Key Insights in 60 Seconds
What Shopify's own pages say about the $1 offer, read against each other — skim first, then check your admin.
What You'll Learn
What's New Since Publication: Updated since publication · 1 change
- Help Center adds a 4-month free trial for stores created with AI toolsShopify's Help Center now describes a free trial, "currently 4 months," for stores created with an AI tool such as the Stripe Projects CLI or with a vibe code partner. That trial belongs to a separate setup path, so the public signup offer this page covers is unchanged: 3 days free, then $1/month for 3 months. Shopify does not date the change; the section was absent from an archived copy of that Help Center page from July 23, 2026.
The Quick Verdict
Key takeaway
Your full-price date is already in Settings → Plan. The help pages disagree on what happens then, so confirm your plan and billing cycle there first. Find your situation below; the sections after it are the sentences underneath each answer.
Your situation → check this
| Your situation | Pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Not signed up yet | Read the term shown for your email on shopify.com/free-trial | Shopify says the term is determined by when you create the account and start the trial, and might vary by store location |
| On the promo, changing nothing | Confirm plan, billing cycle and the date in Settings → Plan before it | The offers page says the price switches; the free-trial page says select a plan or the store might be frozen |
| Want a different plan, or annual billing | Plan: switch now, the date stays. Annual: only once you've decided to stay a year | A plan change is immediate and prorated at the promo price; annual billing bills the full year upfront when the promo ends |
| The store didn't take off | Decide before the date: pause or close | Pausing needs paid invoices and a new plan later; closing charges the balance, and $1 payments aren't refunded |
Is 3 Months Your Term? Why Some People See $1 for 1 Month
Key takeaway
The public offer, as Shopify's pricing page states it, is 3 days free, then $1/month for 3 months on most plans. That is the term this page is written for, and it is worth saying at once that it is not the term every visitor is shown: merchants arrive here because their own signup said one month, or because a friend's said longer.
Shopify does not explain the difference. Its free-trial page states what determines the term without describing a mechanism, and no page we read explains why one visitor is shown one month and another three; what was read, and when, is listed under What Shopify doesn't say below.
The duration of trials and any promotional pricing is determined by when you create your Shopify account and start your free trial.
The same page adds that trial length and pricing are subject to change and might vary by store location, and that the length of your free trial “can vary based on different factors,” which that sentence does not list. None of these sentences names the link you arrived through, ours included. There are two official ways to read your term.
- Before you have an account. The Help Center's instruction is to “visit https://www.shopify.com/free-trial, enter your email address, and then click Start free trial” — the page then states the trial length and any promotional offer available to you.
- Once the store exists. Open Settings → Plan. Shopify's offers page: “If a promotional offer is active, then the plan details will display the promotional rate and the date when standard pricing begins.” That date is the one every section below counts from.
$1 is the US figure, not a universal one. Shopify's UK pricing page printed £1/month for 3 months, its French page 1 €, and its Indian page ₹20/month for 3 months when we read them on September 16, 2026, and the same shopify.com/pricing address served $1 to one of our fetches and €1 to another that day. Read the amount off the page Shopify shows you, in your currency; every published figure by country is on our merchant-offers catalogue.
Two other terms exist, and neither is a version of this one. A store created with an AI tool such as the Stripe Projects CLI, or with a vibe code partner, “starts with a free trial, currently 4 months,” according to the Help Center — a separate route with its own rules, covered in our guide to the 4-month trial. Longer $1/month terms reach merchants through separate programs rather than the public signup; our tracker of longer promotional terms records whether one is live right now.
Starting It Without Losing It
Key takeaway
Starting the offer takes minutes, and the order matters more than the clicks. Create the account on the free-trial page; during the free days the store is “initially in private mode, or its checkout is inactive,” so those three days are for building, not selling. Select a plan in Settings → Plan before they lapse: the Help Center says that if you upgrade to a paid plan within the free trial period, “charges will only start after the free trial period ends.”
The walkthrough below, from a third-party channel, shows the signup screens in the order above; no claim on this page rests on it.
