Comparing Shopify vs Shopify Plus boils down to all the features that are only accessible under the Shopify Plus plan. Both plans work under our top pick for ecommerce platform, Shopify, and are designed to work for different businesses.
In general, we recommend:
- Shopify: Best for small businesses—averaging 10–100 orders a month, with annual revenues of under $800,000
- Shopify Plus: Best for midsize businesses, large enterprises, international and multicurrency online stores—those earning at least $1 million in annual sales revenue ($75,000 and above monthly sales revenue)
Our Expert Take: Upgrading to Shopify Plus is more than worth it based on the features alone. However, we don’t recommend upgrading unless you are earning at least $1 million in annual sales revenue. Shopify recommends that businesses generate around $2 million in revenue per year before considering Shopify Plus.
When it comes to Shopify’s standard subscriptions, consider upgrading to the next tier if the third-party transaction fees that you pay become greater than the difference between what you pay monthly for your current plan and the next plan up.
Our comparison guide focuses on the key differences between Shopify and Shopify Plus and explains what you get in Shopify Plus that you don’t with basic Shopify plans.
Shopify Plus vs Shopify At a Glance
Our Quick Take: Shopify’s standard plans range from $39 to $399 a month and work perfectly for small businesses with varying business needs. These plans are suited for growth and scalability while keeping prices budget-friendly. On the other hand, Shopify Plus, which starts at $2,000 a month, is perfect for large enterprises earning millions in annual revenue. Think Kylie Cosmetics, Rebecca Minkoff, Good American, Staples, Heinz—brands that have stable, high revenue.
Shopify | Shopify Plus | |
|---|---|---|
Best for | Small businesses | Midsize and large enterprises; global businesses |
Pricing | $5–$399/month | Starts at $2,000/month |
Transaction Sales Fees | 0.5–5% per transaction | 0.15–0.30% |
Contract Requirements | Monthly, Annual, Biennial | Monthly, Annual, Biennial |
Online Stores | 1 | Up to 25 |
Customer Support | 24/7 live chat, email and phone | 24/7 live chat, email and phone; dedicated account manager |
Shopify vs Shopify Plus Pricing
Shopify’s standard and Shopify Plus plans include the following:
- Unlimited products
- Up to 1,000 inventory locations
- Sell in 133 currencies
- Multilingual store translation
- Point-of-sale features: Shopify POS and POS Go
- Gift cards
- Online sales channels
- Fraud analysis (when using Shopify Payments)
- Manual order creation
- Marketing tools (abandoned cart saver feature, discount codes, and more)
- Customer support (24/7 live chat and phone support in English; 24/7 email support in multiple languages)
All plans (standard and Plus) share the same Shopify interface (admin and dashboard), site themes (available in the Shopify Theme store), and apps (from the Shopify App store).
Shopify’s standard plans comes in three tiers, namely:
- Basic Shopify ($39/month): Includes all the main ecommerce features but has limited reporting. Online transactions are charged at 2.9% + 30 cents.
- Shopify ($105/month): Provides stronger reporting (such as first-time vs returning customer sales), USPS cubic pricing, and a discounted transaction fee of 2.6% + 30 cents.
- Advanced Shopify ($399/month): Lets you build custom reports and show third-party calculated shipping rates at checkout. Online transactions are further discounted to 2.4% + 30 cents.
Read our detailed guide to Shopify pricing and fees.
There is also a social selling option called Shopify Starter you can subscribe to for $5/month. It doesn’t let you have a standalone online store. Read our review of Shopify’s $5/month starter plan.
Shopify Plus’ pricing starts at $2,000/month. Aside from all the features available in the above-mentioned plans, you get:
- Up to 25 public storefronts
- Up to first 20 Shopify POS Pro locations are free
- Priority support
- Advanced reports and Shopify QL ShopifyQL Notebooks is an app that enables you to query, explore, and visualize your business data in Shopify.
- Access to headless commerce
- And more
Shopify vs Shopify Plus: Key Differences
If we are looking for the difference between Shopify and Shopify Plus, Shopify Plus essentially has everything included in the standard Shopify plans plus more. So, we outline key differences between the two below, focusing on what Shopify Plus provides that you cannot find in basic Shopify plans, namely:
- Lower transaction fees
- Merchant success program with a dedicated account manager
- Better storefront management
- Automation and exclusive apps
- Full customization flexibility when it comes to storefront and backend solutions
1. Shopify Plus has lower transaction fees
Shopify’s transaction fees are waived when using Shopify Payments. This holds true for both Shopify and Shopify Plus. However, if you choose to go with another payment provider, the following transaction fees apply:
Standard Shopify transaction fees:
- Shopify Starter: 5%
- Basic Shopify: 2%
- Shopify: 1%
- Advanced Shopify: 0.5%
Calculate your fees easily using our Shopify fees calculator.
