LivePlan’s Standard plan cannot connect to your accounting, cannot run what-if scenarios, cannot show a performance dashboard and cannot export to Excel. Seven features carry a red cross on the Standard card, and those seven are the entire reason to pay for planning software instead of building a spreadsheet.
LivePlan is upfront about this. The exclusions are printed on the pricing page and repeated in the help centre. The trap is not that anyone is hiding it. The trap is that $15 is the number people remember and the crossed-out list is the part they skim.
I run Ecommerce Paradise, and this is the most expensive skim available in this category, because it turns a $180 decision into a $360 one a month after you have already committed.
If You Buy It, Budget for Premium
Standard cannot sync your accounting, run scenarios, or export to Excel. Premium is $30 a month on annual billing, with a 35-day money-back guarantee.
The Published Prices
| Plan | Monthly billing | Annual billing | Cost per year | You save |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | $20 a month | $15 a month | $180 | $60 |
| Premium | $40 a month | $30 a month | $360 | $120 |
| LivePlan Expert add-on | $30 a month | Monthly only | $360 | Nothing |
Annual billing saves 25 percent on both tiers, which is normal for this category rather than remarkable. There is no free trial. You pay first and rely on a 35-day money-back guarantee.
The Expert add-on is worth flagging because it doubles the bill. It buys one-on-one video support and priority assistance, and it is only sold monthly, so it never gets the annual discount. Premium plus Expert is $60 a month, or $720 a year.
The Seven Crossed-Out Features
This is the part worth reading twice, because it changes the real price by 100 percent.
On LivePlan’s pricing page, the Standard card lists seven capabilities with a red cross beside them rather than a tick. Here they are, in the vendor’s own words.
| Marked unavailable on Standard | What you lose |
|---|---|
| Connect to QuickBooks Online and Xero | No link between the forecast and your real books |
| Performance dashboards | No forecast versus actual comparison |
| Real-time profit and cash forecasting | Forecasts stay static rather than updating from results |
| “What if” scenarios | No modelling a bad quarter before you live through one |
| Financial analysis | No automated read on what the numbers mean |
| Market research | No benchmark data for the plan document |
| Export to Excel | Your data cannot leave the platform |
LivePlan’s help centre article says the same thing in list form, adding the Automated Forecast Builder, year-over-year growth forecasting and the LivePlan Monthly Review to the Premium-only column.
The two sources agree, which is worth saying because a lot of coverage of this product claims they do not. They do. The information is public and accurate on both pages.
What the pricing page does do is put $15 in large type at the top of a card whose exclusion list is seven items long and set in grey. That is ordinary pricing-page design rather than deception, and it still catches people, because almost nobody reads a plan card bottom-up.
So plan on $30 a month, not $15. If you buy Standard and discover the sync missing, the 35-day window is your remedy.
What Standard Actually Gets You
Strip out the disputed features and Standard is a guided business plan writer with a forecast builder attached.
You get the LivePlan Assistant, the Idea Canvas, step-by-step plan writing, a financial forecast, collaboration with other people, and the ability to download and print the finished document.
That is a real product and for one specific job it is the right one. If you need a lender-ready business plan document, once, and you are never going to look at it again after the bank does, Standard at $180 for the year does that job.
What it does not do is anything ongoing. No connection to your actual books, no comparison of forecast against reality, no scenario modelling, and no way to get your numbers out into a spreadsheet.
What the Extra $15 a Month Buys
Premium is the version people mean when they describe LivePlan as planning software rather than plan-writing software.
| Premium adds | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| QuickBooks and Xero integration | Your forecast reads from real bookkeeping instead of guesses |
| Actual Results dashboard | Forecast versus reality, which is the only planning that changes behaviour |
| Multiple forecast scenarios | Model a bad quarter before you live through one |
| Automated Forecast Builder | Less manual entry to get started |
| Export to Excel | Your data leaves the platform, which matters when you cancel |
| Market research data | Benchmarks for the plan document |
| Year-over-year growth forecasting | Multi-year modelling rather than a single year |
That is a substantial gap, and it explains the price. Premium is not overpriced at $30. The mistake people make is anchoring on $15 for a product that, at $15, is a document generator rather than a planning tool.
The Three-Year View
Planning software gets bought on the monthly number and paid on the multi-year total, so here is the longer arithmetic at annual billing.
| Configuration | One year | Two years | Three years |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | $180 | $360 | $540 |
| Premium | $360 | $720 | $1,080 |
| Premium plus Expert | $720 | $1,440 | $2,160 |
Premium over three years is $1,080. That is roughly what it costs to form an LLC properly, buy a year of decent hosting and run a small ad test, which is a useful frame for whether the planning software earns its place.
