Shopify in New Zealand: the complete guide for Kiwi sellers

Shopify is the platform most New Zealand businesses end up on when they start selling online, and for good reason. But most Shopify NZ advice is written for the US market, where payments, tax, shipping and customer expectations are different. This guide covers how Shopify actually works for a store based here, what it does well, where it gets expensive, and when something else is the better choice.

We build and fix online stores for New Zealand businesses, so this is written from the problems we see most often, not from Shopify's marketing pages. Where something changes often (plan names, fees, payment providers) we say so and point you to where to check.

How does Shopify work in NZ?

Shopify is a hosted ecommerce platform. You pay a subscription, and Shopify runs the servers, security, checkout and software updates. You choose a theme, add your products, connect a payment provider and a domain, and you have a working store. There is nothing to install and nothing to patch.

For a New Zealand store, the setup is the same as anywhere else, with a few local settings that matter:

• Set your store currency to New Zealand dollars and your business address to New Zealand. This affects tax, shipping and which payment options you are offered.
• Turn on tax-inclusive pricing so customers see prices with GST included. More on this below.
• Connect your own domain. Most local businesses use a .co.nz or .nz address, and our guide to registering a domain in New Zealand covers the choices.
• Set up shipping zones that reflect how New Zealand delivery is actually priced: North Island, South Island, rural, and anywhere overseas you will ship to.

Everything else (products, collections, discounts, customer accounts, email marketing, reporting) works the same way it does for any Shopify store worldwide. That is part of the appeal: there is a huge ecosystem of themes, apps, tutorials and freelancers who already know the platform.

Shopify plans, in general terms

Shopify sells several plans, from an entry-level option for people selling through social media or a simple shop, through the standard plans most small and medium businesses use, up to Shopify Plus for large, high-volume merchants. The higher plans add things like more staff accounts, more detailed reports, lower transaction rates and more advanced international selling features.

We are deliberately not quoting prices here. Shopify changes its plan names, features and pricing from time to time, and it shows New Zealand pricing separately from US pricing. Check Shopify's current pricing page for New Zealand before you budget, and note whether the figure shown includes GST and whether it is the monthly or the annual rate.

Payments: what works for New Zealand stores

Payments are where New Zealand differs most from the overseas advice, so it is worth getting right before launch.

Shopify Payments in New Zealand

At the time of writing, Shopify Payments, Shopify's own built-in payment processor, is available to eligible New Zealand businesses. It lets you accept cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Shop Pay without signing up to a separate gateway, and payouts go to your New Zealand bank account. Eligibility depends on your business type and what you sell, so confirm it in your Shopify admin under the payments settings.

Using Shopify Payments matters for cost as well as convenience. Shopify generally charges an additional transaction fee on orders paid through a third-party gateway instead of Shopify Payments. If you plan to use another provider, check the current terms for your plan so the extra fee does not surprise you.

Alternatives and extras

• Windcave (formerly Payment Express) is a long-standing New Zealand payment provider and can be connected to Shopify. Businesses that already use it for in-store terminals sometimes prefer to keep everything with one provider.
• Buy now pay later is unusually popular in New Zealand. Afterpay is widely used here and can be offered on Shopify. The market has changed in recent years (Laybuy, once a common choice, went into receivership in 2024), so check which providers are currently operating and supported before you promise them to customers.
• PayPal is still expected by a share of shoppers, particularly older customers and anyone buying from overseas. It is easy to add alongside your main processor.
• Bank transfer and online bank payments. Shopify supports manual payment methods such as direct bank deposit, which suits trade customers and high-value orders. Account-to-account payment services are also developing in New Zealand as open banking rolls out, so availability is changing. Check what is currently supported rather than relying on older guides.

Stripe is a common choice for WooCommerce stores and custom builds in New Zealand, but on Shopify you will usually be choosing between Shopify Payments and the gateways listed in Shopify's own payment settings. If a provider is not listed there for New Zealand, it is not a straightforward option.

GST: display and collection

New Zealand consumers expect to see prices that include GST, and consumer law requires the price you display to be the full price they will pay. On Shopify, that means turning on the setting that includes tax in your product prices, then entering your prices GST-inclusive.

