The Shopify platform now powers over 1 million online stores worldwide, making it easier for businesses of all sizes to increase sales, streamline operations, and grow their customer base. From small startups to large, multinational enterprises, Shopify offers a range of plans designed to meet the diverse needs of merchants, with Shopify Advanced and Shopify Plus representing the highest-tier options.
While Shopify Advanced provides a robust set of features suitable for growing businesses, Shopify Plus takes things up a level, offering enterprise-level solutions for merchants who need more control, scalability, and customisation for their stores. Shopify Plus includes advanced APIs, dedicated support, and full checkout customisation, enabling businesses to tailor the buying experience, automate complex workflows, and integrate seamlessly with multiple sales channels.
Deciding to move to Shopify Plus is often about preparing for growth. Businesses that are processing high volumes of orders, expanding internationally, or managing multiple brands and storefronts will benefit from the added flexibility, lower transaction fees, and access to exclusive tools like Shopify Flow and Launchpad.
However, knowing when to upgrade from Shopify Advanced to Shopify Plus depends on a combination of growth metrics and operational needs of your business. Making the leap to Shopify Plus is often the next step when it comes to future-proofing your ecommerce business, providing the infrastructure, support, and tools needed to scale efficiently while maintaining a supercharged store and high-quality customer experience.
In this guide, we’ll explore the key differences between Shopify Advanced and Shopify Plus, highlighting the features, functionality, and services that make Plus the preferred choice for fast-growing or more complex ecommerce businesses. Understanding these differences will help you determine whether Shopify Plus is the right solution for your business today and where it can support your growth goals for the future.
Shopify Plus vs Advanced: Comparisons
Note: Pricing is variable and may change based on exchange rates and Shopify agreements. Shopify Plus pricing is typically customisable based on individual business requirements.
5 Shopify Pricing Plans
Shopify has 5 different plans available which are built to suit different business needs and budgets. Here is a quick overview of each Shopify pricing plan:
Shopify Lite
This plan is designed for small businesses or individuals who want to add ecommerce functionality onto their existing website or social media. It is a starter version of the Shopify platform which allows merchants to sell via other channels, such as Facebook or Instagram. You can also accept payments in person with the Shopify POS app. Shopify Lite is available for $9 per month.
Basic Shopify
To use the Basic Shopify plan, you will need to set up your own ecommerce store. It includes a Shopify-hosted store and blog functionality, with an unlimited number of products, discount code features and a free SSL certificate for secure transactions. Available at £19/month if paid annually or £25/month if paid monthly.
Shopify
This is the standard Shopify plan, which is priced at £49/month if paid annually or £65/month if paid monthly. It provides a wider variety of features to help scale your business, including professional reports, up to 1,000 inventory locations, and 5 staff accounts.
So what is Shopify Plus?
Shopify Plus is the ultimate commerce platform for reaching more customers, boosting conversions, and scaling rapidly. It’s designed for merchants who want to grow fast, simplify operations, or expand across channels. Perfect for brands bringing B2B business online or entering new markets and territories.
The Difference Between Shopify and Plus
Firstly, to clear up a common question. Shopify and Plus are not two different platforms – if moving from the core Shopify plan to Plus, extra functionality is unlocked within the ecosystem. No new implementation is required, so the move from Shopify or Shopify Advanced to Plus is seamless.
What is Shopify Advanced?
Shopify Advanced is the most significant upgrade, designed for high-volume merchants that require additional features to manage their online store. It includes all of the standard Shopify features as well as more advanced features, such as custom reporting, third-party real-time carrier shipping rates, custom pricing by market and up to 15 staff accounts. Advanced gives ecommerce businesses enhanced functionality for expanding their operations and managing their large sale volumes.
Choosing Between Shopify Plus vs Advanced
When comparing Shopify Plus vs Advanced, the decision equally depends on scale, flexibility and operational complexity.
