---
title: "Shopify vs the Alternatives for DTC: The Fees, the Books, and the Meta Pixel"
description: "Platform fees are the small half of the bill. What a Canadian DTC store really pays on Shopify and the alternatives, what it does to your books, what Meta gets."
url: https://fifteenthmeridian.com/blog/shopify-vs-alternatives-dtc-canada-2026
---
Strategy · DTC

# Shopify vs the alternatives for DTC: the fees, the books, and the Meta pixel

[Bradyn Gardiyash](https://fifteenthmeridian.com/authors/bradyn-gardiyash) October 8, 2026

Platform fees are the smallest line in a direct-to-consumer store’s bill. Card processing is the biggest, and the app stack is the one nobody counts. At $50,000 a month on Shopify’s Grow plan the platform costs $99 and the processing costs about $1,488, and the apps run another US$84.

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Two published prices are traps. BigCommerce’s $29 entry plan is unreachable for a real store, because its own cap counts trailing twelve-month sales and a $10,000 a month store is already past the tier above it. Squarespace’s cheapest commerce plan charges 2% of store sales, which costs more than the upgrade above CA$550 a month.

The part that decides your bookkeeping is that a payout is never revenue. Canadian settlement is three business days plus bank processing, weekend captures are grouped, and refunds do not return the original card fee. Shopify calculates Canadian sales tax and states plainly that it does not remit or file it.

**Monday.** Price your own store with the formula below rather than a comparison table. Pick a connector that reconciles the payout to the bank line, not one that posts orders. If you sell to other provinces, check whether British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba or Quebec already require you to register.

Every platform comparison you can find has the same shape. A table of monthly plan prices, a column of ticks, and a recommendation. That table is close to useless for a direct-to-consumer brand, because the plan price is the smallest number in the bill and the three that matter are hidden.

So this post prices the whole thing, shows the arithmetic so you can redo it with your own numbers, and then covers the two things that decide whether a store is pleasant or miserable to operate: what it does to your books, and how well it feeds the ad platform most direct-to-consumer brands live on. Every price here was read from the vendor’s own page in September 2026, and the currency is marked on every line, because half the figures circulating in this category are United States prices presented as if they were Canadian.

## The bill has four lines, not one

Here is the formula. It is not sophisticated, which is the point: you can run it on a napkin and it will beat any comparison table.

What a store actually pays each month

Platform published plan price

Processing revenue x rate + orders x fee

Gateway penalty revenue x third-party%

Apps sum of plan prices

Run it at $50,000 a month with an average order of $80, which is 625 orders, paying annually, on Shopify Payments with Canadian-issued cards. [Shopify’s Grow plan is $99 CAD a month](https://www.shopify.com/ca/pricing). Processing is $50,000 at 2.6% plus 625 times 30 cents, which is $1,487.50. A working app stack of reviews, email, loyalty, upsell and a page builder is US$83.99 at published prices.

The platform fee is 6% of what you pay Shopify. The processing is 94%. Any comparison that ranks platforms by plan price is ranking them on the small number.

What a $50,000 a month store pays Shopify

Platform

6%

Processing

94%

Grow plan at the annual rate, $99 CAD. Processing at 2.6% plus 30 cents on 625 orders, $1,487.50 CAD. The app stack sits outside this bar because it is billed in US dollars and we did not convert it.

94%

Share of a $50,000 a month Shopify bill that is card processing rather than the plan fee, at published Canadian rates

[Shopify’s published Canadian card rates](https://www.shopify.com/ca/pricing) fall as the plan rises, which is what actually drives the upgrade decision.

Shopify Payments, Canada, published online card rates

Basic, $49 monthly or $37 annual 2.8% + 30¢

Grow, $132 monthly or $99 annual 2.6% + 30¢

Advanced, $517 monthly or $389 annual 2.4% + 30¢

Plus, from $3,400 monthly 2.15% + 30¢

American Express and international, Basic 3.5% + 30¢

In person, card, Basic 2.6% + 0¢

In person, Interac, any plan 0% + 15¢

Set the two rates equal and you get the crossover. Basic against Grow breaks even at about $31,000 a month in card volume. Grow against Advanced at about $145,000. Advanced against Plus at about $1.2 million a month, which is worth sitting with: on card rate alone, Plus does not pay for itself until a store is doing over a million a month. Brands buy Plus for checkout control, business-to-business features, staff seats and application limits. Nobody should buy it for the card rate.

