Shopify vs Shopify Plus: Which One to Choose for E-commerce?
You are ready for e-commerce and want to start in the next few days. The management power, ease of store design, and ease of use of ” Shopify and Shopify Plus ” influence your choice. So you have a hard time comparing Shopify vs Shopify Plus and deducing which suits your needs.
To ease your way through this challenging landscape of choice, in this guide, you will find everything you need to know about Shopify vs Shopify Plus to help you choose the best of the two.
In particular, you will find the specific and standard features of Shopify and Shopify Plus and their points of difference. In addition, the advantages and disadvantages will also be mentioned. Thus, you can make a decantation between these two builders and the e-commerce store managers and make a wise choice that meets your needs and objectives.
What is Shopify?
Shopify is an e-commerce platform you can use to create your online store. It is an excellent e-commerce store builder with favorable options for everyone, beginners as well as experts. It facilitates the integration of products and the complete management of the e-commerce site. In short, Shopify is the most recommended e-commerce platform.
What is Shopify Plus?
Shopify Plus is Shopify’s e-commerce platform for large businesses looking to grow. It offers advanced features such as:
- the payment experience,
- automation tools,
- specific reports,
- dedicated customer service,
- tips for handling large order volumes and more.
It is an e-commerce platform designed especially for products or commercial brands with a high volume. The most important aspect is the access it gives to the checkout file and allows you to customize it.
Shopify Plus is a state-of-the-art, fully-hosted SaaS e-commerce platform. Unlike traditional self-hosted platforms like Magento Enterprise or Prestashop, hosted solutions like Shopify Plus are infinitely more reliable, as the solution is constantly monitored and updated to ensure maximum efficiency and robustness.
Advanced Shopify vs Shopify Plus: Pricing and Features
In this section, I will review the pricing offered by Shopify and Shopify Plus along with their features so that you can have a clear understanding of Shopify vs Shopify Plus pricing.
Shopify Pricing and Features
As you can see, Shopify offers three different options with different price ranges.
Basic Shopify will cost you $29 per month. Check out what Basic Shopify has to offer at this price:
- You can create an online store and sell unlimited items. But you can only create two personal accounts to manage items and sales.
- Essential offers support and forum access to help you with any concerns regarding your online store or sales.
- Along with these, it provides a sales channel that helps you sell your product on various online platforms or social media such as Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, eBay, Pinterest, Messenger, Etsy, etc.
Other features are manual order creation, gift cards, abandoned cart recovery, discount codes, and a free SSL certificate.
A higher version than Basic: priced at $79 per month, offers the same features as Basic, but with a few extras let’s see what they are.
- Instead of 2 employee accounts, you can access 5 employee accounts.
- The unique feature of such price increases is the professional report. It will give you a monthly report on your business and its sales.
Now let’s get to Shopify’s latest Advanced Shopify plan.
Given its progress compared to the first two,
- The price for it stands at $299 per month.
- It offers all the basic and Shopify functionality plus a more advanced report builder
- Moreover, it gives you access to 15 employee accounts in your company.
Transaction fees are another difference between these three Shopify options: Basic, Shopify, and Advanced will apply transaction fees of 2.0%, 1.0%, and 0.5%, respectively.
Advance Shopify Plus Pricing and Features
Shopify Plus offers pricing based on the revenue your store charges. Since Shopify is more from hosted SaaS platforms, your store uses more features and bandwidth as it grows. That is why its license fees vary between a minimum of $2,000 and a maximum of $40,000 per month. But if you exceed $2,000 monthly, the rates applied are pretty competitive with other e-commerce sites.
What to expect if you exceed €800,000 turnover/month? Suppose you have a turnover of $1000,000/month you need to pay $25,000 as a license fee to Shopify Plus. So if you have to pay $40,000 in license fees, you must reach $16,000,000 in revenue.
Shopify Plus lives up to its name by offering options to help you grow in the international market. Apart from all the features of Shopify, it also offers solutions for the following options:
Employee accounts: Shopify Plus offers unlimited employee accounts that you can create in your e-commerce store, unlike Shopify.