Where Shopify's Own Pages Differ — and What to Check in Settings → Plan
Key takeaway
Several of Shopify's help pages describe this offer, and as of September 16, 2026 they do not say the same thing about its end. Each sentence below is quoted as written; where two disagree, both are shown, because choosing one for you would be inventing a rule Shopify has not published. The fourth column is the part that matters: what you do in Settings → Plan while the pages disagree.
Five pairs, read side by side
| Question | Page A says | Page B says | What you do in Settings → Plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| What happens on the date | Offers page: “After the promotional period ends, the price changes to the standard rate for the selected plan and billing cycle.” The plan-changes page agrees: “After the promotion ends, you pay the new plan's standard rate.” | Free-trial page: “After your promotional pricing period ends, you need to select a standard-rate plan to continue using Shopify. If you don't select a plan, then your store might be frozen until you choose one.” The same page's trial-length section says you transition “to the standard plan pricing.” | Shopify's pages differ here. Before the date, confirm the plan shown is the one you want at the standard rate. If no plan is selected, the frozen-store page describes the state: no admin access, and customers can't view the store. |
| A lower plan mid-promo | Promo section of the plan-changes page: “Your new plan takes effect immediately. The promotional pricing carries over for the remainder of the original promotional period and the end date doesn't reset. You receive a prorated invoice at the time of the change at the promotional price, not the new plan's full price.” | General rule on the same page: “Your Shopify plan is pre-paid, meaning that any changes to a lower plan take effect at the end of your current billing cycle.” | A scope split, not a contradiction: the promo section opens with “plan changes work differently than during a free trial.” After the change, confirm the new plan, the promotional rate and the same end date. Plus is outside the promotion. |
| Annual billing switched on mid-promo | Promo section of the plan-changes page: “After the trial ends, the annual billing cycle starts and you're charged the full annual amount upfront.” | Terms of Service, 5.10: “Shopify does not provide refunds.” Free-trial page: charges from the promotional period “aren't refundable.” | The upfront charge is not in dispute; the way back to monthly is. Check the billing cycle shown and leave it on monthly until you have decided to stay a year; the ways back are quoted under the next heading. |
| Pause and Build mid-promo | Billing page for Pause and Build: “When deciding to resume full operations, you will need to select a new Shopify plan because the previous subscription agreement will no longer be applicable.” Billing-extensions page: “all outstanding invoices must be paid first.” Who can pause is on the Pause and Build page. | Free-trial page: “Shopify doesn't extend or reset free trials or promotional pricing.” | Our conclusion, not a rule: read together, the two sentences imply the remaining $1 months do not resume after a pause; no page we read says so. Pay outstanding invoices first, expect the paused store to run “at a reduced subscription fee,” and ask Support in writing first. |
| Closing mid-promo | Free-trial page: “you aren't entitled to a refund for any charges incurred during this period. Any outstanding balance on your account is charged upon cancellation.” | Same page, “not ready to launch”: “Any outstanding balance on your account is charged after cancellation, and charges from the promotional period aren't refundable.” The deactivation page repeats it. | One rule, three wordings: closing does not cancel what is already owed, and app charges already generated survive an uninstall. Check pending app charges and the outstanding balance before you deactivate. |
All sentences quoted verbatim from help.shopify.com and shopify.com/legal/terms, read September 16, 2026. Where two pages differ, both are shown; neither is treated as the one that applies.
What each of these moves costs — the standard rate that starts, the reduced Pause and Build fee, what closing collects — is worked out on our $1 guide's table of the four moves; this page stays on which rule applies and what to confirm.
Annual Billing Switched On Mid-Promo Bills the Whole Year at Once
Key takeaway
A billing-cycle switch made on the second $1 month lands on the first full-price bill as a whole year, and section 5.10 of the Terms of Service says Shopify does not provide refunds. Shopify's refund policy for plans adds that Support reviews eligible requests case by case, without a guarantee, within 30 days of the invoice issue date for an annual subscription. The saving annual billing offers is real; the timing is the trap, because the amount arrives exactly when a store that has not sold yet is least able to absorb it.
