Shopify vs Shopify Plus: Which One Is Right for Your E-Commerce Business?

Your eCommerce store is more than just another digital tool for your business; it sets the foundation for your entire business. But your entire business success and growth depends on what platform you choose for your eCommerce store.

Shopify has been a game changer for eCommerce businesses as it offers valuable features and functionality that uplift your business. But, what about Shopify Plus? Designed to handle high-volume traffic, it is definitely a fit for businesses that are continuously growing and evolving.

So, the question remains- which platform will support your goals for today and tomorrow? For this, you need to understand the difference between Shopify and Shopify Plus. In this blog, we will conduct a Shopify vs Shopify Plus comparison to understand what is the best choice for you.

What is Shopify?

Shopify is a simple and effective eCommerce platform that allows you to build and manage your online store without the need for complicated coding or design. Whether you are a baker or offering digital courses, Shopify can help you get started in minutes.

An efficient and customizable storefront with secure payment processing, inventory management and marketing tools, you have all you need to grow your business. From customizing the layout to stocking the shelves, it is easy for you to build and the single dashboard makes management effortless.

Key Features of Shopify

Shopify has packed a lot of features and functionality into a single platform, making it easier for you to launch, manage and grow your business online. Let’s take a closer look at the standout features offered by the platform.

1. Storefront Themes

With the help of in-built and professionally designed themes, you can create an aesthetic and appealing online store with zero design experience. The platform allows you to customize colours, fonts and even the layouts to meet your brand’s unique image and style. Eventually, you can build a storefront that feels personalized and polished to your brand and its users. The best part- Shopify has several themes that fits all needs, whether it is bold or artistic.

2. Sales Channels

Shopify allows you to move beyond websites to connect and engage with your users. It helps you sell across multiple channels, including social media and in-person with Shopify POS. So, you will meet your customer where they are most likely to shop for your brand and expand the reach. With a single dashboard, you get a complete view into your sales and opportunities, ensuring you don’t miss any.

3. Payment Processing

Shopify payments can make it simple for you to accept multiple payment formats, such as credit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay and other third-party accounts. You can ensure seamless and secure transactions for all your customers, ensuring faster payouts with lower transaction fees. As it supports multiple payment gateways, you can even sell internationally and ensure flexibility.

4. Apps & Integrations

There are numerous apps in the store that support your marketing, SEO and customer service needs. By integrating the tools like email marketing platforms and subscription services, you can easily elevate the functionality of the platform. It increases the flexibility and ensures you get a future-proof platform that aligns with your business needs.

5. Staff Accounts

Create staff accounts with custom permissions for when your store grows so that your team can manage everything. These accounts will help your employees manage the orders, update products and even work on customer service without interruption. You can ensure smooth operations without giving away complete control of the store.

6. 24/7 Support

With 24/7 support available, you can resolve your queries regarding building or managing the Shopify store at any time. They allow you to reach out to their support staff via chat, email and phone at any time of the day. So, whether you have a tech issue or how-to problem, you can get it resolved with the support team.

What are the Benefits of Shopify?

You can avail real advantages with Shopify that helps you grow your business faster and in a smarter way.

1. Customizable Responsive Themes

Shopify offers visually appealing and mobile-friendly themes that stand out amidst competition. You can customize these layouts and colours along with features to match your brand’s identity. Additionally, it offers responsive designs that makes the store accessible across desktops, tablets and smartphones.

2. SEO Capability

With in-built SEO features, you can ensure your store ranks higher on Google as well as other search engines. It allows you to edit meta titles, offers fast loading pages and boosts your visibility online, which helps you let your users discover the products organically.

3. Integration with Various Marketing Tools

You can integrate your Shopify store with the marketing platforms like Mailchimp, Klaviyo, Facebook Ads and Google Shopping. These integrations let you launch marketing campaigns, automate follow-ups and track the performance from a single place.

4. Dedicated Support

You have reliable help in the form of dedicated support from Shopify. This 24/7 support through chat, phone and email allows you to get expert intervention whenever you want and resolve all technical or setup issues you may have.

5. Cost-effective Pricing

You can avail different pricing plans that are flexible and suited to your business size and budget. Whether you are a startup or scaling fast, you will find something that fits your budget and needs perfectly. You should also consider looking at all the features and support requirements to deliver value for money.

6. Trust of Major Brands

Shopify has powered a lot of brands, such as Gymshark, Allbirds and Heinz. This means it can handle high-traffic and demand of the stores. You will realize that having Shopify backing your store means reliability, security and performance.

