Shopify POS
Strongest when paired with Shopify ecommerce. US plans are Basic $39/mo, Grow $105/mo and Advanced $399/mo. Every paid plan location includes what Shopify calls casual in-person selling; the full retail feature set is POS Pro, a separate add-on at $89/location/mo, which Shopify prices on top of Basic, Grow or Advanced. In-person Shopify Payments rates step down with the plan: 2.6% + 10c on Basic, 2.5% + 10c on Grow, 2.4% + 10c on Advanced. A multi-location retailer should add the plan price and the per-location POS Pro fee for every staffed location.
POS Pro is an add-on, not a plan inclusion. Basic, Grow and Advanced each include only what Shopify calls casual in-person selling; the full retail feature set costs $89 per location per month on top, and only the Plus plan carries it without the separate fee. Shopify serves our location prices in pounds, so the dollar figures here are Shopify's published US prices taken from its own US pricing pages rather than read off the page in one sitting.
What this POS actually costs in Year 1.
*Representative buyer: 1 location · 2 terminals · $40K/mo card volume · ~600 transactions/mo.
The number most buyers get wrong is POS Pro. On Basic at $39/mo, one staffed location running the full retail feature set is $39 + $89 POS Pro = $128/mo, or $1,536 a year, not $468. Processing at Basic's in-person rate of 2.6% + 10c on $40K/mo over 1,600 transactions is $1,040 + $160 = $1,200/mo, or $14,400 a year. Shopify does not publish device prices to our location, so there is no hardware line. Year-1 software plus processing on Basic with POS Pro: about $15,900. On Grow it is about $16,200, because the higher plan fee is partly offset by the 2.5% + 10c in-person rate. Add $89/mo for every additional POS Pro location.
Why this POS is priced this way.
Shopify POS exists to make the unified-commerce story work: one inventory record across online and in-store. If you already pay for Shopify ecommerce, the in-person layer is an add-on to a bill you are already paying, and that is the whole argument for it. If you do not, you are buying an ecommerce platform to get a POS, which is the wrong way round. The in-person card rate stepping down by plan, 2.6% to 2.5% to 2.4%, follows the same logic as Square's: the plan fee buys basis points.
What first-time buyers miss.
POS Pro is priced per location, per month, on top of the plan, and it is the tier that contains the features a real shop needs: staff permissions, inventory management, exchanges and returns at any location, retail reporting. Two staffed locations is $178/mo of POS Pro before the plan fee; five is $445/mo. A buyer who budgets from the headline plan price will be out by more than the plan price itself. Separately, Shopify POS is genuinely thinner than Toast or Lightspeed Restaurant for hospitality, so restaurants drawn by the cheap headline should look elsewhere.
Who this POS fits.
Retailers already running Shopify ecommerce, or committed to it. Omnichannel retail where one inventory record across channels is the requirement. Not for restaurants, and not for retailers with no ecommerce ambition, where the value of the unified story collapses.