How to Buy a Shopify Store in 2026

Buying a Shopify store means purchasing an existing online business, its domain, product catalog, supplier relationships, and order history, through a marketplace like Flippa or a broker such as Empire Flippers, instead of building a new store from zero. Most stores sell for 2.5x to 4x their seller's discretionary earnings (SDE), and due diligence typically takes two to six weeks before funds move.

There are two main strategies for breaking into eCommerce through platforms like Shopify: build from scratch or buy an existing store. Either path also means dealing with disputes; merchants can learn how to prevent chargebacks on Shopify stores with Chargeflow's app.

This guide covers where to buy a Shopify store, how to value one, the due-diligence checklist serious buyers use, financing options, and the risks you inherit the moment you take over, including the store's existing chargeback and dispute history. If the listing you're evaluating is specifically a dropshipping store rather than one with owned inventory, see our dedicated guide to buying a Shopify dropshipping store for risks unique to that model, including ad account transferability, supplier exclusivity, and winning-product concentration.

The Case for Buying vs. Building a Shopify Store

Building a Shopify store is free to start but slow to prove out. Buying a store that already has traffic and revenue is a shortcut, at a real financial cost. The main advantages:

1. Established store: You start with a fully built website and, usually, existing customers, instead of building traffic from zero.
2. Proven business model: A store that already demonstrates profitability and market demand skips the riskiest phase of a new venture.
3. Existing customer base: You acquire the company's audience along with the store, which lowers your near-term marketing spend.
4. Operational infrastructure: Most listings come with product sourcing, fulfillment processes, and supplier relationships already in place.
5. Growth headroom: A store with a track record of scaling makes it easier to expand product lines or enter new markets with confidence.
6. Portfolio or skills fit: Buying can diversify an existing portfolio or fill a skills gap you don't want to spend a year closing yourself.

"It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price." - Warren Buffett

Where to Buy a Shopify Store

Buyers generally choose between two channels, each with a different trade-off between price, vetting, and deal support. (Shopify shut down Shopify Exchange, its own marketplace for buying and selling stores, in November 2022, so it's no longer an option.)

Within those channels, buyers most often work with BuySell Empire, Empire Flippers, Flippa, Acquire.com, FE International, BizBroker24, and Motion Invest. You can also do the groundwork yourself through direct outreach or referrals from industry contacts. Shopify Exchange, Shopify's own marketplace for buying and selling stores and once a common starting point, was discontinued in November 2022.

How Much Does a Shopify Store Cost? Valuation Multiples

Most Shopify stores are priced as a multiple of seller's discretionary earnings (SDE), which is annual profit plus the owner's salary and one-time or personal expenses added back in. According to Flippa's 2026 valuation data, ecommerce businesses typically sell in the following ranges:

Profit multiples cooled from a peak near 4.8x in late 2022 to about 3.98x by the second half of 2024, according to Flippa's valuation data. In practical terms, a store generating $150,000 in annual SDE would price out around $375,000 to $600,000 at a 2.5x to 4x multiple, before you adjust for growth trend, traffic concentration, and platform risk. Dropshipping-model stores price at the bottom of these ranges, typically 1.5x-2x SDE, since the seller usually has no exclusive supplier relationship or owned product to sell along with the storefront.

Due Diligence: What to Verify Before You Buy a Shopify Store

The real work of buying a Shopify store happens in due diligence, not in browsing listings. Work through this checklist before you submit an offer:

