Opening a Shopify store in Italy: everything you need in place before you upload the first product
The paperwork no subscription covers, what Shopify does and what stays with you, the legal pages required from day one, and the order that saves the most money.
Opening a Shopify store takes an afternoon: pick a plan, install a theme, publish a product. Opening an e-commerce business in Italy takes more, and nearly all of it concerns things the subscription doesn't buy: a VAT registration, the legal pages, VAT on sales, who issues invoices, how parcels leave.
This is the list of what to settle before loading the catalogue, in the order worth doing it. It isn't a tutorial on where to click — the official documentation covers that — it's what you want to know first, while decisions are still cheap.
1 · What no subscription buys
Selling online on an ongoing basis is a commercial activity: you need a VAT number, and with it a set of steps you do once but should do properly. In Italy they're usually handled together through the Comunicazione Unica: a single electronic filing that opens the VAT number, registers the business, opens the INAIL position, enrols you in the INPS traders' scheme and files the SCIA with the municipality.
The ATECO code for retail over the internet: it identifies the activity, and your accountant picks the current version — the classification was updated recently.
Social security contributions. A sole trader usually falls under the INPS traders' scheme, with fixed contributions due regardless of turnover: the item that surprises new sellers most, and one to budget for up front.
The annual chamber of commerce fee and the filing costs at registration: small compared with the rest, but recurring.
The tax regime. Flat-rate or ordinary changes how VAT, invoices and the year-end sum work: that's an accountant's decision, not a web designer's.
One caveat, once
This is a technical article about building a store, not tax or legal advice. Rules change, and particular cases — selling abroad, regulated products, marketplaces — need checking with an accountant before you start. What you'll find here are the right questions to bring them.
2 · What Shopify does, and what stays with you
The common misunderstanding is that the platform covers everything. It covers a very specific part, and knowing which avoids unpleasant surprises at the first order.
The platform does it
You do it, or whoever builds your store
Hosting, certificate, updates and payment security
VAT, invoices and recording of takings
Checkout and payment collection, with methods you enable from the admin
Legal copy: terms of sale, privacy, cookies, right of withdrawal
Catalogue, variants, stock and discounts
Real content: photos, descriptions, categories that make sense
Shipping as rules and rates
The carrier contract, the labels and the returns flow
A sitemap and the fields for title and description
What you write in them, and how the catalogue is structured
3 · The legal pages you need from day one
This is the part most often postponed and the most expensive to postpone, because a store selling to consumers carries specific disclosure duties. In practice you need:
Terms of sale: who sells, what, with what delivery times, how payment works, how to complain.
A privacy notice and cookie handling, with a banner where accepting and refusing carry the same weight, and where nothing fires before consent.
The right of withdrawal: fourteen days for consumers, with instructions on how to exercise it and who pays for the return. Write it down; don't imply it.
The two-year legal guarantee of conformity, distinct from any additional commercial warranty.
The company's details — legal name, address, VAT number, contacts — readable from every page, usually in the footer.
Copied templates are the most underrated risk
Terms of sale copied from another store describe someone else's process: delivery times you don't meet, a returns address that isn't yours, the wrong governing law. When a dispute arrives, what counts is what you wrote.
4 · The catalogue comes before the theme
Almost everyone starts with the theme, because it's the visible part. But a theme changes in a day; the structure of the catalogue, once search engines have indexed it, changes through a migration. The decisions to take first:
What is a product and what is a variant. Size and colour are variants of one product; two different models are two products. Getting it wrong duplicates pages, splits reviews and multiplies what you have to rank.
Product URLs. A product slug is a public address: pick it readable and stable, because changing it later means redirects.
SKUs. One per variant, consistent with the one in your back office: it's the key the store and the warehouse will talk through.
Collections: the categories buyers need, not your internal price-list hierarchy.
Photos, with alternative text that describes the product: it serves people who can't see the image, and image search.
5 · The connections that actually matter
A store selling ten items a day can be run by hand. Past that, three connections matter, and it pays to plan them from the start even if you switch them on later:
Invoices and takings: who issues them, with what numbering, and how the outcome comes back into the order.
Carriers: rates and times shown at checkout, labels generated without retyping addresses, tracking that reaches the customer by itself.
Stock: if you also sell elsewhere — a physical shop, marketplaces, dropshipping suppliers — you need one source of truth, or you'll sell what you don't have.
And a fourth thing, not a connection but what decides how much you know about what's happening: measurement. Cart and checkout events set up properly from day one, with consent handled correctly, are worth more than any dashboard added afterwards.
6 · The order that saves money
Paperwork and accountant first: VAT number, regime, obligations.
Then the domain, a professional email address and legal copy written for you.
Then the catalogue, with products, variants, SKUs and photos already clean.
Then the theme and content pages, which by then have something to show.
Then the trials: a real order placed by you, actually paid, actually shipped, actually returned. It's the only test that counts.
Finally the launch, with the sitemap in Search Console and someone watching the first weeks.
Reverse the order — theme, then catalogue, then paperwork — and you reach launch day with a beautiful store that can't issue an invoice yet. It happens more often than you'd think.
Starting clean costs less than fixing later
The choices of the first week — catalogue structure, URLs, SKUs, connections — decide what growing will cost. They're also the easiest to get wrong, because they look like details.
If you're about to open, the free audit is there to check them before they get expensive: catalogue, integrations, and what your case actually needs.
Yes: selling online on an ongoing basis is a commercial activity. It's usually opened through the Comunicazione Unica, a single filing that opens the VAT number, registers the business, opens the INAIL position, enrols you in the INPS traders' scheme and files the SCIA with the municipality. Your accountant picks the tax regime.
Which legal pages does an online store need from day one?
Terms of sale, a privacy notice and cookie handling, instructions on the fourteen-day right of withdrawal, the two-year legal guarantee of conformity, and company details readable from every page. Copying them from another store is the most underrated risk: they describe someone else's process.
What does Shopify handle and what stays with me?
The platform covers hosting, payment security, checkout, catalogue and shipping rules. What stays with you: VAT and invoices, the legal copy, the carrier contract, the content and the structure of the catalogue.
Should you start with the theme or the catalogue?
The catalogue. A theme changes in a day; the structure of the catalogue — what is a product, what is a variant, what the product URLs are — changes only through a migration once search engines have indexed it.