International e-commerce: Shopify Plus can expand your market, and you will have access to various stores worldwide, bringing your business to the international market. Which in turn benefits your business by increasing sales.
Shopify Plus also offers Headless commerce – Wholesale & B2B e-commerce.
Shopify Plus lets you automate wholesale, from signup to checkout. It offers prices according to each wholesaler. You’ll have less time to process large orders to better move your business forward.
- offers the possibility to create personalized packages, especially allowing customers to reorder products and track them.
- analyze before charging kids’ orders
Shopify Plus is More Automated
When we talk about automation, we mean three tools: Shopify Launchpad, Shopify Flow, Shopify, and Scripts, which are only available with Shopify Plus. What are these tools?
Shopify Launchpad: a tool that will help us when we plan promotions or introduce a new collection. It will automatically publish new products in the store and other sales channels, make changes to the homepage, and reduce prices at the time you choose. The tool will also automatically end the promotion. It’s a big help, isn’t it?
Shopify Flow: Using Shopify Plus gives you Shopify Flow, which takes your focus away from all the technical stuff by efficiently managing it. The benefit is that it frees you up to focus so you can better manage growth in other areas of your business.
Shopify and Pro Scripts: it allows you to adapt the shopping cart to your needs.
What is the difference between Shopify vs Shopify Plus
Simply focusing on their name implies that Shopify Plus offers more of an edge than Shopify does. But is this true or false? Let’s find out the truth below.
More powerful analysis function
The first feature that Shopify offers is its dashboard which operates a detailed analysis where you can display statistics such as:
- the sales,
- the best products,
- landing pages
- customer return rate, etc.
You will be informed of the latest information about your store.
While this might satisfy most businesses, Shopify Plus invests in working with leading analytics companies to put you at the heart of the latest trends in your store.
Complete Control Over The Checkout Page is Only Possible with Shopify Plus.
Shopify Plus is attracting interest from enterprise customers because it offers a full range of interference in-store designs. What does it mean?
Shopify has a wide selection of templates you can customize to your liking, changing page colors or layouts, adding subpages, and adding new features. You can also upload your template as long as it meets Shopify‘s requirements. There’s one thing you won’t change with Shopify’s basic plans. You cannot edit the payment page.
By choosing Shopify Plus, this problem disappears. Shopify Plus lets you customize your checkout, which isn’t available on lower plans. With Shopify Plus, you can set up a one-page checkout, for example, or customize a subpage with a checkout, thanks to the Shopify script editor. Editing the checkout isn’t the only additional feature of Shopify Plus. What else does Shopify Plus have that Shopify is missing?
More Storefronts Are Included in the Price, Giving Us 9 More Stores Than Shopify
The price difference between the Shopify vs Shopify Plus plans is significant, but when we compare the two plans, we find that Shopify Plus offers more storefronts. It is an invaluable feature when running an international e-commerce store. You can customize each of these stores to suit your market, integrating with payment systems, couriers, and other apps. It allows you to remain competitive against local brands.
The additional store can also be successfully used as a test environment. Whenever you introduce new features, you can test them in an additional store, which will help you avoid an embarrassing situation.
The Features of Shopify Plus Allow, Among Others: Wholesale and B2B Activities.
Shopify Plus offers additional sales support features. By choosing this plan, we can quickly start an additional sales channel and prepare a special offer for a professional client.
Multi-currency in a Shopify Plus-Based Store
Shopify Plus is the only plan to support more than one currency at checkout. For other plans, you can switch currencies, but you can’t get payouts in a currency other than the store’s primary currency. It makes it preferable to open an additional store for the region.
Increased Capabilities and Faster API
The API lets you integrate Shopify with other systems and build new solutions. Shopify Plus Development has a faster and more flexible API compared to Shopify. Using the API, you can grow the store and bring innovation to your business without moving to a new platform.
