Shopify changed some subscription prices and introduced a new plan called Starter that costs $5 per month. It represents the easiest way to enter e-commerce: by sharing product pages through social media, emails, or other channels. 

For those who don’t need in-person sales, it’s a nice replacement for the Lite plan (which offers the same plus POS for $9 per month).

Let’s see what is included in the Shopify Starter plan.

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Shopify Starter plan: who is it for?

The Starter subscription is designed for wannabe-merchants who are looking for an easy way to sell without having to care about creating and maintaining a website. With it, you can create product pages and send links to them to your prospective customers via social platforms, messengers, emails, or SMSs. It also allows you to feature a collection of links (combined on Linkpop) in your bio on social media. 

Note that the plan is only available to new merchants (you can’t downgrade to it) and to those who are on Shopify free trial. 

Shopify Starter plan: what is included?

For just $5 per month after a free trial, Shopify Starter gives you the following:

• Unlimited number of product pages: all you need to do is to add product photos and descriptions
• Checkout functionality: when you send people a link to your product, they can make a purchase right away
• Shopping cart: even though you won’t have a website, customers will still be able to add multiple products to their cart
• Contact page: you can create a page with contact information so that customers can address their issues
• Shopify Inbox: you get a chat to drive your sales
• Linkpop: you can combine different links using this tool and feature your link selection in your bio
• Order management: you’ll have an admin panel to manage your orders
• Analytical data: you’ll be able to measure and track your sales and customers 
• Support: in case you experience problems or have questions, Shopify’s support team can assist you

Note that besides a monthly price, you’ll pay a 5% transaction fee for using Shopify Payments. 

What can’t you do with Shopify Starter?

While Starter seems like a perfect fit for e-commerce newbies, it comes with certain limitations you should understand:

• You don’t have a website. You can only create product links, but you can’t create collections, write blog posts to attract customers, etc. 
• You can’t edit a theme for your product pages. You are given one theme for designing your product links. 
• You don’t get access to Shopify POS. Unlike the Lite plan, Starter doesn’t work with in-person sales. 

Start with Starter

If you want to start selling, Shopify Starter provides you with a great starter pack: you get to share product links across various channels, while Shopify takes care of the secure checkout process and order analytics. 

When you feel that social selling is not enough and you need to expand your reach, you can switch to any other pricing plan and set up a full-fledged Shopify store. With the recent change in pricing, Basic will cost you $24.