Shopify Free Trial: How to Get 3 Months for $1 (2026 Guide)

The $1 deal is real and active right now — re-checked on Shopify's own pricing page on 14 September 2026. New stores get 3 days free, then $1/month for 3 months on any standard plan — that's $3 total for your first three months. No credit card to start. And if you start this week, those three $1 months run straight through Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Claim the Shopify $1 trial →

Last updated: 14 September 2026 — offer terms re-verified against shopify.com/pricing on the day of publication (see the screenshot and how to check it yourself).

Shopify's $1-for-3-months deal is live. New merchants start a 3-day free trial, then pay just $1/month for the first three months on any standard plan — Basic ($39/mo regular), Grow ($105/mo regular), or Advanced ($399/mo regular).

This guide covers how to claim it, which plans qualify, how to confirm the offer is still running before you hand over a card, what the promo window means if you are launching before the November sale weekend, and what happens when the three months end.

What the Offer Actually Includes

The Shopify $1 trial is a promotional deal for new merchants: 3 days free, then $1/month for 3 months on any monthly plan. After that, standard pricing applies.

What's included during the $1 period:

• Full access to your chosen plan (Basic, Grow, or Advanced)
• Shopify's hosted checkout and payment processing
• Access to the Shopify App Store (app costs are separate)
• カスタマーサポート
• Ability to connect a custom domain

What's not included:

• Shopify Plus features (this deal doesn't apply to Plus)
• Transaction fee waivers (those depend on your plan and payment processor)
• App subscriptions — most apps charge their own monthly fees on top

One thing worth knowing: the $1 offer only applies to monthly billing. If you switch to annual billing during the promo period, you lose the discount — which matters more than it sounds, because annual billing is also the thing that saves you 25% afterwards. The sequence that costs least is monthly for the three promo months, then annual from month four.

How to Check the $1 Offer Is Still Live Before You Sign Up

Promotional pricing is not a permanent feature of the platform — Shopify has moved this offer before, and it varies by region and by account. Two minutes of checking beats discovering a full-price charge on your statement. Start with the line under the headline on Shopify's own pricing page:

Step 1 — the offer line on shopify.com/pricing. Tested first-hand by PageFly, 14 September 2026. If that sentence is missing, the promotion is not running for your region or account.

Then work down the rest of the list:

2. Check the currency wording, not just the number. The promo is charged in your store's local currency — £1 in the UK, $1 CAD in Canada. A page showing "1 US$" while your store is registered elsewhere usually means you are seeing the global default, not your offer.
3. Confirm it on the "Pick a plan" screen, not the marketing page. The only price that binds is the one shown at checkout inside your admin. If the plan card there says $39 rather than $1, stop before you confirm.
4. Make sure the monthly/annual toggle is set to monthly. This is the single most common way people lose the $1 rate — the annual view shows the 25% discount instead, and the two cannot be combined.

If the $1 rate does not appear at the plan step, do not subscribe and then hope it corrects. Close the flow, start again from the offer link, and if it still shows standard pricing, ask Shopify support to confirm your account's eligibility before you commit — an already-billed subscription is much harder to move onto a promo than an unstarted one.

Start Now and the $1 Months Cover the Whole Sale Weekend

This is the part timing-sensitive shoppers miss. The promo is three billing months long, so when you start decides which selling season it covers — and a store opened in mid-September gets the year's biggest weekend inside the discounted window.

Counting from today, 14 September 2026:

Black Friday 2026 falls on Friday 27 November and Cyber Monday on Monday 30 November — both inside promo month 3. So the Shopify platform fee for building a store, launching it, and trading through the busiest weekend of the retail year is $3. Your costs in that window are apps, ads and inventory, not the platform.

The catch is preparation time, not money. From today there are roughly ten and a half weeks until Black Friday, and the jobs that decide how the weekend goes — page speed, shipping cutoffs, testing discount codes — cannot be done in the last fortnight. Our week-by-week Shopify BFCM checklist is ordered by how many weeks are left, so you can start where the calendar actually puts you. If you want the sale pages ready before you commit to a paid plan, the PageFly template library includes eight Black Friday page templates you can install and edit rather than design from scratch.

If the sale weekend is the reason you are starting, build the offer page before you build anything else. A dedicated Black Friday landing page carries the offer, the countdown and the deal grid without fighting your permanent navigation, and landing page vs homepage settles which one your traffic actually needs.

One honest caveat: Shopify can change or withdraw this promotion at any time, and the billing dates above assume you pick a plan the day your free trial ends. Treat the table as the shape of the window, then confirm your own renewal date in Settings → Billing once you are subscribed.

Shopify 3-Month Trial vs the $1 Deal: What People Actually Mean (2026)

Searches for a "Shopify 3-month trial," a "3 months free trial," or "Shopify 3 months for $1" almost always point to this same promotion — but the wording trips people up. Here is the plain-English translation:

• "Shopify 3-day free trial" — the genuinely free period. 3 days, no credit card, full access to build your store (you just can't take live payments yet).
• "Shopify 3-month trial" / "3 months free trial" — not actually free for 3 months. People mean the $1/month-for-3-months promo that begins after the 3-day free trial.
• "Shopify 3 months for $1" / "$1 plan" — the accurate name for it: $1/month for months 1, 2, and 3, then standard pricing.

