5 reasons why switching to Shopify Plus might be right for your e‑commerce platform

Think of it as the same product as regular Shopify, plus additional features that benefit a very specific target market.

There’s a tonne of reasons why Shopify is the best e-commerce platform on the market. We can’t go into them all now, but here’s a snapshot:

• It’s an SaaS solution that’s easy to use right out of the box. 
• It gives users drop-and-drag building blocks to build a fully functional e-commerce store without writing a single line of code.
• The app store gives (almost) limitless possibilities for customisation and functionality.
• Shopify sorts out maintenance and site security all for you, just pay the monthly fee and don’t worry about anything else.
• And loads more.

Shopify Plus keeps all of these great features and adds even more.

So should you switch? Why not be content with Shopify Advance? After all, Plus starts at around $2000 per month - a sizeable jump from the previous rung on Shopify’s pricing ladder (Shopify Advanced is $299/month). And this is just the starting price. Plus can scale all the way up to a dizzying $40,000 every month.

Are the extra features worth it?

Before we dive in, the obvious thing to note is that Plus is only viable for fairly large businesses. If you’re in the specific bracket we’ll identify below, it’s often well worth the investment. But for starters and medium-sized business owners, Plus just doesn’t make sense.

Here are our 5 reasons why Shopify Plus might help you.

It’s both a benefit of Shopify Plus, and a way to work out whether Plus is the right step for your business.

Shopify Plus users pay a transaction fee of 0.15% + €0.25. This is markedly lower than Advanced users, who pay 1.6% + €0.25 per transaction. In the difference between these two figures, you can work out whether Shopify Plus will be financially beneficial.

At a certain point, a Plus account’s extra $1700 per month is negated by the savings you’ll make from the lower transaction fee.

As an example, say a business takes €40,000 in 10 monthly orders. On Shopify Advanced, they’ll pay €642.50 per month in transaction fees. Add on the platform’s monthly subscription and they’re still paying less than Shopify Plus’ $2000 fee. So it’s always going to be cheaper for them to stay with Advanced.

But as monthly revenue increases, so too do the transaction fees and at some point they will outweigh the cost of Plus. At this point, it is beneficial to switch. You can try out the maths yourself, but we think the safest time is when a company takes around €165k a month, or €2 million a year in revenue. You can take a little less than this and still save money by switching, but it doesn’t leave you much of a margin. If a business is consistently hitting €165k, we think Shopify Plus makes financial sense.

But a financial boost is not the only benefit of Shopify Plus. And it shouldn’t be the only reason you decide to switch. Plus affords its users much more detailed control - both over the appearance of their store and over its functionality.

If used correctly, Plus gives a business’ customers a better in-store experience and gives the business a less complicated, more automated workflow.

We’ll start with the ways Shopify Plus improves store's most important function, the checkout.

Checkout

It was once the case that only Shopify Plus users could customise their checkouts. That's changed slightly, but Shopify Plus still affords much greater control over the checkout.

All Shopify users, no matter which plan they're using, can now customise their checkout to some degree. They can add a logo and change the font or colours to match those in the rest of their store.

This is great because it helps to build customer trust. It doesn’t take much to convince a customer they’re being scammed, especially if they’re shopping in a store that isn’t globally recognised. Entering a checkout that suddenly looks very different from the store they’ve been browsing is enough to send some customers running to somewhere like Amazon instead. If you want to stop Jeff Bezos taking your customers and making even more money, a branded checkout is important.

However, only Shopify Plus users can customise the checkout's functionality.

Using the checkout extensibility, launched at Shopify Winter Editions '23, Shopify Plus users can alter their checkout flow by integrating Shopify apps. These apps do everything from upselling, crosselling, loyalty schemes, post-purchase SMS marketing, subscription services, and so on. And they're all available via the Shopify App Store.

Shopify Plus’ increased checkout customisation is therefore more than just appearances. Aesthetics are important, a strong design and brand image will make a checkout more trustworthy in the eyes of the customer. However, functionality customisations are geared towards pushing conversion. By allowing checkout customisation, Shopify Plus increases conversion capabilities in one go, giving stores a new look and stronger sales.

Functionality

Shopify Plus users are handed access to a number of exclusive plugins that improve workflow. These are especially useful for larger businesses with high numbers of products and/or sales.

Launchpad

The first of these is Launchpad - an app for automating product releases, flash sales and promotional events. Each of these usually require a number of time-consuming and fairly mundane tasks - manually entering pieces of information over and over. With Launchpad, however, the whole process is automated and planned in advance. Saving time whilst providing more effective events and higher sales levels.

A seller simply selects the products that will be on sale, the discount of choice and the specific time for the sale to begin. From here, Launchpad takes over and schedules the event in a calendar. When the time comes around, products are entered into a sale automatically without the seller writing a single line of code.

And more than this, Launchpad users can build campaign-specific themes to highlight the new products, or those now on a promotional offer. Doing so makes it easier for customers to see which products could be more interesting, therefore improving their overall experience. As you know, UX counts for a lot and is likely to boost both traffic and sales.

Those boosted sales can be tracked in real-time with Launchpad’s analytics dashboard - giving business owners insightful information into the performance of their promotional events. The information is presented in real-time and hence allows for optimisation on-the-go. If customer behaviour is heading in a specific direction, promotional events can be updated to make the most of the specific trend.

There are further advantages to Launchpad, but you get the general idea. Product drops and flash sales are made much easier and more efficient. In large businesses with a lot of products, this can be a godsend.

Whilst not as easy to use as Launchpad (Script Editor requires a level of technical knowledge) this exclusive Plus tool is again useful for running promotional campaigns. Script Editor lets users write new scripts that run during the checkout process.

Any imaginable discount that involves modifying a product’s price can be arranged, giving a much broader scope of promotion to Shopify Plus users:

• Showing/hiding certain payment options to different customers based on the country they’re buying from.
• Adding more advanced discount rules to the checkout.
• Integrating more advanced tracking in the checkout process.

***Important note*** - As part of the Winter Editions '23 updates, Script Editor will be deprecated on August 13, 2024 and no longer supported on the Shopify Platform. All scripts must be migrated to the new Shopify Functions before this date. If you have any questions or concerns about this process, give us a call for a free consultation.

With greater control over their store, Shopify Plus users hope to increase traffic and sales. But optimising a store’s appearance and functionality would be useless unless there was a guarantee the store could handle more hits and clicks.

APIs are interfaces that get multiple softwares talking to each other. They receive requests and send responses every time something happens in your store. These are known as “calls”. Shopify places limits on the number of calls to prevent the server from crashing. But Shopify Plus users have double the allocated number of calls. This means Plus sites can handle double the traffic without problems.

All of those promotions you’ve automated using the above features won’t go to waste. Shopify Plus has everything under control.

This one is useful for businesses employing 20, 30, 40, 50+ people.

Gone are the days of sharing usernames and passwords. Shopify Plus offers an unlimited number of staff accounts so every member of staff can have their own. Handily, each account can be designated its own level of access - so staff are kept within the areas that relate to their role.

And the final reason why Shopify Plus might be right for your platform is the dedicated success manager Shopify provides. On top of Shopify’s excellent support team, success managers are allocated to each and every Shopify Plus store.

These individuals essentially become an extension of your team. They’re always available to answer any Shopify-related question, and to offer advice on growth strategy for your business. They’ll help you identify your goals, explain how to reach them on Shopify, and get you in touch with industry knowledge when necessary.