With so many different plans, tiers, and add-ons available with each Shopify plan, understanding how everything works can be overwhelming and confusing for merchants looking to either get started with Shopify or migrate their stores onto the platform. 

In this article, we’ll break down every option available to merchants on Shopify–from plans for small businesses all the way to an in-depth comparison of the advanced Shopify plans available to high-volume merchants with large enterprises.  

Understanding Shopify Plan Options

While Shopify has a series of subscription tiers: Basic, Shopify, Advanced, and Plus, each at different price points with various additional features as you go up the ladder, they also offer additional “alternative solutions” for businesses. These are the Starter, Retail, and Enterprise Commerce options. The Starter plan is Shopify’s most basic, get-up-and-go option. Retail is tailored for in-person sales with the Shopify POS, and Enterprise Commerce is their most white-glove, tailored offering available.  

Shopify Advanced, Plus, and Enterprise cater to companies on the larger end of the spectrum but vary wildly in features and pricing. Understanding the key differences between these options can be challenging for many. 

As a Shopify Plus Partner agency, we often see merchants asking for help with demystifying the differences and similarities between these options. In the next few sections, we’ll break down what each plan is good for to help you better understand which will work best for you. 

Shopify Advanced VS Shopify Plus 

Shopify’s plans for small to mid-sized businesses are very straightforward, and it’s usually clear to users when they’re about to outgrow their current tier. Conversely, once you start to cross the threshold between mid-sized and large businesses, things get trickier. This is where Shopify’s Advanced option comes into play. 

Shopify Advanced is the plan you want when you find yourself outgrowing the plans tailored more toward smaller businesses. This plan offers all the options of lower tier plans with the addition of 3rd-party calculated shipping rates, custom reports and analytics, better chat support, 15 additional staff accounts, 10x the checkout capacity, and better card rates/shipping discounts. 

As the step between the “Shopify” plan and Shopify Plus, here is how Advanced compares to Shopify Plus in terms of access to features and rates: 

1) API Bandwidth

Shopify Advanced offers up to 2x the limit afforded to lower-tier plans with the Standard limit on select APIs such as the GraphQL Admin API and the Customer Account API. On the other hand, Shopify Plus has better rates than the Advanced plan for all APIs except the Customer Account API, which is the same as Advanced. 

2) Checkout Extensibility 

Advanced can only access Checkout Extensibility through apps downloaded from the Shopify App Store, while users on the Plus plan can build and install custom apps with Shopify Functions and leverage Checkout UI Extensions on their stores however they choose. Merchants using Advanced are also completely locked out of using certain types of functions APIs like Cart Transform. 

3) Dynamic Shipping Rates & Insurance

Shopify Advanced and Plus both offer competitive shipping rates from DHL Express, Canada Post, UPS, or USPS of up to 53% off and 3rd-party calculated shipping rates. Either plan also includes up to $200 insurance coverage with each eligible Shopify Shipping label (this requires Shopify Payments).

4) Card Rates

The Advanced plan offers competitive rates of starting at 2.4% + 30¢ CAD for online transactions, 2.4% + 0¢ CAD in person, or 0.6% for 3rd-party payment providers while Shopify Plus offers dynamic card rates that they state are set to be “competitive for high-volume merchants.”

5) Support Options

All Shopify plans can access Shopify chat support. However, merchants on the Advanced plan get an enhanced version of it, while Shopify Plus merchants gain access to a phone support line and dedicated Merchant Success Manager in addition to live chat support. All Shopify support is 24/7 across plans. 

6) Shopify POS Licenses

All Shopify plans besides Plus come with access to the Shopify POS Lite plan, but Plus is awarded 200 POS Pro locations with Shopify Payments, making it the only plan anyone should consider if they plan to build/grow their retail presence. 

7) International Support

While all plans are capable of selling internationally, the Advanced plan adds the ability to add more markets beyond the included 3 for $59 USD/month per added active market, while Shopify Plus comes with 50 markets out of the box. Plus and Advanced also allow you to estimate and collect duties and import taxes at checkout to give customers total cost clarity.

Features only available on Shopify Plus:

While Shopify Advanced is a great plan for growing businesses, Shopify Plus comes with a set of additional features to consider before pulling the trigger on one or the other. Here are some of the most useful: 

1. B2B on Shopify: Plus enables Shopify B2B features, allowing users to sell wholesale, B2B, and D2C all from one singular admin and commerce platform.
2. Shopify Audiences: Create custom audience cohorts using data from your store and those of stores similar to yours to optimize your paid media marketing campaigns with machine learning.  
3. Free Expansion Stores: Create additional stores under the same brand to cater to different languages or currencies for international sales.
4. Bot Protection: Protect your store(s) from bots when running flash sales. 
5. Launchpad: Schedule and automate promotions, product launches, and store updates in advance.
6. Organization Settings: Oversee administrative tasks such as staff management and billing across multiple Shopify stores.
7. Feature Test Drives: Control when new features are rolled out to your stores, ensuring your workflows and API integrations work properly before going live.