What is Shopify Plus?

Shopify Plus, the enterprise version of Shopify platform, is built for businesses that showcase high growth and performance needs. It comes with more power, features, support and customization capabilities. Along with offering everything that Shopify offers, it also delivers advanced features like increased API limits, better automation and dedicated account management.

With Shopify Plus, you can handle thousands of transactions and multiple accounts simultaneously and seamlessly. It can help you take your eCommerce business to the next level.

Key Features of Shopify Plus

Shopify Plus with its enterprise-grade features can help growing brands and top businesses meet their evolving needs. Let’s look at all the key features you get with Shopify Plus platform.

1. Dedicated Account Manager

Shopify Plus provides you with a dedicated launch engineer or success manager. This manager will help you with setting up the store, app migration and strategy, making them your personal guide. With an expert working by your side, you can manage complex and high-volume operations seamlessly.

2. Unlimited Staff Accounts

You can create unlimited staff accounts without adding extra cost using Shopify Plus platform. This allows you to assign multiple roles, set the permissions and even organize your team efficiently. Moreover, you can manage marketing fulfillment and customer service seamlessly without limitations or additional cost.

3. Customizable Checkout

You get complete control over the checkout experience by accessing the checkout liquid file. This allows you to customize the designs, include upsells and apply discounts. You can even optimize the flow to match the customer’s behaviour. With this flexibility, you can ensure a more personalized and faster checkout process.

4. Wholesale/B2B Channel

Shopify Plus makes it easier for wholesale businesses with in-built B2B channels. By creating separate password-protected storefronts, you can target wholesale customers and provide them with custom catalogs, pricing and discounts. If you are a business that sells to both wholesale and retail customers, you can use Shopify Plus.

5. Higher API Limits

If you are a high-growth brand, you must connect with multiple apps and systems. With Shopify Plus, you get higher API limits that means you can increase integrations with inventory management and marketing automation tools to improve the operational efficiency. It helps in ensuring fast and seamless operations even when your sales and traffic increases.

6. International Capabilities

Planning to sell your products on the global space? Shopify Plus has the tools that can help manage multiple storefronts with different currencies and languages. It is perfect for brands that want to expand globally without creating a separate backend system.

What are the Benefits of Shopify Plus?

Shopify Plus is packed with incredible and powerful features that helps deliver real value and benefits to your business and users. It helps scale your businesses efficiently and save money to provide better customer experiences.

1. Reliable and Secure

With Shopify Plus platform, you get enterprise-grade reliability. This means your store will enjoy 99.99% uptime with robust security measures like PCI DSS compliance. You can ensure a fast, secure and highly available store, even when there are high traffic events like holiday sales.

2. Easy Migration

It is easy to migrate from other platforms to Shopify Plus. With a dedicated team, you can migrate your existing store and its products along with customer data quickly and with utmost security. You can avail expert support throughout the process, so that you can complete the transition without disrupting the customer’s experience or the sales.

3. Cheaper and Better

It offers greater value to your estore as compared to other eCommerce platforms. You can get world-class features, hosting, security and support by paying a predictable monthly fee to the platform. Eventually, it will help you grow and maintain your store without worrying about high costs.

4. Unlimited Staff Accounts

You can create unlimited staff accounts without additional fees with this platform. It is perfect for all the growing teams, especially marketing, customer service and operations. The customizable permission levels allow you to ensure that each team member can access the features they require while keeping workflows smooth and organized.

5. Server Costs-savings

Shopify Plus removes the worries associated with maintaining your servers or managing hosting fees. The cloud-based infrastructure allows you to manage everything, from automatic updates to security patches. You can save operational overheads and server costs, while ensuring your resources focus on core business growth.

6. Design Flexibility and Customization

You can use the advanced customization abilities you get with Shopify Plus, which includes access to checkout liquid file and API enhancements to build a brand-aligned store. It can help deliver a tailored experience and optimize your store for conversions.

Shopify vs Shopify Plus- At a Glance Comparison

In-depth Comparison between Shopify and Shopify Plus

Now that we have seen the basic comparison between Shopify and Shopify Plus, let’s take an in-depth view into these platforms.

#1. Feature Comparison

The core tools and functionality that can help you build an online store for your business.

Shopify: With Shopify you get eCommerce features like storefront themes and sales channels plus payment processing. This allows you to build and grow a standard online store.

Shopify Plus: This platform includes all the advanced features like automation, Shopify scripts for custom checkout and exclusive API access for in-depth customization

Which is Better: Shopify Plus is excellent when you want to grow your enterprise store. In case of basic needs, you can go with Shopify platform.

