Start a Shopify Store in Germany: Costs, Setup and Launch

You want to start a Shopify store and don’t know where to begin? This overview puts all steps from the first idea to launch in a sensible order, shows the realistic costs and points you to the detailed guide for each step. If you’re looking for the big picture including design, marketing and dropshipping, start with the complete guide to creating a Shopify store in Germany.

What first? How to start a Shopify store in 7 steps

Most tutorials start with the theme. For a store in Germany, that’s the wrong order. First come the decisions and the things with waiting times, then the design.

1. Decide on model and platform: What are you selling (your own goods, dropshipping, print on demand, digital products), and is Shopify even the right platform for it? If you’re under 18, clarify the legal situation first.
2. Plan your budget: fixed costs, a test budget for advertising, pre-financing of goods and a buffer. If you only budget for the Shopify subscription, you’ll be left without an ad budget after a few weeks.
3. Register a trade and choose your tax status: at the latest by launch. In the tax office questionnaire (Fragebogen zur steuerlichen Erfassung), you decide for or against the small business rule (Kleinunternehmerregelung). The steps are in Registering a trade for your online store: obligation, costs & process.
4. Create and design the store: Create your account once, choose a free theme, add products. Whether a premium theme is necessary is covered in Choosing a Shopify theme: free, Horizon or premium.
5. Connect your own domain: approx. 10 minutes of work, but up to 48 hours of waiting.
6. Set up payments, shipping, taxes and legal texts: This is the part US videos skip. How to combine Shopify Payments, PayPal and Klarna is shown in Setting up Shopify payment methods; the mandatory texts and the new 2026 obligations are explained in Legally compliant Shopify in 2026: legal texts, withdrawal button & obligations.
7. Test order, launch, first visitors: Test first, then publish, then actively bring in visitors.

What starting costs: all items at a glance

The table summarizes the figures from our detailed articles. Shopify’s euro prices come from German comparison sites, because Shopify displays prices based on location. Check the current status on the official Shopify pricing page before signing up.

Without advertising and goods, a small store comes to approx. €50 to €90 per month (subscription, legal texts, domain and payment fees, without paid apps). The biggest difference isn’t the plan but whether you win visitors with money or with time.

Before you start: platform and age

Is Shopify the right platform?

Not for everyone. Etsy brings buyers and is suitable for testing handmade goods, print on demand and digital products, but it takes a cut of every sale. In the example with €500 monthly sales, you pay approx. €62 in fees on Etsy and approx. €53 on Shopify Basic, though without the costs of bringing visitors to the store yourself. WooCommerce only looks free; Wix fits if the website is the focus. The decision guide with a worked example is in Shopify alternatives: Etsy, WooCommerce or Wix – which fits you?

You’re not 18 yet?

Under German law, running your own trade under 18 is only possible with your parents’ authorization and approval from the family court (§ 112 BGB). According to Shopify’s terms of service, you still only get your own Shopify account at 18; the approval doesn’t change that. Legal options are a family business with a parent as the real owner, an Etsy shop under parental supervision, or thorough preparation until your 18th birthday. Everything about it is in Online store under 18: trade, parents, Shopify – how to do it legally.

Planning costs and starting capital

What Shopify really costs per month

The plan price is only part of it. Payment fees, legal texts, domain and apps come on top. In the worked example with 30 orders at €40, the infrastructure costs add up to approx. €86 per month, just over 7% of revenue. At €300 in revenue it would be almost 20%, because the fixed costs stay the same. All items and the calculation of when a bigger plan pays off are in Shopify costs 2026: what a store really costs (with worked example).

How much starting capital you need

Split your money into four pots: fixed costs, test budget, working capital and buffer. For a store without its own warehouse, plan for six months with approx. €500 (organic) to approx. €2,000 (with paid advertising), of which only around €200 to €300 is for the store, domain, legal texts and trade registration. Often forgotten: you pay suppliers immediately, while Shopify Payments pays out in Germany after 3 business days at the earliest. Three scenarios with concrete figures are in Starting capital for your online store: how much money do you really need?

Building the store: computer, phone, AI and domain

Can you do it with just a phone?

Yes, the Shopify app covers products, orders, shipping and even the theme editor. It gets tedious with legal texts, tax and shipping settings, and with dropshipping tools whose product import runs via browser extensions that don’t exist on phones. The practical split is: build on the computer, run it on the phone. What exactly works is shown in The Shopify app on your phone: what works – and what you need a laptop for.

Can AI build the store for you?

Partly. Shopify’s Sidekick, the theme generator and AI blocks deliver a decent draft in minutes, and ChatGPT or Claude can officially be connected to Shopify. But legal texts, taxes, suppliers, prices and the question of where your buyers come from remain your job. Never have AI write your legal texts. The assessment of all tools is in Creating a Shopify store with AI: what AI builders are really worth.

