What are the differences between the Shopify and Shopify Plus plans?
Shopify is one of the most popular ecommerce website building platforms in the world. The innovative platform allows businesses of every size to create a professional online store with a range of powerful marketing tools available to help grow sales.
In this useful guide, we take a look at the main differences between the Shopify Plus and standard Shopify plans. We’ll also consider additional Shopify packages to help you decided whether your business is ready to upgrade or migrate to the Plus plan. Click on one of the links below to jump to that section:
- Shopify and Shopify Plus: who are they for?
- Shopify and Shopify Plus: what do they do?
- Other Shopify plans
- Frequently asked questions
Shopify and Shopify Plus: who are they for?
The standard Shopify package, also known as regular Shopify or simply the Shopify plan, is designed specifically for small to medium-sized businesses. It is popular with businesses which are still growing and developing. In contrast, the Shopify Plus plan is an ecommerce solution tailored to the specific needs of large enterprise-size online stores who have high annual turnovers and consistently high site traffic.
Both plans are designed to offer store owners access to the Shopify dashboard, editor and help centre. However, Shopify Plus provides an extra level of control, customisation and processing power. Essentially, the Plus ecommerce platform can handle much more than alternative plans and can handle more than 10,000 transactions every minute, amongst other great features!
Shopify and Shopify Plus: what do they do?
Price
All Shopify plans are billed in USD, with standard Shopify costing $79 per month and Shopify Plus the more expensive option starting at $2,000 per month. The Plus pricing plan is designed to be predictable, so will only increase in line with business growth.
Functionality
There are a few key differences in functionality between standard Shopify and Shopify Plus. A great example is the Shopify Flow function, which is exclusive to the premium Plus plan. This allows businesses to tailor customer journeys to suit their specific interests and buying behaviour.
Another difference in functionality between the plans is access to the Shopify Script Editor. This useful feature allows Plus store owners to customise every detail of their online store, including customisable shipping rates.
Customisation
Standard Shopify plans allow businesses to access basic customisation tools through the Shopify editor feature. In comparison, Shopify Plus allows stores to access high levels of customisation for their stores through a feature known as Liquid.
Liquid is the name given to the Shopify theme language, which allows businesses to enter their own coding to change the style of their store. Although, this will require some coding knowledge.
Integration
Both the standard version and Shopify Plus are designed to support multi-channel integration. This can be very useful for many businesses as it allows products to be sold across multiple channels, such as Amazon, eBay and Facebook.
Themes and design
Every Shopify merchant on the standard or Plus plan has access to more than 60 standard store themes, which are designed to offer basic designs for businesses to quickly bring their store online. These can be easily customised within the Shopify editor feature, such as product categories and layouts.
Customer/tech support
If you need assistance with your ecommerce store, both plans provide access to 24/7 customer support. The team is very experienced, and you can get in touch via live chat, phone or email.
In addition to the standard customer service team, Shopify Plus stores are able to access more personalised support. This includes a dedicated Launch Manager, who will be on hand to ensure you are able to quickly get your website up and running. Plus store owners are also assigned a Merchant Success Manager once their site goes live.
Automation tools
There is a range of automation tools available with both plans, such as the Abandoned Cart Recovery feature. This means that if a customer adds products to their basket without checking out, the Shopify platform will automatically send them a follow-up email to see if they are still interested. This could help your business recover a large percentage of these otherwise lost sales.
Transaction fees
This is one of the main benefits of Shopify Plus, as the plan provides significantly lower transaction fees of less than 0.2%. When compared to the standard plan which charges between 0.5% and 2%, this could represent significant savings. For businesses which require support multi-currency transactions, you will be pleased to know that both plans support multi-currency selling.
Other Shopify plans
Lite
If your business already has a website or blog, Shopify Lite will allow you to start selling your products and accept card payments through your existing platform. This is a flexible solution which allows businesses to simply embed a Buy Button on their site and costs $9USD per month.
The plan does not allow you to build on online store, but does enable traders who sell at events and pop-up stores to access their account through the Shopify app.
Basic
This is the cheapest complete Shopify plan and is priced at $29USD per month. The Basic Shopify plan will allow small businesses to showcase and sell their products online, with a choice of up to 20 pre-set themes and basic customisation features.
Advanced
This is the second most premium plan, providing a midpoint between standard Shopify and Shopify Plus, with a price tag of $299USD per month. The main benefits of Shopify Advanced over the standard option are the lower card transaction fees, the custom report builder and flexible calculated shipping.
Frequently asked questions
When should I upgrade to Shopify Plus?
The ideal time to upgrade to the Shopify Plus platform will depend on the size of your business. The standard plan is more than enough for basic ecommerce stores, however if you are a very large enterprise with a high volume of sales and site traffic, Shopify Plus is more closely aligned to your requirements.
How many stores can you have on Shopify Plus?
If your business owns multiple stores, Shopify Plus could be a great solution as it is possible to create up to nine additional stores alongside the main store, and pay a small fee for any extra stores on top of this.
Is Shopify good for big business?
Shopify is an excellent choice for businesses of every size, with large businesses able to access plans specifically tailored to their requirements. If you are a large enterprise, Shopify Plus has a variety of brilliant features which are designed to help thriving businesses grow.
If your business is not quite ready to invest in Shopify Plus, it will be possible to migrate your entire business across to Shopify Plus at a later date. Here at Milk Bottle Labs, we are one of the world's most trusted Shopify agencies and we are committed to helping businesses build and manage their online stores. To find out more about the power of Shopify, please contact our dedicated team today.
