Shopify moves SMS campaigns from flat bundle to pay-per-send across every plan
By Rob Litterst, Co-founder, PricingSaaS
Published
Shopify’s pricing page · Change detected
What changed
Shopify changed SMS marketing campaign billing from a flat, bundled 'Create SMS campaigns' feature to a usage-based 'Pay-per-send SMS campaigns' model. The change applies across all plans.
Why it matters
For e-commerce and marketing platforms that still bundle messaging channels (SMS, email, push) into flat-rate plans, this is a signal the incumbent playbook is shifting toward metering communications costs directly to usage. Watch whether Shopify extends the same pay-per-send treatment to other bundled channels, like email campaigns, next.
In context
This is a textbook bundle-to-usage conversion: a capability that was previously included at no marginal cost is now metered by send volume, and Shopify applied it uniformly across all plans rather than gating it to a premium tier. That signals usage-based charging for communications is becoming default infrastructure rather than an upsell reserved for high-tier customers — a pattern increasingly common as platforms look to monetize channels that scale with merchant activity rather than seat count.