• If you are GST-registered, add your GST number in Shopify's tax settings so invoices and reports show it, and confirm GST is calculated at the current New Zealand rate.
• If you are not yet registered, you do not charge GST, but keep an eye on your turnover. Once you pass the registration threshold you must register. Check Inland Revenue for the current threshold.
• Decide how shipping is taxed. For a GST-registered business, GST normally applies to the shipping you charge New Zealand customers as well as the goods. Shopify can include it, but check the setting.
• Exports are usually zero-rated for GST, but the rules have conditions. If you ship overseas, confirm how your accountant wants international orders treated.

Shopify's tax engine handles the arithmetic well. What it cannot do is decide your tax position for you, and nothing here is tax advice. A short conversation with your accountant before launch is much cheaper than unpicking a year of incorrectly taxed orders.

Shipping a Shopify store in New Zealand

Shipping is where New Zealand stores most often lose money. Domestic freight is relatively expensive, the country is long and thin, and a meaningful share of addresses are rural. Your shipping setup needs to reflect that from the start.

Carriers and shipping apps

Most New Zealand stores use NZ Post (including CourierPost) or one of the national courier networks such as NZ Couriers, Aramex or PBT, often through an account negotiated directly or via a shipping platform. Shipping apps such as Starshipit connect Shopify to the main New Zealand carriers so you can print labels, send tracking emails and, in some cases, show live rates at checkout.

Choosing a shipping model

Also plan for click and collect if you have a physical location, and for the Chatham Islands and other remote addresses if you will deliver there. Shopify handles local pickup natively, and it is popular with customers who live nearby and want to avoid freight altogether.

Themes versus a custom Shopify design

Shopify themes are pre-built designs you install and customise. The free themes from Shopify are well built, fast and accessible, and paid themes from the Theme Store add more layouts and features. For many new stores, a good theme with your own photography, copy and brand colours is the right starting point.

A custom theme, built for your store specifically, makes sense when:

• Your products need a buying experience the standard themes do not support, such as configurators, bundles, trade pricing or complex variants.
• Your brand needs to look genuinely distinct, and the same theme used by hundreds of other stores is a problem.
• Your current theme has been modified so many times that it is slow and fragile, and patching it further is costing more than rebuilding.
• Speed and search performance matter enough to justify a lean build. Our article on why website speed matters for NZ businesses explains the trade-off.

Whichever route you take, check accessibility. Clear contrast, keyboard navigation and properly labelled forms help every customer and reduce legal risk. Our guide to website accessibility in New Zealand covers the basics.

Apps: useful, and the main cost creep

The Shopify App Store has an app for almost everything: reviews, subscriptions, wholesale pricing, loyalty, accounting sync, shipping, product filters, upsells. This is one of Shopify's biggest strengths and one of its biggest risks.

• Each app usually carries its own monthly charge, billed through your Shopify invoice. Five or six small apps can add up to more than the plan itself.
• Apps often load their own scripts on your storefront, which slows pages down. Removing an app does not always remove its code from your theme.
• Apps overlap. It is common to find two apps doing the same job because someone installed a second without removing the first.

A good rule: install an app only when you have a specific problem it solves, review your app list every few months, and uninstall anything you are not actively using. If an app is essential and expensive, ask whether a small piece of custom theme work would do the same job without the ongoing charge.

Selling on Trade Me alongside Shopify

Trade Me is still a major sales channel in New Zealand, and many stores sell there as well as on their own site. Trade Me gives you an existing audience and trust. Your Shopify store gives you your own customer list, your own brand and no marketplace commission on each sale.

The practical challenge is stock. If the same item sells on both channels at once, you can oversell. There are third-party apps and services that sync listings and inventory between Shopify and Trade Me. Check how often they sync, how they handle variants, and what happens when an item sells out, before relying on one. For low volumes, some stores simply keep separate stock for each channel.

Pros and cons of Shopify

Is Shopify worth it for beginners?

For most beginners, yes. Shopify removes the technical work that sinks most first stores: hosting, security, payments, tax calculation and a checkout that works on every phone. You can launch with a free theme, a handful of products and Shopify Payments, and learn what your customers want before spending on anything more elaborate.

Where beginners get caught out is in what comes after setup. A Shopify store is not a marketing plan. Nobody visits a new store by default, so budget your time for getting found: search, social, email and, if it suits your product, ads. Our SEO guide for New Zealand businesses is a good starting point, and getting your first Google reviews helps if you also have a local presence.