So the honest answer to "Is there a Shopify 3-month free trial?" is: not free, but close. You get 3 days free, then pay just $3 total for the next three months. That's the cheapest legitimate way to run a real, fully operational Shopify store before committing to full pricing — and it's the same deal whether you search for "3 month trial," "3 months free," or "$1 plan." If you'd rather not spend anything at all yet, we've also covered your options for selling online for free.

Who Is Eligible

The deal is for new Shopify accounts only — no existing accounts qualify. Requirements:

1. New email address (not previously used with any Shopify account)
2. One store per promotional offer
3. Must be in an eligible country (nearly all countries qualify — exceptions below)

Countries where Shopify cannot support stores at all:
Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and the Crimea/Donetsk/Luhansk regions of Ukraine.

If you're in the US, UK, Canada, or most of Europe — you're eligible.

How to Claim the Shopify $1 Trial (Step-by-Step)

Step 1: Go to the offer page

Visit Shopify's $1 trial landing page via PageFly. The promotional pricing is tied to this partner link — going directly to Shopify.com may show standard pricing instead.

Step 2: Enter your email and start the free trial

No credit card required at this stage. Fill in your email and click "Start free trial." You'll be taken to a short setup questionnaire — you can skip this and go straight to your dashboard.

Step 3: Set up your store dashboard

Once inside your admin, Shopify shows your store in free trial mode. You can start building immediately — add products, set up your theme, configure payments.

If you want to make the most of your trial period, you can prototype storefront ideas quickly with AI tools — see our guide to using Lovable with Shopify.

Step 4: Pick a plan (before the 3-day trial ends)

Click "Pick a plan" at the bottom of your dashboard. Make sure you're on monthly billing (not annual). You'll see the Basic plan offered at $1/month for 3 months. Click "Choose this plan."

Step 5: Confirm billing

Add your payment method (credit card or PayPal). Shopify will charge $1 for the first month. The $1 rate continues automatically for months 2 and 3.

That's it. Your store is live on Shopify for $3 total over the first 3 months.

As you add your first products, our walkthrough of the Shopify catalog can help you keep everything organized from day one.

Pricing by Country

The $1 deal is denominated in local currency depending on where your store is registered:

Note: Some EU countries may still display pricing in USD. This is a known display issue — the charge will be processed in local currency.

What Happens After the 3 Months End

After month 3, your plan automatically renews at the regular monthly rate for whichever plan you chose:

• ベーシック：月額39ドル
• Grow: $105/month
• 上級：月額399ドル

To save 25% going forward: switch to annual billing before month 3 ends. On annual billing, Basic drops to $29/month — billed $348/year — vs $39/month on monthly billing. Grow and Advanced get the same 25% cut on annual terms. For a full breakdown of what each tier costs and includes, see our guide to Shopify pricing plans.

If you started in September, the first full bill lands after the holiday season

The timing works in your favour and it is worth planning around. A store that picks a plan in mid-September pays $1 in each of the three months that include the sale weekend, and does not see a full-price invoice until roughly 17 December — after the Q4 revenue has landed, not before it. You get to judge the platform on a quarter of real trading, with real orders, rather than on an empty three-day trial.

Put a reminder in your calendar for the week before that renewal. That is the moment to decide three things at once: whether to stay on Basic or move up, whether to switch to annual billing for the 25% cut, and which apps you trialled during the promo are actually earning their monthly fee. Deciding all three together is cheaper than discovering them one invoice at a time.

If you decide not to continue, Shopify saves all your store data — products, themes, customizations, orders. You can reactivate at any time by purchasing a plan again. Nothing is deleted.

How PageFly Fits In

Once you have your Shopify store, your next challenge is building pages that actually convert visitors into buyers. Shopify's built-in theme editor is functional but limited — it doesn't give you full control over landing pages, product pages, or campaign pages.

PageFly is a Shopify page builder used by 200,000+ merchants to build custom pages without code. It's free to install and includes a free plan.

During your $1 trial period, using PageFly lets you:
- Build a professional landing page for your first product
- Create a high-converting homepage without hiring a developer
- Test different page layouts before committing to a paid plan

Because the promo months are the cheapest trading you will ever do on Shopify, they are also the right months to test rather than guess — which offer, which layout, which hero. The PageFly plans page shows which tier includes A/B testing if you want to run that properly before the sale weekend.

Two pages are worth the effort first, because they take more traffic than anything new you build: your product pages, and whichever page your ads land on. Getting a read on both is what Shopify A/B testing is for — and the $1 months are the cheapest window you will ever have to run those tests on real traffic.

Install PageFly free →

Ready to start? Claim the Shopify $1 trial here →