Payments pays the 2 percent third-party fee. For industries with a high chargeback risk this is a real business risk.
The store is only half yours. URLs are fixed under /products/ and /collections/, which creates duplicate content for SEO. Each subscription covers one store; a second language or country store with its own domain costs extra, and only Plus includes nine expansion stores. And Shopify decides what may be sold: in June 2026 the platform suspended every store selling e-cigarettes within a few days. Moving away from Shopify is possible, but reviews, app data and customer accounts rarely migrate cleanly. And if you want to pause the store, you pay $9 a month for the dormant state.
Refunds practically do not exist. Shopify subscriptions are non-refundable under the terms of service; a review only happens on request within seven days (monthly plan) or 30 days (annual plan) of the invoice. If you take the annual plan and stop after four months, you do not get the remaining eight back. The 30 percent annual discount is a bet on your own perseverance.
What applies specifically to the DACH region
Shopify is not warning-proof in Germany “from the factory”. Without a legal-text app, an invoice app, a consent app and a withdrawal button, mandatory information is missing, and the German warning-letter industry specifically looks for Shopify stores with an English default checkout and missing unit prices. The tax logic has been good since Shopify Tax, but accounting always needs a second piece of software because Shopify generates neither small-business invoices nor e-invoices. For merchants with their own warehouse and an Amazon connection, JTL or Shopware is often the more honest route. And anyone who needs a German contracting party and servers in the EU gets neither from Shopify.
What users say about Shopify
The review picture is split in two, and you need to know that before reading Trustpilot:
| Platform | Rating | Count | Tenor (09/2026) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trustpilot (shopify.com) | 1.3 / 5 | 5,098 (1,352 in 12 months) | 87% one star, mostly shoppers from third-party stores; Shopify replies to none of the 1,253 negative reviews |
| Capterra | 4.5 / 5 | 6,714 | Ease of use 4.5 · support 4.4 · value 4.3; 80% would recommend |
| OMR Reviews (DE) | 4.6 / 5 | 299 | 223 five-star ratings, no one-star; criticism: costs, GDPR features for Germany |
| G2 | 4.4 / 5 | 4,976 | 67% five stars, 26% four stars |
| App Store DE (merchant app) | 4.7 / 5 | 3,321 | 2026 complaints: login lockouts, hidden cancellation, chat falls back to AI |
| Google Play DE | 4.0 / 5 | approx. 72,000 | individual 2026 reviews not extractable |
The 1.3 on Trustpilot says little about Shopify as software. In a sample of the most recent negative reviews, nine out of 17 came from consumers who had ordered from a fraudulent Shopify-based store and blame the platform, seven were about charges after cancellation, and only one was about an account suspension. That Shopify replies to none of the more than 1,200 negative reviews and that the Canadian Better Business Bureau rates the company “F” is still a finding: anyone with a problem finds nobody to talk to. On the merchant portals Capterra, OMR and G2, by contrast, Shopify sits steadily at 4.4 to 4.6.
Merchant criticism concentrates on three topics. First, Shopify Payments: in the community and on Reddit, 2026 reports pile up of payouts frozen after a cancellation or a first large order, with the standard outcome “ten percent reserve for 120 days”; one merchant waited more than 30 days in June 2026 for the promised release of about $10,000. Second, support: a Plus merchant clicking “talk to a human” in July 2026 got an AI chat that invented messages, another was locked out of the admin for four months although eleven agents had the case. Third, billing: subscriptions that keep running after cancellation, duplicate PayPal charges, apps that are not cancelled along with the store. Add complaints about Sidekick, which in February 2026 described more than 80 of one merchant’s products with invented item numbers, and a two-hour full outage on 3 June 2026 that took down storefronts, checkout and admin at the same time.
Praise in almost every positive review names the same things: setup without coding, an app store with a solution for every problem, payment methods without a contract of your own, the mobile app and the certainty that the platform will not collapse on Black Friday. An agency owner wrote on Trustpilot in September 2026 that nobody writes about the good parts and Shopify is by far the best platform, and that is roughly the picture the merchant portals paint.
Shopify compared with the alternatives
| System | Entry price | Better than Shopify if | Weaker at |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shopware 6 | Community Edition €0 + hosting; Rise from €600/month | you need a German provider, data sovereignty, B2B or your own warehouse | setup without an agency, cost from the first paid plan |
| WooCommerce | plugin €0 + hosting from €10; Germanized Pro €85/year | a WordPress site already exists and you refuse revenue-based fees | updates, security and performance in your own hands (comparison) |
| Wix | store plans from about €24 to €30/month | the store is a side feature of a website | apps, multichannel, dropshipping (Wix review) |
| Jimdo | store from €20.50/month, no transaction fee | you sell 20 products and want a German provider | scaling, legal texts only in the top plan |
| JTL-Shop | Start €0 (500 items), Advanced €119/month + hosting | inventory management, warehouse and Amazon are the core | beginner-friendliness, price jumps since April 2026 |
| Gambio | Cloud €29/month + 1.5% above €500 revenue | you want legal texts and marketplaces included | app selection, design, revenue commission |
| Etsy | no base fee, 6.5% + 4% + €0.30 per sale | you want to test demand without fixed costs | brand building, total fees of 12 to 17 percent |
The rule of thumb: Shopify if you want to start fast without tech and accept revenue-based fees. Shopware or JTL if warehouse, B2B and German processes matter more than speed. WooCommerce if you already know WordPress. A website builder if the store is less than half of your site.
