This is the most aggressive section of the agreement. Shopify excludes liability for all damages, expressly including direct damages and its own negligence, with no dollar cap that would preserve a remedy and no carve-out for gross misconduct. The services come as is with every warranty disclaimed, and separate clauses add zero liability for third-party services, POS data breaches, beta features, and service changes. Only the phrase limiting this to what applicable law permits keeps any remedy alive.
You keep ownership of your content, which is the right starting point, but the license you grant Shopify is extremely broad: worldwide, royalty-free, transferable, sublicensable, and it covers modifying your content and creating derivative works. You also irrevocably waive your moral rights, meaning Shopify and anyone it passes rights to can use your work without credit. Deleting your store does not end licenses Shopify says it still needs, and any feedback you submit becomes Shopify's to use freely.
Shopify's billing terms are strict: there are no refunds at all, not even pro rata when your account ends, and transaction and additional fees can be charged at Shopify's discretion. Domains you buy are preset to auto-renew, and you get roughly two weeks to dispute subscription billing. The fair parts are 30 days advance notice of fee changes and a 28-day grace window before suspension for failed payments, but cancelling requires contacting support rather than a simple online action.
The indemnity is entirely one-way and very broad. You must cover Shopify, its parent, affiliates, partners, officers, employees, and suppliers, including their attorneys' fees, for claims arising from your breach, any violation of law, and any aspect of your transactions with customers, even merely alleged violations. A second indemnity covers anything arising from your use of third-party services. Shopify offers you no indemnity in return and there is no cap or defense procedure.
Shopify can change any part of the terms at any time in its sole and absolute discretion, and continued use counts as acceptance, with quitting as your only alternative. The partial saving grace is a real notice commitment: materially harmful changes come with reasonable advance notice by email or console, and fee changes get 30 days notice. However, Shopify keeps a broad carve-out to make immediately effective harmful changes for legal, security, or content reasons it defines itself, and incorporated third-party terms can change effective on posting.
The good news is what is missing: there is no forced arbitration clause and no class action waiver, so you keep your right to go to court and to join collective claims where the forum allows them. The bad news is where that court is. Depending on your billing address you must sue exclusively in Ontario, Singapore, or Ireland, under Ontario and Canadian law for North American merchants, which makes small disputes impractical for most small businesses. Disputes are resolved in English and Shopify can assign the contract freely while you cannot.
Shopify gives itself very broad account power: it can reject or cancel your account for any reason at its sole discretion, and can suspend or terminate it without notice at any time unless the law requires otherwise. There is no appeal process in the document, no refunds after termination, and your store simply goes offline. Since a store owner's livelihood can depend on this account, that one-sided discretion is a serious risk.
The privacy picture in this document is mixed and the details are pushed to separate policies. On the plus side, Shopify commits to PCI DSS compliance for payment data and lets you switch off the Shopify Network Intelligence setting that powers cross-merchant use of your customers' data. On the minus side, Shopify can use your customers' personal data across other merchants for its Enhanced Services and advertising, your content may travel unencrypted, and Shopify disclaims liability for unauthorized access to data sent through POS connections.
You accept the terms by signing up or simply by using any Shopify service, and the agreement pulls in a long chain of other documents, including third-party payment terms that can change on posting. The scope is open ended, since any new feature Shopify adds is automatically covered. Shopify does provide plain-language summaries near each section, which helps, but it states those summaries are not binding and tells you to check back for updates on your own.