Shopify and Shopify Plus serve various kinds of companies, with Shopify Plus tailor-made to enterprises and bigger operations.

Whereas Shopify is nice for small to mid-sized companies with its affordability and ease of use, Shopify Plus is constructed for high-growth manufacturers that want automation, customized checkout, and enterprise-level assist. I’d suggest Shopify Plus for companies already incomes a gentle $80,000 in month-to-month gross sales.

Right here’s a breakdown of their pricing constructions, together with a breakdown of Shopify Plus options you received’t get with Shopify plans.

A look at Shopify vs Shopify Plus

Shopify Plus vs Shopify function comparability

Wanting on the variations between Shopify and Shopify Plus, Shopify Plus primarily has the whole lot included in the usual Shopify plans and extra. So, I define the important thing variations between the 2 within the desk beneath, together with detailed explanations beneath.

Listed here are some Shopify Plus options that elevate Shopify Plus above Shopify’s primary and mid-tier choices, significantly for big companies or enterprises that require customized workflows, scalability, and superior assist.

1. Devoted account administration and assist

Shopify is understood for its excellent assist — reviewed and validated by its customers. It is likely one of the few e-commerce platforms that present 24/7 assist by way of telephone, stay chat, and e mail — in a number of languages. If these aren’t sufficient, you’ll be able to rent Shopify specialists. All these can be found to you underneath the same old Shopify tiers.

Nevertheless, with Shopify Plus, you might be included within the Service provider Success Program on prime of the assist beforehand talked about, which provides you entry to the next:

• Devoted account supervisor: Personalised assist and steerage for enterprise technique, progress, and troubleshooting
• Precedence 24/7 assist: Entry to precedence buyer assist with assured response occasions, together with technical assist from a devoted workforce
• Launch assist: Help from a Shopify Plus skilled throughout retailer setup or important modifications.

Underneath the Service provider Success Program, you achieve entry to unique sources resembling:

• A personal Fb neighborhood the place you’ll be able to work together with different Shopify Plus customers
• Shopify Plus Companions, a listing you’ll be able to seek the advice of to  preserve you abreast of trade tendencies and assist with staging occasions on your on-line retailer
• Shopify Plus Academy, an unique program with extra superior self-guided sources, together with programs and webinars to boost your on-line retailer’s design, operations, advertising and marketing, and extra
• Entry to unique beta applications

2. Decrease charges with increased transaction quantity

Shopify’s transaction charges are waived when utilizing Shopify Funds for each Shopify and Shopify Funds. Nevertheless, when you go together with one other fee supplier, the next transaction charges apply:

Customary Shopify transaction charges:

• Shopify Starter: 5%
• Fundamental Shopify: 2%
• Shopify: 1%
• Superior Shopify: 0.5%

Shopify Plus transaction charges:

• If utilizing solely Shopify Funds or each Shopify Funds and a third-party supplier: Minimal charges apply and can differ primarily based on location
• If utilizing a third-party supplier completely: 0.20% per transaction

For instance, a enterprise earns round $1 million in annual income and makes use of a third-party fee supplier. Whether it is underneath a regular Shopify plan (say, Superior Shopify, which prices 0.5% in transaction charges),  transaction charges can be $5,000/yr. Underneath Shopify Plus, transaction charges would solely be $1,500/yr (0.15% transaction payment).

3. Customized integrations and personal apps

Underneath Shopify’s customary plans, you have already got entry to greater than 8,000 third-party integrations or apps within the Shopify App Retailer. For Shopify Plus retailers, API integrations have extra flexibility with exterior techniques, resembling ERP or CRM platforms.

For instance, Shopify Plus customers can combine their on-line shops with their present platform techniques, one thing these underneath Shopify customary plans can not do. Shopify Plus retailers can even construct their very own personal apps via Shopify Features.

