When the fees
add up.

The examples below use the growing shop plan on dedicated hosting. The small shop plan starts at £19.99 a month + VAT, with £299 + VAT setup. Compare both plans.

What you pay for the shop software is only part of the bill. If you take payments through an outside provider on Shopify, a percentage charge can grow as you sell more. Paid apps can add another bill every month.

Here is how to check what you pay, where Gax can cost less, and what changes in the first year.

Start with the right payment fees.

Shopify charges a third-party transaction fee when a sale is paid through an outside payment provider: one that is not Shopify Payments. It is a percentage of the sale, and it comes on top of what that provider charges you.

It does not apply to every Shopify sale. Sales taken by Shopify Payments avoid this charge. Manual payments and till orders are exempt, and PayPal is exempt when Shopify Payments is your main provider. Other payment methods have their own rules. Check Shopify's official fee guidance against the way your shop takes payments.

Payment processing fees still apply on both Shopify and Gax. Gax takes no transaction fee: nothing per order, per sale or as a percentage. Your provider charges you for taking the payment.

What £10,000 a month looks like.

This example uses monthly billing and £10,000 a month in sales, all of it charged Shopify's third-party fee. It compares the subscription and that fee only. Processing fees, paid apps and VAT are left out on both sides.

Shopify prices and rates: Shopify UK pricing, checked 12 November 2026. Plus is its advertised starting price, and its contract terms matter. Shopify works the fee out on products after discounts, plus tax and shipping, so use that amount rather than assuming all your sales are charged.

At this level, Gax costs £126 less a month than Basic: £1,512 less over a year of running the shop. Against Grow it is £66 less a month, or £792 over a year. These are running costs, before the cost of moving.

Count the cost to move, too.

Gax’s growing shop plan is £99 a month + VAT, plus £999 + VAT once to move or build your shop. The first year is £2,187 + VAT. After that it is £1,188 + VAT a year at the published monthly price.

At the same £10,000 of sales every month, Basic costs £2,700 in the year before processing, apps and VAT. Once you include Gax's one-off build or move, Gax is £513 cheaper in the first year.

Grow costs £1,980 on the same basis, so Gax is £207 more in the first year, then £792 less each year after at that level of sales. The monthly saving on its own does not tell you when a move pays for itself.

When Shopify costs less than the growing shop plan.

At £1,000 a month in sales that the fee applies to, Basic is £25 plus £20 of third-party fees: £45 a month. That is below the growing shop plan’s £99 a month + VAT, before the move. If all your payments go through Shopify Payments, that extra percentage disappears altogether: Basic's £25 or Grow's £65 stays below the growing shop plan’s monthly price, before processing, apps and VAT.

Gax may still be the better fit for the service, the payment choice or the features your business needs. Judge that separately from the bill.

Where do the costs meet?

On monthly billing, the growing shop plan’s £99 + VAT running cost matches Basic's subscription plus its 2% fee at £3,700 a month in sales the fee applies to, comparing before VAT. Against Grow's subscription plus its 1% fee, they match at £3,400. Above those amounts, the growing shop plan’s running cost is lower on these assumptions.

Add the £999 + VAT move or build and spread it across the first 12 months. Before VAT, the two then match at £7,862.50 a month against Basic and £11,725 a month against Grow. In the first year, your average monthly sales the fee applies to need to be above that amount for Gax to cost less.

Paying Shopify yearly changes the sums. Its advertised monthly equivalents are £19 for Basic, £49 for Grow and £259 for Advanced, paid for the year up front. At £19 a month, Basic is £228 a year: the growing shop plan at £99 a month + VAT, plus £999 + VAT to move, is not cheaper than that on price alone. The examples above use the higher monthly-billed subscriptions. A different billing term, payment mix or contract moves the point where the costs meet.

Give the apps their own line.

Write down the paid apps your shop actually uses, including subscriptions and usage charges. Small bills add up, but the total depends on your shop. Do not count an app as a saving until you know how its job will be done after the move.

On Gax, the £99 a month + VAT covers the published growing shop service: one shop, hosting and updates, a checkout with supported payment connections, the shop and its admin on phones, tablets and desktops, live shop figures, and connections for the AI assistants you allow. Your domain and your data stay yours.

What you get is set out on the plan you choose: your products, and the payment connections and custom work that plan lists. Both plans have fair use on infrastructure and data — that is, the servers and the data behind your shop. Each shop gets a fixed standard amount, and unusual outbound data or use above it is billed at cost, after we tell you.

The £999 + VAT move or build includes standard setup, the move or build work we agree in writing, and one additional custom integration defined before we build it. Further integrations are quoted before work starts. Check that scope with us: a cost comparison does not prove that two platforms do every job the same way.

Use your own numbers.

Take your real payment mix, your billing term and your app bills. Compare the running cost and the first year separately, then check the shop will do what your business needs.

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