Shopify vs Shopify Plus: What Are The Pros & Cons [Mar, 2023 ] (2023)

Among the multiple platforms out there, Shopify vs Shopify Plus are widely praised as two of the outstanding eCommerce platforms. However, not everyone really arrives at a radical understanding of them. Hence, in this article, LitExtension – #1 Shopping Cart Migration Expert will be providing you:

• An overview of Shopify Plus vs Shopify
• Detailed analysis of notable features (Pricing Plans, Customer Support, and eCommerce features)
• List of winning Shopify and Shopify Plus websites to get inspiration
• Exclusive Shopify Plus benefits you should know about
• How to upgrade to Shopify Plus

Shopify vs Shopify Plus – Overview

What is Shopify?

Shopify is a front-runner in the eCommerce market. This all-in-one solution is famous for a wealth of top-notch eCommerce features, well-designed themes, and great support. Currently hosting over 4 million websites, Shopify is one of the best eCommerce platforms for businesses of all sizes.

Want to take a closer look at all the features that Shopify offers? Check out our quick Shopify review below!

What is Shopify Plus?

Shopify Plus inherits all the best features that Shopify offers. However, the main difference between these two platforms lies in the target customers it aims at. Shopify is a wise choice for small, medium, and large businesses in light of its affordable cost and efficiency. Whereas, Shopify Plus is the icing on the cake for enterprise-level businesses as they need a more high-powered platform to cater to their enormous business.

What are the differences between Shopify vs Shopify Plus?

Before getting into the detailed comparison, let’s take a quick look at the main differences between Shopify vs Shopify Plus.

Shopify vs Shopify Plus – Pricing Plans

The first part of our comparison between Shopify Plus vs Shopify is pricing packages. Please bear in mind that, once you purchase either 3 standard Shopify plans or Shopify Plus, you can immediately activate Shop Pay to speed up your customer’s checkout process.

The difference between Shopify vs Shopify Plus pricing is presented in the following:

Shopify Pricing

One of the most essential Shopify costs you need to take into consideration is Shopify pricing packages. As a Shopify user, you have a couple of options to choose from for the best suitability.

Basically, there are four main pricing plans from Shopify that you can take a look at:

Shopify Starter plan: with only $9/month, you can start promote and sell your product links on social media, sms and email without owning a full online store. Shopify Starter enables you to access a dashboard to keep track of your business performance chronologically. If you want to upgrade your store, you can choose superior plans like Basic Shopify, Shopify or Shopify plan.

Basic Shopify plan: this plan is a great solution for eCommerce newbies and small store owners. It has all the basic features like unlimited product upload, report, blog and marketing automation. Especially, Shopify let you use the Basic Shopify plan for $1/month in 3 months if you buy this plan after the trial period.

Shopify plan: when it comes to growing your business, Shopify plan is what you should opted for. It brings you all the solid features from Basic Shopify plus more advanced reports and lower fees regarding third-party transaction and shipping.

Advanced Shopify plan: this is the ultimate plan made for huge stores. With Advanced Shopify, you can launch your big business smoothly and save your budget. In particular, you only have to pay the lowest fees for transaction via third-party services and shipping.

In summary, the more you pay, the more helpful features and benefits you will get in Shopify, namely professional reports, a point-of-sale system, or third-party calculated shipping rates. These features surely will facilitate your business management.

For more information about how much money you should prepare to open and maintain a Shopify store, please visit our evaluation of Shopify pricing here.

Shopify Plus Pricing

While you can have a crystal clear view of how much is a Shopify store with 3 standard plans, with Shopify Plus cost, direct negotiation is required.

You can compromise the deal with Shopify Plus by tapping the “Get Pricing” button and fill in the contact form to get the exact quotation.

The question “How much is Shopify Plus?” is hard to get the precise answer. However, generally, retailers will pay at least $2000 per month based on their sales volume. When you achieve $800,000/month in sales, their charging system will turn into a revenue-based model. You’ll pay 0.25% as Shopify Plus fees, but not more than $40,000 of your monthly revenue.

The transaction fee on Shopify Plus can be negotiated in accordance with your sales volume and the reliability of your store.

With Shopify Payments, in the United States, you’ll pay 2.15% + $0.30 for each transaction on domestic Visa and MC. For AMEX and international cards, you will have to pay an extra fee of 1%. Other 3rd party payment gateways, such as PayPal, 2Checkout, Skrill, will charge you 0,15% of an extra fee. Please note that these fees vary by country.