The billing cycle change takes effect after the promotional trial ends. During the promotional trial, you continue to pay the promotional price per month. After the trial ends, the annual billing cycle starts and you're charged the full annual amount upfront.
The plan-changes page itself gives two routes back. Its promotional-trial section says: “Changing from annual to monthly billing: To make this change, go to Settings > Plan and select the monthly billing option.” Its note for Support says: “To switch from annual billing to monthly billing, you need to contact Shopify Support before your annual cycle ends. This change can't be made on your own through the Shopify admin.” The page does not say which of the two applies to a store on a promotional trial.
What annual billing saves, and the revenue at which it becomes the right call, is on our billing guide's monthly-versus-annual section.
Check Your Move Against the Pages
Key takeaway
The table above answers by question. The checker below answers by combination: where you are on the calendar, crossed with the move you are weighing.
The same move reads differently on day 40 and on day 85 — a plan change is still prorated at the promo price, but the standard-rate bill it leads to is one cycle away — and Pause and Build reads differently again inside the free days: the Pause and Build page requires a store past the free trial period, while the free-trial page says a store that already selected a paid plan and wants to cancel its account must “manually pause or deactivate” the store to prevent being charged the fee for the chosen plan.
“After the promotional period ends, the price changes to the standard rate for the selected plan and billing cycle.”
A store on a promotional offer. Offers
“After your promotional pricing period ends, you need to select a standard-rate plan to continue using Shopify. If you don't select a plan, then your store might be frozen until you choose one.”
The end of any promotional pricing period. Free trial
“If you missed paying your Shopify subscription bill, or if a payment fails multiple times, then your store is frozen until you settle your bill with Shopify. Your store doesn't freeze until your bill's due date. If your store is frozen, then you can't access your Shopify admin and customers can't view your store.”
A missed or repeatedly failed subscription payment. Frozen store
Either the standard rate of the plan and billing cycle shown in Settings → Plan, or a store that might be frozen until you select a standard-rate plan.
- The plan name, the billing cycle and the date standard pricing begins.
- That the plan shown is the one you want to pay the standard rate for.
Whether a store that already has a plan selected at the promotional rate needs to select a standard-rate plan again when the promo ends is not stated on the pages we read. What we read, and when
Ask Support in writing: “Will my plan continue automatically after the date shown in Settings → Plan, or do I need to select a plan?”
The tool does not compute this date. Paste the one your admin shows and download two all-day reminders, 7 and 2 days before it. The file is built in your browser; nothing is sent anywhere.
- It does not calculate dates or sums, or list plan prices; the date comes from Settings → Plan, and sums and prices live on our $1 guide.
- It does not choose between Shopify's two end-of-promo sentences; it shows both and points you to the admin.
- It does not say what happens to your remaining promotional months on Pause and Build, because the pages we read do not.
- It does not judge whether you, or a second store on your account, qualify for the offer.
Why You May Get More Than Three $1 Bills
Key takeaway
Three $1 bills, then full price is what the offer sounds like, and it is roughly what happens to the subscription line. The number of bills that reach your card is a different question, answered by sentences on two help pages that are rarely read together:
- Every 30 days, not every month. Billing cycles page: “On a monthly subscription plan, you'll receive a bill every 30 days, so you might get two bills in months with 31 days.”
- Issued in UTC. Same page: “Bills are issued using the UTC time zone.” A date that reads as tomorrow in your evening can already be today's bill.
- Threshold bills sit outside the cycle. “you receive a bill before your regular subscription billing whenever the total of your third-party transaction fees, recurring app charges, and other outstanding charges or fees exceeds your account's billing threshold.” The same page adds that monthly subscription fees count towards the running total but are not included in threshold bills.
- Apps keep their own clock. App-charges page: “Apps with subscription charges are billed on an independent, 30-day billing cycle. This billing cycle is charged for at the same time as the Shopify subscription.”
- Uninstalling doesn't erase a generated charge. Same page: “Uninstalling an app stops future billing cycles, but it might not remove a pending app charge that has already been generated for your upcoming invoice.”
