Shopify Vs Shopify Plus: Which One Is Right for You?

Shopify and Shopify Plus are two robust ecommerce platforms that help businesses build and manage online stores. While they share some similarities in features and functionality, there are some key differences between the Standard Shopify platform and Shopify Plus tailored for high-volume merchants. Understanding these differences can help you determine which platform makes the most sense for your ecommerce business.

Standard Shopify Overview

Shopify offers an intuitive platform to create fully customized online stores and sell products online. Some key capabilities and benefits of standard Shopify include:

• Easy setup with hundreds of professional themes and templates to choose from to quickly launch your store. No coding skills required. However, you can hire a Shopify web development service for advanced customizations.
• Robust core features like shopping cart, product listings, checkout process, shipping options, multiple payment gateway integrations, order management dashboard and reporting.
• Add-ons app store with thousands of applications to further extend functionality like email marketing, accounting, customer support and more. This will keep you away from custom ecommerce web development. That’s because you will not come across the need to reinvent the wheel.
• Scalable cloud-based infrastructure that can support significant traffic volumes out of the box. No hosting to manage.
• Built-in support for secure credit card processing, shipping carriers, and handling local taxes.
• 24/7 customer support and a thriving ecommerce community for troubleshooting issues.
• Affordable pricing starting at $29/month for basic plan. More advanced Shopify plans are available as your store grows.

Ideal For: Smaller merchants just starting out selling online or with less than $1M in annual online revenue.

Shopify Plus Overview

Shopify Plus offers an enterprise-grade experience tailored for high-volume brands doing over $1M in annual sales. Key capabilities include:

• All the core features of Standard Shopify like themes, payment processing, and add-ons.
• Significantly higher scalability to support Black Friday/Cyber Monday spikes in traffic.
• International pricing and tax tools suitable for global brands.
• Wholesale channel support and business to business (B2B) functionality.
• Advanced reporting with custom reports and direct data warehouse access.
• Dedicated Merchant Success Manager account rep for onboarding, optimization, and technical support.
• High level security protections and advanced fraud analysis. This will eventually benefit the rankings you achieve with SEO efforts. Your SEO service may also recommend you get Shopify Plus upon a SEO audit.
• Volume discounts for transactions and shipping to improve profit margins.
• No transaction fees unlike standard Shopify (though monthly fees still apply).

Ideal For: High volume merchants selling globally with annual revenue over $1M per year. Geared towards established brands.

Choosing The Right Shopify Plan

When deciding between standard Shopify and Shopify Plus, first consider your current and projected annual sales. Standard Shopify can support strong growth with upgraded plans – plus has an app store for added tools. But at very high order volumes the extra scalability, B2B features and dedicated support of Shopify Plus becomes essential.

You’ll also want to factor where you are at with your ecommerce journey. Is your brand new to selling online? Then simpler and more affordable standard Shopify likely fits the bill. Are you an enterprise brand needing to migrate to an existing multi-million store? Shopify Plus aligns better.

It’s worth noting you are not locked in forever – Shopify makes it easy to upgrade or downgrade plans over time. Some stores may start on standard Shopify before upgrading to Plus. Others may decide Plus is overkill and standard meets their needs just fine. Monitor your growth and reevaluate as your goals evolve.

You can also go through some other Standard Shopify vs Shopify Plus comparisons on the internet. If you still have doubts, such additional resources will be able to help you clarify them.

Final Words

Standard Shopify suits most small-to-medium sized merchants just fine. While Shopify Plus packs the extra power, support and features essential for brands managing huge product catalogs and selling globally at scale. Understanding the tier of capabilities, you need today plus where you want to go long-term makes choosing between the two platforms much easier. This allows you to create a foundation for growth on the right Shopify ecommerce platform from the start.