#2. Performance and Scalability

This measures the platform’s ability to handle increasing traffic conditions and business growth.

Shopify: It can handle the regular online traffic efficiently, as it provides reliable hosting with fast loading. Perfect for small to medium businesses.

Shopify Plus: This is built for high traffic spikes, especially during flash sales and high volume transactions. You will get excellent server resources with API limits in this case.

Which is Better: Shopify Plus is best when there is high and rapid traffic growth. In the case of small and steady stores, you can go with Shopify.

#3. Support

The customer service plus expert help you get from the platform

Shopify: This platform offers 24/7 customer support using chat, email and phone. This is a more generic support system.

Shopify Plus: They provide a dedicated launch engineer for smooth onboarding and a merchant success manager for personalized support. This helps manage priority issues seamlessly.

Which is Better: Shopify Plus offers personalized and hands-on support for complex businesses.

#4. Automation

The ability to automate the different eCommerce tasks like order management and promotions.

Shopify: You get limited automation options, especially third-party apps that can enhance workflow automation.

Shopify Plus: It provides the native automation tools like Shopify Flow and Launchpad to customize your automation solutions across marketing, checkout and operations.

Which is Better: Shopify Plus offers better solutions to automate the tasks and streamline operations.

#5. Integration

This indicates how easily your platform can connect with third-party applications, tools and software systems.

Shopify: This platform can integrate with multiple apps and tools using the Shopify app store, which makes it useful for basic needs.

Shopify Plus: It provides deeper integrations with ERP, CRM and other fulfillment systems. Allows higher API limits for complex and seamless connections between tools.

Which is Better: Shopify Plus is ideal for scalable integrations while Shopify is useful for simple tech stacks.

#6. Checkout and Payment

The checkout customizations and payment options available for the platform.

Shopify: It provides fast and secure checkout using customizations via applications

Shopify Plus: Full checkout customization with checkout liquid and Shopify scripts for personalized discounts and upsells.

Which is Better: Shopify provides an edge with optimized and completely tailored checkout experience.

#7. Expansion

The ability to grow your business in international markets and manage multiple storefronts

Shopify: It supports selling products in international markets involving multiple languages and currencies.

Shopify Plus: Used for global expansion, with in-built multi-currency and language support

Which is Better: Shopify Plus is best for brands that sell in international markets.

#8. Security and Compliance

Protects customer data and adherence to industry standards and security.

Shopify: It offers stronger baseline security with PCI DSS compliance with SSL certificates

Shopify Plus: It enhances the security with dedicated SSL and faster patches to ensure compliance with GDPR and CCPA like regulations.

Which is Better: Shopify Plus offers better compliance and security, ensuring high-level data protection.

#9. Target Audience

The business types your platform is designed to serve

Shopify: It is perfect for startups, and small businesses that need reliable platforms

Shopify Plus: It is best fit for enterprises and high-growth brands that need multiple storefronts.

Which is Better: If you want to scale aggressively, choose Shopify Plus. In case of simpler operations, use Shopify platform.

#10. Pricing

Cost structure and investment needed to use your platform

Shopify: It is affordable, as the plans range from $39 to $399. It is accessible for small to medium businesses.

Shopify Plus: The monthly cost starts at $2000 and goes up based on business needs and volume.

Which is Better: Shopify is great for budget-conscious businesses while Shopify Plus is great for enterprises.

Shopify vs Shopify Plus: Which One Is the Perfect Fit for Your Business Growth?

Whether you should choose Shopify or Shopify Plus, it depends on the current size of your business and the future goals. Shopify is best fit for startups and small businesses that need a cost-effective platform to launch and grow the business. On the other hand, Shopify Plus is designed to meet the advanced feature and customization needs of fast-scaling businesses and enterprises.

If you are a rapidly growing business with complex operations and international expansion, you should go with Shopify Plus. You must understand the business needs, goals and ambitions to confidently pick your platform to fuel growth and long-term success.

Conclusion

It is crucial to choose the right platform if you want to achieve your goals. Shopify is a reliable and budget-friendly solution that ensures steady growth. Shopify Plus can ensure you scale rapidly by providing you with enterprise-level features and deep customization.

Both these platforms are powerful and can shape your business towards success. Whether you go with Shopify or Shopify Plus, you need a good partner to ensure your solution is suited to user needs and brand image.

CommerceBizz is a leading shopify development company with an expert team and high-value portfolio. If you want to convert your eCommerce business idea into a successful store, connect with CommerceBizz.