Shopify Versus Shopify Plus: What Does Upgrading Get You?
Upgrading to Shopify Plus is an investment starting at around $2000/month; but gives you significantly more features, control and functionality compared with other Shopify plans. This enterprise-level system allows merchants to put more energy into business growth whilst the technicalities and infrastructure of their site are taken care of. Shopify Plus is proven to be hugely beneficial to high growth and well-established stores, sites with a desire for specifically customised stores, and businesses that simply want to push more energy into growth.
If you’ve been considering an upgrade to Shopify Plus, it could be a worthwhile investment. To help you decide whether Shopify, Shopify Plus, or perhaps another eCommerce platform is the right fit for you, we’ve complied all the differences and benefits into the below article.
Choosing Between Shopify and Shopify Plus
Shopify recently reported fluctuations with respect to eCommerce merchants switching between Shopify and Shopify Plus. Some storefronts found that the extra features of Shopify Plus were too much, while other eCommerce businesses needed more from their Shopify experience. This begs the question: What is the difference between Shopify and Shopify Plus?
Shopify and Shopify Plus share a lot of similarities, and both reign as the number one choice for certain companies based on need. Generally speaking, the two offer the same services, with the main difference being the costs involved and the size and scale of them.
Shopify vs Shopify Plus Pricing
Shopify provides a range of solutions for online shops, designed to meet the needs and budget of any retail business. Its plans start from just $29/month - perfect for small startups - then increase up to $299/month when your store starts generating more success and requires a Shopify Advanced plan.
Shopify Plus, on the other hand, starts at $2000/month - a considerable difference when compared to a standard Shopify plan. Stores with larger revenues reaching a threshold of $800k/month change to a revenue-based pricing model with 0.25% of their monthly revenue being charged instead of $2000/month.
Benefits of Shopify Plus
In a nutshell, Shopify Plus offers the following benefits over Shopify’s standard subscription:
- Greater Customisation
- Increased Customer Capacity
- Limit Potential Restrictions
- Standardised API Modules
- Better Management Capabilities
- Payment Fee Benefits
- Launchpad and Shopify Flow
- Sell More Broadly
- Additional Support
Greater Customisation
Although Shopify out-of-the-box provides various opportunities for customisation of themes as well as by using third-party apps, Shopify Plus allows for customisation to be taken to the next level and creates a personalised customer journey through your site. With access to script editing, the checkout page can be customised in ways that were unavailable beforehand, allowing you to personalise the design to your brand and boost conversions. We worked closely with LABFRESH to create a bespoke single-page checkout to fulfil their needs.
Increased Customer Capacity
One of the biggest upgrades that accompanies a Shopify Plus membership is the ability to handle a much higher volume of transactions. Shopify Plus can take up to 10,000 checkouts per minute, which is vital for larger eCommerce stores. It can handle such a significant number because Shopify's system is built on cloud architecture that is backed by load-balancing systems, ensuring storefronts always have the necessary bandwidth for influxes of customers. Of course, this heightened capacity for customer load means nothing if a site loads slowly.
Limit Potential Restrictions
With unlimited bandwidth, Shopify Plus assists growing businesses in handling large amounts of traffic, as well as the ability to deal with sudden traffic influxes which might occur during flash sales. As mentioned above, it can deal with around 10,000 peak orders per minute, as well as 4 million hits per second – so your site won’t be crashing and disrupting sales. This explains how some top Shopify Plus sellers manage to sell out of their releases in record time.
Shopify shout about the success of one of their Shopify Plus users, Good Amercian, who sold a staggering $1million worth of products on their very first day in business. Whilst the success of their launch was hugely down to promotion from Co-founder Khloe Kardashian, their website allowed them to cater to the immense demand and overwhelming number of checkouts in one day.
Standardised API Modules
API refers to the methods of communication available between different softwares. API modules are software components with the ability to communicate, which are available with a Shopify Plus subscription. Standardising API communication allows for module app connections that share Shopify Plus information for streamlined user experiences. On Shopify Plus, ads and applications are quickly and easily integrated from a data standpoint.
Better Management Capabilities
Currently, Shopify's normal plan offers a restricted number of staff accounts for your store. One upgrade Shopify Plus offers is the ability to add more of them. In fact, you can have an unlimited number of staff accounts, and they come with additional permission settings.
While Shopify does have multi-channel generalised support for store owners, Shopify Plus actually offers support in the form of a personalised and dedicated support contact. This "Launch Engineer" helps with moving your store to Shopify from another platform (if necessary) and setting up your new storefront. They're a great single-point contact for platform-specific questions you may have.
Lastly, Shopify Plus has a better inventory management system than the normal Shopify subscription. This is helpful as businesses begin to expand and increase their inventory of products, which tends to happen often with larger stores. It can also be really beneficial for Shopify storefront owners who are balancing inventory across both a digital and a physical space, such as a brick-and-mortar store.