If any of this additional functionality seems like something you might need, then Shopify Plus might be the plan for you.

Isn’t Shopify Plus and Shopify Enterprise the Same Thing? - Shopify Plus VS Enterprise

Enterprise-level merchants considering Shopify tend to have a hard time navigating what is available to them as larger operations. The messaging for plans beyond the Advanced plan can get complicated to navigate. 

Shopify advertises its Plus plan as built “for more complex businesses,” stating that it’s definitely capable of being an enterprise-level plan. It offers an all-in-one, full-stack platform that is customizable on both the front and back end and can be further customized through API connections to other systems. 

Enterprise Commerce, on the other hand, doesn’t fall under a specific subscription tier and has variable pricing, mostly because this offering is based on the use of Shopify’s Commerce Components, which are essentially the underlying building blocks that Shopify itself is built on. 

In choosing to go the Enterprise Commerce route, you can choose which modular components you would like to leverage on your store and leave behind all that you don’t want or need. With Enterprise, Shopify allows you to build your stack with the infrastructure, scale, and innovation powering the world's leading enterprise brands like Glossier, Spanx, and Staples. 

Key Differences Between Shopify Enterprise Commerce Components and Shopify Plus

While Shopify enterprise customers can pick between a Plus subscription or getting the dedicated service of Enterprise Commerce, there are a few notable differences between the options that should be considered. 

If you need help choosing between Shopify Plus or Shopify’s more flexible Enterprise Commerce offering, here are the main differences between both options: 

Shopify Plus offers a great core commerce system backed by a vast ecosystem of pre-integrated vendor solutions, facilitating quick setup and expansion. Conversely, Commerce Components enable enterprise businesses to select and combine the specialized components that Shopify itself is built with, fostering a highly adaptable, customized commerce stack.

One of Commerce Components’ biggest draws is its high rate limits for API requests, which enable retailers to supercharge their online stores and ensure that they can handle the enterprise-level number of requests that larger retailers experience. 

Plus provides many great configuration opportunities, primarily utilizing native settings and approved partners. At the same time, the Shopify Enterprise plan’s composable setup enables almost infinite customization options based on your chosen components and needs. You can take what you like from Shopify and leave what you don’t while still being able to select other tools from any other providers you’d like. 

Since Shopify Plus features pre-existing integrations and established processes, it’s much quicker to implement than Shopify’s composable commerce architecture, which requires selecting, configuring, and validating individual, separate components. Commerce components take much longer to launch than any other configuration, depending on which components you select and how many. 

While any composable setup can be significantly more expensive than other options, Shopify boasts huge savings through its own Commerce Components due to its at-scale buying power. Shopify doesn’t have any public pricing information for its Components, as the pricing is usage-based and depends on the number of components a company intends to use. Still, it’s safe to assume that this option, which is targeted at large enterprise businesses with a GMV of over $100 million, can get pricey at this scale. 

Commerce Components pricing is annual and based on commitment tiers, so enterprises know how much they’ll pay annually. Bundle discounting is also available, so discounts increase as merchants commit to using more components. 

Shopify Plus plans are subscription-based on either a one or three-year term and start at $2,300 USD/month. Additionally, higher-volume businesses can choose to switch to a variable platform fee based on revenue and business model if they don’t want to go so far as to use Shopify’s Commerce Components.

Since Plus is a subscription service built and maintained only through Shopify, users can access a dedicated support team and have a dedicated Customer Success Manager. This is exactly what you’d expect for a service like this. 

Conversely, one of the biggest draws to using Commerce Components is Shopify's enterprise-grade white-glove level of support. Choosing Shopify’s Enterprise ecommerce platform will give you access to their 24/7/365 priority technical support from experts across the globe. 

They offer a dedicated account team to help manage your migration and implementation. Finally, your company will gain access to their Shopify Professional Services designers and developers to help you solve your most complex problems. 

Conclusion

Each Shopify plan caters to a different type of business, from small operations to large enterprises. While Shopify Advances and Plus provide robust features for growing businesses, Enterprise Commerce Components offer unmatched flexibility and scalability for the largest brands. 

Choosing the right plan depends on your company’s size, needs, and growth trajectory and can make all the difference in running a successful ecommerce store. Understanding your business's long-term goals and evaluating what each plan offers will help you select the best path for your business.

Whatever your business requirements are, as a Shopify Plus Partner Agency, we at Blue Badger are available to meet all your enterprise commerce needs. From integrating all your systems to developing custom themes for your store, we offer everything an ecommerce business needs to meet customer expectations and thrive in this always-changing industry. Contact us today to learn more.