Connecting your own domain

According to the Shopify Help Center, you can’t buy a .de domain through Shopify. You get it from a provider like INWX, IONOS or Strato and set two records there: the A record to 23.227.38.65 and a CNAME for “www” to shops.myshopify.com. Then you make it the primary domain in Shopify. You don’t need a hosting package for this. The guide with the specifics of the German providers is in Connecting a domain to Shopify: guide for IONOS, Strato & co.

Checking and going live

The pre-launch checklist

Technically, going live is one click: choose a paid plan and switch the online store from “Private” to “Public”. Before that, check your legal texts, the withdrawal button (mandatory since June 19, 2026), the legal guarantee label (mandatory since September 27, 2026), the manufacturer information under the GPSR, payments without test mode, shipping and taxes. Finally, place a test order and look closely at the order confirmation too. The complete list is in Launching your Shopify store: the pre-launch checklist 2026.

Account, subscription and professional help

Switching plans, pausing, canceling

Your Shopify subscription isn’t set in stone: you can switch plans, pause or cancel the store, and every additional store needs its own subscription. It’s important to think about paid apps, a domain bought through Shopify and your data beforehand. How that works in detail is in Shopify account & subscription: switch plans, pause, cancel, multiple stores.

Build it yourself or hire experts?

You can set up a simple store yourself following this order. For migrations from another store platform, custom design or little time, a professional can be worth it. What that costs, how to recognize good providers and how a project runs is shown in Hiring a Shopify expert: costs, selection & process (or build it yourself?).

The most common mistakes at the start

These mistakes come up again and again in the comments under Shopify videos. Almost all can be avoided with the order above:

• Two Shopify accounts: If you sign up on the side via a dropshipping app or an AI builder, you suddenly have two stores and double costs. Create the account once directly with Shopify and connect apps to that store.
• Annual plan before testing: Annual billing saves around a quarter but is due in advance. Test monthly first, then switch.
• Copied or AI-generated legal texts: one of the most common sources of cease-and-desist letters (Abmahnungen). A subscription with an update service costs less than a single cease-and-desist letter.
• Launch without a test order: As long as a payment provider is in test mode, real customers can’t order.
• Whole budget in the first ad test: Set a stop limit per product beforehand and keep money for a second round.

FAQ

How long does it take to start a Shopify store?

With preparation, you can set up the store technically in a few days. The waiting times are elsewhere: the ELSTER registration can take up to two weeks, the tax number then often only arrives by post after a few weeks, and a domain needs up to 48 hours. Also plan time for samples and a test order. If you trigger the steps with the authorities first, you won’t lose any time.

What is the biggest cost factor at the start?

Almost never Shopify itself. Subscription, legal texts, domain and fees come to approx. €50 to €90 per month for a small store. Visitors are more expensive: if you start with advertising, you should budget several hundred euros for product tests. If you start organically via social media, you pay with time instead of money. With your own goods, there’s also purchasing inventory, which quickly becomes the largest single item.

Do I need a laptop and a tax advisor to get started?

Neither is strictly necessary. You can create and run a store on your phone, but for legal texts, taxes, shipping and dropshipping tools, a computer is much faster and less error-prone. A tax advisor isn’t mandatory. But a one-time start-up consultation is almost always worth it, at the latest with standard VAT taxation, sales to other EU countries or goods from non-EU countries.

What happens if my store doesn’t work out and I want to stop?

You can pause or deactivate the store, with monthly billing without a long commitment. An annual plan, on the other hand, is paid in advance. Check the term for legal texts: some providers can be canceled monthly, others have a 12-month minimum term. You deregister the trade at the trade office (Gewerbeamt) and file your tax returns for the active years. Uninstall paid apps beforehand.

Where do my customers shop, on the Shopify website?

No. Shopify is the software behind your store, not a marketplace like Amazon or Etsy. Your customers shop at your own store address, i.e. under your domain or initially under your-store.myshopify.com. There they see your products; Shopify stays in the background. But that also means: nobody finds your store by chance via Shopify. You have to bring in the visitors yourself.

Should I have the product first or the store first?

The product first. A store is built quickly, but even the most beautiful theme won’t save a product without demand. Check demand, competition and margin before you start the paid plan, and order a sample. Then you use the cheap first months for setup and first sales instead of for product research. How that works is in the overview on products and product range.

More topics

This overview is one of seven topic areas. Depending on where you are right now, continue here:

• Law & taxes for Shopify stores in Germany: the overview: trade registration, small business rule, legal texts, image rights.
• Payments, payouts & calculation in Shopify: the overview: payment methods, payouts, prices.
• Products & product range in Shopify: find, create, sell: from winning product to product page.
• Shopify dropshipping in Germany: the honest overview 2026: suppliers, apps, process, returns.
• Shopify design & technology: theme, apps & tracking at a glance: theme, brand presence, languages, tracking.
• Shopify marketing: how to get your first sales: ads, SEO, email, trust.

As of: October 2026. Shopify prices in euros and Payments fees partly come from secondary sources and may differ. The official Shopify pricing page is authoritative. This article is not legal or tax advice.