The Interac line is genuinely Canadian and has no equivalent on Shopify’s American page. It is a flat 15 cents with no percentage, against 2.6% for an in-person card on Basic, so for any in-person sale above about six dollars it is the cheapest acceptance in the table.

## Two published prices that are not real

**BigCommerce’s entry plan.** [The advertised price is US$29 a month billed annually](https://www.bigcommerce.com/pricing/), capped at “Up to $30K TTM GMV”. Two definitions in BigCommerce’s own words make that unreachable. Gross merchandise value is “gross order value minus 10%”, and the cap is measured on a trailing twelve-month basis. A store doing $10,000 a month has $9,000 of monthly gross merchandise value, so $108,000 over twelve months, which is already past the $100,000 cap on the tier above. BigCommerce’s stated rule is that you are “automatically upgraded to the next plan”, which puts that store on Scale at US$299 a month, roughly ten times the advertised entry price.

There is a second problem for Canadians. [BigCommerce’s own pricing page](https://www.bigcommerce.com/pricing/) says the 2.89% plus 29 cent rate requires “that you must be a United States-based business”. A Canadian merchant prices a third-party gateway separately, and BigCommerce charges its own fee on top for providers outside its embedded list.

**Squarespace’s cheapest commerce plan.** [Basic carries a 2% fee on store sales](https://www.squarespace.com/pricing). At $10,000 a month that is $200, against a plan gap of eleven dollars to the tier above. The crossover is CA$550 a month in store sales, so essentially any real store should skip it.

Two more absences worth stating. [Adobe Commerce publishes no list price](https://business.adobe.com/products/commerce/pricing), no tiers and no transaction fee anywhere. [Salesforce Commerce Cloud publishes](https://www.salesforce.com/commerce/pricing/) “Contact for pricing” on every commerce edition, and its currency selector does not offer Canadian dollars. The widely repeated claim that Salesforce charges 1% to 3% of gross merchandise value is not published on that page. If you see a dollar figure for either in a comparison article, it is somebody’s leaked quote.

## What it does to your books

This is the section that separates people who have run a store from people who have read about one. The central fact is that a Shopify payout is never your revenue, and the gap is not small.

A sale is an accrual event, dated when the order is placed. A payout is a cash event, grouped by when the payment was captured, in Coordinated Universal Time. In Canada, [Shopify’s documentation puts the minimum settlement at three days](https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/payments/shopify-payments/supported-countries/canada/payouts), adds that “banks require 24-72 hours to process and deposit the funds”, and that payments captured Friday, Saturday and Sunday are “consolidated and sent as a single payout”. Before a single deduction, the two never line up by period.

Then come the deductions. A payout is net of fees, refunds, chargebacks and their dispute fees, adjustments, reserves and holds. Two of those have teeth. The original card fee is not returned when you refund an order, so a refunded sale costs you the processing twice over. And in Canada, a refund the payout cannot cover is debited from your bank account outside the payout schedule and retried after three business days, which is a cash event with no matching sale at all.

Why the bank line never matches the sales report

Canadian minimum settlement 3 business days

Bank processing on top 24 to 72 hours

Weekend captures grouped into one payout

Original card fee on a refund not returned

Shopify chargeback fee $15

Currency conversion, Canada 2%

Gift card sold cash, no revenue

Gift card redeemed revenue, no cash

The practical consequence is a rule for choosing a connector. Some post every order into your ledger. Some post a daily summary. Only some reconcile the payout to the bank line, which is the one thing that makes the books close. [Intuit’s own instructions for the official QuickBooks connector](https://quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support/en-ca/help-article/manage-integrations/connect-shopify-quickbooks-online/L1Xv7ZCFB_CA_en_CA) are explicit about it, routing sales through an undeposited-funds account and then matching the deposit in the bank feed, with a warning not to add the deposit manually. Xero’s official app and the settlement-level third-party connectors work the same way. If a connector cannot show you the payout as a single reconciled line, expect your accountant to charge you for the difference.

