Merchants upgrading to Shopify Plus from Advanced often do so under pressure: a peak season that exposed automation limits, a checkout that could not be customised the way they needed, or a B2B operation being run through workarounds that were becoming untenable. The problem is that Shopify's marketing for Plus is heavy on vague claims like "enterprise-grade" and light on specifics. If you are evaluating the upgrade and want the numbers, here they are.

What follows is a feature-by-feature breakdown of what Plus actually changes. No filler, no ambiguity.

What is the pricing difference between Shopify plans and Shopify Plus?

Standard Shopify plans (Basic at £25/month, Shopify at £65/month, Advanced at £344/month) are billed monthly on fixed terms. Transaction fees apply on non-Shopify Payments gateways: 2%, 1%, and 0.5% respectively.

Shopify Plus starts at $2,500/month (approximately £2,000/month), billed annually. Transaction fees for third-party payment gateways are capped at 0.2%. For merchants processing significant volume through external gateways, the fee saving partially offsets the plan cost.

At high volumes, the revenue-based pricing kicks in: 0.25% of monthly revenue (capped at $40,000/month) once you exceed $800,000/month GMV. In practice, most Plus merchants pay between $2,500 and $10,000/month depending on volume.

The question is not whether Plus is expensive. It is whether the specific capabilities justify that cost for your operation.

How do automation flow limits differ between plans?

This is one of the most commonly cited reasons merchants hit a ceiling on standard plans.

Plan	Shopify Flow automations
Basic	Not available
Shopify	Not available
Advanced	Available, limited to 1,000 workflow runs/month
Shopify Plus	Unlimited workflow runs

Shopify Flow is the native automation tool. It handles tasks like tagging high-value orders, auto-applying discounts for specific customer segments, sending internal Slack notifications when inventory drops below threshold, and routing B2B orders to a separate fulfilment queue.

At 1,000 runs/month on Advanced, a store doing 3,000 orders per month with a three-step flow for each order would burn through that limit almost immediately. Merchants at volume on Advanced either stay well under the limit by being selective about their automations, or hit the ceiling during peaks.

On Plus, there is no run cap. You can run complex multi-condition flows across your entire order volume without tracking usage.

What do API call limits actually change?

Shopify's API is used by apps, integrations, ERP systems, warehouse management platforms, and custom tooling. Every call to the API counts against your rate limit.

Plan	REST API rate limit	GraphQL Admin API
Standard plans	2 requests/second (40 request bucket)	1,000 points/second
Shopify Plus	4 requests/second (80 request bucket)	2,000 points/second

Double the rate limit matters when you are running real-time ERP sync, custom order routing logic that needs to read and write order data at speed, or bulk operations during a flash sale where inventory updates need to propagate immediately.

For most merchants on standard plans, the default API limits are not an issue. Apps are built to handle throttling. But if your custom integrations are hitting rate limit errors under load, this is one of the concrete Plus benefits that has a direct operational cost.

How many staff accounts do you get?

Plan	Staff accounts
Basic	2
Shopify	5
Advanced	15
Shopify Plus	Unlimited

This matters more for larger teams and for merchants operating multiple brands or stores from one Plus organisation. Plus also gives you access to the Shopify Plus organisation admin, a unified dashboard for managing up to 50 stores under one account. Each store under the organisation can have its own staff accounts without any additional seat cost.

For merchants running separate stores for different regions, brands, or wholesale channels, the multi-store organisation admin is a meaningful operational improvement over logging into each store separately.

What is checkout extensibility and why does it matter?

Checkout customisation is arguably the feature that drives more Plus upgrades than any other. The gap between standard plans and Plus is significant here.

On standard Shopify plans, you can:

Change colours, fonts, and basic branding in the checkout
Add your logo
Edit checkout CSS (with limitations)

On Shopify Plus, you get:

checkout.liquid (being phased out in favour of Checkout Extensibility)
Checkout Extensibility: a suite of purpose-built extension points using Checkout UI Extensions, Functions, and the Checkout Branding API
The ability to add custom UI blocks, banners, fields, and widgets at multiple points in the checkout flow
Native upsell and cross-sell offers in checkout via checkout extensions
Post-purchase pages (thank you and order status) that you can fully customise

The practical impact is measurable. Checkout upsells built via Checkout Extensibility routinely add 8-15% to AOV for merchants who implement them well. Apps like Rebuy (from £99/month for Shopify) and Triple Whale's post-purchase flows require Plus-level checkout access to run natively.

