Our comprehensive breakdown of the differences between Shopify and Shopify Plus should help you get closer to figuring out if it’s the right time.

Shopify was founded in 2006 and quickly evolved to become one of the leading ecommerce platforms globally. They launched “Shopify Plus” in 2014. A decade later, Shopify offers 4 different price plans with features and support for a variety of businesses, from solo entrepreneurs to global enterprises.

Shopify, Shopify Advanced and Shopify Plus

When we say “Shopify vs Shopify Plus” we’re really talking about three tiers of pricing: (1) Shopify, (2) Shopify Advanced, and (3) Shopify Plus. We’ll sort of lump Shopify and Shopify Advanced in together for this comparison because they’re part of the same pricing ecosystem.

There's some key differences between the first two tiers (Shopify and Shopify Advanced) in more detail in our blog Shopify vs. Shopify Advanced.

First, let's take a closer look at the type of business that Shopify Advanced and Shopify Plus are aimed at.

Who is Shopify Advanced for?

In short, Shopify Advanced is designed for businesses that are “growing” and need more advanced features and capabilities to support their operations. You’ll get more staff user accounts, slightly cheaper transaction rates and increased monthly costs.

If your ecommerce business is turning over about £135,000 per month it’s basically a free upgrade. That said, we’ve seen instances where companies make less but need a Shopify Advanced plan for the included features.

Learn more about other differences between the first two tiers (Shopify and Shopify Advanced) in more detail in our blog on Shopify vs. Shopify Advanced.

Who is Shopify Plus for?

Shopify Plus is a step (or two) beyond Advanced. It’s built for businesses that require advanced customisation, higher API limits, better platform support, or tools for scaling globally.

Larger enterprises with high sales volumes, complex needs, and a requirement for advanced customisation or support would be well suited to Shopify Plus. Or, those that are growing into those shoes.

One Reddit user sums it up pretty succinctly: “If you have at least $1 Million annual revenue you could consider it. If you have more than $7 Million and still don’t have Plus there is almost absolute certainty that you are paying more than you need to, and switching to Plus should be a priority.”

But there are some caveats to this. Shopify Plus is going to cost a lot more but that should be justified by the increased capabilities and support designed for large enterprises. 

Let's take a look at the standout features of Shopify Plus, how much they cost, and explain how they could benefit your business.

For a quick rundown of Shopify Plus you can check out their Shopify Plus platform demo video. You can also access Shopify Plus Academy to learn more about the specific features you’re interested in implementing.

Shopify Plus Cost Structure

At starting rates of $2,300 USD, it’s important to understand when Shopify Plus is worth it. 

Conversions to GBP and USD prices are correct at time of writing.

Shopify’s own pricing information states Plus will cost businesses “$2,300 USD/month or a variable platform fee for more complex business structures”. Which essentially means a basic monthly cost of $2.3k (or £1,813) unless your business makes more than $800,000/£630,760 per month.

After this 800k threshold a rate of 0.35% for every eligible translation is applied, starting at $3,500 USD. It’s important to note that these charges are only applied on a month-by-month basis.

So, for seasonal ecommerce businesses you could pay $3,500 USD or more during your busiest months. However, if you don’t go over the threshold during a month the rate would drop back down to lowest at $2,300 USD.

According to Shopify, this aims to support the expansion of your business and guarantee top performance for your stores, and it makes sense to us. Pay more when business is good but if things slow down you’re not tied to unaffordable platform rates.

But $2,300 is still steep compared to Shopify Advanced, so what does this extra cost get you with Shopify Plus, and is it worth it for your business?

What you get with Shopify Plus

1. Reduced transaction fees

Shopify’s transaction rates can vary depending on international purchases, the account the payee uses, and even the payment gateway your business uses. For this example, we’ll just focus on domestic purchases using Shopify’s own payment gateway.

Shopify’s standard plan users can expect to pay 1.7% + 25p for every standard domestic transaction. Shopify Plus users, on the other hand, will be subjected to a 1.3% + 25p fee on these transactions.

But what does this actually mean for businesses like yours? In this example we’ll look at how much more Shopify Plus would be, on an annual basis, compared to their standard plan’s fees. We’ll help you figure out if the costs are worth it after that.

Shopify Plus Pricing Example

Let’s say your business makes about £1.3m in ecommerce sales every year and you’re subscribed to the Shopify standard plan. This means you’d never go above the $800k USD threshold and into the increased plan tiers.

This is a real-life example, one of our actual clients was in this very position.

Over the year, they were paying £995 in plan costs and £23.2k in transaction fees at a total cost of  around £24,200 per year.

