Shopify or a Custom Online Shop in Lebanon?
Shopify works from Lebanon, but its own card payments do not. What that changes for card payments, cash on delivery and the monthly bill, and when Shopify is still the better choice.
Author
You can run a Shopify store from Lebanon. What you cannot use is Shopify Payments, the card processing built into Shopify: it is available in 41 countries, and in the Middle East that means the UAE only. That one fact changes how card payments, cash on delivery and the monthly bill work for a Lebanese shop, and it is the part most "Shopify vs custom" comparisons written for other countries leave out.
A disclosure before the detail: I build custom online shops, so I have an interest in this question. That is why every Shopify fact below links to Shopify's own pages, and why there is a section on when Shopify is the better choice.
The short answer
| Shopify (Basic plan) | Custom shop | |
|---|---|---|
| To start | No build cost if you set it up yourself | From $700, quoted in writing |
| Every month | $27 billed monthly, or $19 a month billed yearly | No platform fee. Hosting and a domain |
| Card payments | Through a third-party provider, with a 2% Shopify fee on each sale | Through whichever provider accepts your business, with no platform fee on top |
| Cash on delivery | Built in, with no Shopify fee | Built in, and tracked in your dashboard |
| Ordering on WhatsApp | Usually through an app | Built around how you take orders |
| Arabic, right to left | Depends on the theme you choose | Built in from the start |
| Who keeps it running | Shopify runs the platform | You, or the developer you agree it with |
Shopify prices are from Shopify's pricing page, checked on 1 November 2026.
What "no Shopify Payments" means in practice
In the countries where it is available, Shopify Payments is the default: the customer types a card, Shopify processes it, and there is no extra transaction fee from Shopify.
From Lebanon you connect a third-party payment provider instead, and Shopify then adds its own fee on every sale that provider handles: 2% on the Basic plan, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced. That is on top of whatever the provider itself charges. On a $50 order paid by card on the Basic plan, $1 goes to Shopify before the provider takes its share.
There is a harder question underneath: which provider will accept your business at all. Getting a merchant account as a small Lebanese business can mean paperwork and waiting, and that is true whichever platform you build on. Find out before you build anything, not after.
Cash on delivery is the good news. Shopify treats it as a manual payment method, and its help centre says plainly that you are not charged third-party transaction fees for manual payments. For a shop where most orders are paid in cash at the door, which is common here, the 2% mostly does not apply.
What it costs over three years
On the Basic plan billed yearly, Shopify is $19 a month: $228 a year, or $684 over three years. Billed monthly it is $27, which is $972 over the same three years. Those figures are before any paid theme, any app that charges its own monthly fee, and the 2% on card sales.
A custom shop starts from $700, quoted in writing before any work starts. After that there is no platform subscription, but there is hosting, a domain, and the cost of any change you later ask a developer to make.
So over three years the two can land in the same range. Price is rarely what decides it. What decides it is whether the platform fits how your customers actually buy.
When Shopify is the right choice
- You want to test an idea this month. A Shopify store can be live in days. If you are not sure the products will sell, find out before paying for a custom build.
- Your catalogue is simple and your customers pay by card. If you have a payment provider lined up and the standard checkout suits your customers, Shopify does that well.
- You would rather not depend on one developer. Shopify is a large platform with many people who can work on it. That is a fair reason to choose it.
When a custom shop makes more sense
- Most of your orders are cash on delivery or confirmed on WhatsApp. A custom shop can treat both as the main path rather than an add-on: the basket lives on the site, the confirm button opens WhatsApp with the order written out, and every cash order shows in your dashboard until it is marked paid. What actually works when you sell online in Lebanon covers this in more detail.
- Your customers read Arabic first. A shop built right to left from the start avoids the half-mirrored layouts that come from adapting a theme designed for English.
- You price in dollars and lira at a rate you set. The rate you charge is not always the rate an exchange service reports, and a custom shop can use yours.
- You want no monthly platform fee. Some owners simply prefer paying for the build once and keeping running costs to hosting and a domain.
Questions to ask before you decide
Whichever route you take, get answers to these first:
- Which payment provider will accept my business, and what does it charge per sale?
- Does the checkout work properly in Arabic, right to left, on a phone?
- How are cash-on-delivery orders tracked and marked as paid?
- What is the real monthly total, including every app or service the shop depends on?
- Is the domain registered in my name?
What I build
I build custom online shops for businesses in Lebanon, from $700, with the price and scope agreed in writing before any work starts. The e-commerce page sets out what is included, and what a website costs in Lebanon puts that price in context. If Shopify is the better fit for your shop, I will tell you that too.
Sources
- Shopify pricing: plan prices and third-party transaction fees, checked 1 November 2026.
- Supported countries for Shopify Payments, Shopify Help Center.
- Manual payment methods, Shopify Help Center.