The Shopify Plus Platinum Partner for Europe’s leading fashion, lifestyle, and beauty brands.

Common questions

• What is Shopify Plus and who is it for?

  Shopify Plus is Shopify’s enterprise tier, unlocking technical capabilities the standard plans don’t include: customisable checkout (Checkout Extensibility and Functions), up to 10 stores under one Plus organisation, native B2B alongside DTC, and Plus-only tooling like Launchpad and the full Flow trigger set. Most of our clients are fashion, lifestyle, and beauty brands scaling internationally. They typically migrate when they hit one of three walls: payment-processing fees that compound at volume, checkout limitations they can’t engineer around, or operational complexity (multi-brand, multi-region, B2B) that the standard plans weren’t designed for. Shopify positions Plus from around €1M in annual revenue, but in our experience the platform investment really pays off above €3M. Below €2.5M with no custom requirements, you’re better served on Advanced.

• What’s the difference between Shopify and Shopify Plus?

  Shopify Plus is the enterprise tier of the same platform. The differences: a customisable checkout (standard Shopify’s is locked beyond branding), Plus-only tooling like Launchpad for scheduled launches and the full Shopify Flow trigger set, Shopify Functions for custom cart, discount, shipping, and checkout logic, up to 10 stores under one Plus organisation, dedicated Launch and Merchant Success managers, and a 99.99% uptime SLA. Pricing starts at $2,300/month (around €2,100) for Plus, versus roughly €33-380/month for standard Shopify (Basic, Grow, Advanced). You move to Plus when you’ve outgrown what standard Shopify can do, not because you’ve hit a revenue line. Most brands need it past €2.5M GMV, or once they’re doing multi-store, B2B, or custom checkout.

• How does Shopify Plus compare to Salesforce Commerce Cloud?

  Shopify Plus moves faster, costs less, and is easier to staff. Salesforce Commerce Cloud (formerly Demandware) has more flexibility for complex B2B catalogue logic and integrates with the rest of the Salesforce stack (Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Data Cloud, Agentforce). For most fashion, lifestyle, and beauty brands that depth isn’t needed, and you pay for it twice: in licensing (GMV-based, typically 1-3% of revenue) and in developer hours per change. Plus’s checkout is faster and converts well, the app ecosystem is roughly twice the size of Salesforce AppExchange, and you ship features in days, not quarters. Where Salesforce still has an advantage: enterprises above $500M GMV with complex multi-region B2B (RFQ workflows, multi-level approval, deep contract pricing), or shops where multiple Salesforce clouds already form the system of record. Most migrations from Salesforce to Plus are driven by TCO and velocity, not by needing more enterprise depth.

• Should I migrate from Shopware to Shopify?

  For most fashion, lifestyle, and beauty brands, yes. Shopware demands more dev hours per change (open-source means you own updates, patches, and plugin compatibility), the extension marketplace is a fraction of Shopify’s app store, and the architecture drags once you sell internationally because multi-region setup is manual rather than turnkey. Shopify Plus ships features faster, the partner network is larger, and the checkout converts better (Shopify’s commissioned research shows up to 36% better than competing platforms). Where Shopware still has an advantage: heavy B2B catalogue logic (10,000+ customer-specific price lists, approval workflows), GDPR-native data sovereignty, and the German Mittelstand market with its SAP / DATEV integrations. The honest answer depends on what you’re optimising for, but for unified commerce consumer good brands, most stop fighting Shopware once they cost out three years of dev time and infrastructure.

• Magento vs Shopify Plus: when is the migration worth it?

  When developer hours start eating the budget. Magento (rebranded by Adobe as Adobe Commerce in 2018, with the free Magento Open Source still alongside) demands a developer for nearly every change, carries operational and infrastructure overhead, and the upgrade cycles are notoriously painful. Adobe Commerce licences start around $22K/year (On-Premise) or $40K/year (on Cloud) and scale with GMV, before you’ve paid for hosting, devs, or extensions. Shopify Plus hosts everything for you, ships features faster, and Shopify’s commissioned research shows a 29% better TCO and significantly higher checkout conversion on average. Where Magento still wins: extremely complex B2B catalogue logic, approval workflows, large multi-store / multi-brand operations with shared catalogue logic, or enterprises that need on-prem control for compliance or data sovereignty reasons. Most Magento-to-Shopify migrations are TCO and velocity plays: brands costing out three years of developer hours, infrastructure, and licence creep, and choosing to spend that money on growth instead.

