Shopify Australia: set up your store step by step
Open a Shopify store from Australia: plan prices in AUD, GST and the ABN, Shopify Payments card rates, postage across the country, and a launch checklist.
The short answer: Shopify's Australian pricing page, checked on 6 August 2026, lists Basic at A$56 a month on monthly billing, or A$42 a month billed annually. Grow is A$149 or A$114, and Advanced is A$575 or A$431. Shopify Payments is available in Australia. That same page puts the standard online card rate at 1.75 % + 30c on Basic, 1.6 % + 30c on Grow and 1.4 % + 30c on Advanced. Choose a third-party gateway instead and Shopify adds a surcharge of 2 % on Basic, 1 % on Grow and 0.6 % on Advanced. GST is 10 %, and business.gov.au states that registration is compulsory once your GST turnover reaches A$75,000. Postage is the line most new sellers underestimate, and this guide quotes no carrier rate — Australia Post publishes its own, by lodgement postcode.
Most people searching for this don't want a tour of the software. They want to know what leaves their bank account, and what the Australian Taxation Office will eventually ask of them. Then they want to know how a parcel gets from a garage in Ballarat to a customer in Broome without eating the margin.
So that's the order here: decisions, then the admin, then the two things that break imported advice — tax that sits inside your displayed price, and postage across a continent. Every platform figure comes from Shopify's own Australian pricing page or its Help Centre, with the date it was checked. Where a number isn't published, this guide says so.
Decide these five things before you open the admin
Opening a store takes an afternoon. Deciding what the store is takes longer, and skipping that is why so many Australian stores sit half-built for six months.
Who is legally selling. A sole trader, a business name registered with ASIC, or a company. This decides whose Australian Business Number goes on your invoices and who wears the liability.
Where the stock comes from. Local makers, wholesale, imported goods, print on demand. Imported stock brings landed cost, and landed cost is what turns a healthy-looking margin thin.
Where the parcel goes. Metro-only is a different business from national, and national is different again from national plus New Zealand. Decide before you touch postage settings.
Whether you'll ever sell in person. Shopify's point-of-sale software changes the plan maths, and it's cheaper to know that now than at your first market stall.
How much you can lose before it hurts. Set a real number in Australian dollars covering plan, processing, apps and postage for six months. If it's uncomfortable, the fix isn't a cheaper plan; it's a smaller first range.
None of those five decisions happens inside Shopify. All five change what you build once you're there.
How big is online retail in Australia, really?
Bigger than it was, smaller than the pitch decks suggest, and no longer measured the way it used to be.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics put online sales at 11.4 % of total Australian retail turnover in 2024. The figure comes from its retrospective article Retail Trade: A journey through 75 years of retail statistics, released on 31 July 2025, which traces the series back to 1.8 % in 2013.
Read the shape rather than the last point. The jump from 6.3 % in 2019 to 9.4 % in 2020 was lockdown. The dip to 10.8 % across 2022 and 2023 was people going back to shops. Growth resumed in 2024, but the pandemic peak was not a new baseline.
A caveat matters more than the number. The ABS ceased the Retail Business Survey and the Retail Trade Publication after the June 2025 reference period, with the last release on 31 July 2025. There is no ABS online-retail share for 2025 or 2026 in this form, and there won't be — so treat any current-year figure attributed to the ABS with suspicion.
GST, an ABN, and when the ATO becomes your problem
This guide is general orientation, not tax advice. Check the ATO or your registered tax agent before making decisions about your own business.
Two things get confused constantly, so take them apart.
An Australian Business Number (ABN) identifies your business. Goods and Services Tax (GST) registration is separate, and it's the one that changes your prices. Plenty of Australian sellers hold an ABN for a long time before GST registration is relevant to them.
GST is a tax of 10 % on most goods, services and other items sold or consumed in Australia, per business.gov.au.
Registration becomes compulsory once your GST turnover reaches A$75,000 or more. Non-profit organisations have a higher threshold of A$150,000. business.gov.au also sets the timing plainly: you have 21 days to register from becoming aware that your turnover will go over the threshold. Below that, registration is voluntary — some sellers register early to claim GST credits on stock and equipment, and that's a conversation for a registered tax agent.