Some examples of Shopify Plus API options embrace:

• Reward Card: Distinctive reward playing cards that work within the Shopify POS and can be utilized in its place fee technique
• Multipass: Unite buyer logins on your discussion board, web site, and on-line retailer without having to synchronize any buyer database
• Consumer: Add, take away, edit, and retrieve knowledge about Shopify workers accounts

4. Extra theme and checkout customization

A key distinction between Shopify and Shopify Plus is the flexibility to additional customise themes. Underneath customary Shopify plans, you’ll be able to configure your chosen Shopify theme templates utilizing the On-line Retailer 2.0 (OS 2.0) editor, however superior customization is proscribed.

Shopify Plus offers you entry to Shopify’s theme language, Liquid. With Liquid, you can also make backend modifications on the code degree for better management. You can even use headless commerce, which separates your back-end infrastructure out of your front-end buyer touchpoints. You will have extra management over your purchaser and developer experiences, as defined within the picture beneath.

Shopify Plus additionally helps you to customise your buyer’s buy expertise via the checkout web page. Shopify recommends utilizing checkout UI extensions (customized UI or content material you’ll be able to add to the checkout course of and order standing web page), which is barely out there underneath Shopify Plus.

5. E-commerce automations utilizing Launchpad

Shopify’s advertising and marketing instruments allow you to arrange reductions, promo codes, and reward playing cards. With customary plans, it’s a must to do that manually. You’ll be able to schedule when sale campaigns (unique reductions) go stay and once they finish, however you will want to watch them.

Shopify Plus makes promotions simpler with automation via Launchpad. This app lets you schedule and launch occasions resembling promotions, restocks, and product drops. It additionally automates most steps wanted for promotional campaigns, reductions, flash gross sales, and product releases.

Listed here are some duties that made simpler via automation:

• Schedule new merchandise and create campaigns that may launch throughout a number of gross sales channels
• Generate predetermined reductions for particular merchandise or whole collections
• Create and replace gross sales marketing campaign themes
• Return pricing to regular on marketing campaign finish dates

6. A unified dashboard to handle a number of shops

As a result of Shopify Plus lets you might have a limiteless variety of on-line shops underneath one model, you’ll be able to handle all your shops from one location in your Shopify admin dashboard. You can even simply handle workers accounts, person permissions, and automation instruments (like Shopify Movement), in addition to view analytics and reporting.

• Analytics overview: Get a centralized view of your whole group’s efficiency, permitting you to trace and examine key enterprise metrics throughout a number of time durations and all shops in actual time.
• Consumer administration: Handle your workforce effectively from a single hub. Assign roles, management entry, and oversee workers permissions throughout all shops in your group.
• Retailer administration: Achieve a complete view of all of your shops in a single place. Simply take a look at new methods, launch further shops, and leverage present knowledge—resembling customers and first-party apps—whereas seamlessly switching between shops.
• Unified billing with group billing: Shopify Plus consolidates all store-related prices right into a single invoice, making it simpler to handle funds, monitor prices, and streamline monetary operations.

7. Simpler buyer acquisition with Shopify Audiences

You get entry to advertising and marketing instruments that assist develop your viewers with Shopify’s customary plans. Nevertheless, Shopify Plus takes this a step additional by supplying you with entry to Shopify Audiences.

Shopify Audiences lets you discover new prospects by producing an viewers checklist for promoting platforms (at the moment unique to U.S. and Canada places). These audiences are these prone to buy out of your retailer and are routinely exported to your digital promoting accounts (resembling Fb, Google, and Pinterest), the place you’ll be able to launch advert campaigns to focus on these audiences.

In case you are involved about knowledge privateness, exported knowledge from Shopify is transmitted securely and might’t be downloaded from the digital advert platform. The transmitted uncooked knowledge is used to match the promoting platforms’ information after which deleted.

Right here’s how Shopify Audiences assist what you are promoting:

• Increase advert efficiency: Shopify Audiences makes use of superior algorithms to generate high-intent purchaser segments primarily based on hundreds of thousands of buy alerts.
• Scale digital advert technique: Leverage Shopify Audiences throughout Fb, Instagram, Google, and extra to drive efficiency at scale.
• Get correct measurement: Monitor viewers efficiency with exact conversion attribution — instantly inside Shopify. Use real-time knowledge to optimize campaigns, enhance concentrating on, and make knowledgeable advert spend choices.