The honest answer for most store owners is that it does not, and I say that as someone with an affiliate relationship with LivePlan. The value case for this product is a loan application or an investor conversation. If neither is happening, a spreadsheet you built yourself teaches you more.
Applying for Financing? Check What Lenders See First
Nav shows your business credit profile on a free tier, which tells you whether a plan document is even the thing standing between you and approval.
The 35-Day Guarantee and No Trial
LivePlan does not offer a free trial. You enter a card, you are charged, and your protection is a 35-day money-back guarantee.
Thirty-five days is generous on paper and longer than most of this category. It is also a support interaction rather than a button, so treat it as a real conversation you will need to have rather than a safety net you can rely on absent-mindedly.
The practical approach is to do the work inside the first month. Build the forecast, connect the accounting if you bought Premium, produce the document you actually needed, and decide before day 30 whether the ongoing subscription earns its keep.
Most people who regret this purchase bought it in a burst of planning enthusiasm, opened it four times, and then paid for eleven more months out of inertia. The guarantee does not protect against that. A calendar reminder does.
Where the Money Would Do More
Worth being direct, since I would rather you had a working business than a nicely formatted plan.
A high-ticket dropshipping store has an unusually simple financial model. Average order value, gross margin after the supplier takes their cut, advertising cost per sale, return rate, and payment processing. Five numbers. You do not need forecasting software to hold five numbers, and building the model yourself is the only way you will actually internalise them.
What you do need, before any of that, is suppliers who have approved you. A forecast built on distributor pricing you have not been quoted is fiction with a chart attached. Getting approved is covered step by step in the supplier outreach guide.
Distributors ask for entity documents before they ask for anything else, so the paperwork comes before the planning. The business formation guide covers what they actually want to see.
And if you are still deciding what to sell, the high-ticket niches list settles that question before a forecast means anything. The model itself is explained in what high-ticket dropshipping is.
Free Alternatives That Cover the Document
If the reason you are here is that somebody asked you for a business plan, the document itself is free.
The SBA’s business plan guide walks through both the traditional and lean formats, with free downloadable examples of each. It is written by the people whose loan programs most small business plans are aimed at, which is a meaningful advantage over a generic software template.
Bplans, the long-running free library of sample plans by industry, is worth knowing about with one caveat: it is now LivePlan’s. The domain redirects to liveplan.com and the library lives at their sample business plans page. The plans are still free to read and download, and they are still the best way to see what a finished plan looks like in your sector. Just be clear that you are browsing the vendor’s own marketing funnel, not an independent resource.
Neither gives you the forecasting engine. Both give you the document, which for most people is the actual requirement.
Who Each Option Suits
| Situation | Buy | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Applying for an SBA loan or bank financing | LivePlan Premium | $360 a year |
| Need one lender-ready document, then done | LivePlan Standard, cancel inside 35 days | $15 to $20 |
| Want to track forecast against real books | LivePlan Premium | $360 a year |
| Struggling with the software and paying anyway | Add LivePlan Expert | $360 a year on top |
| Somebody asked you for a plan document | SBA template | Free |
| Wondering why financing keeps getting declined | Nav free tier | Free |
| Building a normal bootstrapped store | A spreadsheet you build yourself | Free |
What a Lender Actually Wants
Since financing is the one case where this software genuinely earns its price, it is worth being specific about what the document is for.
A lender reading a business plan is checking three things. Whether you understand your own numbers, whether the numbers are plausible against how businesses in your category actually perform, and whether you have thought about what happens when the good case does not arrive.
The formatting is not what they are assessing. A beautifully typeset plan with a hockey-stick revenue curve and no downside case reads worse than a plain document that says “here is what happens if customer acquisition cost is 40 percent higher than I have modelled, and here is how I would respond.”
This is why the scenario modelling is the feature that matters, and why it being Premium-only changes the recommendation rather than just the price. Standard produces the document. Premium produces the answer to the question the lender is actually going to ask.
It is also why the free SBA templates are more competitive than they look. They are structured around what the SBA’s own loan programs assess, which is closer to the target than a generic software template is.
What This Does Not Solve
A plan is a description of a business. It is not a business, and the gap between those two things is where most of this category’s customers get stuck.
I have watched people spend six weeks producing a genuinely excellent forty-page plan for a store that had no supplier approvals, no traffic and no products. The plan was better than the plans of people already making money, which tells you exactly how much the document correlates with the outcome.
The uncomfortable version: planning software is appealing precisely because it feels like progress while being entirely safe. Nobody rejects your forecast. Distributors reject dealer applications, ad platforms burn your budget, and customers do not buy. Those are the activities that produce information, and they are the ones people avoid by planning.
If you find yourself reaching for this tool before you have applied to a single supplier, that is worth noticing. The forecast is not the constraint.
If You Do Buy It, Use It Properly
Assuming financing is real and Premium is the right call, here is how to get the money back out of it.