For the reader of this page the consequence is narrow. The date in Settings → Plan is the subscription's date; a bill that arrives before it may be a threshold bill or an app cycle, and neither means the standard rate has started early. Read the line items, and count the $1 subscription lines separately from everything else.
The Day-90 Verdict: Three Numbers You Can Only Collect Now
Key takeaway
The money side of the date is arithmetic, and the checker above says which rule applies to it. What the promo has to supply is evidence, and evidence has a property money does not: it can only be gathered while the window is open.
Three numbers do most of the work. The thresholds below are our rule of thumb, not a Shopify benchmark, and they are deliberately low — the question is whether the store survives contact with strangers, not whether it is profitable yet.
Three numbers, and where to read them
| Number | Shopify Analytics report | Threshold (our rule of thumb) | What a miss means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Real visitors on a product page | Visitors over time for unique visitors; Sessions by landing page to see which page sessions start on | 100 | Below it, nothing you observe about conversion is a signal. The problem is audience, and that is the one worth knowing before month four. |
| A first sale to someone you don't know | Total sales over time or Orders over time | One | Traffic with no sales points at the offer or the price, not at the audience. |
| A second sale from the same channel | Total sales by sales channel, or Net sales by channel, on the same sales-report page | Two | One sale can be luck; two from one channel is a mechanism you can name, and the thing to repeat in month four. |
Report names as listed on Shopify's Help Center report pages, read September 16, 2026. Shopify notes that “The types of analytics and reports that you can view for a store depend on your Shopify subscription plan.” Which reports each plan includes is not itemised on the report pages we read.
Read the three together rather than in turn, and add the one number Analytics cannot show: a store with sales that cost more than they return has a margin problem, and the ad spend and card fees that decide it live outside Analytics, in your own ledger.
Three Checkpoints, Counted Back From the Date in Your Admin
Key takeaway
Tie the checkpoints to the date your admin shows rather than to “month two.” A term counted from an account's creation date starts on a different day for everyone, and a store on a longer or shorter term needs the same three checks at the same distance from its own date — which is why the distances below are days before that date, not days since signup.
Counted back from the date in Settings → Plan (our rule of thumb)
| Days before the date | The store should | If it isn't there |
|---|---|---|
| 60 | Sell publicly: a plan selected, checkout active, and one stranger has navigated it | Cut scope until it is live; a store still being built here has spent a third of the window on nothing measurable. |
| 30 | Have the first 100 real product-page visitors from one deliberately chosen channel | The next 30 days go to traffic, not to the theme. Without the number, day 90 has no evidence to weigh. |
| 7 | Have the decision made, and the plan, billing cycle and date confirmed in Settings → Plan | Run the checker above for the move you lean to, and add the two reminders it builds; deferring past the date is itself a decision, made at the standard rate. |
A no is a result. If the three numbers say the idea does not work, closing or pausing before the date is the outcome the offer exists to make cheap — the answer cost a few dollars of platform fees plus whatever you chose to spend on traffic. The expensive version is continuing at the standard rate because nobody wrote the numbers down. If the answer is no and you expect to try again, the five situations that argue against opening now are set out in our readiness checklist — the same question asked before the clock starts, rather than after.
What Shopify Doesn't Say About the Offer — and What to Ask in Writing
Key takeaway
First the sentences you can quote back to Support; then what, after reading those pages on September 16, 2026, is still not written anywhere we looked.
What the Pages Do Say, Verbatim
Key takeaway
- Who it is for. Offers: “Shopify might offer promotional pricing on monthly plans for new merchants, such as a reduced rate for a set period after your free trial ends.”
- Which plans. Free trial: “Promotional pricing is only available to eligible merchants on eligible plans.” The plan-changes page names Plus as a plan the promotion doesn't cover.
- After the window. Offers, before you contact Support: “Shopify Support can help investigate missing credits and verify offer eligibility, but can't override Terms and Conditions or apply offers retroactively if the eligibility window has passed.”