The ABN is the identifier the registration runs through. business.gov.au states that if you already have an ABN, you can register for GST online through the Australian Taxation Office's Online services for business.
That has two practical consequences for a Shopify store:
- GST sits inside your displayed price. An Australian shopper expects the number on the product page to be the number they pay. That is not the American pattern of adding tax at checkout, and getting it wrong reads as a foreign store.
- The threshold is turnover, not profit. A store doing A$80,000 in sales and losing money still crosses it.
Those were the figures in force on 6 August 2026. business.gov.au states them as currently applicable without a financial-year label, so re-check them before you change how you price. One caveat about sourcing: the ATO is the authority here, but ato.gov.au refused automated retrieval on 6 August 2026, so every GST figure above is cited to business.gov.au, which is also an Australian Government service. Confirm them on the ATO's own site, which is where they are maintained.
Create your account and your store
Heads up: this guide uses Shopify affiliate links. Sign up through one and we are paid a commission, and you pay exactly the same as you would otherwise.
Start at shopify.com. The Australian pricing page currently advertises a 3-day free trial, then A$1 a month for 3 months, checked on 6 August 2026. That's a promotion and Shopify can end it, so confirm it on the page before you count on it.
The setup runs roughly like this. Shopify moves the admin around from time to time; if a label here doesn't match your screen, the Help Centre's setup documentation is the authority, not this page.
- Create the account. Email, password, store name. The store name becomes your temporary
myshopify.comaddress, and a proper domain goes on top later. - Answer the setup questions. Set the location to Australia — it seeds your currency, tax settings and postage origin.
- Add one product. Products › Add product. Do one properly rather than twenty badly: title, description, price, weight, one good photo. Weight matters more than new sellers expect, because carrier rates are priced on it.
- Set your address and currency. Settings › Store details. Confirm the currency reads Australian dollar and the address is the one you post from.
- Turn on payments. Settings › Payments. Shopify Payments is activated here, and a third-party gateway would be added here instead.
- Set up postage. Settings › Shipping and delivery. Leave this until you've read the postage section below — the defaults are not written for Australian distances.
- Set your taxes. Settings › Taxes and duties. If you're registered for GST, this is where you tell Shopify.
- Pick a theme. Online store › Themes. The free themes are genuinely usable, and swapping later is cheap.
- Remove the password page. Online store › Preferences. This is the switch that makes the store public, and it should be the last thing you touch.
The order matters. Products before postage, postage before taxes, password page last.
Which plan, and what it costs in Australian dollars
Shopify plans, pricing and features change; always verify the current details on shopify.com before deciding.
The consumer lineup is Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus. Each plan carries two prices, because annual billing charges the full year upfront at a lower effective monthly rate. These are the figures on Shopify's Australian pricing page, checked on 6 August 2026.
Plus is quoted separately, starting at A$3,700 a month on the Australian page. The Help Centre's Plus table reconciles that: AUD $4,000 a month on a one-year term and $3,700 on a three-year term. Plus is enterprise territory and out of scope for a first store.
What actually separates the plans. Basic includes no additional staff accounts at all; Grow supports five and Advanced fifteen, per both the pricing comparison table and the Help Centre plan pages. All three allow ten inventory locations, and all three list checkout customisation as "limited", with "full" reserved for Plus. One gate is easy to trip over: third-party carrier-calculated shipping is not available on Basic, while Advanced includes real-time rate calculations from third-party carriers.
One oddity worth knowing. Shopify's Help Centre billing overview lists subscription charges in "Euros (EUR), British pounds (GBP), US dollars (USD), Indian rupees (INR)", while the Australian pricing page quotes AUD. Shopify doesn't reconcile the two, so check the currency on your first invoice rather than assuming.
The recommendation. Start on Basic. The A$14 a month saved by paying annually is real, but that's a twelve-month commitment to a business you haven't proved — pay monthly for the first quarter. Move to Grow when you need a second staff login, and not before.
How do Australian customers actually pay you?
Australia is one of the countries where Shopify Payments is available. It appears among the named markets on Shopify's Help Centre list of supported countries, checked on 6 August 2026. Each supported country has its own page covering bank-account and business-verification requirements.