Additional Help For Migrating Your Store to Shopify
Many Shopify customers are seasoned e-commerce sellers who have decided to move their stores to a new e-commerce platform. The reason for this may be the expensive and expensive service of the existing solution. Migrating to Shopify takes weeks, including template selection and branding.
By switching to Shopify Plus, in addition to the help of e-commerce specialists, the customer has access to unique tools that make the migration genuinely painless.
Unlimited Number of Employee Accounts
Shopify‘s basic plans limit the number of people you can set up for employee accounts. Shopify Plus has no such restrictions. Everyone involved in working on your e-commerce can have access to the admin panel.
Shopify support and community around Shopify Plus
In addition to additional features, Shopify Plus provides every Shopify Plus user with direct expert assistance, support, and an active community. For example, an official Facebook group where other sellers share their knowledge and experience. As a Shopify Plus merchant, you have access to Merchant Success Programs, which will also give you strategic support and assistance from the agencies Shopify highlights. It is excellent value for money for ambitious brands.
Shopify vs Shopify Plus: Overall Comparison
Let’s talk about the Shopify vs Shopify Plus similarities
- Convenient navigation and creation of e-commerce sites
- Basic dashboard with blogs to let you know about features and updates
- Customer support is available 24×7
Now about the differences between them.
- Every Shopify Plus seller is assigned a dedicated Seller Success Manager who answers any questions almost instantly.
- Flow: Shopify Plus will handle all your backend work, notify you when you’re out of product, handle ads, etc.
- Scripts: You can create rules and regulations for customers and give them a VIP pass or personal discounts.
- International stores: Shopify Plus allows you to access regional and international stores.
- Payment methods: Shopify Plus gives you an edge in this area as it offers around 20 different payment options that you can use to pay for a product.
- Staff accounts: Shopify Plus gives you unlimited accounts, whereas Shopify limits it to 15 accounts.
- Bandwidth: Shopify Plus can handle high traffic on your website and handle over 10,000 orders per minute. Which increases your chances of any sale and also avoids any website downtime that may occur.
The Advantages of Shopify Pro
- Uncompromising performance and security
- Ready to put away in hours
- Intuitive handling and navigation in the store
- Flexible design
- Multi-store, multilingual, multi-currency
- Extensive app store
- Enterprise version for large stores
- Sales and omnichannel support
Disadvantages of Shopify Pro
- Only one automatic discount is activated per store.
- Shopify earns commissions on sales.
- A currency at checkout for regular Shopify plans
- Experience needed in writing your solutions
The Main Benefits of Shopify Plus
- Shopify Plus lets you manage up to 10 linked stores with one account. Store domain names can be in the form of (abc.com / xyz.fr etc.). It is what justifies their diversification.
- offers and promotes trade
- has specific functions for B2B
- offers more options to customize your website’s interface
- offers an even more powerful API engine
- guarantees greater security of the online store thanks to the EV SSL certificate
- Lets you take advantage of the Shopify Flow business process automation tool
- offers 24/7 technical support with priority on major Shopify customers
- guarantees better performance
- Offers lower commissions to sellers than the basic version.
Disadvantages Shopify plus
- Limited backend access
- Limited content management
- Limited administration of
Shopify vs Shopify Plus: Which Plan is Better?
We’ve compared Shopify vs Shopify Plus features and plans but can’t decide on a winner. In our opinion, the choice of a plan depends on the seller’s needs, and we generally try to follow these needs when advising our customers on which plan to choose.
- Before deciding between setting up your store on Shopify or Shopify Plus, consider your needs.
- Do you need an efficient store that can withstand heavy traffic? You will get this with both plans.
- Do you need a proven, mobile-optimized store? You will get it by choosing one of the plans.
- Do you want a store that will allow you to increase your sales? Both plans will allow you to do this.
If you need a wholesale channel, the ability to edit a cart and checkout page, more integrations, or a global store, choose Shopify Plus. On the other hand, if you find it challenging to assert these needs, Shopify will undoubtedly suffice. Shopify Plus makes sense if you and your team have a plan for how to use it (create new solutions, personalize your store, personalize user experience).