- The account itself. Terms of Service, 14.3: “Without limiting any other remedies, we may suspend or terminate your Account or the Terms of Service for any reason, without notice and at any time (unless otherwise required by law)…”
None of these is a rule to work around, and this page offers no way to. The sentence Shopify puts most plainly is the one merchants most often plan against:
Shopify doesn't extend or reset free trials or promotional pricing.
What the Pages Leave Unwritten
Key takeaway
Some statements on this page are absences in what we read, not rules Shopify publishes.
- Why one visitor is shown $1 for 1 month and another for 3: not explained on the Help Center's free-trial or offers pages, its pricing-plans FAQ, pricing-overview, local-pricing and choosing-a-plan pages, or on shopify.com/pricing and shopify.com/free-trial. The free-trial page says the duration is determined by when you create the account and start the trial, that it might vary by store location, and that trial length can vary based on different factors, without describing a mechanism.
- Who counts as a “new merchant,” and whether a second store on the same account qualifies: not defined on the offers, free-trial or plan-changes pages, the billing-extensions, Pause and Build billing, app-charges, pause-store or deactivate-store pages, or on shopify.com/pricing and shopify.com/free-trial.
- What happens to the remaining $1 months on Pause and Build: not stated on the pause-store, Pause and Build billing, billing-extensions, app-charges or deactivate-store pages, or on shopify.com/pricing and shopify.com/free-trial. Two sentences — a new plan on resuming, no extensions or resets — imply the promo does not resume; that is our reading, not a rule.
- Which end-of-promo sentence applies to a store that already selected a plan: the offers page says the price changes to the standard rate for the selected plan; the free-trial page says you need to select a standard-rate plan, and in another section describes “transitioning to the standard plan pricing.” The billing-extensions page says you need to choose a paid plan and the pricing page FAQ says most plans switch to standard monthly pricing after the first 3 months; none of them says which version takes precedence, and the Pause and Build billing, app-charges, pause-store and deactivate-store pages do not settle it either.
All of these were read on September 16, 2026. The absence is the finding: if Shopify publishes any of them, this block is what changes, and the sentences elsewhere on the page that point here change with it.
One neighbouring question has its own answer and is not an absence: a store a developer built on their own account and handed over follows a different path, covered in our FAQ on whether a developer-built store keeps the free trial.
Three Questions to Put to Support in Writing
Key takeaway
The offers, free-trial, plan-changes, billing-extensions and billing-cycles pages each end with a “Before you contact Shopify Support” block listing what to bring: URLs, offer names, dates, screenshots. None answers the three questions below — which is why they are worth asking, in writing, so the answer stays in the thread rather than in a chat that closes.
- “Will my plan continue automatically after [the date in Settings → Plan], or do I need to select a plan?” The offers and free-trial pages answer this differently; neither says which applies to a store that has already selected a plan.
- “If I switch to Pause and Build on [date], what happens to the remaining promotional months?” The pages require a new plan on resuming and rule out extensions and resets; they do not say what a pause does to the months still owed.
- “Would a new store on my account receive promotional pricing?” The offers page says the pricing is for new merchants and does not define the term.
One thing those blocks do answer, so there is no need to ask: Support “can't extend free trials or reset promotional pricing periods.” Refunds are not settled there alone: the billing-extensions block says Support “can't grant billing extensions or provide refunds for subscription charges” and, in the same note, points to Shopify's refund policy for plans “to understand what's eligible for review.”
The Bottom Line: Check the Admin, Not Your Memory
Key takeaway
The two failures this page is written against — assuming either end-of-promo version without reading Settings → Plan, and switching on annual billing before deciding to stay — both come from planning against memory instead of the admin.
Frequently Asked Questions
Front-end developer specializing in Shopify since 2017. Experienced in building custom Liquid themes, optimizing storefront performance, and integrating third-party apps. Directs the editorial process behind Shopify Ecom: sets each topic, and checks facts, links, and interactive elements before publication.
This article was written entirely by AI under human editorial direction. The editor sets the topic and structure, runs multi-stage validation on facts, links, and interactive elements, and verifies the output is useful from a business perspective. All claims are checked against official Shopify sources. Details may change — always confirm critical data at shopify.com.
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