Embarking on the journey of establishing a Shopify store is a thrilling undertaking, and Shopify proves to be an outstanding platform for this endeavor. Nevertheless, as businesses progress, their requirements transform, and this is precisely where Shopify Plus comes into play.

Tailored to meet the demands of burgeoning enterprises, this advanced platform provides augmented features and capabilities. In this blog, we will delve into the core of Shopify Plus, providing insights into its key features, who it’s for, its pricing structures, and its significance in fostering business growth.

What Is Shopify Plus?

Shopify Plus stands out as a scalable SaaS e-commerce platform, providing Shopify merchants with an extensive set of tools to effectively run and oversee their Shopify store. Specifically designed for larger businesses, it surpasses the capabilities of standard Shopify plans, presenting advanced features and functionalities essential for swift expansion.

Who Is Shopify Plus Perfect For?

Shopify Plus is crafted for businesses generating substantial revenue, specifically with multi-million dollars in sales. Although the dashboards of standard Shopify and Shopify Plus appear similar with identical features, Shopify Plus elevates the experience by introducing a Merchant Success Program, Shopify Plus Academy, Shopify organization admin, customizable checkout, advanced apps, and additional enhancements.

How Much Does Shopify Plus Cost?

Shopify Plus pricing starts from 2000 USD per month. This fee serves as the baseline payment to Shopify, granting access to the Plus system and hosting your site on their servers. The fee structure is contingent on the monthly sales volume processed through your Shopify Plus account.

The license fee is structured as follows:is 

• It starts at a standard rate of $2,000 per month.
• It increases gradually after surpassing $800,000 in monthly sales.
• It is capped at $40,000 per month for businesses achieving $16 million in monthly sales.

What Distinguishes Shopify Plus from Other Shopify Plans?

The standard Shopify plans encompass Basic Shopify, Shopify, and Shopify Advanced, offering exceptional options for small businesses and individuals seeking online expansion. This platform equips you with diverse tools for showcasing products and services, including themes, free and paid apps, access to payment providers, enterprise plans, and more.

Below are the key features exclusive to Shopify Plus:

Flow for Shopify Plus

Shopify Plus users can now utilize Flow, empowering them to personalize and automate essential inventory and order procedures that were previously handled manually. With Flow, you can achieve the following:

• Automate recurring tasks
• Establish connectors for tool integration
• Develop custom logic triggers based on specific events or criteria
• Customizations can be made without the need for coding knowledge.
• Launchpad – Automating Flash Sales

Several prominent Plus merchants conduct frequent weekly or monthly product launches and flash sales. The manual preparation for each of these unique events can be time-consuming and stressful. Recognizing this challenge, Shopify introduced Launchpad as the automated command center for significant e-commerce sales events. Launchpad empowers merchants to schedule product launches, set pricing, adjust inventory levels, and customize themes well in advance of the sale event.

Shopify Pay

Shopify Pay enables your customers to swiftly check out by inputting a 6-digit verification code sent directly to their phone. By using Shopify Payments, customers can bypass the tedious process of entering shipping and payment details when making a purchase on your store or any other Shopify store. Customers can choose to store their checkout information with Shopify Pay, and this convenience is accessible across various devices and browsers.

Server Expenses

In comparison to Magento Enterprise, Shopify Plus proves to be a more cost-effective solution for server-related expenditures and maintenance. Magento entails expenses for a license ($18,000/year), programming support for features, and the requirement of your own server, which can incur a monthly cost of over $500 for a dedicated server. Additionally, you must have staff with server admin skills to handle tasks such as maintenance, updates, and monitoring to ensure proper setup and operation. In contrast, Shopify Plus handles the server and maintenance aspects, allowing you to concentrate on enhancing user experience and boosting sales for your store.

Shopify Plus Merchant Success Program

Shopify maintains an extensive Plus Merchant Success Team, ready to provide assistance round the clock, every day of the year. Upon becoming a Shopify Plus merchant, your company automatically becomes part of the Merchant Success Program, offering access to five crucial areas:

• Specialized Support
• Shopify Plus Academy
• Merchant Growth Model
• Platform and Ecosystem
• Plus Community

In addition, new Shopify Plus merchants receive support from Shopify Launch Engineers, who assist with technology requirements and provide guidance during the migration from another e-commerce platform.

Shopify Plus Uptime and CDN

Shopify relies on a robust server infrastructure hosted by Rackspace, a prominent global cloud hosting provider. Boasting an impressive 99.99% uptime, Shopify Plus outperforms the three standard Shopify plans. Shopify maintains a comprehensive record of known issues, allowing real-time tracking.

Handling scaling seamlessly, Shopify Plus can manage a substantial surge in store traffic. Contrast this with self-managed servers – can your server effectively handle a sudden spike in visitors? What if your server crashes on Black Friday, causing you to lose an entire day's worth of sales? With Shopify Plus, concerns about scalability become a thing of the past.

Utilizing Fastly for its global CDN, Shopify ensures swift load times for stores worldwide. A CDN proves particularly valuable for storing and caching images on edge servers distributed globally, facilitating rapid data delivery to local hosts (websites).

Shopify Checkout Customization & Complete SSL

The opportunity to customize the Shopify checkout page is a strong feature that frequently convinces customers to choose Shopify Plus. Check out how we helped our client Fame On Central to customize their checkout experience through upselling on the checkout page.

