Shopify Paid

Shopify is a hosted commerce platform, and its AI assistant Sidekick sits inside the admin, reads your real store data and answers questions like “why did sales drop last week.” Basic is $29/month on annual billing; Sidekick is available on Basic and above, with a monthly prompt cap on the cheapest tier.

What is Shopify Sidekick?

Sidekick is a chat assistant wired into Shopify admin, with access to orders, products, discounts and analytics. Ask it to “create a 15% discount for returning customers ending Sunday” and it sets up the discount, not just a text description of one. That’s the difference between a chatbot bolted onto a dashboard and an agent that can actually change settings.

Around it sit narrower tools: AI product description generation from a photo, Magic image editor for background removal and scene replacement, and Shopify Magic in Inbox for suggested replies. Shopify says its millions of merchants push well over a billion AI-assisted actions a year, which mostly proves the features are on by default rather than that they’re great.

Product Features

• Sidekick chat — natural-language store operations. It can build segments, draft campaigns and explain performance, but it will not design your theme.
• AI product writing — generates titles and descriptions in a chosen tone from an image or a few keywords. Editing output is mandatory; default copy is bland.
• Magic image editor — background removal, object relocation and scene generation at no extra cost, decent for catalog photos shot on a phone.
• Shopify Payments — card processing at 2.9% + 30¢ on Basic, with no third-party gateway fee when you use it.
• POS and omnichannel — the retail app and buy-online-pickup-in-store flow are included, not paid add-ons.
• App ecosystem — thousands of apps, which is both the platform’s strength and its biggest hidden cost.

Product Highlights

• Sidekick reads live data, so answers about orders and traffic are grounded, unlike generic models.
• Checkout is the best-converting in the industry and you inherit that on day one.
• Pricing scales by plan: Basic $29, Grow $79, Advanced $299 per month on annual terms.

What does Shopify cost beyond the plan fee?

More than the sticker. Transaction fees apply if you use an outside gateway: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced. Themes run $180–$400 once. Apps commonly add $50–$200 a month for a store doing real volume. A store on Basic with basic apps realistically spends $80–$150 monthly.

Sidekick’s honest limits: it’s weak at anything requiring a custom theme change, its discount-building can misfire on complex rules, and on Basic you hit the monthly prompt allowance if you use it daily. Merchants who need deep customization usually end up in the Liquid template language anyway — Sidekick won’t write that for you.

Use Cases

1. Launching a DTC store with product pages written by AI and photos cleaned in Magic.
2. Running a pop-up with Shopify POS syncing inventory to the online store.
3. Building a returning-customer discount in Sidekick instead of clicking through admin menus.
4. Getting a plain-language answer on why conversion fell after a theme update.
5. Drafting support replies in Inbox during a sale spike.

Quick Summary

• Shopify is a hosted commerce platform; Sidekick is its in-admin AI assistant with store data access.
• Plans: Basic $29, Grow $79, Advanced $299/month on annual billing.
• Extra costs: 0.6–2% outside-gateway fees, paid themes, and app subscriptions.
• Best for merchants who want checkout, POS and inventory handled by one vendor.
• Not for anyone expecting AI to build a custom storefront — theme work is still manual.