as a Canadian company, why are small Canadian businesses being asked to upgrade to a much more expensive plan just to recover newly imposed tariff costs?
Small businesses are already dealing with declining sales, uncertainty, and rising expenses. I simply cannot afford hundreds of dollars more each month for a feature that has become necessary because of the current trade situation—not because my business suddenly needs a larger Shopify plan.
This feels like exactly the moment Shopify should be supporting Canadian entrepreneurs, not putting an essential tool behind a costly upgrade. Please offer small businesses an affordable way to clearly and accurately collect these charges.
That duty collection at checkout is gated to Advanced, and posting here won’t change that since this board is merchants and partners, so put that request on community.shopify.dev where Shopify’s team actually reads.
In the meantime there are two workarounds on your current plan that get you most of the way. In Settings, Markets you can set a price adjustment for the affected market, so a percentage uplift covers the tariff automatically without touching individual product prices. Or add a flat rate to your shipping for that market and label it clearly as duties and handling, which is transparent to the customer and takes two minutes. Neither calculates exact per item duty like the Advanced feature does, so you’d be using an average rather than precise numbers, but for a small catalog that’s usually close enough and it stops you eating the cost.
Hope that helps! If it did, a Like and Marking it as Solution goes a long way and helps others find the fix faster too.
I think Shopify deals with their plan pricing appropriately. You want more features, you need to pay more money. It’s not about being small are large operation. It’s about feature gating. This is generally the best way for plan pricing.
That said, your business costs can be included in the product pricing itself. You don’t go to Walmart and see tariff fees on the receipt. The costs are baked into the product price. You could potentially change the shipping cost to accommodate. There are also apps for fees and such. There’s a lot you can and probably should be looking into rather than asking Shopify for yet another feature the majority don’t need.
The majority may not need it yet, but a lot of small Canadian businesses do.
I agree that Shopify’s plan pricing is mostly reasonable, but something like this could honestly make me close up shop. Simply raising all my prices doesn’t work when the tariff only applies to certain customers or destinations, and adding it to shipping isn’t always accurate or transparent.
I know I’m small beans, but small businesses make up a big part of Shopify’s customer base. If enough of us lose sales or close because we can’t afford the tools needed to deal with these tariffs, Shopify loses a big chunk of business too. I’m not asking for every premium feature for free—just an affordable way for small businesses to handle a situation we didn’t create.
With a CAD 15–750 range, I would not use one average percentage. It could overcharge unaffected orders and still under-recover the products carrying the highest duty.
Before changing prices, are these tariffs you already paid when importing inventory into Canada, or duties charged when you ship customer orders to particular countries? Also, are only certain products or countries of origin affected? The workable option depends on those two facts.
Yeah, I get the frustration here. If the tariff calculation is something you suddenly need because of the current trade situation, having to jump to a much more expensive plan just to handle it feels pretty rough.
Especially for a smaller store that might only have a portion of its orders affected. Paying hundreds more every month can eat into the margin you’re trying to protect in the first place.
I’d much rather see Shopify offer this as a reasonably priced add-on or give smaller merchants a lower-cost way to handle the charges accurately. Small stores already have enough recurring costs to keep track of without upgrading to features they may only need because of a change in the trade environment.
I’ve started being a lot more conscious of this with Shopify stores in general. There are already so many separate things to keep track of that I try to keep the stack fairly lean. Even with SEO, I prefer something like SiteGuru that gives you a prioritized list of what actually needs attention rather than adding another app for every individual issue.
The same principle would make sense here. Give smaller merchants the functionality they actually need without making them pay for an entire higher-tier plan.
These are DDP or I pay the duities in advance as required by the US Government. So I need to charge this at the point of sale. ALL my products are affected not one is not being hit
That clarification makes this much narrower: every U.S. order is DDP, so this is not a selected-product surcharge problem. It is a duty-at-checkout plus DDP reconciliation problem.
Before paying for an Advanced upgrade, check Settings > Taxes and duties > Duties and import taxes. Shopify’s current help page lists the requirements as a DDP-compatible carrier/integration, HS codes and country of origin on products, and no Shopify Fulfillment Network; it does not list Advanced as a requirement: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/international/duties-and-import-taxes/charging-duties
If Set up is available, I would test one U.S. checkout using a product with a verified HS code and origin, then compare the Duties line with the carrier’s DDP quote or first invoice. If the option is missing, ask Shopify Support to confirm the eligibility restriction for this specific store in writing before changing plans; a third-party duty calculator is the fallback Shopify documents.
Which DDP carrier do you use, and do you see that Set up option? Those two facts determine whether this is a configuration gap or a real plan/account restriction.
I use ChitChats for shipping and they are not in the list of DDP carriers. The cost difference from what I have seen in the past is not using ChitChats doubles the cost of shipment. However I will look into this. Definately a avenue to explore here. Maybe Shopify can add ChitChats for those of us who use them
That identifies the real blocker. Chit Chats can provide DDP postage, but Shopify’s current guidance warns that if duties are collected at Shopify checkout and the label is purchased externally, the customer can still be charged again. I would not turn on native duty collection until one order reconciles end to end.
The useful next step is a one-order compatibility check: use the same SKU, HS code, origin and U.S. destination, then compare the Shopify duties line, the Chit Chats duty/postage total and the final customer amount. That will show whether an app-based checkout calculation can preserve Chit Chats, or whether the shipping economics force a different route.
If you want me to run that comparison rather than just outline it, that would be a small fixed-scope paid check; I can state exactly what it covers before anything starts.
I can understand the frustration here. Having to move to a much more expensive Shopify plan simply because you need to collect an additional charge doesn’t necessarily mean your business actually needs everything included in that higher plan.
One possible workaround, depending on how your tariff is calculated, is to treat it as a clearly disclosed additional charge rather than changing the underlying product price.
For example, Easify Custom Product Options can be used to add a paid option or additional fee to a product. You can give the charge a clear label so customers understand exactly what they’re paying for, rather than simply increasing the product price without explanation.
Of course, this wouldn’t replace Shopify’s native duties/tariff functionality if the amount needs to be automatically calculated based on destination, product classification, or other customs rules. In that situation, the native Shopify functionality would still be the appropriate route.
But if you’re dealing with a known or manually determined tariff amount, an additional paid option could be worth considering as a simpler way to present and collect the charge without rebuilding your whole pricing structure.
I do agree that there should ideally be a more affordable option for smaller Canadian merchants in this situation. Being required to pay hundreds more every month for one necessary capability can be a pretty significant burden when the business doesn’t otherwise need the higher-tier plan.
Tried to set up Canada post as my shipper. Once we set that up then guess what. You need to upgrade the plan to be able to use them. So very frustrating. Thanks for the avenue to persue though.