Shopify vs Shopify Plus – Support

One of the key reasons that more than 1,4m e-store owners trust Shopify vs Shopify Plus to set the very first brick for their businesses is the platform’s excellent customer service. Along with fantastic help centers that are always kept up-to-date for you to search for information, you can get assistance from users and experts all over the world by joining its huge forum.

Shopify Support

Shopify also arms you with 24/7 live support via phone, email, and live chat. The live chat is definitely the profound difference between Shopify and other eCommerce platforms.

Shopify Plus Support

Shopify Plus offers you the same support as Shopify. However, store owners will also receive exceptional merits with this version of Shopify.

What you receive from Shopify Plus is unwavering personal support called Launch Manager, who will get your business ready within 90 days or less. Then Merchant Success Manager will take center stage in fully exploiting your potential with expert strategy and support. Apparently, they make a substantial contribution to your success with detailed guidance on how to optimize Shopify Plus, strategic coaching, and prediction coupled with analysis of industry trends.

Shopify vs Shopify Plus – Themes & Design Flexibility

On both Shopify vs Shopify Plus, 100+ themes are available on its Theme Store. Bear in mind that, besides 10 free themes, the rest of the themes’ prices range from $140-$180. Don’t forget to check out the top-recommended Shopify Themes here if picking a suitable one is too difficult for you!

Shopify Themes

Shopify allows you to change the theme and employ Shopify Liquid – an open-source template language to edit HTML or CSS. This means you need a basic understanding of Liquid coding to make the custom edits. Don’t despair, step-by-step instructions are always ready for you.

Shopify Plus Themes

As a matter of fact, big sellers also benefit from top-quality Shopify features in terms of theme and design flexibility. However, with the assistance of Shopify Plus, the Launch Manager is in charge of writing code and making custom edit for you. In this case, a dedicated Launch Manager will save enterprise-level businesses hundreds of bucks and a great deal of time.

Another superiority of Shopify Plus is that it allows you to utilize Script Editor to customize your checkout page, which is not available on other Shopify plans.

Defined as small pieces of code, Shopify Scripts let you create personalized experiences for your customers in their cart and customize Shopify checkout page.

There exist 3 sorts of scripts you can generate, which are Line item scripts, Shipping scripts, and Payment scripts. You can:

• Change the discount for specific products by both percentage and fixed discounts;
• Run promotions;
• Offer prices based on the volume;
• Alter, hide, reorder shipping options and price and payment gateway methods.

The personalized checkout page will bring a more satisfactory experience to your customers on your site.

Shopify Plus also enables merchants to deploy bot challenges on the checkout page.

Once you activate this, customers will be required to prove that they are human before they purchase their orders. Bot challenges are essential when you stage an online event to avoid robots or opponents’ clicks.

Shopify vs Shopify Plus – eCommerce Features

In the next part, let’s take a look at the most outstanding eCommerce features between Shopify vs Shopify Plus including Internationalization, Wholesale channel, Integration, eCommerce automation tools, and Analytics.

#1 Internationalization

Multi-Currency

Understanding the demand to attract international customers of Shopify merchants, since 2019, Shopify has launched the ability to sell in multiple currencies with Shopify Payments. This means your online store can change the currency displayed for your items depending on where the customer is. Additionally, customers can get refunds in local currency.

This brilliant idea opens the door for merchants who intend to sell globally since it facilitates customers’ payment process. Fortunately, the list of supported currencies is now up to 133 ones, so almost everyone can access your products without any barrier.

While your customers have to select the proper currency manually on Shopify, Shopify Plus automatically selects the appropriate currency for buyers based on their IP addresses.

What’s more, Shopify Plus allows you to customize the rounding rules on your store after the system converts the origin price into a target currency. Besides, your customers can freely make the payment with local payment methods instead of creating an account on a new one. This is a plus point of Shopify Plus if you are considering entering the international market.

Omnichannel (Shopify Plus function)

Omnichannel plays a great role in providing customers with a seamless experience on your website, social media accounts, brick-and-mortar stores, and more. By diversifying your “storefronts”, Shopify Plus merchants have multiple ways to approach their customers, leading to a strong relationship between the brand and the customers.

With more than 100 social media channels together with over 80 online marketplaces, you’ll have the chance to enhance the visibility of your products in front of more potential customers. Especially, regarding omnichannel, Shopify Plus can help you win more clients by automating messages and emails thanks to Shopify Flow.