One more currency detail that trips up Canadian stores. Shopify’s marketing page says currency conversion is 1.5% per transaction. [The help centre’s regional table](https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/international/pricing/fees) gives 1.5% for the United States and 2% for all other Shopify Payments regions, and Canada is not named separately. For a Canadian store selling in American dollars, the number to budget is 2%.

## Sales tax is where American advice goes wrong

Shopify calculates Canadian sales tax. It states, [in its own Canadian documentation](https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/taxes/canada), that it “doesn’t remit or file your taxes for you”, and [its automated filing product is available only for stores in the United States](https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/taxes/shopify-tax/automated-filing/considerations). Every platform here is the same in substance: a calculator, not a filer. WooCommerce says it “does not file returns, remit tax, or determine where your business has a tax obligation”. Treat all of them as arithmetic and nothing else.

Four things about Canadian tax that a store’s platform will not decide for you.

**The small supplier threshold is $30,000**, and the rule catches people out because you must charge tax on the very supply that takes you over it, then register within 29 days. It is not a next-year problem.

**Place of supply follows the parcel.** [The Canada Revenue Agency’s rule](https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/gst-hst-businesses/charge-collect-place-supply) is that where you mail goods or send them by courier, the place of supply is the province the goods are sent to. So a Calgary store charges the destination province’s rate, not Alberta’s, and [Nova Scotia has been 14% since April 2025](https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/gst-hst-businesses/charge-collect-which-rate).

**Four provinces run their own tax with their own registration rules.** This is the part American guides skip entirely, and the thresholds do not match each other.

Provincial sales tax registration for an out-of-province seller

[British Columbia, provincial sales tax](https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/taxes/tim/pst/parts/pt-8) $10,000 threshold

[Saskatchewan, provincial sales tax](https://sets.saskatchewan.ca/rptp/portal/footer/taxinformation/provincial-sales-tax) no threshold at all

[Manitoba, retail sales tax](https://www.gov.mb.ca/finance/taxation/pubs/bulletins/004.pdf) no dollar test out of province

[Quebec, specified system](https://www.revenuquebec.ca/en/businesses/consumption-taxes/gsthst-and-qst/special-cases-gsthst-and-qst/suppliers-outside-quebec/qst-registration-for-suppliers-outside-quebec/registration-under-the-specified-system-suppliers-outside-quebec-who-are-registered-under-the-general-gsthst-system/) $30,000 threshold

Saskatchewan is the one that surprises people: an out-of-province seller shipping into the province has no minimum to hide behind. Manitoba’s $30,000 exception applies to businesses located in Manitoba, not to you shipping in. And because Quebec’s general system test excludes goods shipped in by mail or courier, a typical direct-to-consumer store lands in the specified system.

**Your records have to live in Canada.** [The Canada Revenue Agency requires books to be kept for six years and in Canada](https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/keeping-records/where-keep-your-records-long-request-permission-destroy-them-early), and states that records kept outside Canada and accessed electronically from Canada are not considered to be records kept in Canada. Worth a conversation with your accountant about where your store’s data actually sits.

We are marketers, not accountants. Every rule in this section is the regulator’s or the vendor’s, linked so you can read it, and none of it is advice about your situation.

## How each platform feeds Meta

Most direct-to-consumer brands live on Meta advertising, so the question that decides a platform is not whether it has a Facebook integration. Every one does. The question is what that integration can actually send.

Meta’s Conversions API sends events from your server rather than the browser, which is what survives ad blockers and browser restrictions. [Meta documents the customer-information parameters](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/marketing-api/conversions-api/parameters/customer-information-parameters) that improve matching, and [the deduplication mechanism](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/marketing-api/conversions-api/deduplicate-pixel-and-server-events/) that stops a browser event and a server event counting twice, using a shared event identifier and name within a 48-hour window.