• Is Shopify Plus a fit for brands moving off Centra?

  For most fashion brands considering it: yes. Shopify Plus has caught up on the gap that historically kept brands on Centra. Centra is the European fashion-vertical platform, founded in Stockholm in 2015: strong B2B, multi-market, and opinionated about wholesale workflows. Shopify Plus now matches most of that: native B2B (Companies, Catalogs, Price Lists, Payment Terms), Markets for multi-region, expansion stores. Where Centra still wins: complex fashion-specific wholesale logic (delivery windows, preorders, line-sheets, tiered pricing), a built-in fashion PIM, and brands deep in the Scandinavian fashion-tech ecosystem. Most switch when they want a broader app ecosystem, faster platform feature shipping, a larger talent pool, and a checkout with Shopify’s conversion track record.

• Do I need to go headless on Shopify?

  Most brands don’t. Headless makes sense when you need a real interactive layer Liquid can’t carry (complex product configurators, app-like UX with deep client-side state, real-time personalisation), editorial workflows that need a dedicated CMS like Sanity or Contentful, or a composable stack where Shopify is one of several systems. The trade-off is real: 3-5x the build cost (€200k+ for a proper Hydrogen build), more team to maintain it, and ongoing engineering work to keep up with Shopify platform releases that Liquid stores get for free. Veloretti went headless because they needed a configurator rendering 100+ bicycle combinations with real-time pricing across four languages, and Liquid couldn’t carry it efficiently. Most brands don’t have that ceiling problem. Our default is custom Liquid first, headless via Hydrogen (commerce-first) or Next.js (editorial-heavy or composable stack) when the brief actually requires it.

• How long does a Shopify Plus migration take?

  Two to three months for a no-code migration. Three to six for a custom build with our Ask Phill Accelerator (APA) for a custom designed theme. Five to ten for full enterprise replatforms with deep integrations or multi-store. The variance isn’t effort, it’s scope. We scope honestly in discovery so the timeline isn’t a surprise.

• What does a Shopify Plus migration cost?

  €20-60k for no-code or theme migrations. €50-200k for standard mid-market custom theme builds. €200k+ for custom enterprise work with headless, multi-store, or deep integrations. Pricing follows scope, not hours. Projects are typically built up from strategy and consultancy, design, front-end development of the theme, and where applicable, back-end integrations and data migrations. Not every project includes all of these.

• What payment methods does Shopify Plus support in the Netherlands?

  All the major Dutch and European methods. iDEAL (transitioning to Wero by end of 2027) is supported three ways: natively through Shopify Payments (live in the Netherlands), through Mollie, or through Adyen. Shopify Payments is the simplest if you want one provider for everything, though it doesn’t currently support iDEAL for recurring payments. Mollie is what we recommend for most Dutch DTC brands: local, broader EU method coverage, clean Shopify integration, and SEPA Direct Debit for subscriptions. Adyen is the right call when you’ve already got an enterprise acquirer contract or sell across many regions for on- and offline. Klarna and other BNPL options work alongside any of the three.

• How is Ask Phill different from other Shopify Plus agencies?

  We’re a Shopify Platinum Partner, the top tier of Shopify’s global partner program. Ten years on Shopify, since before Shopify was cool, with 200+ migrations behind us. We’ve made every mistake possible over the past decade, so you don’t have to. We focus on fashion, lifestyle, and beauty because depth in a vertical compounds. Our team is AI-native: we use it daily across discovery, design, code, and content, which keeps timelines lean and deliverables sharp. We bring developers into discovery early, so design and architecture don’t fight each other later. And we’ll tell you when you don’t need us: when Shopify alone is enough, or when a smaller agency is the right fit.