Every store eventually asks the same question in the same order. What does the name cost, does that number change later, and am I locked in if I buy it here. Those are three separate questions and the marketing pages tend to answer only the first one. This piece answers all three with figures each company publishes itself, gathered on August 25, 2026.
If you have not settled on the name yet, start one step earlier with how to choose a domain name, and if you are still deciding where to register it, the Shopify domain registrar guide compares the places to buy.
How much does a domain cost on Shopify?
Shopify's domains page says domains typically start at $9 USD per year, billed annually, and its own pricing guide puts a .com at around $16 per year with a general band of $10 to $30 depending on the string and the extension. Both numbers are true and they describe different things: $9 is the entry point across all extensions, $16 is the realistic figure for the .com most stores actually want.
Set that against the floor every registrar shares. Verisign charges registrars $10.26 for a year of .com and ICANN adds 20 cents on top, so about $10.46 is the true cost of a .com before anyone's salary is paid. Shopify is taking roughly five to six dollars of margin. That is more than a discount registrar and less than the worst of the bundled sellers, which is a fair summary of Shopify's position on most things.
Shopify also includes WHOIS privacy at no extra cost, noting it is included with eligible extensions and that some registries do not permit privacy. That matters more than it sounds, because privacy is exactly the line item that turns an advertised price into a different real price at several competitors. If you want the full picture of what a domain actually costs across the market, the registry floor is the number to anchor on.
Does Shopify charge more to renew a domain?
Shopify does not publish a renewal rate card, and its current wording is careful: renewal pricing may differ from initial purchase and can change over time. Domains are sold in one year terms and set to auto-renew by default, with multi-year renewals available on many extensions, and Shopify Help adds that you need to pay the registration fee every year to renew your domain subscription. So the honest answer is that nobody can tell you the year two price before you are inside an account.
That is worth stating plainly because an earlier version of this article reported a flatter position from Shopify's own pricing guide. Read on September 2, 2026, the shopify.com/domains page makes the softer claim, and we go with the current primary source rather than the older one. It is still a better disclosure than several competitors manage, but it is not a promise that the price holds.
Why this matters at all: a promotional first year is a customer acquisition cost that gets recovered from you every year afterward. The headline number tells you almost nothing about a five year holding cost, which is why the renewal price in year two is the figure to compare rather than the one on the ad. Every registrar also passes on registry increases, and Verisign raises .com wholesale to $10.97 on November 1, 2026 regardless of where you bought.
For contrast, look at what a builder that does publish both numbers shows. Wix lists a .co at $13.35 for the first year and $30.95 to renew, and a .ai at $13.35 then $93.00. Wix does not publish a renewal rate card at all for .com, .net or .org, so the year two figure only appears once you are inside your account. It is the same pattern every builder-bundled domain follows: a first year number you can see and a renewal you cannot.
Shopify vs Wix vs Squarespace vs a plain registrar
| What you are comparing | Shopify | Wix | Squarespace | Plain registrar |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First year .com | Not published. Domains start at $9 a year across all extensions | $13.35 | States $20 a year for a common domain | $11 to $14 typical, under $11 at cost |
| Renewal published? | No rate card. States renewals may differ and can change | No rate card for .com, .net or .org | Yes | Usually yes |
| Known first year to renewal jump | None published either way | .co $13.35 to $30.95, .ai $13.35 to $93.00 | Flat pricing, no promo cycle | Varies widely by company |
| WHOIS privacy | Free, where the registry permits | Listed among the factors that change your price | Included | Free at most, paid at a few |
| Plan required to buy the name | No, but a store needs a plan from $39 a month | Free voucher requires an annual site plan | Requires a trial or paid site plan | No |
| Buy a name someone already owns | No marketplace or auctions | No marketplace or auctions | No marketplace or auctions | Only at registrars with an aftermarket |
Figures are each company's own published numbers as displayed on August 25, 2026, not our estimates. Pricing moves, so re-check before you buy. The column worth reading twice is the second row, because a company that will not publish a renewal price has told you something about the renewal price.
Do I need a Shopify plan to buy a domain?