Shopify Plus transaction fees:
- If using only Shopify Payments or both Shopify Payments and a third-party provider: Minimal rates apply and will vary based on location.
- If using a third-party provider exclusively: 0.15%–0.30% per transaction
Let’s say, a business earns around $1 million in annual revenue and uses a third-party payment provider. If it continues to be under a standard Shopify plan (say, Advanced Shopify which has 0.5% in transaction fees), its transaction fees would be $5,000/year. Under Shopify Plus, its transaction fees would only be $1,500/year (0.15% transaction fee).
2. Shopify Plus includes a dedicated account manager
Shopify is known for its outstanding support—reviewed and validated by its users. It is one of the two ecommerce platforms we have reviewed (the other one is BigCommerce) that provide 24/7 support via phone, live chat, and email—in multiple languages. If these aren’t enough, you can hire Shopify experts. All these are available to you under the usual Shopify tiers.
With Shopify Plus, you are included in the Merchant Success Program on top of all the stellar support previously mentioned. Under the program, you are assigned a dedicated account manager who serves as your launch engineer during your store setup and migration—from solution engineering to providing ongoing support.
Under the Merchant Success Program, you gain access to exclusive resources such as:
- A private Facebook community where you can share experiences with other Shopify Plus users
- A directory of Shopify Plus Partners you can consult with to help keep you up to speed with industry trends and help stage events for your online store.
- Access to the Shopify Plus Academy—an exclusive program with more advanced self-guided resources like courses and webinars to help you improve your online store’s design, operations, marketing, and more
- Access to exclusive beta programs
3. Shopify Plus provides unlimited staff accounts
Depending on the Shopify plan you subscribe to, you can assign up to 15 users or staff accounts to help manage your store, aside from you. Under Shopify Plus, you are given unlimited staff accounts so you will not encounter problems assigning whole teams to access and manage your online store.
4. Shopify Plus allows for more API integrations
Under Shopify’s standard plan, you already have access to more than 8,000 third-party integrations or apps in the Shopify App Store. For Shopify Plus merchants, API integrations have more flexibility. For example, Shopify Plus users can integrate their online stores with their existing platform systems, something those under Shopify standard plans cannot do. Shopify Plus merchants can also build their own private apps through Shopify Functions.
Some examples of Shopify Plus API solutions include:
- Gift Card: Unique gift cards that work in the Shopify POS; consider this as an alternative payment method
- Multipass: Unite customer logins for your forum, website, and online store—without the need to synchronize any customer database
- User: Add, remove, edit, and retrieve data about Shopify staff accounts
Some examples of existing platforms Shopify Plus users can integrate their stores with include:
- Product information management (PIM)
- Enterprise resource planning (ERP)
- Inventory and order management (IMS and OMS)
- Customer relationship management (CRM)
- Third-party logistics (3PL)
- Warehouse management software (WMS)
- Global fulfillment partners
5. Shopify Plus allows for more theme and checkout customization
One of the major differences between Shopify and Shopify Plus is the ability to further customize themes. Under standard Shopify plans, you can customize your chosen Shopify theme templates using the Online Store 2.0 (OS 2.0) editor, but there isn’t much you can do.
With Shopify Plus, you are given access to Shopify’s theme language, Liquid. Using Liquid, you can make backend changes at the code level for greater control. You can also use headless commerce, which separates your back-end infrastructure from your front-end customer touchpoints. You have more control over your buyer and developer experiences, as explained in the image below.
(Source: Shopify)
Another notable difference is the ability to customize your customer’s purchase experience through the checkout page. Shopify recommends checkout UI extensions (custom UI or content to the checkout process and order status page). This feature is only available under the Shopify Plus plan.
Shopify Plus merchants also have access to the checkout.liquid asset that allows for a complete self-contained design outside the store theme. However, Shopify has announced that the Information, Shipping, and Payment pages will be preferred to the checkout.liquid layout beginning Aug. 13, 2024. Access to checkout.liquid will no longer be available for new stores.
6. Run automated promotions, flash sales, and campaigns with Shopify Plus
Shopify has great marketing tools that let you set up discounts, promo codes, and gift cards. However, you only get to do this manually under the standard Shopify plans. To some extent, you can schedule when sale campaigns (exclusive discounts) go live and when they end, but you will still need to be on top of things.
With Shopify Plus, these sales promotions get easier with automation using Launchpad. This exclusive Shopify Plus app automates most steps needed for promotional campaigns, discounts, flash sales, and product releases.
Here are some tasks that can easily be done through automation:
- Schedule new products and create campaigns that can launch across multiple sales channels
- Generate predetermined discounts for specific products or entire collections
- Create and update sales campaign themes
- Return pricing to normal on campaign end dates
(Source: Shopify)
7. Easily clone stores for multicurrency selling under Shopify Plus
Standard Shopify plans are actually pretty decent for international (multicurrency and multilingual) selling, but merchants need to manually create an online store for each country they sell. There are also plenty of cross-border tools in the App Store to help change language and currency options. In short, multilingual and multicurrency selling can work under standard plans—with a bit of work.
