Do you need Shopify for a Diwali sale? The honest answer for new sellers

TL;DR

• • Need it? No, not for a first festive sale.
• • Shopify’s plan, as listed in September 2026: Basic ₹1,994/month billed monthly, after 3 days free and an introductory ₹20/month for 3 months.
• • Shopify’s fee on sales: Basic lists 2% when you use a third-party payment provider.
• • SitesPlaced for the same six weeks: ₹0 on Free, ₹398 on Starter, ₹998 on Growth, with 0% commission.
• • Choose a paid builder when: you need a specific app, several currencies, or delivery rates by pincode.

What a paid builder gives you

Shopify is the builder named in the question, so we use it as the example. Dukaan, Wix and others sell store plans too. We have not checked their prices this month, so we do not quote them; look at their own pricing pages.

What Shopify does well:

• • A large theme store. When we looked in September 2026 it listed 24 free themes, and paid themes at roughly $100 to $420, bought once for one store.
• • A large app store. If you need something unusual, an app for it probably exists.
• • Discounts built in, including Buy X Get Y, on every plan.
• • Room to grow into a large catalogue, several countries and several currencies.
• • People who know it. Many agencies and developers build on it.

What a new Indian seller should know before starting: cash on delivery can be switched on as a manual payment method, but extras such as a COD charge or checks on COD orders usually come from apps. Orders over WhatsApp come through an app. Many apps charge a monthly fee. None of this is a fault. It is how a platform built for every kind of business in every country works.

What a six-week festive season actually needs

The first ten rows cover a first festive sale, and they are free. The last two are worth paying for only when you have a reason. The week each job belongs in is in the Diwali 2026 checklist.

The cost of each, from today to Diwali

From 28 September to 8 November is six weeks, so a monthly plan is billed twice. The sales figure of ₹60,000 is an example with a round number, not a forecast.

Shopify figures are from its India pricing page and theme store, as we recorded them on 21 September 2026. Prices and offers change, and an introductory offer may not apply to every seller; check Shopify’s own pages before deciding. Taxes may apply on both. SitesPlaced figures are our published prices.

How to read that table

The plan is not the main cost. With the introductory offer, Shopify’s plan for six weeks is small. The cost that grows with your sales is the 2% that Basic lists for orders paid through a third-party payment provider. It comes on top of what the provider itself charges. On the example sales of ₹60,000 it is ₹1,200. On SitesPlaced that line is ₹0 on every plan, because we take no commission.

Apps are the cost you cannot see yet. You find out which apps you need while you build, and each one has its own price. On SitesPlaced, WhatsApp checkout, the COD charge, coupons, the free-delivery bar, invoices and courier booking are part of the store.

Your time is a cost too. A first-time seller has six weeks, and every evening spent choosing a theme and testing apps is an evening not spent on photos, stock and packaging. A SitesPlaced store built by the importer from your Instagram, website or PDF catalogue takes about a minute; one built from a template takes about 10 to 20 minutes with your own text and photos. On Starter and up, a dedicated setup person helps you connect payments, couriers and your domain.

Look at the fourth month. An introductory price ends. If the store stays open after Diwali, the plan moves to its listed price. The SitesPlaced free plan has no end date, so a quiet December costs nothing.

Where Shopify is ahead, and where we are

Two things favour Shopify, and it is fair to say so. Buy X Get Y discounts come with every Shopify plan; on SitesPlaced they are part of Growth at ₹499/month. And its app store covers needs that we do not.

Two things favour SitesPlaced in a festive season. The first is the hamper page: a build-your-own hamper page where buyers pick the items and you set the price by the number of items, free, under Settings → Sales boosters. It is covered in how to sell Diwali gift hampers online.

The second is speed on paid plans. On every paid plan, from Starter at ₹199/month, store pages answer about 4× faster than on the free plan: about 75 ms instead of about 330 ms, measured on live paid stores on 28 September 2026. “Answer” is the moment the page starts arriving on the phone, before the photos load. This compares our paid plans with our own free plan. We have not measured any other platform, so we make no claim about theirs. The details are in paid stores now answer about 4× faster.

When a paid builder is the right call

• You sell in several countries and currencies, with a large catalogue.
• You already have a team or an agency that builds on Shopify, and a monthly budget for a plan and apps.
• You need one specific app that exists only in its app store.
• You need delivery charges by pincode or weight. SitesPlaced has one flat delivery charge per store, free delivery above a value you set, an express option, and a checkbox that removes the charge for local customers. It has no rate table, and it cannot block orders by pincode.

If none of these is you today, you would be paying for room you will not use this Diwali.

The verdict

For a first Diwali sale, open a free store on SitesPlaced. It has what six festive weeks need, it takes nothing from your sales, and there is no bill waiting in December. Try a paid plan only when you have a reason: enter FREE7 at checkout for 7 days free on Starter or Growth, monthly or yearly, when you set up autopay. Cancel before the first charge and you pay nothing. There is no Diwali discount and no trial without autopay.

The year-round comparison is on the Shopify alternative for India and in the best Shopify alternatives of 2026. For every way to sell this season, read the best platform to sell online this Diwali. The week-by-week plan is on the Diwali hub.

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