Tax

• Shopify

Shopify eases your worry of tax with a built-in tax engine that is able to carry out the common sales tax calculations automatically. You can also set tax overrides to deal with specific tax regulations and particular circumstances.

Even though Shopify applies various default updated sales tax rates, you still have to check it again to make sure that they are up-to-date and correct for your situation. Shopify allows you to override them whenever necessary.

However, Shopify will not file for you or remit your sales taxes. To administer your Shopify sales tax you may need to register your company with the state or federal tax authority. Shopify’s calculations and reports will be a great help when it’s time to file and pay your taxes.

• Shopify Plus

On the other hand, Avalara AvaTax automatically calculates and files tax on Shopify Plus plan for you.

Avalara AvaTax is a paid service that is only available for Shopify Plus plans. After registering for Shopify Plus, you can purchase Avalara AvaTax. Once you activate Avalara, you can find it in Shopify admin to start charging taxes. Avalara AvaTax is compatible with both Shopify POS on Android and iOS devices.

Avalara AvaTax is helpful in:

• Collect accurate and up-to-date tax codes from more than 12,000 jurisdictions
• Modifying a set of tax rules to satisfy your business’s demand.
• Producing accurate reports of your business’s taxes

Despite some minor disadvantages, merchants report that Avalara AvaTax is cost-effective.

#2 Shopify Wholesale Channel

Wholesale largely contributes to the increase of your sales and the expansion of your business. Luckily, Shopify enables you to sell your products wholesale. It offers a variety of ways to wholesale your products, from using discount codes to opening another store.

You have the same solutions of wholesale applied for Shopify Plus. However, you can benefit more from this version as it can help you to build up a wholesale channel separate from your Direct to Customer (DTC) sales. Since this channel is based on your existing store, you display the same products at exclusive discounts to wholesale customers. You can also sell wholesale-only products on this channel.

Besides customizing the pricing of wholesale products, Shopify Plus brands can even create percentage discounts. Plus, you can distribute customers into smaller groups and set a specific price for each one.

Another advantage of the Shopify Plus wholesale function is that you have the freedom to create separate pages to display the FAQs, policies, and terms when it comes to wholesale. This helps your customers browse the information they are looking for without accessing another website.

Specularly, you’re able to control wholesale orders before invoicing as well as automate wholesale customer signups. Hence, you don’t need to spend much time concerning the order management and the credentials of your customers. This would save you a lot of time and you can focus on other marketing campaigns that drive your business forward.

Highlighted Shopify Plus features:

• Manage B2B and B2C orders from one single control panel.
• If you already have a Shopify store, Shopify Plus can synchronize entities like inventory, orders, and customers between two stores.
• Set price and quantity increments flexibly depending on different products or variants.
• Integrate your business to 3PL, OMS, ERP, and CRM.

#3 Integration

Any merchants can expand their stores on Shopify vs Shopify Plus by employing API to integrate with several apps.

API plays an integral role in interoperating with other systems and platforms to add innovative features to Shopify and Shopify Plus.

All Shopify APIs are rate-limited to remain stable and fair for every merchant. There are slight differences between Shopify vs Shopify Plus in integration. You can figure out with the table below:

With the doubled API call limit, Shopify allows you to seamlessly integrate some third-party platforms you’re already using such as Product information management (PIM), Enterprise resource planning (ERP), Inventory, and order management (IMS and OMS)…

#4 eCommerce Automation Tool (Shopify Plus Sales Features)

Shopify Plus exclusively offers you two management tools that can make a huge difference from Shopify. With the assistance of these tools, your business catering process becomes exceedingly straightforward and effective.

• Launchpad

Launchpad is an automation tool that allows you to handle tons of event tasks to launch your business impressively. You can use Launchpad to schedule, coordinate and execute events such as sales, product drops, and restocks of inventories. You can monitor the performance of an event progresses by viewing the real-time, analytic dashboard of the app.

• Shopify Flow

Basically, Shopify Flow enables you to set up automation for all facets of your business, including customer service, marketing, inventory tracking, order management, risk management, and more. In a couple of minutes, you can personalize the most common workflows of Shopify Plus on your own. You can select templates grouped by different areas of your business by visiting Shopify Flow’s Templates page. It’s easy to pick and start simplifying your workload straight away. With the benefit that Flow offers, you can effectively cater to your business with less time since it automatically set everything for you.