Shopify Plus is designed for high-growth and high-volume merchants who need:
- Custom checkout experiences
- Automation (e.g. Shopify Flow)
- Dedicated support and infrastructure
Shopify Advanced is ideal for growing brands that need strong reporting, lower transaction fees and solid integrations without enterprise overhead. Choosing between Shopify Advanced and Plus isn't always straightforward, and the right answer depends on the specifics of your business. Our ecommerce discovery audit is designed to cut through the noise, giving you a clear picture of your current setup and a roadmap for where to go next.
Shopify Plus vs Advanced Pricing Plans
One of the biggest considerations when choosing which Shopify tier to go for is pricing:
Shopify Plus uses a custom pricing model, typically starting at £1,600/month and scaling with revenue Shopify Advanced has fixed monthly pricing
While Shopify Plus is a bigger investment, it often delivers increased ROI through:
Improved conversion rates (via checkout optimisation) Lower transaction costs at scale Automation efficiencies
What’s new in 2026?
The Shopify ecosystem continues to evolve rapidly, and the gap between Plus and Advanced is becoming more defined as new features are added. Here are some key updates to consider:
1. Checkout Extensibility (Plus Advantage)
Shopify has fully transitioned away from legacy checkout customisation, so now Plus merchants use Checkout Extensibility for flexible, secure customisations, while Advanced still has limited checkout control.
2. Increased Focus on Automation
Automation tools such as Shopify Flow have become more powerful and accessible, helping to streamline operations, especially for high-end stores. As it stands, advanced automation is still primarily a Shopify Plus benefit.
3. Improved B2B Capabilities
Shopify have significantly expanded their Plus B2B offerings, with custom pricing and catalogues along with company accounts and payment terms. This is a major differentiator if you’re a wholesale business or hybrid DTC/B2B.
4. International Expansion Tools
Both Plus and Advanced support Shopify Markets functionality; however, Plus offers more scalability for multi-store and international setups, which is better suited for more complex global operations.
Reasons to Choose Shopify Plus Over Shopify Advanced
Here we run through some of the key features, functions, services, and teams that become available to merchants on the Plus plan.
1. Checkout customisation and extensibility
There have been some recent changes to the way checkouts are updated in Shopify Plus, for example previously, developers could customise the checkout through checkout. liquid files. This enabled the look and feel to be tailored and any extra functionality to be added. This needed access to the liquid files and was causing some issues. For example, if Shopify updated the files, it meant merchants also had to deploy updates, and it could cause breakages in addition to spending time and money on updating and fixing it.
2. Shopify Functions
Functions offer a new way to build a unique commerce experience with an injection of custom code to meet the demands of the biggest merchants for added flexibility.
They extend and replace parts of Shopify business logic and can handle large-scale events without any effect on performance. The functions are simple, can be configured directly in the admin, and execute in under 5 milliseconds. For developers, they are fast, flexible and scalable.
They include product and order discounts and delivery or payment customisation. For example, if a cart is under £20, then it can be configured to not show PayPal as an option.
Functions give the ability to create unique shopping rules. Checkout validations as customers complete their orders are included for enhanced security. Discount bundles are going to be natively available soon, as well as shipping discounts. These functions are available to both Advanced and Plus merchants, but when any custom functionality is created, it then becomes restricted to Plus merchants only.
3. Shopify POS Pro (Point of Sale)
This creates an omnichannel experience for customers of Plus merchants. For example, it gives the opportunity to buy online and pick up the product in store, or alternatively, if someone is in the physical shop but wants to go home and consider the purchase, merchants can follow up with them for a later conversion online. It allows merchants to sync online and offline products and integrates with apps for useful functionality like loyalty, returns, appointment booking and more. Check out our Shopify POS guide for more information.
4. Selling Internationally
Shopify wants to streamline commerce and offer merchants the ability to sell their products everywhere. This can be done using Shopify Markets or, on Plus, using the expansion store model.
- Shopify Markets: You can localise pricing, content, language and also products.
- Expansion Store Model On Plus: Gives you up to 10 stores.
It depends on the individual business’ goals and territories for which is the best option, but often there is a hybrid approach using Markets and (if using Plus) Store Expansion. Many factors can impact what will be the best approach, such as how many bank accounts will be used, whether the business wants to use market-specific discounts, and what apps and integrations are required.