8. Superior worldwide capabilities

Shopify Plus affords superior worldwide capabilities, permitting companies to handle a number of worldwide shops from a single account. With built-in foreign money conversion, region-specific pricing, and tax configurations, manufacturers can tailor their choices to completely different markets effortlessly.

Moreover, Shopify Plus adapts checkout experiences to native languages and currencies routinely, making certain a seamless and acquainted buying course of for world prospects.

That is performed via Shopify Markets and Shopify Funds. Shopify Markets serves as a centralized instrument for managing worldwide gross sales, permitting companies to implement localized pricing methods and tax changes. In the meantime, Shopify Funds automates real-time foreign money conversion, making certain prospects see correct native pricing and might full transactions of their most popular foreign money.

Associated: Understanding cross-border funds

9. Handle B2B and DTC promoting from one platform

With B2B on Shopify Plus, you’ll be able to promote to wholesale and retail prospects from a single retailer or platform, eliminating the necessity for third-party options or complicated integrations. Shopify Plus gives a versatile, built-in suite of wholesale instruments, together with customized themes, reductions, Features, and APIs, permitting you to tailor the B2B expertise effortlessly.

Whether or not you select to handle each B2B and DTC gross sales from a single blended retailer or create a devoted B2B enlargement retailer, Shopify Plus offers you the pliability to scale. Key options like customer-specific pricing, catalogs, fee phrases, simple reordering, and a self-serve buyer portal guarantee a seamless shopping for expertise for each buyer — with out writing a single line of code.

Pricing distinction between Shopify and Shopify Plus

Pricing is likely one of the key differentiators when evaluating Shopify vs. Shopify Plus. Subscription charges and transaction charges are the primary prices when contemplating pricing.

• Subscription charges: Shopify’s pricing plans are considerably extra reasonably priced in comparison with Shopify Plus, however Shopify Plus affords quite a lot of further options for large-scale companies.
• Transaction charges: Shopify Plus eliminates transaction charges if utilizing Shopify Funds, which generally is a important saving for companies with excessive gross sales volumes.

Right here’s an in depth pricing comparability between Shopify and Shopify Plus:

Shopify’s customary plans is available in three tiers, particularly:

• Fundamental Shopify ($39/month): Consists of all the primary e-commerce options however has restricted reporting. On-line transactions are charged at 2.9% + 30 cents.
• Shopify ($105/month): Offers stronger reporting (resembling first-time vs. returning buyer gross sales), USPS cubic pricing, and a reduced transaction payment of two.6% + 30 cents.
• Superior Shopify ($399/month): Enables you to construct customized stories and present third-party calculated delivery charges at checkout. On-line transactions are additional discounted to 2.4% + 30 cents.

These three plans are appropriate for small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with rising or established on-line shops. Nevertheless, as soon as a enterprise scales to a sure dimension and complexity, Shopify Plus often is the higher possibility.

Shopify Plus’ pricing begins at $2,500/month for a one-year time period and $2,300 for a three-year time period. Other than all of the options out there within the above-mentioned plans, you get:

• As much as 25 headless storefronts, and 9 free enlargement shops
• As much as 200 stock places
• As much as first 20 Shopify POS Professional places are free (or 200 with Shopify Funds)
• Precedence assist
• Superior stories and Shopify QL
• And extra

resolve between Shopify vs Shopify Plus

Selecting between Shopify and Shopify Plus will depend on what you are promoting dimension, gross sales quantity, and progress technique. Listed here are key components to think about when deciding:

1. Enterprise dimension and gross sales quantity

• Shopify: Greatest for small to mid-sized companies making lower than $1M/yr in income.
• Shopify Plus: Designed for large-scale companies incomes $1M+ per yr or processing high-order volumes.

Rule of thumb: In the event you’re processing over $80,000 value of on-line gross sales a month,  Shopify Plus might prevent cash on transaction charges and supply scalability.

2. Customization and checkout management

• Shopify: Restricted checkout customization (primary branding).
• Shopify Plus: Full management over checkout with Shopify Scripts (customized pricing, reductions, delivery guidelines).

In the event you want superior checkout options like customized reductions, multi-currency assist, or tailor-made person experiences, Shopify Plus is value contemplating.