Worth noting: Shopify is actively migrating away from checkout.liquid (the legacy method) toward Checkout Extensibility. Any Plus merchant still on checkout.liquid should be planning their migration, as checkout.liquid support will be removed.

What is Launchpad and when should you use it?

Launchpad is a Plus-exclusive campaign scheduling tool. It lets you schedule a coordinated set of changes to go live at a specific time and then revert automatically after the campaign ends.

A typical Launchpad configuration for a flash sale:

Enable a discount code at 00:00 on the sale date
Switch to a sale-themed homepage banner
Apply a custom theme (or theme sections) designed for the sale
Enable inventory holds or pre-order settings on specific products
Revert all of the above at the end of the campaign window

Without Launchpad, this is done manually: someone stays up at midnight to make changes, or changes go live at the wrong time, or reversion is forgotten. For merchants running frequent sales, seasonal campaigns, and regional promotions, Launchpad reduces human error and eliminates the need to coordinate manual changes across your team.

Launchpad is not available on any standard plan. There is no equivalent third-party app that handles the full coordination across themes, discounts, and products simultaneously.

How does native B2B work on Shopify Plus?

B2B on Shopify (previously Shopify B2B) is a Plus-exclusive feature set for managing wholesale and trade customers directly within Shopify, without needing a separate app or a second store.

Key capabilities:

Company profiles: Group contacts under a company with company-level pricing, terms, and order history
Net payment terms: Net 30, Net 60, Net 90 natively on orders (no workaround required)
Custom price lists: Product-level and percentage pricing for different companies or customer segments
B2B checkout: A separate checkout experience for wholesale customers, including VAT-exempt purchasing (relevant for UK VAT-registered buyers)
Draft orders via buyer portal: B2B customers can request quotes and convert to orders through a self-service portal

Before native B2B, merchants with wholesale operations had to either use a separate Shopify store (with separate costs and inventory sync headaches), or rely on apps like Wholesale Club or Wholesale Gorilla (typically £50-100/month). Neither option integrates as cleanly as native B2B.

The limitation: native B2B does not replace a full ERP or purpose-built trade ordering platform for complex wholesale operations. But for merchants with moderate B2B volume alongside their DTC channel, it removes significant operational overhead.

What reporting differences should you know about?

All Shopify plans include basic sales reports. The reporting gap increases at higher plan tiers.

Feature	Advanced	Plus
Custom reports	Yes	Yes
Advanced report builder	Yes	Yes
Shopify Analytics API	Standard limits	Higher rate limits
ShopifyQL	Available	Available
Multi-store reporting	No	Yes (via organisation admin)
Benchmarks	Peer comparison data	Plus-exclusive benchmarking

Shopify Plus merchants also get access to Shopify Audiences (currently US/Canada-focused), a tool that uses aggregated Shopify network data to create lookalike audiences for Facebook and Google advertising. Early case studies from Shopify cited 1.4x to 2x ROAS improvements on paid campaigns using Audiences-generated segments, though results vary considerably by category and average order value.

For merchants who have outgrown native Shopify Analytics, Plus does not fundamentally change the reporting picture: most serious merchants at Plus level use a third-party analytics stack (Triple Whale, Northbeam, or Glew) regardless of plan.

What else does Shopify Plus include?

A few additional capabilities worth noting:

Priority support and a dedicated merchant success manager: Plus merchants get a named contact at Shopify and access to priority support queues. Standard plan support is handled through general queues.

Shopify Plus Academy: Training resources for your team covering operations, marketing, and platform usage.

Exclusive apps: Some apps in the Shopify App Store are Plus-only, including certain checkout extension apps, Shopify Audiences, and Shopify Markets Pro (for multi-currency and cross-border selling with localised checkout).

