Shopify markets on legacy plan and the new shopify subscriptions.

Shopify Discussion

Topic summary

Early adopters of Shopify Markets on legacy Basic plans ($39/month) face a significant pricing dilemma when attempting to upgrade. Under legacy plans, unlimited markets were included at no extra cost, allowing merchants to expand internationally across multiple countries.

The Problem:

  • New Shopify plans limit markets to 3 on standard tiers
  • Additional markets cost $59 each on the Advanced plan ($399/month)
  • One merchant with 21 markets would face costs jumping from $39 to $1,461/month upon upgrading
  • Merchants invested heavily in translations, domains, and infrastructure based on original unlimited market access

Current Situation:

  • Multiple merchants report being “stuck” on Basic plans, unable to access features like live shipping rates
  • Shopify support initially offered no special upgrade path for legacy users
  • Merchants feel penalized for early adoption and existing investments

Potential Resolution:

  • One user received confirmation from Shopify support that upgrading to the Grow plan would preserve all existing markets (up to 50) at the standard plan price without additional per-market fees
  • This contradicts widely available information, leaving merchants uncertain and hesitant to proceed

The discussion remains unresolved as merchants seek clarity on whether legacy market access truly transfers to new plans.

Summarized with AI on October 29. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Hello,

This info I find when I go to Shopify settings - Plan

You’re on a legacy Basic plan
There have been changes to what’s included on the different plans, but you still have access to the original features included when you first subscribed.

I was one of the very early adopters of using Shopify markets.
It was all included in the basic plan no matter how many markets you started to use.

We basically want to target all countries in the EU, we have therefore translated our site into 20 different languages, use country specific domains, name it, we did it.

So we heavily invested setting this up time wise and money wise. We need to pay the translation app for 20 languages and use the professional drivers from google cloud and deepl for which we need to pay as well.

At some point I started to get interest in upgrading my plan, because with our present plan we can not get live shipping charges / fees from various couriers in our checkout. (as an example)
At this stage I was taken by surprise: Shopify subscription plans changed drastically: With the present Shopify plans you get only 3 markets and if you want more than you need to upgrade to the advance plan for USD 399 (we now pay USD 39 for the basic plan) and pay USD 59 for each additional market

That means: we have in total 21 markets (our Swedish native market included)
so if we would like to change plan the present cost would be:

USD 399 (3 markets included)
USD 59 x 18 (for the other 18 markets) = USD 1062
The total cost would be: USD 1461

So in case we would like to upgrade our plan we would go from USD 39 to USD 1461 per month.

It would be reasonable that Shopify would have an upgrade path for the early adopters of Shopify markets, but the answer from shopify support was no.

After all this investment, we are now stuck in the basic plan.

Shopify can iof course decide whatever they would like to charge to new customers, because those have a free choice choosing Shopify or not.

But we, do we want to give up on our investment?
Definitely not, but we do not have to capital to move to a different plan.

Pretty bad how Shopify is treating their existing customers.

2 Likes
2

I have the exact same problem, I have 10 markets, need to upgrade my plan and now I can’t because the extra cost is absurd!

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3

Too bad I would say!

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4

Hi there,

I’m posting here because I’m facing the exact same issue. However, today I contacted Shopify support and here is what they told me after double checking with tech and billing teams :

05:45 François M: So you can confirm 100% that if I follow your recommendation, I can upgrade to the Grow plan, keep using 50 markets including the 30 already set up, and keep their existing subdomains working? And this won’t cost me more than the actual new Grow plan price? Again, I’m sorry to insist, be we really need to be 100% sure, this is absolutely critical for us.

05:47 Arnie A (Support Advisor): In behalf of our Team and me, YES! a merchant upgrading to the Grow plan can continue to use up to 50 markets, including the 30 already set up, and maintain their existing subdomains working as before. The Grow plan supports unlimited markets (up to 50 is standard for legacy plans), and international domains/subdomains/subfolders are fully supported features. This upgrade will cost the merchant the standard Grow plan price without additional hidden fees beyond that plan’s cost.

So even though it goes against everything I’ve read on the internet, they confirmed that I could upgrade from Basic (legacy plan) to Grow without losing any of our markets or paying additional fees for extra markets.

Have you done the upgrade yet, and how did it go for you? I’m still scared.

5

This is an interesting answer from Shopify support, but if you ask Shopify AI assistant then the naswer is no and you have to de-activate all markets unless you are willing to pay the additional charges for additional markets

6

If it is true then it means they changed strategy, because i keep on watching what shopify is doing, asked a while ago the shopify bot and got opposite answers and one was indeed still being restricted regarding the use of markets

7

But 1 thing is sure: once you upgrade there is no way to go back and if the upgrade does not include all 50 markets, you’’re fucked, so therefore we have not upgraded so far, maybe wait till someone did it and reports he did not loose all his markets. We invested in having 20 country specific domains each linked to its own language and to get this working properly with all the apps we are using was a very big investment time and money wise, so no way we are going to give this up

8

I asked the shopify bot: The shopify basic and growth plan: are there any restrictions on how many markets you can use?

9

answer: Good news! Both the Basic and Growth (Grow) plans let you create Region markets without any restrictions on the number of markets you can use. Creating Region markets to help you sell internationally is free for all Shopify plans.

However, there are some differences in what you can customize within those markets. On Basic and Growth plans, you can customize product catalogs, currencies, domains and languages, and manage duties and taxes. The main limitation is that you won’t be able to customize themes for each market (that requires Advanced or Plus plans), and you can’t create B2B markets (which is a Plus-only feature).

10

I askd again: This was different only a short while ago where only 3 markets were included in the basic and growth plan and only the advanced and Plus plan would allow you to use more then 3 markets against extra payment

11

answer: You’re absolutely right! Shopify recently changed their Markets policy. Previously, Basic and Growth plans were limited to just 3 markets, and you needed Advanced or Plus plans to create more markets (with additional fees). This was a significant restriction for merchants wanting to expand internationally on lower-tier plans.

The current documentation shows that creating Region markets is now free and available on all Shopify plans without those numerical limits, which is a much more merchant-friendly approach. This change makes international expansion more accessible for businesses at every stage, not just those on higher-tier plans.

It’s great that you’re staying on top of these changes - Shopify does update their features and plan structures periodically, and this particular change definitely opens up more opportunities for international growth on the Basic and Growth plans.

12

so indeed it looks like that the restrictions on markets has been taken away by Shopify

13

I think I will test this on our development store