Skip to content
Beginning as an emerging eCommerce platform starting in 2006, Shopify is now the go-to choice for ecommerce stores of all sizes. Everything from startups to global enterprises like Uppercase magazine and Hiut Denim Co. use Shopify for their businesses.
Since then, Shopify has upped the ante with Shopify Plus, an enterprise-level platform that’s designed for growing businesses. With the ability to handle over 10,000 transactions per minute, Shopify Plus is intended for high-volume sales and offers a cost-effective option for high-growth businesses.
Shopify Plus has everything a business needs for success, but it comes at a cost. If you’re considering upgrading to Shopify Plus, look at all the pros and cons.
Table of Contents
Shopify Plus
Launched by Shopify in 2014, Shopify Plus is the highest tier of the eCommerce platform and offers its full range of features to extend the effectiveness, scalability, and support to meet the changing demands of enterprises.
It’s recommended for businesses to upgrade to Shopify Plus when they’re looking for more customized product offerings and headless commerce options without the high price tag and long delivery time frames. Many brands have leveraged these capabilities to success, including Tesla Motors, Budweiser, and Kylie Cosmetics.
What Are Shopify Plus’s Benefits?
Shopify Plus adds an array of desirable features to the basic Shopify plans.
Integrated Systems
Flexible APIs and Shopify Partners seamlessly integrate with the tools and systems you already use for your business, including a variety of enterprise resource management systems, customer relationship management systems, and more.
Shopify Plus also supports headless architecture to allow customization for virtually every aspect of your business without the need for a cookie-cutter front-end.
International Sales Support
International ecommerce is becoming more and more popular. Opening up your store to multiple countries and currencies can be challenging, however, especially if you’re trying to provide personalized or geo targeted promotions to only certain countries.
Shopify Plus offers up to nine store clones with different currencies, all run from the same centralized platform. You can customize each store to create highly targeted marketing campaigns and promotions.
Lower Transaction Fees
All Shopify plans have transaction fees for each sale, which can really add up. Shopify Plus may have a higher monthly cost, but it comes with the benefit of lower transaction fees. Shopify Plus charges only 0.15% per transaction, compared to 0.5% with Shopify Advanced. Consider the difference this can make with hundreds of thousands – or even millions – in sales each month.
In addition, if you take payments with Shopify Plus’s payment platform, you don’t get any transaction fees.
High-Volume Sales Support
Many ecommerce businesses struggle with high-volume sales periods, such as Christmas and Black Friday. A high volume of shoppers and site traffic can cause the site to crash, leading to frustrated customers, lost sales, and lost profits.
Shopify Plus is designed for growth and ensures high-volume sales support. The platform can handle over 10,000 transactions per minute, so you can rest assured that your store is ready for the holiday rush or big-time promotions.
Shopify Plus Feature Highlights
Launchpad
Launchpad is a useful feature that supports product launches, flash sales, product upgrades, new collection launches, and more. You can take full control over your promotions and launches, including setting a start and end date, triggering themed campaigns, and automating pricing changes. This is an exclusive app for Shopify Plus.
Shopify Flow
Shopify Flow is another exclusive feature that automates your day-to-day tasks to make your business more efficient and streamlined. You can automate and track a variety of tasks, including tracking workflows and filtering tasks to ensure everything is prioritized. You can also monitor the performance of your automated tasks to reevaluate and improve them as needed.
Multi-Channel Integration
Shopify Plus is intended to support growth and integrations for different sales channels, such as Amazon and social media. You can integrate with social media to set up messaging and interactions from the same centralized platform. You can also set up each channel with trusted payment gateways, including PayPal and Google Pay, to make customers more comfortable shopping with you for the first time.
Shopify Admin
Shopify Plus comes with the Shopify Organization Admin, an upgrade from the Shopify Admin feature included with other plans. With this feature, you can manage multiple stores in one location and operate them on an organizational level. Instead of changing things individually with each store, you can make bulk changes organization-wide to save time and hassle. Several other functions are included, such as adding new users, managing orders and customers, and more.