Here is the sentence that settles most of this category, from [Meta’s own comparison of setup options](https://www.facebook.com/business/help/433493041367251): the events and parameters shared through the one-click integration are the same ones the browser pixel already sends. Event selection and parameter selection are listed as configurable only for a direct integration. So a platform’s one-click Conversions API cannot send anything the pixel did not already see. It hardens what you have against blocking. It does not extend it.

What each platform documents about server-side Meta events

Shopify, Enhanced or Maximum sharing purchase event, server side

WooCommerce built in, with deduplication

Wix paid plan, verified domain

Squarespace browser pixel only

Squarespace pixel limit one pixel identifier

One-click integrations, any platform only what the pixel sees

Squarespace is the sharp one. [Its documentation covers a browser pixel and nothing else](https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/115015760107-Using-Meta-Pixel-with-Squarespace), it allows a single pixel identifier, and it does not appear on Meta’s own partner list. For a brand whose acquisition runs on Meta, that is a structural ceiling rather than a setting.

[Shopify’s own wording is worth reading closely too](https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/promoting-marketing/analyze-marketing/meta-data-sharing). Its enhanced and maximum data sharing levels use the Conversions API, and the sentence describing what it does says it “sends the purchase event” from server to server. One event, documented. Whether you need more than that depends on whether you are optimising to purchases or to something earlier in the funnel.

Two caveats Shopify publishes that matter for measurement. Purchase events are not created for test orders, and for a subscription product only the first order creates a purchase event. If you sell subscriptions, your Meta numbers and your revenue will diverge by design.

## The Shopify checkout deadline nobody budgets for

If you are on Shopify and anyone has ever added tracking to your checkout, there is a dated migration in your future, and [the dates are published](https://shopify.dev/changelog/online-store-script-tags-deprecation).

Shopify’s checkout script sunset, as published

Announced February 13, 2023

Scripts in checkout stop working August 13, 2024

Thank you and order status pages August 28, 2025

Script tags, non-Plus stores August 26, 2026

Script creation starts erroring October 1, 2026

Storefront injection stops March 1, 2027

The replacement is [checkout extensibility and the web pixels interface](https://shopify.dev/docs/api/web-pixels-api), which run third-party code in a sandbox rather than letting it touch the page. That is better for shoppers and for security, and it does mean any custom tracking, upsell or trust badge somebody bolted into your checkout years ago has a deadline. The last of those dates is inside the next eighteen months.

## What is actually measurable

One honest note before anyone picks a platform on the strength of its reporting. The number your ad platform reports is not the number your business earned, and the research on this is unambiguous.

[Gordon, Moakler and Zettelmeyer ran 663 experiments on Facebook](https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.07055), with thousands of user-level features available to them, and concluded that they were unable to reliably estimate an advertising campaign’s causal effect from observational data. That is the platform’s own data, at a scale no merchant will ever have, and it still could not recover the answer that a randomised test gives.

What follows for a store is modest and useful. Use platform reporting to steer creative and budget within a channel, because it is good at relative comparisons. Use a holdout or a geographic test when you want to know whether the channel is worth running at all. And treat every vendor conversion claim, including the ones Shopify publishes about its own accelerated checkout, as a vendor measuring its own product. We could not find a single conversion-rate-by-platform dataset from anyone who does not sell one of the platforms.

## Getting out again

Lock-in is rarely about the data export and almost always about the checkout. Still, one published limit deserves naming. [Squarespace’s own export documentation](https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/206566687-Exporting-your-site) says the site export is a WordPress file that does not include store pages or product blocks. For a store, that is not an export in any meaningful sense.

[Shopify exports products, customers and orders as comma-separated files](https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/products/import-export/export-products). WooCommerce, being software you host, gives you the database. Adobe Commerce and Salesforce publish nothing we could verify about export terms, which is its own signal.