Use it, and the standard online card rate is 1.75 % + 30c on Basic, 1.6 % + 30c on Grow and 1.4 % + 30c on Advanced. In-person rates work the other way round: the percentage is higher — 1.95 %, 1.85 % and 1.75 % respectively — but there is no fixed 30c component. Which one costs you less depends on your average order value. On a A$20 sale the missing 30c outweighs the higher percentage; on a A$200 sale it does not.
Use something else, and Shopify adds a surcharge on top of whatever that provider charges you. The same page lists it as 2 % on Basic, 1 % on Grow, 0.6 % on Advanced and 0.2 % on Plus. That surcharge is not the gateway's fee. It's Shopify's, and it's charged in addition.
Read the red bars carefully. On Basic, the surcharge alone is larger than the entire Shopify Payments card rate. A third-party gateway has to be very cheap, or solve a problem nothing else solves, before that maths works.
The Help Centre is specific about what escapes the surcharge: "you aren't charged third-party transaction fees for orders that are processed through Shopify Payments, Shop Pay, Shop Pay Installments, and Paypal Express". It also states there are "no transaction fees on manual payment methods such as cash, cash on delivery (COD), and bank transfers".
On buy-now-pay-later and bank-based payments, this guide stops short. Australian shoppers expect instalment options, and you'll find plenty of confident claims about which ones Shopify Payments covers here. Shopify's own local-payment-methods documentation names no Australian method, so this site won't tell you whether a particular instalment product or direct-debit scheme is supported. Open Settings › Payments in your own trial and read what Shopify offers your account.
Shipping across a continent
This is where overseas advice fails hardest, and it isn't really a settings problem.
A parcel travelling three suburbs and a parcel travelling from Melbourne to Karratha cost very different amounts to send. Australia Post prices business Parcel Post by lodgement postcode and destination, and publishes those business postage costs on its own site alongside the MyPost Business rate card. This guide quotes no carrier price, because rates change on the carrier's schedule and a stale number is worse than no number.
- Australia Post, business postage costs: https://auspost.com.au/business/shipping/postage-costs
- Australia Post, MyPost Business: https://auspost.com.au/business/shipping/mypost-business
Sendle is the other name small Australian Shopify sellers weigh up, particularly for metro-to-metro parcels. Its rates live on its own site, and we don't restate them here for the same reason.
Zones are the mechanism; economics are the decision. You build zones and rates in Settings › Shipping and delivery, and building one is five minutes of clicking. Deciding what to charge in it is the afternoon's real work. Three approaches:
- Flat national rate. Simple, and the thing customers understand. It also quietly averages a cheap metro parcel against an expensive remote one, so metro orders subsidise the rest. That can be a deliberate choice. It is never an accident you can afford.
- Zone-based rates. Separate rates for metro, regional and remote. Honest, and it protects your margin. It also produces a checkout number that surprises people, so explain it on the page.
- Free shipping over a threshold. The threshold has to clear your average order value plus your worst realistic postage cost, or every large regional order becomes a loss.
A plan gate belongs here. Third-party carrier-calculated shipping is not available on the Basic tier, per Shopify's Help Centre. If live carrier rates at checkout are essential, that's a plan decision rather than an app decision.
Refunds and returns under Australian Consumer Law
Australia has no European-style cooling-off period for ordinary online retail purchases. What it has instead is stronger in some ways and narrower in others. Getting the difference wrong is what puts small stores in front of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
Under Australian Consumer Law (ACL), consumer guarantees are automatic. The ACCC sets out several for goods. A product must be of acceptable quality — safe, durable, free from defects and performing as expected. It must be fit for a particular purpose where the customer relied on your advice, match its description, and match any sample or demonstration model. Manufacturers must honour express warranties and supply spare parts and repair facilities for a reasonable time.
You cannot contract out of them. The ACCC says a business "can't take away these basic rights by displaying a 'no refunds' sign". A no-refund policy on your returns page isn't enforceable, and publishing one is itself a problem.