#5 Analytics

Shopify serves its own dedicated analytic dashboard. The live reports will illustrate a broad picture of your up-to-date business’s sales and customer data. The higher fee you pay the more detailed reports will be provided. Take a brief look at the table below to know how many reports you have with your current plan.

#6 Headless Commerce

If you are a big fan of the digital world, you may probably hear about “Headless commerce”, a rising star that is promised to develop at a rapid growth in the years to come.

Keeping up with this latest trend, Shopify Plus headless eCommerce comes with numerous features that you would be interested in:

• Enjoy a high level of customizability
• Integrate your store with business and content management systems like ERP, PIM, CRM, and CMS.
• Enhance the quality of your website’s visual with the GraphQL Storefront API.
• Give you the freedom to bring your own tech stack to your website.
• Get support from experienced Shopify Plus Partner

Successful Shopify Plus Stores & Shopify Stores

Exclusive Shopify Plus Benefits

When you are in the Shopify enterprise team, you also get special benefits of Shopify Plus which make other store owners green with envy.

#1 Exclusive Apps

Besides Wholesale channel, Shopify Flow, Launchpad, Script Editor, you can also take advantage of Transporter app and Bulk Account Inviter while using Shopify Plus.

#2 One-of-a-kind Community

Shopify Plus is regarded as a pass for you to:

• Shopify Plus Academy;
• Facebook Community;
• Meetups and events by invitation only.

#3 Merchant Success Program

First, Shopify Plus assists you to clearly see your business plan and vision.

Next, the team will provide you with necessary support through webinars, online courses, training videos from industry experts and even checklists so that you can accelerate your business growth and reach the set goal.

How to Upgrade to Shopify Plus?

There exist two methods to painlessly upgrade from Shopify to Shopify Plus.

The first one is to migrate with an automated tool.

The World #1 Shopping Cart Migration Expert – LitExtension is always yourself to help you upgrade your whole Shopify website with all of its important data. You can effortlessly perform the transfer from Shopify to Shopify Plus on your own by setting up the migration on cm.litextension.com.

In case you are snowed under with a massive pile of work and have no time to move your Shopify store to Shopify Plus, All-in-one service is right at your fingertips. The team will be in charge and keep you up-to-date with the process.

The other way is to contact Shopify. The team will get your store up and running within 90 days.

FAQs about Shopify vs Shopify Plus

1. What is the difference between Shopify and Shopify plus?
The biggest difference between Shopify and Shopify Plus is pricing. Shopify comes with 3 transparent pricing packages. Meanwhile, you need to negotiate with Shopify Plus experts besides spending at least $2000 for the upgrade.

2. Is it worth upgrading to Shopify Plus?
Yes. Shopify Plus offers you superior features and functionalities. If your online business has grown out of what Shopify has to offer, it’s time to upgrade to Shopify Plus. The extra support and unique features of Plus make it worth the investment for your business.

3. When should you switch to Shopify Plus?

Once you hit over $1M in annual revenue, you can consider switching to Shopify Plus. The platform is designed for scalability so you can continue to grow your eCommerce store.

Conclusion

We’ve come a long way to review Shopify vs Shopify Plus. Now is the time for the final verdict!

In the final analysis, it’s apparent that the three core plans of Shopify are certainly an appropriate choice for you to kickstart your online business if you’re catering to small, medium, and large businesses. The reason is that it’s quite easy to approach and it offers every necessary thing for your business to thrive at reasonable prices. Besides, you can try out Shopify for 3 days free of charge to see what this platform has to offer.

At the same time, Shopify Plus is the cream of the crop in terms of its professional support, high customizability, and powerful functionalities. Besides, Shopify Plus also gets its name on the scoresheet thanks to the implementation of the latest technology like Headless commerce.

Even though the price is much higher than Shopify’s core plans, it’s totally cost-effective since Shopify Plus minimizes the time, labor force, and workload. With all of these features above, Shopify Plus arms your enterprise-grade business with the optimal factors to sustainably develop.

If you are planning to upgrade from Shopify to Shopify Plus, LitExtension is always here to give you a hand. With our help, re-platforming is a piece of cake. We offer an advanced automated migration service that transfers all your data to another platform quickly, with a high level of security and accuracy.

To experience yourself, free Demo Migration is available. Spend a couple of minutes to check how the process works. Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.

You can also check out our LitExtension blog and join our Facebook Communityto get more eCommerce tips and news.