Shopify Plus gives you the ability to customize the checkout page experience by updating the checkout.scs.liquid file or using third-party apps such as:

Dynamic Checkout Customizer: provides full control over the checkout process. With features like instructional and image banners, as well as personalized product recommendations, it's perfect for creating a seamless and unique checkout experience for Shopify Plus stores.

Orderful: This app enables customers to choose a convenient delivery date during the cart and checkout process, optimizing inventory management for events like the holiday season.

HypeUp: specializes in post-purchase upsells and cross-sells, boosting your average order value by showcasing relevant products after a customer makes a purchase.

To learn about more apps for Shopify checkout customization, check out our blog.

API Limits & Access

Upgrading to Shopify Plus brings significant benefits, including increased access to scripts for your store. Plus stores enjoy early access to beta scripts, providing a head start over non-Plus stores. Moreover, Shopify Plus shops receive a higher allocation of API calls, and by consulting with your dedicated Plus manager, you can potentially elevate the standard API call rate.

Shopify Scripts

To maximize the potential of your Shopify Plus store, leveraging Shopify scripts is essential. These scripts allow you to execute code on Shopify’s servers, enabling the creation of features beyond the capabilities of a regular Shopify store. For instance, you can:

• Implement a fixed percentage discount on products
• Offer promotions like buy 3, get 1 free, or buy 2, get the 2nd at 50% off
• Establish discount tiers based on order volume or frequency
• Apply a specific dollar amount discount, such as $20 off a product

Explore creative applications of Shopify scripts, like displaying a pop-up offering a free giveaway or discount on a related product when a customer adds an item to their cart. If you're aiming for volume discounts, update pricing in real-time on the product detail page as customers adjust the quantity they wish to purchase.

Discount Code API

Managing a large number of store discount codes becomes more efficient with the discount API, allowing easy creation, disabling, enabling, and retirement of discounts. This API enables the creation of fixed_amount discounts, such as providing $50 discount codes that deduct $50 from the customer's order during checkout. Additionally, you can generate shipping discount codes to offer free shipping when the customer surpasses a predefined spending threshold.

Gift Card API

For handling store gift cards, utilize the Shopify gift card API to create, track, modify, and disable gift cards. These gift cards can retain a balance and be redeemed across multiple checkouts.

Selling in Different Currencies

To showcase prices in various currencies and maintain currency consistency throughout the checkout process, consider creating additional Shopify Stores. An exemplary case is QuadLockcase.com, demonstrating the seamless integration of multiple Shopify sites. Clicking on "Country" at the top of their website allows users to switch between sites, displaying products and prices in the native currency. QuadLock opted to change the top-level domain name (observe the URL) when switching countries, providing a smooth experience. Alternatively, you could set up subdomains like germany.quadlock.com or france.quadlock.com, but their choice of using different top-level domains (TLDs) is notable.

Upon upgrading to Shopify Plus, you gain access to 9 more clone stores, facilitating the sale in additional currencies. This becomes a significant incentive for upgrading to Shopify Plus, especially for those preparing to sell globally.

Unlimited Staff Accounts

With Shopify Plus, the growth of your business is unrestricted, as there is no limitation on staff access to your site. Generate individual staff accounts that can log in, perform updates, and manage inventory updates, product pricing changes, etc., while tracking all their modifications with Shopify Plus.

Wholesale Channel Functionality

While Shopify Plus has previously lacked the capability to establish wholesale pricing on your store, a recent announcement introduced wholesale channel functionality specifically for Shopify Plus customers. This feature eliminates the need for clients to resort to WooCommerce for tiered pricing, making Shopify Plus a more appealing choice. If you're considering implementing wholesale channels for your store, feel free to reach out with any questions, and we can provide a detailed report on how this functionality works for Shopify Plus customers.

Avalara Tax Integration

Ensuring accurate tax rates for your customers is crucial, and with Avalara's tax integration, you can have peace of mind, knowing that a third-party tax company is handling this aspect. Avalara seamlessly integrates with Shopify Plus, providing real-time tax calculations for over 14,000 US tax jurisdictions. This integration also offers guaranteed protection against tax audits, obsolete data, and outdated tax laws.

Single Sign-On for Forums/Group Membership Sites

The multipass login feature is a valuable addition for Shopify Plus users. If you have a separate website where customers log in to access your content, the multipass feature allows you to redirect users from your membership site to your store without requiring them to log in again on Shopify. Enable the multipass login feature in the Setting-Checkout page, and you can start generating tokens for your customers using JSON.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Shopify Plus stands as a robust and sophisticated solution tailored for high-growth businesses seeking to elevate their e-commerce ventures. With its array of advanced features, including unlimited staff accounts, dynamic checkout customization, and powerful APIs, Shopify Plus empowers enterprises to efficiently scale operations and enhance customer experiences.

While it may require a higher investment, the platform's benefits, such as dedicated support through the Merchant Success Program, global selling capabilities, and seamless integration with essential tools, make it an invaluable choice for those ready to take their online presence to the next level. Whether you're a rapidly expanding enterprise or an established brand aiming for global success, Shopify Plus provides the tools and flexibility to propel your business forward in the dynamic world of e-commerce.

If you’re looking to develop or migrate to a Shopify Plus store, let our team of Shopify experts put you on the right track. Reach out to our experts below and get ready to join the mile-high club.

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