Introduction
Shopify is where most online sellers start. Shopify Plus is the top tier, built for big brands with demanding setups.
Both sit on the same foundation. The admin, the app store and the product tools look and work the same way.
The gap shows up in checkout control, automation, system limits and support. Plus gives you more room to customise and a named account manager.
Standard Shopify means Basic, Grow or Advanced. People often treat Advanced as “Plus lite”, but it isn’t. Plus is a separate product sold on custom contracts.
Most businesses don’t need it. This guide helps you work out whether yours does.
Shopify vs Shopify Plus Pricing: How Much Does Each Cost?
Let’s start with money, since that’s the first thing most people want to know. Prices below are in US dollars. Pound prices differ, so check Shopify’s site for current UK rates.
Shopify Basic, Grow, and Advanced Pricing
Basic costs $39 a month, or $29 on annual billing. Grow costs $105, or $79 annually. Advanced costs $399, or $299 annually. Paying yearly takes 25% off.
Card fees drop as you move up. Shopify Payments charges 2.9% plus 30 cents online on Basic, 2.7% on Grow and 2.5% on Advanced.
Using an outside payment provider costs extra. Shopify adds 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus.
Picture a shop taking £50,000 a month through an outside provider. On Basic, that extra 2% comes to £1,000 every month.
Staff seats are another sticking point. Basic doesn’t allow extra admin users, so adding a colleague means moving up to Grow. Advanced allows up to 15 staff accounts.
Shopify Plus Pricing and Contract Terms
Shopify Plus starts at $2,300 a month on a standard three-year agreement. Shorter terms cost more. Depending on contract length, the price runs from $2,300 to $2,500 a month.
Very large merchants may also pay fees tied to their revenue. Ask Shopify’s sales team for a quote based on your own numbers.
Plus has the lowest card rates of any Shopify plan. Exact rates depend on your country and contract.
The subscription isn’t the whole bill. Migration, custom development, apps, and themes all cost extra, and first-time Plus buyers often forget them.
So compare Shopify Plus pricing with your full ecommerce spend. If Plus replaces three paid apps and a separate wholesale site, the gap closes fast.
Shopify vs Shopify Plus: Feature-by-Feature Comparison
Now for the Shopify Plus features themselves. Some matter a lot. Others only matter at a certain size.
Store Customisation and Design
Every plan comes with themes, the theme editor and the app store. For most shops, that’s plenty.
Plus gives your developers more control over the storefront and checkout. They can build journeys that standard plans simply block.
Launchpad also comes with Plus. You can schedule product drops, sales and theme changes ahead of time, so nobody has to hit publish at midnight.
Plus includes unlimited staff accounts too. Growing teams tend to hit the standard caps sooner than they expect.
Advanced Reporting and Analytics
Basic and Grow cover the essentials: sales, customers and traffic. Advanced adds custom reports, which is enough for most growing brands.
Plus gives larger teams more data access. It also helps you compare performance across several markets.
Think about how you use data now. If you check a handful of reports each week, Advanced will do the job.
If your finance and marketing teams need figures broken down by region or store, Plus starts to make sense.
Checkout Customisation and Shopify Functions
Checkout is the biggest gap between the plans. On standard plans, you can change the logo, colours and fonts. That’s about it.
Plus allows you to create custom fields, upsells, and thank-you pages right from checkout.
Shopify Functions allow developers to modify how your store handles discounting, shipping, and payments. A business could provide varying loyalty discounts, or selectively hide particular shipping choices for certain geographic locations.
Standard plans are able to use Functions via pre-built apps. Plus plans are allowed to build their own.
This is especially important if your discounting/shipping logic isn’t standard. A more streamlined checkout process can also increase conversion rate, and that will translate into revenue at scale.
Automation with Shopify Flow
Shopify Flow completes repetitive tasks without writing a single line of code. You select a trigger point and tell Shopify what to do after that.
For example, you can have one flow that automatically tags your most loyal customers and another one that marks orders that look suspicious and need checking before dispatch.
Shopify Flow is available for free on Basic, Grow, and Advanced plans, while Plus offers more functionality and limits.
You’ll feel the difference once you’re handling hundreds of orders a day. At that point, automation saves your team hours each week.
A shop with 50 orders a day will manage fine on standard Flow. Plus comes with its own suite of business-to-business selling capabilities. Business accounts can be set up, special pricing, discounts and terms established.
Your wholesale customers login, see their special pricing and reorder within minutes. All this is managed within a single backend for retail and wholesale.
If you don’t go with Plus, most retailers end up creating a separate wholesale store or rely on apps. Both do the job, but both add costs.