Expansion Stores on Plus has features including market-specific fulfilment priority, payouts in different bank accounts or currencies, and creation of local teams and staff permissions.
5. B2B
On Shopify Plus you are able to run B2B and B2C from one store. Merchants have the ability to choose between a single online store for direct and wholesale business or a dedicated B2B store at no additional cost.
B2B-specific tools:
- Companies, locations and buyers
- Product catalogues
- Payments (pro-formas and terms)
- Price lists and discounts
- Buyer self-serve portal *Draft orders and requests for quotes
- One-off shipping address
- Quantity purchasing rules
Platform features
- Integrated natively with Shopify
- Over 1,000 mobile-optimised themes
- Partner and app ecosystem
- Customer engagement tools
- Automation and scheduling tools
- Search and discovery features
- Global selling features
- The best converting checkout available
6. Building Custom Storefront Experiences
Larger merchants often want to move away from a predetermined theme – they may have a different CMS they want to use, for example. It is entirely possible to build bespoke and custom storefronts on the Plus platform. With Plus, brands can access hydrogen and oxygen, enabling merchants to deploy headless solutions.
Hydrogen’s React-based framework and Oxygen’s hosting solution make it easy for merchants to build headless, custom storefronts on Shopify Plus without sacrificing performance.
7. Multipass
Merchants often have a separate website (for example, a blog or a forum), and they want to pass their customers from there to Shopify seamlessly. Multipass on Plus will let customers do this using the same logins they already used to log into the first site. It deploys single-use tokens for enhanced security.
8. Streamlining Ops
Plus admin can be used to access all stores (up to 10). It provides the ability to create roles and permissions, view sales data for different stores, and create new stores for different markets.
- Shopify Launchpad This feature helps merchants automate the launch of new products or collections. It can enable merchants to schedule product releases and create custom landing pages for new products and set ad timers for products to launch. Using Launchpad makes it easy to create a buzz and efficiently implement sales. Price changes can be set to update in advance so they change automatically at the point a sale launches.
9. ShopifyQL Notebooks
This allows developers to write and execute QL queries in a notebook environment. It uses Shopify APIs to analyze data, create custom reports, and automate tasks.
10. Merchant Success Services
When it comes to Plus vs. Advanced, not only are there additional features and functionality, but there are exclusive services as well.
Plus merchants have access to a Merchant Success Manager. The MSM acts as the merchant’s advisor and brand advocate and can be contacted via email or on a call. Their expertise and service provision includes:
- Account management (contracts, finance)
- Acquisition, retention and conversion tips
- Brand strategy discussions
- Business operations guidance
- Keep merchants up to date with what’s new at Shopify
- Early access features and betas of new functionality
- Key data and analytics provision
- Shopify Partner and third-party solution or app recommendations
- Access to exclusive webinars and courses through Shopify Academy
11. Shopify Payment Rates
Upgrading to Shopify Plus lowers your payment processing rates, and merchants can benefit from reduced credit card and transaction fees, helping you save on every sale as you scale.
12. Launch Consulting
This team works with merchants upgrading to Plus or businesses coming across to Plus via a platform migration and launching a new store. They sit between the sales team and the solution engineering team and provide guidance through the launch process, giving advice and guidance to navigate the Shopify ecosystem. Launch Consultants work closely with merchants and Shopify Partner agencies like Eastside to make sure the launch goes smoothly and the merchant is maximising their value from the platform.
They can also help with scenarios such as, in the event of a business ownership transfer, they can involve the legal team, for example.
13. Product Consultants
This team is made of Solutions Engineers for the post-launch merchant journey. They combine strong technical discovery and solutioning with product expertise to increase the value of Shopify to merchants using it.
They help with issues such as:
- Using Shopify’s products and features to improve strategic outcomes
- Aligning a tech stack with Shopify for the best combination and more possibilities
- Migrating from older or third-party solutions to native Shopify products
While there is a crossover with Product Consultants and Shopify Partner agencies, the PCs consult and advise, whereas Shopify Partners like Eastside can consult and advise, as well as implement and build.