Script Editor (legacy): Shopify Scripts allowed merchants to write server-side Ruby scripts to customise checkout discounting, shipping, and payment logic. This is being deprecated in favour of Shopify Functions, which is available to all plans but with more capability exposed on Plus.

Shopify POS Pro for up to 20 locations: Standard plans include POS Lite. Plus includes POS Pro (normally £79/month per location on standard plans) for up to 20 locations. For retail merchants, this has direct cost implications.

Is Shopify Plus worth the upgrade?

Plus is worth it when you can point to specific operational problems it solves. It is not worth it if you are upgrading on principle or because your GMV "feels" like it warrants it.

The upgrade makes commercial sense when one or more of these are true:

You are hitting automation flow limits on Advanced and your operations depend on Flow
You need checkout extensibility for native upsells or bespoke checkout UI
You are running B2B alongside DTC and managing wholesale through workarounds
You have multiple brands or regions and need the multi-store organisation admin
You are running frequent campaigns where Launchpad saves significant manual coordination
Your API rate limits are causing production issues with your custom integrations
The 0.2% gateway transaction fee saving materially offsets the plan cost (relevant at very high volume with a third-party payment provider)

A quick calculation on the gateway fee point: a merchant processing £5 million/year through a non-Shopify Payments gateway would pay £25,000/year in transaction fees on Advanced (0.5%) and £10,000/year on Plus (0.2%). The saving of £15,000 covers the Plus plan cost at the base rate of $2,500/month (approximately £24,000/year). At that volume, the transaction fee alone nearly justifies the plan cost.

If none of the seven conditions above apply, Advanced is the right plan. Advanced gives you custom reports, 15 staff accounts, and Shopify Flow within its limits. Most merchants between £1 million and £3 million annual revenue are well-served by Advanced.

Key takeaways

Checkout extensibility is the most commercially impactful Plus feature for most merchants: native upsells in checkout add 8-15% to AOV when implemented well
Automation flows: unlimited runs on Plus vs 1,000/month on Advanced. If you are running Flow automations at volume, this cap will affect you
API call rates: doubled on Plus. Relevant for custom integrations under load, not for merchants relying entirely on standard apps
Native B2B removes the need for a second store or a wholesale app if you have a trade channel alongside DTC
Launchpad is valuable if you run frequent time-sensitive campaigns with coordinated theme, discount, and inventory changes
Staff accounts: unlimited on Plus vs 15 on Advanced. The multi-store organisation admin is a separate and significant operational benefit for multi-brand merchants
The break-even point: at high volume with a third-party payment gateway, the 0.2% transaction fee can offset a significant portion of the Plus subscription cost
If you cannot identify a specific operational problem Plus solves for your business, Advanced is the correct plan

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you negotiate Shopify Plus pricing?

Yes. The $2,500/month base price is a starting point. Merchants with proven GMV, longer contract commitments, or existing relationships with Shopify can negotiate. Annual commitments typically receive a discount over month-to-month Plus pricing.

Does Shopify Plus have a free trial?

No, not in the standard sense. You can negotiate a proof-of-concept period in some cases, but Plus is a contract, not a subscription you try for a month. Talk to a Shopify Plus sales contact about your specific situation.

What happens to your theme on Shopify Plus?

Nothing automatically. Your existing theme carries over. The difference is that Plus unlocks checkout extensibility, meaning you can now use checkout extension apps and customise the checkout and post-purchase pages in ways standard plans do not allow.

Is checkout.liquid going away?

Yes. Shopify has announced checkout.liquid deprecation for Plus merchants. If your checkout relies on checkout.liquid, migrate to Checkout Extensibility. Shopify has provided migration tools and documentation, and most Plus-focused development agencies have done dozens of these migrations.

Do you need Shopify Plus to use Shopify Functions?

No. Shopify Functions (the replacement for Shopify Scripts for custom discount, shipping, and checkout logic) is available on all plans. Plus merchants get higher function execution limits and access to additional extension points, but Functions itself is not Plus-exclusive.

Shopify Plus vs Standard Shopify: Full Feature Comparison