AddTheShop vs Shopify
Shopify is the default answer to "how do I sell online" and for a serious catalogue it deserves to be. The question this page answers is narrower: you already have a website, you want to sell a few things from it, and you do not want a second platform. That is where the comparison tilts.
| Shopify | AddTheShop | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly fee | From $39 (Basic), $5 Starter without a full store | None |
| Transaction fee | Shopify Payments rates; 2% extra on third-party gateways (Basic) | 2% per sale, plus Stripe's processing fee |
| Your existing site | Becomes a theme or a Buy Button embed | Stays exactly as it is; one script tag |
| Checkout | Shopify checkout on your Shopify domain | Stripe hosted checkout on your own Stripe account |
| Who holds the money | Shopify Payments balance, paid out on schedule | Your Stripe account directly |
| Products, variants, inventory | Deep: variants, collections, multi-location inventory | Simple: one price per product, stock count, images |
| Managed by AI agents | Shopify MCP for Shopify stores | OAuth MCP server for Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor; REST API |
| Best for | Brands building a store as the business | Sites that need to sell a few things well |
When Shopify is the right call
Hundreds of products with variants, multiple warehouses, wholesale, POS in a shop, a team that lives in the admin. Shopify's app ecosystem and checkout conversion are hard to beat at that scale, and its MCP server lets agents work with Shopify stores too.
When AddTheShop is the right call
You prompted a site in Lovable, Bolt or Cursor, or built it in Webflow, Framer or plain HTML, and the shop is one page of it. You want products, a cart and a checkout that buyers trust, and you want your AI to be able to add a product without you opening an admin. You do not want $39 a month before the first sale.
The money
Shopify's monthly fee is the obvious line, but the structural difference is where the money goes. With AddTheShop, buyers pay on Stripe's checkout on your own Stripe account. There is no balance to wait for and no platform between you and your payouts. We take a 2% application fee at payment time and that is all.
Moving later
If you outgrow AddTheShop, your products are a short list you can export from the API in a minute, and your customers' payments are already in your Stripe account. Nothing locks you in.