Payment Fee Benefits
Shopify Payments already allows card and payment details be stored for future purchases – reducing checkout time for returning customers and so boosting conversions whilst also reducing the risk of cart abandonment. Level 1 PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) ensures security is maintained, alongside security SSL certificates being present on each page, ensuring customer trust and assisting SEO. Where the benefits of Shopify Plus more specifically can truly be seen is through the reduction of transaction fees, so you can often end up saving money despite your upgrade. For high turnover businesses, this can more than cover the $2,000 cost of Plus.
Launchpad and Shopify Flow
Launchpad allows you to set up and launch specific events with start and end dates (such as sales, seasonal specific page design changes, and Captcha technology) in order for you to plan for various activity on your site in an organised fashion. Shopify Flow enables you to create automated workflows and tasks which can cover promotions, loyalty schemes, customer management and inventory control. Both Shopify Plus exclusive features; Launchpad and Flow are handy for allowing more time to focus on business growth.
Sell More Broadly
Shopify Plus lets you clone your site up to 9 times within the same account, which is really helpful for accessing multiple languages and currencies with less reliance on extra plans or third-party apps. Shopify Payments also lets you edit these currencies at any time, so you can constantly keep up with market changes. Multi-platforms can also be managed from your Shopify site so you can utilise multiple marketplaces and social media platforms for selling. As well as this, Shopify Plus targets their previous wholesale limitations – with the new opportunity to run a separate wholesale page via the existing account.
Additional Support
Shopify Plus offers customers expert technical support 24/7, targeted specifically to Plus users. This allows users to have access to a dedicated account manager, as well as launch management, assistance and migration tools which allow for a hassle-free upgrade.
Other benefits of using Shopify Plus over other Shopify plans include:
- Unlimited Staff Accounts (vs up to 5 staff accounts with Shopify)
- Advanced Report Builder
- Third-party Calculated Shipping Rates
- 9 Free Expansion Stores - Ideal for selling in multiple languages and/or currencies
- Shopify Organisation Admin - Easy, single-location management
- Shopify Flow - Streamline workflows with automated customer rewards, segmentation, merchandising, and fraud prevention
- Shopify Functions Installed with Custom Apps
- B2B on Shopify - Read more on this below…
- Oxygen - Host your headless, Hydrogen storefront on our global hosting solution at no extra cost. Read more on Headless here.
- What is B2B on Shopify?
- In today’s online world, businesses selling directly to other businesses need to offer the same streamline purchasing process that a consumer would expect. Shopify gives businesses the ability to manage orders easily and efficiently with their B2B specific spaces.
- B2B on Shopify is the future of businesses selling online to other businesses. This space is built directly into the core of Shopify and offers a suite of features to create a custom wholesale buying experience that can be tailored to each customer. For example, you can create customer-specific pricing for B2B customers, quickly apply percentage or fixed discounts, easily adjust currency and exchange rates for international buyers, and provide multiple price list options to meet the needs of any given customer.
- Shopify currently offer another B2B solution with their Plus Wholesale Channel. It is similar to B2B on Shopify in that is provides businesses a dedicated space for B2B sales, however Plus Wholesale Channel requires businesses to create a separate store which has far less flexibility in terms of branding and design customisation, and integration with third-party apps and your ERP.
With a Shopify Plus plan, businesses are able to make full use of B2B on Shopify, making it another benefit of choosing Plus.
What is B2B on Shopify?
In today’s online world, businesses selling directly to other businesses need to offer the same streamline purchasing process that a consumer would expect. Shopify gives businesses the ability to manage orders easily and efficiently with their B2B specific spaces. B2B on Shopify is the future of businesses selling online to other businesses. This space is built directly into the core of Shopify and offers a suite of features to create a custom wholesale buying experience that can be tailored to each customer. For example, you can create customer-specific pricing for B2B customers, quickly apply percentage or fixed discounts, easily adjust currency and exchange rates for international buyers, and provide multiple price list options to meet the needs of any given customer. Shopify currently offer another B2B solution with their Plus Wholesale Channel. It is similar to B2B on Shopify in that is provides businesses a dedicated space for B2B sales, however Plus Wholesale Channel requires businesses to create a separate store which has far less flexibility in terms of branding and design customisation, and integration with third-party apps and your ERP.
With a Shopify Plus plan, businesses are able to make full use of B2B on Shopify, making it another benefit of choosing Plus.
Full Fat Commerce’s Shopify Themes and Expertise
Each with their own benefits, navigating the decision between Shopify and Shopify Plus can be tricky, especially for fast-growing businesses trying to assess their needs. Full Fat Commerce knows that picking between the two is just the first of many decisions you'll have to make about your Shopify storefront, and you shouldn't make them alone! Not only does our team design and build custom Shopify websites, but we have Shopify experts with the experience and know-how to transform the content and conversion of your site.
Whether your storefront is run via Shopify or Shopify Plus, we're ready to optimise your success through improved SEO, website speed, and browser compatibility. Contact us today to get started with eCommerce specialists that make running a Shopify store a breeze!
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