Which remedy applies depends on how bad the fault is — and so does who gets to choose it:
| Situation | Who chooses the remedy | What the customer gets |
|---|---|---|
| Major problem — unsafe, very different from the description, or one serious fault | The consumer | A refund, or a replacement of the same type of product |
| Minor problem | The business | The business must fix the problem or repair the product for free |
| Change of mind | Nobody — no guarantee applies | Only what your own published policy offers |
That last row gets misread in both directions. The ACCC states that consumers are not entitled to a remedy if they "changed their mind…found the product cheaper somewhere else, or decided they didn't like the purchase". It also states that "if a business has a 'change of mind' policy, they must follow it". Advertise 30-day returns and you've created an obligation you now have to honour.
Write your returns page from the ACCC's own guidance, not from an American store's. The two describe different countries.
Theme, products and checkout
Themes absorb far too much of a new seller's first fortnight. The free ones are fine. Change the logo, colours and fonts, put a real photo in the hero, and move on.
Products earn the sale. Photograph on a plain background in daylight. Write for someone deciding between you and a competitor, not for a search engine. Include dimensions and weight — you need the weight for postage anyway.
Checkout is where you lose people, and you have less control than you'd like. Shopify's comparison table lists checkout customisation as "limited" on Basic, Grow and Advanced. Within that limit, the useful moves are unglamorous: show postage costs early rather than at the last step, state your returns position plainly, and don't force account creation.
Two Australian details that read as amateur when wrong. Prices should display GST-inclusive if you're registered, because that's what a local shopper expects. And an address form asking for a "ZIP code" tells a customer instantly that the store isn't really here.
Your launch checklist, ending in a test order
Work down this in order. The last item is the one people skip, and it's the one that catches everything else.
- Store details correct. Business name, Australian address, AUD currency, a contact email you actually read.
- At least one real product, with weight, dimensions, price and photos.
- Payments live. Settings › Payments shows an active provider, and the bank details are yours.
- Postage rates set for every zone you'll really ship to, priced off a carrier rate card.
- Taxes configured to match your GST registration status.
- Policy pages published — returns, privacy, terms, postage. Returns must square with the ACL section above.
- A domain connected, or at least chosen. A
.com.ausignals to Australian shoppers that you're local. - Contact details visible, including a way to reach a human.
- Test the store on a phone. Most of your traffic arrives on one.
- Run a test order. Buy from your own store, with your own card, at full price, all the way through. Then refund it.
That last step is the point of the whole list. It tells you whether the confirmation email arrives, whether the postage rate at checkout is the one you intended, whether the tax line reads correctly, and whether the money lands. The refund matters just as much — a refund path you've never tested is one you'll be learning at the worst possible moment. Shopify's Help Centre documents test-order options for stores that would rather not move real money.
Only once the test order passes should you remove the password page.
What the first year actually costs
Shopify plans, pricing and features change; always verify the current details on shopify.com before deciding.
The plan price is not the bill. Here's the first year in Australian dollars, with the source of each line and a clear mark where no figure is published.
| Line | First year in AUD | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Basic plan, billed annually | A$42 a month → A$504 | Shopify AU pricing page, 6 Aug 2026; our multiplication |
| Basic plan, billed monthly | A$56 a month → A$672 | Shopify AU pricing page, 6 Aug 2026; our multiplication |
| Card processing, worked example | A$510 | 1.75 % + 30c applied to 300 orders averaging A$80; our arithmetic on the published Basic rate |
| Same volume through a third-party gateway | +A$480 in Shopify surcharge alone | 2 % of A$24,000 on Basic, before the gateway's own fees |
| Shopify POS Pro, if you also sell in person | A$129 a month per location → A$1,548 | Shopify AU pricing comparison table, 6 Aug 2026 |
| Theme and apps | Not published | Shopify publishes no typical figure; price your own shortlist |
| Postage | Not published here | Australia Post publishes business rates by lodgement postcode |
| Domain | Not published here | Registrar pricing, not a Shopify figure |
The 300-orders-at-A$80 example is an illustration, not a forecast. Substitute your own numbers — the rate is the verified part, the volume is yours.
That table makes two things obvious. On Basic, a store doing A$24,000 a year pays more in card processing than in subscription. And the third-party gateway surcharge is the most avoidable line on the list.