• Traffic sources: Pull the store's analytics and confirm how much traffic is organic versus paid. A store propped up entirely by ads has a different risk profile than one with durable SEO.
• Financial records: Review at least 12, ideally 24-36 months of income statements, bank deposits, and payment processor statements. Bank deposits are harder to fake than a spreadsheet the seller controls.
• Supplier and fulfillment relationships: Confirm supplier contracts and pricing terms transfer to you, and that the seller isn't the only person with the supplier relationship.
• Assets actually included: Get an explicit list of what you're buying: the domain, hosting, email list, social accounts, trademarks, and any proprietary tooling or apps.
• Legal and tax documents: Review business licenses, incorporation documents, and at least three years of business tax returns.
• Payment processing and dispute history: Ask for the store's chargeback and refund rate for the past 12 months, and calculate the chargeback ratio yourself rather than trusting the seller's figure. A store you're inheriting can arrive with an elevated dispute rate or even a high-risk merchant account designation that follows the business, not just the previous owner.
• Customer concentration: Check what share of revenue comes from repeat customers versus one-time buyers, and whether any single wholesale account represents an outsized share of sales.
• The seller: Search for the seller's name and the business name together, and ask directly why they're selling.

Negotiation and Purchase Agreement

Once due diligence supports the asking price, the deal moves through a fairly standard sequence:

Send a Letter of Intent

A Letter of Intent (LOI) outlines your proposed price, general terms, and any contingencies. It sets the tone for negotiation but usually isn't legally binding on price.

Negotiate Price and Key Terms

Negotiate based on the store's financial performance, growth trend, and the multiples above, not the seller's asking price alone. Also nail down asset transfer, any non-compete clause, and how long the seller will stay on for transition support.

Use o serviço de custódia para transferência de fundos

Once terms are signed, route the payment through escrow rather than paying the seller directly. Escrow releases funds only after the assets and access are confirmed to have transferred; brokers like Empire Flippers and FE International, and open marketplaces like Flippa, structure their closings this way.

Financing Options for Buying a Shopify Store

Most buyers don't pay 100% cash. Common ways to finance a Shopify store acquisition include:

• Seller financing: The seller accepts a portion of the price over time, often 10-30%, which also keeps them motivated to support a clean transition.
• SBA 7(a) loans: In the U.S., SBA 7(a) loans can finance a change of ownership and go up to $5 million, per the U.S. Small Business Administration, though lenders will still want two to three years of verifiable financials.
• Ecommerce-specific lenders: Revenue-based financing providers underwrite against a store's processing history rather than personal collateral, which can move faster than a bank loan for smaller deals.
• Earn-outs: Part of the price is paid later, tied to the store hitting agreed revenue or profit targets post-close, which shifts some performance risk back to the seller.

Post-Purchase: The Chargeback and Fraud Risk You Inherit

Buying a Shopify store doesn't just transfer inventory and traffic. It also transfers the store's payment history, and in many cases its dispute exposure, to you. A handful of things to plan for immediately after closing:

• You inherit the store's dispute reputation. Card networks track dispute rates against the merchant account and processing history, not just the current owner. Before you take over, it's worth reviewing what is a chargeback and how a high dispute rate on a store you didn't create can still follow it into your ownership.
• Migrating payment processing is a risk point. If you switch the store to a new payment service provider, expect closer underwriting scrutiny in the first 90 days while the new processor builds its own risk picture of the business.
• Friendly fraud doesn't disappear at closing. Customers who don't recognize a charge, or who claim "I didn't authorize this" months after a subscription renewal, are a leading driver of friendly fraud, and that pattern typically continues under new ownership until you actively manage it.
• Set up monitoring before problems compound. A chargeback alert service flags disputes before they escalate, giving you a window to refund or resolve a case before it counts against the merchant account you just took over.

The numbers make the case for treating this as a day-one priority rather than an afterthought. According to a 2026 LexisNexis study, businesses typically incur at least $5.13 in total cost for every $1 lost to chargebacks and fraud once investigation time, fees, and lost merchandise are counted. See our full breakdown of chargeback fees and costs for what a dispute actually costs beyond the refund itself. Chargeflow's own transaction data shows the ecommerce chargeback rate climbed from 0.15% in Q1 2023 to 0.47% in Q1 2024, a 222% increase in about a year. Mastercard separately projects the global financial impact of chargebacks to grow from $33.79 billion in 2025 to $41.69 billion by 2028. None of that is specific to acquired stores, but it explains why a store's existing dispute rate belongs on your due-diligence checklist next to its revenue, not after it.