## What we would actually do

**For most Canadian direct-to-consumer brands, Shopify, and not for the reason people give.** It is not cheaper. At $10,000 a month the totals across Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix and Squarespace Core sit within a few dollars of each other, because processing dominates and everyone’s processing is about the same. It wins on the Interac rate for anyone selling in person, on a documented server-side purchase event, and on not being the platform with a 2% store fee or an unreachable entry tier.

**WooCommerce if you have a developer, and price the whole stack.** The software is free and [the hosting, extensions and developer time are not](https://woocommerce.com/pricing/). One structural advantage is real: subscription billing. A percentage-based subscription app on Shopify at a quarter of orders on subscription costs roughly a thousand dollars a month more than [WooCommerce’s flat annual licence](https://woocommerce.com/products/woocommerce-subscriptions/) on a store doing $250,000 a month. If subscriptions are your model, that difference compounds.

**Not Squarespace for a serious store.** A browser-only Meta integration, a single pixel identifier, a 2% fee on the entry plan and an export that omits the store. It is a good website builder. That is a different job.

**Price your own store rather than trusting anyone’s table.** Take your revenue, your order count, your card mix and the app stack you would actually install, and run the four lines. The answer changes with average order value and with how much of your volume is American Express or international, and no published comparison knows those.

**Then spend the argument somewhere it matters.** The gap between the best and worst platform choice here is a few hundred dollars a month. The gap between a store that reconciles its books and one that does not, or between advertising you have tested and advertising you have only reported on, is much larger.

## Methodology and limitations

Every price was read from the vendor’s own pricing or documentation page in September 2026, with the currency taken from the page. Shopify, Squarespace and WooCommerce’s extension store render Canadian dollars natively. BigCommerce states its prices are in United States dollars, and Wix’s are read as United States dollars. We did not convert anything, because we did not verify an exchange rate, so United States figures stay in United States dollars on their own line. Prices in this category change without notice; check the vendor before relying on a figure here.

The worked totals rest on stated assumptions, and the assumptions do real work. An average order of $80 chosen to make the order counts whole. All Canadian-issued Visa and Mastercard, no American Express, no international cards and no currency conversion, each of which would raise the processing line. Shopify Payments rather than a third-party gateway, which is the cheap case and avoids the 2%, 1%, 0.6% and 0.2% third-party fee by plan. Annual billing wherever a vendor publishes an annual price. An app stack priced on Shopify only, and assumed at zero on Squarespace, Wix and BigCommerce, which understates those. The crossover points are our arithmetic on published rates, not published figures.

Tax and bookkeeping rules are quoted from the Canada Revenue Agency, each province’s own materials and the vendors’ documentation. Meta’s behaviour is quoted from Meta’s developer and business documentation and each platform’s own help centre. One conflict we could not resolve on primary sources: Meta still lists BigCommerce as a one-click Conversions API partner while BigCommerce’s own article says its legacy Meta app is gone, so we make no claim about BigCommerce’s current server-side support. We deliberately do not print Meta’s published figure for the lift from running the Conversions API alongside the pixel, because it is Meta measuring its own product and we could not verify it on a Meta page.

## Related reading

- [Wix vs Shopify vs WordPress vs Webflow](https://fifteenthmeridian.com/blog/platform-tax-calgary-2026): what each builder costs a Calgary business in speed, schema and contact access, measured across 350 sites.
- [Direct-to-consumer alcohol in Canada](https://fifteenthmeridian.com/blog/direct-to-consumer-alcohol-canada-2026): the interprovincial shipping rules, if your product is regulated.
- [Your ad reporting is taking credit for sales you already had](https://fifteenthmeridian.com/blog/ad-attribution-incrementality-2026): the measurement problem, in more depth.
- [Ecommerce work in Calgary](https://fifteenthmeridian.com/calgary-ecommerce): what we build and run for direct-to-consumer brands.