Connect the accounting integration in the first week, not the fourth. The plan-versus-actual dashboard is the feature that changes behaviour, and it only starts being useful once it has real data flowing into it. Buying Premium and never connecting QuickBooks is buying Standard at twice the price.
Build three scenarios, not one. Your expected case, a case where acquisition costs run 40 percent above plan, and a case where a key supplier relationship falls through. The third one is the scenario high-ticket stores actually face and almost nobody models.
Export to Excel once a quarter regardless of whether you need it. It is a Premium feature, your data should not live only in a vendor’s cloud, and the export takes two minutes.
Then diary the renewal for month eleven and make keeping it a decision rather than a default.
The Renewal Habit, Since This Is a Good Example
One broader point, because planning software is where this pattern bites hardest.
Every subscription in your stack renews at a price nobody re-reads, on a date nobody diarised, for a tool somebody stopped opening months ago. Planning software is unusually prone to it because the work is front-loaded. You use it intensely for three weeks and then not at all.
Keep one list of every recurring charge with its renewal date and its renewal price. Review it quarterly. Twenty minutes, four times a year, and it consistently finds more money than any individual purchasing decision.
Skip the Planning Phase Entirely
We build high-ticket stores end to end, including the supplier approvals and the real numbers behind them, so there is nothing left to forecast in the abstract.
Common Questions
How much does LivePlan cost?
Standard is $20 a month billed monthly or $15 billed annually, which is $180 a year. Premium is $40 monthly or $30 annually, which is $360 a year. The LivePlan Expert add-on is $30 a month and is sold monthly only.
Does LivePlan have a free trial?
No. You pay up front. The protection is a 35-day money-back guarantee, which is longer than most of this category but requires contacting support rather than clicking a button.
Which plan do I actually need?
Premium, if you want the software to do anything beyond producing a document. QuickBooks and Xero syncing, performance dashboards, scenario modelling, financial analysis, market research, real-time forecasting and Excel export are all Premium-only, on both the pricing page and the help centre.
Is LivePlan hiding what Standard leaves out?
No, and it is worth correcting this because plenty of coverage implies otherwise. The seven exclusions are printed on the Standard card with a red cross beside each one, and the help centre repeats them. The information is public and the two sources agree. It catches people because $15 is in large type and the exclusion list is in grey, which is how every pricing page in software is built.
Is the annual discount worth it?
It is 25 percent on both tiers, which is $60 a year on Standard and $120 on Premium. Given the 35-day guarantee applies either way, annual is the reasonable choice if you have decided to keep it. The risk is not the billing term, it is buying software you stop opening in week four.
Is there a cheaper way to get a business plan?
Yes. The SBA publishes free templates and guidance for both traditional and lean plans. The Bplans sample library is also still free, though it is now owned by LivePlan, so treat it as the vendor’s marketing rather than an independent source. Neither includes forecasting tools, but for a document somebody has asked you to produce, they cover it.
Do I need business planning software for a dropshipping store?
Almost certainly not, unless you are applying for financing. The financial model is five numbers, and building it yourself in a spreadsheet is the only way you will genuinely understand it.
The Short Version
Real price is $30 a month, not $15, because the seven features that make it software rather than a template are all Premium-only. That is printed on the pricing page. Read the crossed-out list before the headline number.
Buy it if a lender or an investor is waiting on a document and you want the forecasting to be defensible. Do the work inside the first 35 days either way, so the guarantee is still live when you decide.
Otherwise build the spreadsheet, spend the $360 on supplier outreach or ad testing, and come back to this when there is a financing conversation to have.
Related Articles
LivePlan Review 2026: Do You Actually Need Business Planning Software?
Business Formation for High-Ticket Dropshipping
How to Find High-Ticket Suppliers
Trevor Fenner is an ecommerce entrepreneur and the founder of Ecommerce Paradise, a platform focused on helping entrepreneurs build and scale profitable high-ticket ecommerce and dropshipping businesses. With over a decade of hands-on experience, Trevor specializes in high-ticket dropshipping strategy, niche and product selection, supplier recruiting and onboarding, Google & Bing Shopping ads, ecommerce SEO, and systems-driven automation and scaling. Through Ecommerce Paradise, he provides free education via in-depth guides like How to Start High-Ticket Dropshipping, advanced training through the High-Ticket Dropshipping Masterclass, and fully done-for-you turnkey ecommerce services for entrepreneurs who want a faster, more hands-off path to growth. Trevor is known for emphasizing sustainable, real-world ecommerce models over hype-driven tactics, helping store owners build scalable, sellable, and location-independent brands.
Still deciding what to sell?
Grab the free list of 1,000+ niches that work for high-ticket dropshipping, sorted by category.
Free. Unsubscribe any time.