Who Shopify is right for
A good fit if you are launching your first store and have no appetite for servers, updates and plugin conflicts, if you run dropshipping or print on demand with providers such as DSers or Printful, if you sell through Instagram and TikTok and need a checkout that works on a phone, if you can use Shopify Payments, and if your store should be much bigger in two years than it is today.
A poor fit if you absolutely need a German contracting party and servers in the EU, if your business depends on an existing payment provider and you refuse to pay the 2 percent, if you run a warehouse with its own inventory system, many B2B customers or complex product configurators, if you want to work as a team on the Basic plan, or if you expect phone support without paying €2,100 a month.
Our verdict
Shopify is the most mature store system for beginners in 2026, and it has become cheaper. €19 a month for hosting, checkout, payment processing and an AI assistant, plus an app store with three solutions for every problem: no other provider matches that combination. The checkout alone justifies the switch for many merchants.
What keeps the rating at 4.0 are the things Shopify does not put on its pricing page: the 2 percent for third-party payment providers, the four to six apps without which a German store is not warning-proof, the loss of the staff account on Basic, a support that has thinned out noticeably since 2025, and the dependence on Shopify Payments, whose risk department can freeze payouts without a contact person.
Our recommendation: start with Basic on monthly billing, activate Shopify Payments on day one and install the four mandatory apps before the store goes live. Budget €50 to €60 a month plus around 2.5 percent of revenue. Switch to the annual plan only after the store has been selling for three months. And if warehouse, B2B or Amazon become your core business, look at Shopware or JTL before you stack ten apps on top of each other.
Try Shopify yourself
Three days free without a credit card, then three months at €1 each. That is enough time to set up theme, products, checkout and the German compliance apps completely and check everything with a test order before the regular price applies.
Not an affiliate link. We earn nothing from this recommendation.
Frequently asked questions about Shopify
How much does Shopify cost per month in Germany?
Basic costs €27 on monthly and €19 on annual billing, Grow €74 or €56, Advanced €384 or €289, Plus from €2,100. Add 1.9% + €0.25 per card payment through Shopify Payments on the Basic plan. With domain, legal texts, invoice app and cookie consent, a German beginner store realistically lands at €45 to €60 a month. New stores test free for three days and then pay €1 a month for three months.
Does Shopify charge transaction fees?
Only if you use a third-party payment provider instead of Shopify Payments: 2 percent on Basic, 1 percent on Grow, 0.6 percent on Advanced, in addition to that provider’s own fees. With Shopify Payments active the fee is waived, also for PayPal Express and manual methods such as bank transfer. With Shopify Payments you only pay the card fee, from 1.9% + €0.25 in Germany.
Is Shopify legally compliant and GDPR-compliant in Germany?
With some work, yes. Button text, tax display, unit prices and EU VAT are configured in Shopify itself. Legal texts, invoices under § 14 UStG, a full cookie consent banner, delivery times, GPSR details and the withdrawal button required since June 2026 have to be added via apps. Data runs through Shopify’s Irish entity with servers in the USA and Canada on the basis of standard contractual clauses; there is no EU-only data centre.
Can I cancel Shopify monthly?
Yes, the monthly subscription ends at the end of the current billing cycle, with no notice period and no setup fee. Refunds, however, practically do not exist, not even for the remaining term of an annual plan. If you only want to pause the store, you pay $9 a month in “Pause and Build” mode. After closure Shopify keeps your data for two years.
Is there German-language support at Shopify?
Admin, help centre and community are available in German. Support itself runs exclusively through AI search and chat on Basic, Grow and Advanced, around the clock but not guaranteed in German. Phone and email support exist only on Plus and the POS plan, and Shopify makes no outbound calls on any plan. Since 2025 reports of chats being closed without a solution have increased.
Shopify or Shopware: which is better for beginners?
Shopify if you want to start without an agency and without tech and can live with revenue-based fees. Shopware if you need a German provider, full data sovereignty, B2B or your own warehouse and have budget for hosting and setup. The Shopware Community Edition is free, the first cloud plan Rise starts at €600 a month. For most first-time founders Shopify is the faster route to the first sale.
Is Shopify suitable for dropshipping?
Yes, Shopify is the standard system for it. DSers, Zendrop, Spocket and CJ Dropshipping run as apps, and Shopify Collective has been available in Germany since September 2025. Keep the EU customs reform of July 2026 in mind, though: the €150 exemption is gone, parcels from China carry a flat duty of €3 per goods category, which Shopify’s duty calculator can show at checkout for 0.5 percent of the order. A list of European suppliers is in our EU dropshipping supplier list.