Shopify has also expanded access to some B2B functionality into lower plans. Be sure to check out the capabilities of your existing plan.
If wholesale is a large part of your income, then this one reason alone might warrant a switch.
Multi-Store Management and International Selling
Standard Shopify charges a separate subscription for every store. Running several brands or regional shops gets expensive quickly.
Plus includes a set of expansion stores under one contract. You manage them together and share staff access between them.
International selling works on every plan through Shopify Markets. You can sell in local currencies and languages from a single store.
Plus becomes useful when each region needs its own catalogue, branding or legal setup. Separate storefronts then give you cleaner control.
A UK brand might start with one store selling across Europe and North America. Later, it may split into regional stores on Plus.
API Limits, Integrations, and Scalability
An API is how your other software talks to Shopify. Limits decide how fast those tools can send and receive data.
Plus has much higher limits than standard plans. That helps when you connect your store to accounting, warehouse or stock software.
Large catalogues sync faster and fail less often. Plus also copes better with traffic spikes, such as Black Friday.
Most stores turning over under £1 million a year never hit the standard limits. Bigger operations often do.
Plus, merchants also get priority support and a dedicated success manager. That person helps with launches, integrations and technical problems.
Who Should Choose Standard Shopify?
Standard Shopify suits most businesses. If you sell mainly to consumers through one store, you probably belong here.
Basic fits new stores and product tests. Grow fits small teams with steady sales.
Advanced fits bigger merchants who want custom reports and lower card fees. It also suits brands with lots of orders but simple operations.
You get flexibility too. You can pay monthly or yearly, and no multi-year contract holds you in place.
In the Shopify Plus vs Shopify Advanced decision, Advanced is often the smarter buy. A well-run Advanced store can easily beat a badly run Plus store.
Plus only pays off if you use what it offers. Paying for a custom checkout you never build wastes money.
Who Should Choose Shopify Plus?
Plus suits businesses that have outgrown the standard plans. These merchants often run several stores, sell wholesale or need checkout rules that no app can handle.
It also suits brands that link their store to large business systems, such as accounting or stock software. Heavy traffic during big sales events is another strong signal.
Companies leaving enterprise platforms such as Adobe Commerce or Salesforce Commerce Cloud sometimes land on Plus too. Compare total costs before you commit.
The benefits of Shopify Plus show up in daily operations. Fewer workarounds, faster launches and tighter control save time and money.
The dedicated success manager helps as well. You get a named contact who knows your account and can escalate problems quickly.
When Should You Upgrade to Shopify Plus?
Don’t upgrade just because your sales hit a milestone. Upgrade when your current plan starts costing you time or money.
Here’s a simple test. Add up your plan fee, apps, payment fees and the staff hours you spend on manual work.
Then request a Plus quote and compare the two totals. Sometimes the gap is small. Sometimes Plus costs far more, and staying put is the better call.
Certain problems point towards Plus. Your team may spend hours on tasks that Flow could automate, or you may need checkout changes that standard plans block.
Maybe you pay for several store subscriptions and struggle to manage them. Or your integrations keep hitting system limits.
A common rule of thumb says to consider Plus once annual sales reach the low seven figures. Treat it as a rough guide only.
A simple operation can stay on Advanced for years. A complex one may need Plus much sooner.
Talk to a Shopify Plus partner before you decide. They can model your costs, plan the migration and flag problems early.
Frequently Asked Questions
01. What is the difference between Shopify and Shopify Plus?
Shopify Plus is the highest plan of Shopify, offering more customizability and scalability. The usual Shopify plan is suitable for small and medium companies. Shopify Plus provides custom checkout, multi-store options, increased limits and dedicated support.
02. How expensive is Shopify Plus?
Shopify Plus costs a minimum of $2,300 per month with a three-year contract. For other plans, prices vary. Some big enterprises will have to pay Shopify Plus based on revenue. Ask Shopify Plus for an offer.
03. Is Shopify Plus really worth its price?
The answer is yes when you require some unique features that are not included in other plans such as custom checkout, expansion stores or built-in B2B capabilities. Otherwise, paying extra isn’t really worth it.
04. What is the difference between Shopify Plus and Shopify Advanced?
Advanced is the premium standard solution at $399 per month, or $299 if billed annually. Plus has custom checkout, increased limits, better automation possibilities, multiple stores, and a success manager.
05. Is it easy to migrate from Shopify to Shopify Plus?
In most cases, yes. However, you will have to do it with care, since products, customers, and themes will transfer automatically, but not if you require custom checkout development or integration.
06. Should I get Shopify Plus to start B2B sales?
Not necessarily. If business-to-business commerce is not a major part of the business, smaller wholesale sales can be managed via an app or cheaper solutions.