Shopify Plus just makes it easier. For one thing, you can clone your store and create up to nine versions of it and customize it for specific audiences. This feature is very helpful for wholesalers and international stores. Moreover, it can support multiple languages and currencies, so translating your website is easily done.
8. Shopify Plus gives a unified dashboard to manage multiple stores
Since Shopify Plus lets you have an unlimited number of online stores under one brand, you can manage all of your stores from one location in your Shopify admin dashboard. Aside from all your stores, you can easily manage staff accounts, user permissions, and automation tools (like Shopify Flow), as well as view analytics and reporting. Under standard Shopify subscriptions, you are only allowed to manage one public storefront.
A look at how Shopify users can set up automation using Shopify Flow (Source: Shopify)
9. Shopify Plus has exclusive apps
The regular Shopify plans already include a robust set of features that are enough for small businesses to run their online store. Large online stores, however, will definitely benefit from Shopify Plus’ exclusive apps.
Here are a few that are only available for Shopify Plus merchants:
- Wholesale channel: Create a separate (but unified) storefront from wholesale customers
- Shopify Flow: Automate workflows like updating inventory, segmenting customers, and more
- Launchpad: Schedule and roll out events like promotions, restocks, and product drops
- Script Editor: Create personalized experiences with code that changes your store for certain customer segments
- Bulk Account Inviter: Ask large groups of users to activate accounts on your store (super helpful for post-migration)
- Transporter app: Ingest customer, product, and other data into your store
10. Shopify Plus works with leading analytics companies for trends
Shopify gives more than 10 types of reports. All Shopify plans, including Shopify Starter, have access to key financial reports, but other reports, such as inventory, behavior, and profit reports, vary per subscription plan.
You can see which reports are available per plan below.
Analytics & reports | Shopify Starter | Basic Shopify | Shopify | Advanced Shopify | Shopify Plus |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Analytics page | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Finances reports (including taxes & payments) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Fraud reports | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Order reports | ✓ (2 of 6) | ✓ (2 of 6) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Live View | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Acquisition reports | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Inventory reports | ✕ | ✓ (5 of 7) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Behavior reports | ✕ | ✓ (5 of 6) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Marketing reports | ✕ | ✓ (1 of 5) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Sales reports | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Retail sales reports | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Profits reports | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Customer reports | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ (7 of 9) | ✓ | ✓ |
Custom reports | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ |
While it seems at first glance Shopify Plus doesn’t give an advantage when it comes to reports and analytics, the ability to set filters to create custom reports helps Shopify Plus owners get the average order value (AOV) over time, which provide valuable insights on store performance and help you make more strategic and informed decisions on marketing.
One key difference is how leading analytics companies work with Shopify Plus to keep you updated with the latest trends in your store.
(Source: Shopify)
11. Find new customers easily with Shopify Plus
Shopify’s standard plans already give you marketing tools that help grow your audience. However, Shopify Plus takes this a step further by giving you access to Shopify Audiences.
Shopify Audiences is a tool that helps you find new customers by generating an audience list for advertising platforms (currently exclusive to US and Canada locations). These audiences are those likely to purchase from your store and are automatically exported to your digital advertising account (such as Facebook, Google, and Pinterest), where you can use them to launch ad campaigns that target that audience.
If you are worried about data privacy, exported data from Shopify is transmitted securely, and can’t be downloaded from the digital ad platform. The raw data that’s transmitted is used to match the advertising platforms’ records and then deleted.
Shopify vs Shopify Plus Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Yes, it is certainly worth upgrading to Shopify Plus based on the features alone. However, we don’t recommend upgrading unless you are earning at least $1 million in annual sales revenue. Shopify recommends that businesses generate around $2 million in revenue per year before considering Shopify Plus.
If your annual sales revenue hits $1 million or more, your business will be better equipped to handle more revenue and sales volume with the Shopify Plus plan. It offers more flexibility, better support options, and exclusive resources designed to support higher levels of growth.
Shopify is a fully hosted ecommerce platform that lets you start, manage, and grow an online store. It offers three different pricing options from $39 to $399 a month, with a social selling option at $5 a month. Shopify Plus is an enterprise ecommerce solution for high-growth merchants and brands, earning millions in annual revenue.
Bottom Line
Shopify Plus definitely pulls out all the stops you need to drive your online business forward and upward, but with a high price tag. Unless your business is earning millions in revenue, we recommend you stick with any of the standard Shopify plans until you achieve high-revenue growth.
Shopify plans already give you all the need to grow your business. Shopify is our top-ranking ecommerce solution, and you won’t be disappointed with any of their plans. They are designed for scalability, and you wouldn’t feel hindered in every step.
However, once you hit that million, don’t hesitate to invest and upgrade to Shopify Plus. It will be more than it’s worth in investment.