3. Automation and effectivity

• Shopify: Fundamental automation instruments.
• Shopify Plus: Superior automation with Shopify Movement (auto-tagging, order routing, stock administration).

For companies trying to scale with out hiring further workers, Shopify Plus saves time via automation.

4. Multi-store and worldwide enlargement

• Shopify: Helps a number of languages however lacks multi-store administration.
• Shopify Plus: Permits a number of storefronts for various areas, currencies, and pricing methods.

In the event you’re increasing globally, Shopify Plus affords higher localization choices.

5. Assist and account administration

• Shopify: Customary 24/7 assist by way of chat and e mail.
• Shopify Plus: Devoted Service provider Success Supervisor for strategic progress and troubleshooting.

In the event you want precedence assist and a direct level of contact, Shopify Plus is a greater possibility.

6. Value and return of funding (ROI)

• Shopify: $39–$399/month + transaction charges.
• Shopify Plus: $2,500/month with decrease transaction charges.

Improve to Shopify Plus if the decrease transaction charges offset the upper value. Keep on Shopify if what you are promoting isn’t hitting the income threshold but.

How can I improve to Shopify Plus?

Shopify doesn’t have a self-serve Plus improve. You’ll want to speak to a Shopify Plus advisor. Go to the Shopify Plus contact web page, fill out the shape (primary enterprise particulars and progress objectives), and count on a follow-up from a gross sales rep inside 24-48 hours.

When coping with a Shopify Plus advisor, ask about contract flexibility. Some manufacturers negotiate higher primarily based on quantity. When you lock in a contract, you get entry to a Devoted Account Supervisor.

In case you are already on Shopify, they may information you thru a seamless improve with zero downtime. In the event you’re migrating from one other platform (Magento, BigCommerce, WooCommerce), Shopify gives white-glove assist for a clean transition.

As soon as you might be correctly onboarded and your retailer efficiently migrates, your Service provider Success Supervisor goes to be your go-to for progress methods.

Ceaselessly Requested Questions (FAQs)

Click on via the questions beneath to search out the solutions to probably the most usually requested questions on Shopify and Shopify Plus.

Is it value upgrading to Shopify plus?

It will depend on what you are promoting dimension and desires. In the event you’re producing $1M+ in annual income, want customized checkout, superior automation, B2B performance, or multi-store administration, Shopify Plus is value it. In any other case, Shopify Superior ($399/month) could also be more cost effective.

What number of manufacturers use Shopify plus?

As of January 2024, over 48,000 manufacturers throughout 175 international locations use Shopify Plus. Notable corporations embrace Heinz, Allbirds, and Steve Madden.

How previous is Shopify Plus?

Shopify Plus was launched in February 2014, making it 10 years previous as of 2024. It was launched as an enterprise-level answer for high-growth and large-scale companies needing extra customization, automation, and assist than customary Shopify plans.

Who’s Shopify finest suited to?

Shopify is finest suited to small to mid-sized companies on the lookout for an easy-to-use, scalable e-commerce platform with built-in instruments for promoting on-line, in-store, and throughout a number of channels. It’s preferrred for entrepreneurs, startups, and rising manufacturers that want a dependable, low-maintenance answer with out in depth technical experience.

How do you qualify for Shopify Plus?

There are not any strict necessities to qualify for Shopify Plus, but it surely’s usually really useful for companies producing $1M+ in annual income or dealing with high-order volumes. To improve, you have to contact Shopify Plus gross sales for a session.

Shopify vs Shopify Plus: Conclusion

Selecting between Shopify and Shopify Plus in the end will depend on the size and desires of what you are promoting.

In case you are working a small to mid-sized enterprise with restricted customization wants and a tighter funds, Shopify’s customary plans are possible the very best match. Nevertheless, if what you are promoting is scaling quickly, increasing internationally, or wants extra superior e-commerce options, Shopify Plus is an funding that can repay within the type of improved efficiency, higher assist, and extra sturdy customization choices.

So, when you’re doing $1M+ in gross sales and scaling quick, Shopify Plus isn’t simply an improve—it’s an effectivity multiplier.