## Questions, answered.

**How much does Shopify cost in Canada?**

Shopify's Canadian plans are $49 a month for Basic, $132 for Grow and $517 for Advanced, or $37, $99 and $389 when billed annually, with Plus starting at $3,400 a month on a three-year term. Those figures are the smaller half of the bill. Card processing on Shopify Payments runs 2.8%, 2.6%, 2.4% and 2.15% plus 30 cents by plan, so a store doing $50,000 a month on Grow pays $99 in platform fees and about $1,488 in processing.

**Is Shopify cheaper than WooCommerce?**

Not meaningfully, once the whole stack is priced. At $10,000 a month the totals for Shopify Basic, WooCommerce on managed hosting, Wix Business and Squarespace Core land within a few dollars of each other, because card processing dominates and every platform's processing rate is similar. WooCommerce's software is free, but hosting, paid extensions and developer time are not, and WooCommerce's own page puts hosting at $25 to $350 a month. The real structural difference is subscription billing, where WooCommerce's flat annual licence beats a percentage-based Shopify app by roughly a thousand dollars a month on a large subscription store.

**Why is BigCommerce's $29 plan more expensive than it looks?**

Because of how BigCommerce defines the cap. Its plan limits are measured on trailing twelve-month gross merchandise value, which it defines as gross order value minus 10%, and it automatically upgrades accounts that exceed a tier. A store doing $10,000 a month generates about $108,000 of trailing gross merchandise value, past the $100,000 cap on the middle tier, which lands it on the Scale plan at US$299 a month. Separately, BigCommerce's published card rate requires a United States-based business, so Canadian merchants price a third-party gateway on top.

**Does Shopify file my GST or HST?**

No. Shopify calculates Canadian sales tax but states in its own documentation that it does not remit or file your taxes for you, and its automated filing product is available only for stores in the United States. The same is true of the other platforms: WooCommerce's documentation says it does not file returns, remit tax, or determine where your business has a tax obligation. Registration, collection and filing remain yours.

**Which province's sales tax do I charge on an online order?**

The destination province's. The Canada Revenue Agency's place-of-supply rule for goods mailed or sent by courier is that the place of supply is the province the goods are sent to, so a Calgary store charges the rate of wherever the parcel lands. Separately, four provinces run their own sales tax with their own registration rules for out-of-province sellers: British Columbia has a $10,000 threshold, Quebec's specified system has $30,000, and Saskatchewan has no threshold at all.

**Which ecommerce platform is best for Meta ads?**

The question to ask is what the integration can send, not whether one exists. Meta's own documentation says a one-click Conversions API integration sends only the events and parameters the browser pixel already sends, so it hardens your tracking against blocking rather than extending it; only a direct integration allows event and parameter selection. Squarespace documents a browser pixel only and allows a single pixel identifier. Shopify's enhanced and maximum sharing levels use the Conversions API and its documentation describes sending the purchase event server to server. WooCommerce ships the Conversions API with deduplication.

**Why does my Shopify payout never match my sales?**

Because a payout is a cash event and a sale is not. Canadian settlement takes a minimum of three business days plus 24 to 72 hours of bank processing, and Friday, Saturday and Sunday captures are grouped into one payout, so the periods never align. The payout is then net of fees, refunds, chargebacks and dispute fees, adjustments and reserves. Two items catch people out: the original card fee is not returned when you refund an order, and a refund your payout cannot cover is debited from your bank account outside the payout schedule.

**When do Shopify checkout scripts stop working?**

In stages that are already published. Scripts stopped running inside checkout on August 13, 2024, and on the thank you and order status pages on August 28, 2025. For non-Plus stores, script tags on those pages stopped on August 26, 2026, creating new script tags has returned an error since October 1, 2026, and storefront script injection stops on March 1, 2027. The replacement is checkout extensibility and the web pixels interface, which run third-party code in a sandbox.

## Price the whole bill, not the plan.

We build and run online stores for Canadian brands, including the tracking behind the ads and the reconciliation behind the books. If you want your own store priced and taken apart, talk to us.

[Talk to us](https://fifteenthmeridian.com/contact)

[Which website builder do most Calgary businesses use?](https://fifteenthmeridian.com/blog/platform-tax-calgary-2026)

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