This is also where working with a dedicated chargeback management system pays off fastest: you get visibility into the inherited dispute pattern from week one, instead of discovering it the first time your new processor puts a reserve on your account. For the full mechanics of fighting Shopify disputes once you own the store, see our Shopify chargebacks guide. Beyond the store's specific numbers, it's worth reading up on ecommerce fraud prevention more broadly before you take over customer-facing operations.

Red Flags to Avoid When Buying a Shopify Store

1. Skipping due diligence. This is the single biggest cause of overpaying, and of missing undisclosed liabilities like pending legal claims or a single point-of-failure traffic source.
2. Undisclosed dispute or chargeback history. A seller who can't produce clean chargeback and refund numbers for the trailing 12 months is a red flag on its own, regardless of how good the revenue looks.
3. Signing before reviewing every legal document. That includes supplier agreements, terms of sale, and intellectual property rights, not just the headline purchase agreement.
4. Paying outside of escrow. Wiring funds directly to a seller before assets transfer removes your main protection against non-delivery.
5. No transition plan. Buying without a documented handover, covering responsibilities, timelines, and how the seller stays reachable, sets you up to inherit problems with no one to ask about them.
6. Skipping legal counsel. For anything beyond a small, simple listing, an hour of a lawyer's time before you sign is cheap relative to the deal size.

Should You Buy a Shopify Store?

There's no single right path into eCommerce. Building from scratch gives you full control and a lower up-front cost, at the price of time. Buying a Shopify store trades a real financial commitment for existing traffic, revenue, and infrastructure on day one, provided you do the diligence to confirm what you're actually acquiring.

If you buy a Shopify store, use the checklist above to work through prospecting, due diligence, negotiation, and financing in order, and treat the store's dispute and chargeback history as seriously as its revenue history. And once you've closed, remember to automate your chargebacks to protect your earnings and your relationship with your new payment processor.

Buying a Shopify Store FAQs

How much does it cost to buy a Shopify store?

Prices range from a few thousand dollars for an unproven, new store to well into six or seven figures for an established business with a real revenue history. Most marketplaces price listings as a multiple of SDE, typically 2.5x to 4x, so the store's financials matter more than its age. Businesses at the higher end of that range are often already running Shopify Plus, which brings its own lower transaction fees and B2B tools worth factoring into the valuation. Check our Shopify Plus pricing guide to see whether the seller's plan tier and fee structure line up with what you're paying for.

Where can I buy a Shopify store safely?

Shopify shut down Shopify Exchange, its own marketplace, in November 2022, so buyers now work through established brokers and marketplaces instead. Flippa, Empire Flippers, Acquire.com, and FE International vet listings and typically support escrow, which reduces the risk of buying directly from an unverified seller.

What should I check before buying a Shopify store?

At minimum, verify the traffic sources (organic versus paid), review at least a year of financial records tied to bank deposits, confirm supplier relationships are transferable, and check the store's chargeback and dispute history before you commit to a price.

Is buying a Shopify store better than starting from scratch?

It depends on what you're optimizing for. Buying gets you existing revenue, customers, and infrastructure on day one, at a real financial cost. Building from scratch costs less up front but takes time to reach profitability, if it gets there at all.

What's the difference between "buy a Shopify store" and buying something on Shopify?

"Buy a Shopify store" refers to acquiring an entire existing business, its domain, catalog, and customer base, through a marketplace like Flippa or a broker such as Empire Flippers. It's unrelated to buying an individual product from a Shopify-powered storefront, which is what most shoppers mean when they search simply for "Shopify buy."

Do I inherit the previous owner's chargeback history when I buy a Shopify store?

Yes, in practice. Card networks and payment processors track dispute rates against the business and its processing history, not just the individual who owned it. A store with an elevated chargeback rate or a high-risk merchant account designation can carry that status into your ownership until you actively bring the rate down.