Wholesale Store
Opening ecommerce to wholesale is becoming more popular for ecommerce stores, but adding a wholesale channel is even more complicated. You need to run different stores simultaneously, including managing customers and orders, but Shopify Plus makes this easier.
Shopify Plus includes a gated wholesale storefront that’s separate from the ecommerce store, but managed from the same centralized platform. Both retail and wholesale storefronts can be customized, scaled, and run at the same time, ensuring that you deliver the best service to both B2B and B2C customers. Several wholesale features are included, such as discount triggers, exclusive products, and a password-protected storefront.
Shopify Scripts and Script Editor
Shopify Scripts allows you to customize your store to improve the user experience (UX), such as personalizing the checkout process to provide volume or bulk discounts, BOGO sales, dynamic pricing, and VIP customer service. Shopify Plus gives you the Script Editor to edit custom scripts run by the platform, so you don’t need to add another app.
Bulk Account Inviter
The Bulk Account Inviter is a beneficial tool that allows you to invite a high number of existing customers to activate accounts on your store. If you already have a storefront on Shopify or another platform with an existing customer base, this feature makes it easy to maintain that customer base with Shopify Plus. You will also be able to send automated notification emails to your customers, complete with Sender Policy Framework to verify your email address.
Shopify Plus Pricing
Shopify Plus has many excellent features, but the cost may be a concern for some businesses. Currently, Shopify offers three flat-rate plans that offer different features and are intended for businesses at different stages of growth.
- Basic Shopify: $29 per month
- Shopify: $79 per month
- Advanced Shopify: $299 per month
All of these plans offer important features like multi-currency selling, abandoned cart recovery, and fraud analysis. But like most things, the more you pay, the more you get. If you want elevated features, such as professional reports, Shopify is better than Basic Shopify, for example.
Shopify’s plans are competitive, and the platform runs promotions to save at signup or try out a free trial to see if the features are worth the benefits for your specific business.
Now, there’s Shopify Plus. Unlike the previous plans, Shopify Plus pricing requires a quote from Shopify. Plans start at $2,000 per month or 0.25% of your sales, with a ceiling of $40,000. So, the more you sell, the more you pay in monthly fees for the service.
With that high price comes all the features you need to manage your business on the organizational level, rather than managing one individual storefront.
Is Shopify Plus Worth It?
Whether Shopify Plus is worth it depends on your business’s current demand. If you are building a business online from scratch, then the basic Shopify plan is the best choice. The platform will provide you with all you need to create a beautiful and functional storefront with highly secure payments. As you grow, you can consider other Shopify plans.
Shopify Plus is a big jump from Advanced, both in price and functionality, but it may be worth it for enterprise businesses looking to scale. Here are some factors to consider:
Your business’s annual revenue: Shopify Plus comes with a pricey monthly fee, so it’s important to make sure you can afford it. Ideally, businesses should upgrade when they hit $1 million in annual revenue, which is when the extra features with Shopify Plus are important.
Staff accounts: Shopify’s other plans only offer so many staff accounts, but Shopify Plus has unlimited staff accounts. If your business is growing rapidly and you need more staff in your store, as well as control over permissions, Shopify Plus is the way to go.
Time wasted: As your business grows, it can become challenging to keep up with all the mundane tasks. Shopify Plus allows you to automate various processes to save time and focus on what really matters – growing your business.
These are just a few of the reasons businesses upgrade to Shopify Plus, but there are numerous other benefits. Ultimately, making the decision to switch to Shopify Plus comes down to what features you really need vs. what your business can afford to pay for the service.
Make the Switch to Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus is an enterprise-level platform that offers exclusive features, advanced analytics and support, and high-volume capability for enterprise-level businesses. If you’re looking to scale and you need more customization and personalization, automation, and sophisticated app integration, consider what Shopify Plus can do for you.
About the Author
Sean Richards is the VP of Strategy & Partnerships for Vincit, a React Native Consulting and App Development company. Prior to Vincit, Richards provided business development, digital marketing strategy, and partnership development at several reputable companies and marketing agencies in both California and Arizona. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Design Management from Arizona State University.