If you are weighing Shopify against the general website builders, our comparison of website builders in New Zealand covers where each one fits. If you are thinking about selling products you never hold in stock, read our honest guide to dropshipping in New Zealand first.

Why is Shopify charging me?

This is one of the most common questions from store owners, usually after a bill that is higher than the plan price they expected. Shopify bills everything through one invoice, so charges from different sources appear together. The usual causes:

1. 01Your plan subscription. Billed monthly or annually. If a free trial or discounted introductory period has ended, the full rate starts.
2. 02App subscriptions. Most apps bill through Shopify, so their charges appear on your Shopify invoice, not separately. Some apps also have usage-based charges that rise with order volume.
3. 03Transaction fees. If you use a payment gateway other than Shopify Payments, Shopify may add its own fee on each order, on top of what the gateway charges.
4. 04Theme purchases. A paid theme from the Theme Store is a one-off charge on your invoice.
5. 05Domains. If you bought your domain through Shopify, its renewal appears on your bill.
6. 06Other services, such as shipping labels bought in Shopify, Shopify Email beyond the included allowance, or point of sale hardware and subscriptions.

To see exactly what you are paying for, open the billing section in your Shopify settings and look at the itemised bill. If an app charge appears for something you uninstalled, check that it was fully removed, and contact the app developer or Shopify support if the charge continues.

Shopify vs WooCommerce vs a custom build

WooCommerce is a free plugin for WordPress, but free software is not the same as a free store. You need good hosting, regular updates and someone to fix things when a plugin update breaks checkout. Our comparison of WordPress and custom websites and our guide to web hosting in New Zealand go deeper on that side.

A custom build only makes sense when you can name the specific requirement the platforms cannot meet. For a wider view of platform choice, see our guide to building an ecommerce website in Auckland, which applies to stores anywhere in the country.

Migrating to Shopify from another platform

Moving an existing store to Shopify is very doable, but the details decide whether you keep your search rankings and your customers.

1. 01Export your products, customers and, if you need them, past orders. Products and customers import by CSV. Order history usually needs a migration app.
2. 02Map every old URL to its new Shopify URL and set up 301 redirects. Shopify uses fixed paths for products and collections, so most URLs will change. Missing redirects are the most common cause of traffic drops after a migration.
3. 03Rebuild your page titles and meta descriptions rather than letting them default. Our meta tag generator helps you write ones that fit in search results.
4. 04Tell customers that passwords do not transfer. They will need to activate or reset their account on the new store, so send an email explaining why.
5. 05Run the old and new stores side by side until you have tested checkout, tax, shipping and emails on the new one, then switch the domain.
6. 06Watch Google Search Console for crawl errors in the weeks after launch and fix any missing redirects quickly.

Shopify NZ launch checklist

• Store currency set to NZD, business address in New Zealand, GST number entered if registered
• Prices entered GST-inclusive and tax-inclusive pricing turned on
• Payments tested with a real order and a real refund
• Shipping zones for North Island, South Island and rural, with any overseas zones you serve
• Clear shipping, returns and refund policies that reflect the Consumer Guarantees Act
• A privacy policy that reflects the Privacy Act 2020. Our privacy policy generator gives you a starting draft
• Your own domain connected, with the Shopify subdomain redirecting to it
• Page titles and meta descriptions written for your main products and collections
• Checkout tested on a real phone, on mobile data, not just office wifi
• Store speed checked with our website speed test, particularly after installing apps
• Abandoned cart emails switched on
• Google Search Console and analytics set up before launch, not after

Many of the same basics apply to any business website. Our small business website checklist covers the non-ecommerce side, and if you are starting completely from scratch, read how to make a website in New Zealand first.

Getting help with your Shopify store

Plenty of New Zealand businesses set up Shopify themselves and do well. Where outside help pays off is in the parts that are hard to undo: platform choice, migration, a custom theme, or a store that has grown slow and expensive with apps.

If you want a hand, our ecommerce website design page explains how we build and fix stores for New Zealand businesses. Every project gets a fixed, written quote before any work starts, so you know exactly what you are paying for. If you are not sure what you need yet, get in touch and tell us about your store. If your main question is how to bring people to a single offer or campaign, our explainer on what a landing page is is a useful next read.