Staxly

Shopify vs Plausible Analytics

Dominant SaaS commerce platform — Online Store + Hydrogen headless
vs. Privacy-first web analytics — cookieless, no GDPR/CCPA nightmare

Shopify website ↗Plausible Analytics ↗

Pricing tiers

Shopify

Starter
$5/mo. Sell via social/chat links. No checkout site. Basic.
$5/mo
Basic
$29/mo ($19 annual). Full store. 2.9% + 30¢ online. 2 staff.
$29/mo
Shopify
$79/mo ($49 annual). 2.7% online. 5 staff.
$79/mo
Advanced
$299/mo ($229 annual). 2.5% online. Custom reports. 15 staff.
$299/mo
Plus
$2,300/mo (starting). Enterprise features, checkout customization, unlimited staff.
$2300/mo
Enterprise
Custom. For $1M+ GMV merchants. Dedicated support, Checkout Extensibility.
Custom
Shopify website ↗

Plausible Analytics

Self-Hosted (CE)
Community Edition — AGPL-licensed, run on your own infra.
$0 base (usage-based)
Starter
$9/month. 1 site. Basic dashboard, goals, 3-year data retention.
$9/mo
Growth
$14/month. 3 sites + 3 team members. Shared dashboards + team mgmt.
$14/mo
Business
$19/month. 10 sites + 10 members. Custom properties, API access, funnels, 5-year retention.
$19/mo
Enterprise
Custom. SSO, managed proxy, priority support.
Custom
Plausible Analytics ↗

Free-tier quotas head-to-head

Comparing starter on Shopify vs starter on Plausible Analytics.

MetricShopifyPlausible Analytics
No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers.

Features

Shopify · 22 features

  • Admin APIs — REST + GraphQL for management.
  • App Store — 8,000+ apps.
  • B2B (Plus) — Company accounts + catalogs.
  • Checkout — Shopify-managed checkout (PCI-compliant).
  • Checkout Extensibility — UI extensions in checkout (Plus).
  • Collections — Manual + smart grouping.
  • Customers — CRM-lite + B2B (Plus).
  • Discounts — Automatic + code-based.
  • Hydrogen — React/Remix headless framework.
  • Inventory — Multi-location stock.
  • Markets — Multi-region selling (currency, language).
  • Online Store — Default Liquid-based storefront.
  • Orders + Fulfillment — Multi-location fulfillment.
  • Oxygen — Edge hosting for Hydrogen (Plus).
  • Products + Variants — Full PIM.
  • Shipping + Rates — Carrier integrations.
  • Shopify Functions — Rust/WASM backend extensions.
  • Shopify Payments — First-party payment processor.
  • Shop Pay — Accelerated checkout with saved payment.
  • Storefront API — GraphQL for custom storefronts.
  • Theme Store — First-party + paid themes.
  • Webhooks — Event subscriptions.

Plausible Analytics · 16 features

  • 404 Error Tracking — Auto-detect 404 pages.
  • Custom Properties — Attach arbitrary properties to events (Business+).
  • Email/Slack Reports — Weekly + monthly reports to email/Slack.
  • File Download Tracking — Track PDF/DOC/ZIP downloads.
  • Funnels — Multi-step funnel analysis (Business+).
  • Goals & Conversions — Track custom events + pageview-based goals.
  • Import from Google Analytics — Import historical GA data via script.
  • Managed Proxy (Ent) — Proxy plausible.io through your domain to bypass ad-blockers.
  • Outbound Link Tracking — One-line extension to track outbound clicks.
  • Revenue Goals — Track $ amounts per goal. Great for e-commerce.
  • Self-Hosting — Run via Docker. AGPL Community Edition.
  • Shared Dashboards — Public or password-protected share links.
  • Single-page Dashboard — All your metrics on one page: visitors, pageviews, sources, devices, countries, …
  • Stats API — Pull data into your own tools via REST. Business+.
  • Team Management — Owners, admins, viewers per site.
  • UTM Campaigns — Track utm_source/medium/campaign automatically.

Developer interfaces

KindShopifyPlausible Analytics
CLIshopify CLI—
SDK@shopify/admin-api-client, @shopify/hydrogen@nuxtjs/plausible + plugins, plausible-tracker (npm)
RESTAdmin REST APIEvents API, Plausible Stats API, Sites Management API
GRAPHQLAdmin GraphQL API, Storefront API—
MCPShopify MCP (unofficial)—
OTHERLiquid Templates, Shopify Admin, Shopify WebhooksTracker Script (<script>)
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Some links to Shopify and Plausible Analytics may be affiliate links — Staxly may earn a commission if you sign up through them, at no extra cost to you. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.

Want this comparison in your AI agent's context? Install the free Staxly MCP server.