14. Extensive Support With Shopify Plus
When using Shopify Plus, you will have access to the best support system and dedicated representatives. These experts will be available 24/7 to assist you in all aspects of your online store management. Including:
- Email, Live Chat and Phone Support
- Shopify Help Center documentations
- Community Groups
- A dedicated merchant success manager
- Developer support
- Exclusive resources from Shopify partners
Signs You’ve Outgrown Shopify Advanced
As your business grows, there comes a time when Shopify Advanced can start to limit growth, especially when it comes to costs, flexibility and operational efficiencies. Here are some key signs it might be time to consider Shopify Plus:
Transaction Fee Break-even Point
One of the clearest indicators that it’s time for an upgrade is transaction fees. Shopify Advanced charges 0.5% on third-party payment providers, while Shopify Plus reduces this to 0.15% or 0% if you’re using Shopify payments. So if you’re paying more than £19,000/year in third-party fees, the savings from lower fees on Shopify Plus can offset a significant portion of the overall licensing cost.
For a full breakdown of fees and costs across every Shopify plan, including how transaction rates compare at each tier, take a look at our Shopify pricing guide.
Note: Exact fees and thresholds can vary depending on your agreement with Shopify.
Multi-store Scalability
Managing multiple storefronts for different brands, regions, or currencies becomes increasingly complex on Shopify Advanced. With Shopify Plus, you can:
- Manage multiple stores more efficiently
- Handle international expansion at scale
- Streamline operations across regions
This makes Plus ideal if you’re growing into new markets or running multiple brands.
Run B2B and B2C from a single admin
Shopify Plus has significantly improved its native B2B capabilities, allowing merchants to:
Manage wholesale and direct-to-consumer in one place Offer custom pricing, terms and catalogs Avoid workarounds or third-party apps
Use of Launchpad (Automation of Key Events)
Shopify Plus gives users access to Launchpad, which is a powerful tool for:
Scheduling product drops Automating flash sales Managing high-traffic events such as Black Friday
Launchpad reduces manual work and helps ensure smooth execution for brands during critical moments where revenue matters most.
Build Custom Functionality (Beyond Apps)
On Shopify Advanced, you’re often reliant on third-party apps to extend functionality. With Shopify Plus:
Developers can build custom apps and integrations Greater access to APIs and backend flexibility Reduced reliance on plugins
For brands with more technical requirements, this makes Shopify Plus an ideal choice.
If you're weighing up the costs and benefits of moving to Plus, it helps to start with a clear picture of your business. Our ecommerce discovery audit identifies exactly where the opportunities are, so any investment you make in the platform is backed by data, not guesswork.
FAQs
Is Shopify Plus worth it for small businesses?
Shopify Plus is typically not necessary for small businesses, unless they are scaling or need advanced functionality such as custom checkout or automation. If you’re a small- to medium-sized brand, Shopify Advanced is probably the most suitable at this stage.
What’s the main difference between Shopify Plus and Advanced?
The key differences are flexibility and scale. Shopify Plus unlocks checkout control, automation, and dedicated support, whereas Advanced offers solid features but with limitations, including no checkout customisation.
When should I upgrade from Shopify Advanced to Shopify Plus?
You should consider upgrading to Shopify Plus when your business is scaling rapidly if you need more customisation or require full control over the checkout experience. Shopify Plus is also the best choice for managing multiple store fronts or expanding internationally.
Choose Your Shopify Plan Today
Ultimately, whether you decide to go with Shopify Advanced or Plus depends on your needs as an online retailer and which plan’s features will best support your business now and in the future. It’s easy to switch between plans as your enterprise grows and you start to need more features and services.
At Eastside, we help brands stay ahead of Shopify's latest updates and choose the right plan based on where they're going, not just where they are today. If you'd like to talk it through, get in touch for a conversation with our team, or find out more about our Shopify experts and how we've helped hundreds of brands scale on the platform. We're happy to help you find the best path forward for your business.