Not to hold the name. Shopify's own guide notes that every Shopify store gets a free myshopify.com subdomain and that custom domains cost extra independently of that. What you need a plan for is running the store, and Shopify pricing starts at $39 per month for the Basic plan.
That is a cleaner arrangement than the one Wix uses, where the free domain voucher rides on an annual site plan and Wix support states you must upgrade your site to connect a domain to it. Squarespace goes further still and gates domain purchases behind a trial or paid plan, which is worth knowing before you start the trial. Shopify is the least entangled of the three on this specific point.
Practically, the $39 a month is the real number in a Shopify budget and the domain is a rounding error beside it. That said, the annual charges are the ones that slip past unnoticed precisely because they are small and yearly, so put the domain renewal date in the same calendar as the plan renewal.
Can I transfer a domain to Shopify, or away from it?
Both, and the mechanics are the ordinary industry ones. To move a name in, Shopify says to unlock the domain, get the EPP or authorization code from your current registrar, and start the transfer in Shopify. To move a name out you request the authorization code and hand it to the receiving company.
The constraint people trip over is not Shopify's. Shopify states that new registrations and recent transfers are usually locked for 60 days under ICANN rules and cannot be transferred during that period. That lock is policy, no registrar anywhere can waive it, and a third version of it fires when you change the registrant name, organization or email address. If you are planning a move, do the contact edits after the transfer rather than before. Where the name should land is the separate decision, and registrars differ most on renewal price and on how easy they make a transfer out.
Shopify also supports pointing an externally registered name at the store instead of transferring it. Its instructions are to update DNS to point to Shopify, setting the A record for the root domain and the CNAME for www to the values shown in the Shopify admin. That is the option most agencies pick, because it keeps the name and the storefront independent of each other.
Is it better to buy a domain from Shopify or a registrar?
Buy it from Shopify if you want one vendor, one invoice and no DNS to copy between control panels, and if the name you want happens to be available. Free privacy and automatic connection to the storefront make it a genuinely low friction purchase, and that convenience is real rather than imaginary. The trade is that Shopify Help states domain hosting services are only available with a paid Shopify plan, so the name and the subscription are coupled in a way a registrar name is not. A name registered at an ordinary registrar has no such coupling, which is the whole trade.
Buy it from a registrar if you want the name held independently of the storefront. A domain routinely outlives the platform it was first pointed at. Stores replatform, get redesigned, or get acquired, and at that moment the domain is the one asset that has to survive the migration intact. Holding it separately turns that into a boring afternoon instead of a coupled migration. If you are weighing where to keep it long term, the registrar comparison puts the main options side by side on renewal price.
What if the domain I want is already taken?
This is where every builder and every store platform runs out of road at the same point, and it deserves saying plainly because the search boxes never do. A domain search answers exactly one question: is this exact string unregistered right now. For anything short and memorable the answer has been no for about fifteen years, so the search offers you the consolation prize instead. Add a word, add a hyphen, take a different extension.
Sometimes that is the right call. Often it is a name you will quietly resent in eighteen months. The option nobody surfaces inside a store platform is that the name is very likely for sale, either listed by its owner with an asking price or moving through an auction as it expires. Acting on that needs a way to discover the listing, a price signal so you are not negotiating blind, and a venue to complete the deal. That is a different transaction from registration, and it is the one covered in how to buy a domain name that is already registered.
Before you open that negotiation, search the near variants of the name across several extensions at once. A different clip of the same word, or one word swapped in a compound, is unregistered far more often than the original, and registering it costs only the yearly fee.
The short version
Shopify starts domains at $9 a year, shows the exact price before you confirm, includes WHOIS privacy on most eligible extensions, and connects the name to your storefront without any DNS work. Against that, it publishes no renewal rate card, states that renewal pricing may differ and can change, and couples the domain to a paid plan closely enough that closing the store means transferring the name out first. Like every platform it also has no answer whatsoever for a name that is already taken. Decide which of those problems is actually yours, then buy accordingly.
Shopify figures and quotations are its own published wording on shopify.com/domains and in Shopify Help as read on September 2, 2026. Wix and Squarespace figures are each company's own published numbers as displayed on August 25, 2026. Domain pricing and platform terms change, so verify before you purchase.