On the Shopify Plus plan, based on the same annual income, they’d pay an additional twenty-thousand pounds in plan rates (£21.8k total) but would save £5.5k in transaction fees. 

The total annual cost of Shopify Plus would be about £39.6k. That’s £1.2k more a month, or £15.3k more every year.

Which sounds like a lot, so what makes it worth it? That depends on how well your current store is meeting your needs and the needs of your customers.

2. Customising your checkout

This is perhaps Shopify’s biggest selling point for their Shopify Plus package. And genuinely, it’s one that might make the biggest difference to your business depending on your current conversion rates and average order value.

Improving your ecommerce checkout experience can easily have the biggest positive impact on revenue for the least amount of effort. Is customising your checkout going to be worth it?

What you’ll need to know:

• Total number of sessions that reached checkout (year)
• Total number of sessions that converted (year)
• Your average order value (AOV)

If your current checkout drop-off rate exceeds the industry benchmark (which is about 30% by the way), then you’ve got a significant potential loss in sales. Customising your checkout can be one way to gather some of this lost revenue.

We can predict the return on investment (ROI) of improving your checkout experience with a few simple sums.

First, figure out how much revenue you might be missing out on each year by taking sessions that reached the checkout minus the number of sessions that converted. This will give you a % of checkout sessions that didn’t convert. 

If this is over 30%, you’ve got room for improvement. If it’s under 30%, there still might be room for improvement.

Let’s say you had 36,000 checkout sessions in the past year, but only 22,500 of those sessions actually converted. This means that 37.5% of checkout sessions did not convert. 

That’s nearly 40% of users that had something in their basket, looked at the checkout, but decided not to buy. Right at the last minute.

If your average order value is £35 (x 13500, the number of abandoned checkout sessions) then this amounts to £472,500 in missed revenue annually.

Obviously, it’s highly unlikely (almost impossible) for a store to achieve a 100% conversion rate on checkout sessions. But small percentages can make a huge difference. Remember, at the lower end of the scale, Shopify Plus is only £15.3k more than Shopify’s standard plan annually. 

Your improved checkout would only have to increase conversions by 2% to make up this difference. That’s an extra 450 sales per year, an increase from 22.5k to 22.95k over the year.

We asked Shopify what sort of conversion rate uplift might reasonably be expected with Shopify Plus after improving the checkout experience. Here’s what they said:

 “On average, our merchants see an increase in conversion between 5% and 35% when they choose to use Shopify Plus. However, we understand that not everyone may see this increase.”

They’ve got an interesting case study about how Peepers increased conversions and average order value, and you can learn more about building a unique checkout in Shopify’s checkout extension apps guide.

In conclusion, if there’s room for improvement throughout your checkout journey, then the upgrade to Shopify Plus could definitely be worth it. Consider these things:

1. Optimising your checkout will still take time and effort.
2. Real-world usage still might not increase, conversion rate depends on way more than just a smooth checkout process.
3. Shopify Plus has some other great benefits that might make it worth it either way.

3. Access to up to 9 expansion stores (and a B2B store)

A Shopify expansion store is an additional store created by a business to support its growth and expansion strategies.

These stores can serve various purposes depending on the business. Often we see expansion stores used to target new international markets but we’ve seen instances where ecommerce businesses use expansion stores to launch new product lines and brands too.

Shopify Plus allows users to create up to 10 different storefronts with individual control over domains, themes and more. You can learn more about how to set up new storefronts in Shopify’s ‘Organization Settings’ documentation.

If you replicated the same setup using different stores on Shopify’s standard plan your business would pay up to 10x more per month in plan fees (before transaction fees are even applied). 

That’s before you allow for the added costs of expensive third-party solutions and time-consuming workarounds.

Shopify Plus B2B store

The new-ish ‘B2B on Shopify’ offers a suite of features built directly into the core of Shopify, giving you access to many features of the online store that you can use to customise the wholesale buying experience.

It’s different from Shopify’s “Plus Wholesale Channel” that’s been around for a while. You can read more about how B2B storefronts are different from the “Plus Wholesale Channel” in Shopify’s blog.

We’ve already written about how Shopify have been strengthening their B2B offering so we’ll keep it short here. 80% of B2B transactions are expected to take place digitally by 2025. 

Businesses that have a well established B2B or DTC offering, and those that are just dipping their toes, can make a huge difference to their sales success with the features included with Shopify Plus.

Just like checkout optimisation though, you’ll still need to (1) spend time and effort building your B2B storefront, (2) launching a B2B store does not automatically mean you’ll generate revenue, and (3) there are still other benefits that might make Shopify Plus worthwhile.