This is an independent educational site. It is not operated by, affiliated with, or endorsed by Shopify Inc.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Shopify cost in Australia?
Checked on 6 August 2026, Shopify's Australian pricing page lists Basic at A$56 a month billed monthly or A$42 billed annually, Grow at A$149 or A$114, and Advanced at A$575 or A$431. Plus starts at A$3,700 a month. Those are subscription prices only. Card processing starts at 1.75 % + 30c per online order on Basic, with postage and apps on top, and prices change — verify them on shopify.com.
Do I need an ABN and GST registration before I open a Shopify store?
They're two different things. Per business.gov.au, GST registration is compulsory once your GST turnover reaches A$75,000 or more, and you have 21 days to register from becoming aware you'll cross it. Below that, registration is voluntary. An Australian Business Number is the identifier the registration runs through, and many sellers hold one long before GST applies. This is general orientation, not tax advice — check the ATO or your registered tax agent.
Is Shopify Payments available in Australia?
Yes. Australia appears on Shopify's Help Centre list of countries supported for Shopify Payments, checked on 6 August 2026. The Australian pricing page puts the online card rate at 1.75 % + 30c on Basic, 1.6 % + 30c on Grow and 1.4 % + 30c on Advanced. In-person is a higher percentage with no 30c. Which local instalment or bank-based methods it covers here is not something Shopify's published documentation confirms. Check Settings › Payments in your own store rather than relying on any article.
Can I put a "no refunds" sign on my Australian store?
No. The ACCC states that a business "can't take away these basic rights by displaying a 'no refunds' sign, or otherwise saying that refunds are not available at all". Consumer guarantees under Australian Consumer Law apply automatically. Change of mind is genuinely not covered by those guarantees — but if you advertise a change-of-mind returns policy, the ACCC says you must follow it.
Sources
- Shopify, "Shopify Pricing" (Australia). https://www.shopify.com/au/pricing — retrieved 6 August 2026.
- Shopify Help Center, "Pricing plans and billing overview". https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/intro-to-shopify/pricing-plans/pricing-overview — retrieved 6 August 2026.
- Shopify Help Center, "Shopify Payments" (fees). https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/payments/shopify-payments/fees — retrieved 6 August 2026.
- Shopify Help Center, "Supported countries for Shopify Payments". https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/payments/shopify-payments/supported-countries — retrieved 6 August 2026.
- Shopify Help Center, "Basic plan". https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/intro-to-shopify/pricing-plans/plans-features/basic-shopify-plan — retrieved 6 August 2026.
- Shopify Help Center, "Advanced plan". https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/intro-to-shopify/pricing-plans/plans-features/shopify-advanced-plan — retrieved 6 August 2026.
- Shopify Help Center, "Shopify Plus plan". https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/intro-to-shopify/pricing-plans/plans-features/shopify-plus-plan — retrieved 6 August 2026.
- Shopify Help Center, "Local payment methods". https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/payments/shopify-payments/local-payment-methods — retrieved 6 August 2026.
- Australian Government, business.gov.au, "Register for goods and services tax (GST)". https://business.gov.au/registrations/register-for-taxes/register-for-goods-and-services-tax-gst — retrieved 6 August 2026.
- Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, "Consumer rights and guarantees". https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/buying-products-and-services/consumer-guarantees — retrieved 6 August 2026.
- Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, "Repair, replace, refund, cancel". https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/problem-with-a-product-or-service-you-bought/repair-replace-refund-cancel — retrieved 6 August 2026.
- Australian Bureau of Statistics, "Retail Trade: A journey through 75 years of retail statistics", released 31 July 2025. https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/retail-trade-journey-through-75-years-retail-statistics — retrieved 6 August 2026.
- Australian Bureau of Statistics, "Cessation of the Retail Business Survey and Retail Trade Publication". https://www.abs.gov.au/about/cessation-retail-business-survey-and-retail-trade-publication — retrieved 6 August 2026.
- Australia Post, "Business postage costs". https://auspost.com.au/business/shipping/postage-costs — retrieved 6 August 2026.
- Australia Post, "MyPost Business". https://auspost.com.au/business/shipping/mypost-business — retrieved 6 August 2026.