4. Automated processes 

Automated processes on Shopify Plus should help your business reduce the amount of time spent on operational management and free up resources to focus the work that matters.

Manual tasks turn into automated workflows with Shopify Flow. You can automate tasks like order management, customer segmentation, and inventory updates by using triggers, conditions, and actions. Connectors also integrate and automate the apps you use on your store.

According to the Web Manager at Scandinavian Designs: “It’s allowed us to run three Shopify stores without hiring an employee for each one”. 

Launchpad is designed for scheduling campaign launches, including theme changes and price discounts, then roll changes back after the promotion is finished. Set start and end times, automatically apply theme changes and even launch new products on a timer.

As with the other features we’ve covered, the usefulness of Shopify Plus’ automated workflows depends very much on how much time and effort you’re capable of spending on getting them up and running.

5. Priority Support for 24/7 technical help

Shopify Plus support gets mixed reviews but everyone’s experience is subjective. All Shopify Plus users used to get access to a dedicated merchant success manager but that was changed a while ago.

Shopify themselves claim: “Our Plus merchants are fully supported through their lifetime on the platform - on both a strategic and technical level. Merchants will have access to a team of knowledgeable Plus specific experts to provide feedback, best practices and strategic advice regarding e-commerce & how to’s.”

In short, don’t expect overwhelming support from Shopify themselves, but that’s why experienced agencies like Digital Six exist; to offer you holistic ecommerce support that’s specific to your actual business needs.

When to Upgrade to Shopify Plus

There are a few reasons why you should absolutely move to Shopify Plus and then some others that depend on your business’ specific situation. 

You should definitely move to Shopify Plus If your business generates more than £6.5 million in revenue. It’s highly likely that you’re paying more than necessary in transaction fees alone.

If your annual sales are less than £1 million, there are only a few scenarios where Shopify Plus would almost definitely be beneficial:

1. You require multiple expansion stores.
2. You need the B2B feature that cannot be implemented otherwise.
3. You need editable checkout.liquid and checkout scripts, although these features are being replaced by Functions and Extensions.

But then there are a bunch more reasons that you should also consider:

1. When you require more control over your store’s design, checkout experience, and backend processes.
2. Automation to potentially reduce the need for bigger teams doing repeated manual tasks.
3. Integration and API Limits: If you require higher API call limits and deeper integrations with other business systems (e.g., ERP, CRM).

Shopify Plus FAQs

What is Shopify Plus for?

Shopify Plus is Shopify’s top-tier ecommerce platform plan. It does the same basic things as Shopify does but has added features, functionality and support for scaling businesses. It’ll allow you to sell things, just like Shopify, but it’ll help your business sell to more people by making it easier for you to (1) reach international audiences, (2) create smooth user experiences with less staff resource.  

What type of clients are on Shopify Plus? 

There’s typically a size of business that works really well with us. Turnover and being at a critical point of growth.

Why pay £2300 p/month? 

It’s a big step up. Firstly, there’s generally a size of business where Plus is needed. More support from Shopify themselves. There is a revenue point where it’s cheaper/the same than other plans. With the benefit of Shopify Plus’ amazing features. Being able to update the checkout is the key feature here. Up to nine expansion stores. B2B functionality for volume discount, net payment terms.

Is Shopify Plus worth it?

Your fixed monthly cost goes up with Shopify Plus, but you save on each transaction. If you’re making at least £1 million a year, it’s worth a look. And if your annual revenue tops £7 million and you’re not on Plus yet, you’re almost certainly overspending. Make the switch to Plus a priority.

What is a certified Shopify Plus agency?

A certified Shopify Plus agency is a specialised agency recognised by Shopify for its expertise in developing and optimising Shopify Plus stores. These agencies provide a range of services, including custom development, design, marketing, and strategic consulting, to help businesses achieve their full potential on the Shopify Plus platform.

Over to you

Deciding whether to upgrade to Shopify Plus hinges on your business's specific needs and growth stage. For businesses with significant turnover, the advanced features, lower transaction fees, and enhanced support offered by Shopify Plus can provide substantial benefits.

From customised checkouts and automated processes to multiple expansion stores and dedicated B2B functionality, Shopify Plus is designed to support and scale larger enterprises. If your annual revenue exceeds £700k, it's worth considering.

For those surpassing £6.5 million, upgrading to Shopify Plus should be a priority to avoid overspending and to fully leverage the platform's capabilities for optimal growth and efficiency.

Some useful links

If Shopify Plus isn't quite right, check out Shopify vs. Shopify Advanced.

Our Shopify Plus development services are right here when you need expert insight.

The r/Shopify Sub-Reddit can be pretty useful.