Like the millions of merchants around the world, you rely on Shopify to fuel your sales and grow your business. While you’re now in the enviable position of managing a large and growing business, you may have outgrown your Shopify plan without realizing it.
The truth is, you can’t compare Shopify’s standard plans to Shopify Plus by looking at the platform fee alone. Shopify Plus is a significant upgrade, introducing powerful new tools to accelerate your growth and simplify your operations.
In this article, we’ll explore some of the early warning signs that it may be time for you to upgrade to Shopify Plus.
What is Shopify Plus? Powerful Tools and Features You Need to Know
Shopify Plus is one of the top enterprise eCommerce platforms, supporting brands including Mattel, Ruggable, and Everlane. While Shopify’s basic plans are designed to be easy to use for entrepreneurs and small businesses, Shopify Plus gives you more—more tools, more power, more flexibility, more insight.
Some of the standout features of Shopify Plus include:
- B2B support – The only way to run your wholesale or DTC business without patched together capabilities that accumulate tech debt.
- Shopify Audiences – Leverage buyer insights and benchmark data to improve your ad performance (reducing acquisition costs up to 50%, according to Shopify).
- ShopifyQL Notebooks – Consolidate your commerce data with powerful query tools to gain powerful business insights.
- Launchpad – Accelerated checkouts, automated event scheduling, and built-in bot protection to support product drops and sales.
- Shopify Functions – A way for developers to extend or replace parts of the backend logic with custom code, making it possible to build truly customized commerce experiences. Clients have used Functions to see a 20% average order value with custom promotions.
- Checkout Extensions – A code-free, upgrade-proof way to customize the checkout experience.
- Commerce Components by Shopify – Support for a modern, composable stack using headless SDKs, low-code storefronts, and edge-deployed cart (additional upgrade from Plus).
In addition, Shopify Plus offers priority support (more than just live chat), huge capacity increases, and the most competitive rates. While the monthly cost is definitely higher, these exclusive features can give you the power to scale your business at an unprecedented level, particularly with the help of an experienced partner who knows the ins and outs of Shopify Plus. Of course, if you’re not ready to upgrade, that’s a big fixed cost impacting your balance sheet and cash flow.
So, how do you know when it’s time to upgrade? Let’s dive into the most common scenarios.
7 Indications It’s Time to Upgrade to Shopify Plus
The move to Shopify Plus isn’t just about where your business is today—it’s about where it’s headed tomorrow. Here are 7 signs that it could be time to consider upgrading to Shopify Plus:
01. You’re Experiencing Rapid Growth
If you’re experiencing rapid growth, what you’re doing is resonating with your target audience. Congrats! However, Shopify’s mid-tier plans are designed for small teams (Shopify) and initial periods of growth (Shopify Advanced or Shopify Retail), but there are caps that can lead to operational challenges, store performance issues, and service challenges:
- The number of staff accounts – Up to 15, limiting all teams (including marketing and customer service).
- Inventory locations – Up to 10.
- Markets – 3 included.
- Checkout capacity – How many people can simultaneously checkout.
- SKU management – SKU creation limit per day.
- API limits – Impact apps and workflow automations created using Shopify Flow.
If not addressed, these limitations can cause issues that can halt or even reverse your growth trajectory. Furthermore, Shopify’s lower plans limit some of the automation tools and have limited localized selling support for international operations.
So, at what level of “growth” is it time to move to Shopify Plus? While how a business defines rapid growth for themselves is subjective, there are certain telltale signs that, when proactively and frequently assessed, can signal the need for a shift:
- Transaction Volume – Thousands of daily transactions can push Shopify’s standard infrastructure to its limits. Shopify Plus is designed for scalability, capable of processing up to 10,000 transactions per minute, nearly 40x the capacity of basic accounts.
- Traffic Volume – While built on the same infrastructure, high traffic volumes can push Shopify’s standard setup to its limits. Currently, 70-80% of site performance is dependent on themes and add-on applications, but Shopify Plus is more extensible and provides the ability to control more of the backend, allowing merchants the opportunity to optimize load times. Further, Shopify Plus offers better API access and integration options to provide for quick and effective manipulation of data, also enhancing loading time and site responsiveness.
- Revenue Milestones – While Shopify used to state that Shopify Plus was ideal for businesses with over $1 million in annual revenue, it now states the goal in monthly terms: $80,000 in sales per month. While roughly the same annually, looking at figures from a monthly perspective helps brands make the jump earlier in their growth trajectory.
- Rate Limits – You hit the API rate limits of your plan, which can limit the number of apps and integrations you use or your ability to bulk manage inventory.
- Catalog Size or Complexity – You manage a large or complex catalog and are hitting limits in bulk editing, uploading, or changes. Shopify Plus supports unlimited SKUs.
02. Limited Customizations Are Holding You Back
Shopify provides limited opportunities for customization, which can constrain your ability to tailor your online store to ever-changing consumer needs. The signs that you are constrained include:
The Need for Checkout Customization
The checkout process is one of the most critical stages of the customer journey, directly impacting conversion rates. Shopify Plus grants access to Checkout extensibility to allow developers and merchants to customize the Shopify checkout experience far beyond the options previously supported with custom code in the checkout.liquid theme file (which is now unsupported).
Shopify Plus has introduced Checkout Extensions as a new, upgrade-proof solution to create custom functionality across the entire checkout flow (product info, shipping, payment, order summary). This adds powerful new capabilities to improve the customer experience and streamline the checkout flow in a very brand or customer-specific manner.
Sidenote: Checkout extensibility replaces checkout.liquid. checkout.liquid is now unsupported for information, shipping, and payment pages, and will be sunset on August 28, 2025, for Thank You and Order status pages.
Advanced API Capabilities
Growing businesses often require robust integrations with tools such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, or custom-built applications. Further, for those customizations that are introduced via apps, Shopify Plus features more generous API rate limits, enabling:
- Faster synchronization of inventory, orders, and customer data in real-time.
- Seamless integration with third-party apps or proprietary software to meet business-specific needs.
- Support for advanced use cases such as dynamic pricing, personalized product recommendations, or real-time shipping rate calculations.
These enhanced API capabilities ensure your eCommerce operations scale efficiently alongside your business.
To better understand the rate limits across plans, here is a quick comparison chart:
Deliver Personalization with Headless and Composable Commerce
Today’s shoppers demand unique experiences that flow across touchpoints, a capability supported by headless commerce. While all price tiers have access to Hydrogen, Shopify’s headless framework, to build custom front-ends / storefronts to deliver unique experiences for each channel (e.g. social, mobile, etc.), mid-tier plans only support 1 headless storefront. Shopify Plus supports 25 headless storefronts.
Alternatively, for merchants that want a custom and composable tech stack to choose the components they need and integrate with their existing infrastructure, Shopify’s Commerce Components is an enterprise solution above-and-beyond Shopify Plus.
Shopify suggests hiring an experienced partner to build custom shopping experiences using the many SDKs and APIs available.
Read Also: 10 Key Benefits of Headless Commerce
Extend with Shopify Functions
For mid-tier price points, customers have no way to interact with the Shopify backend to change the admin or customer experience. Shopify Plus includes Shopify Functions, a customization framework that allows developers to extend or modify Shopify’s backend logic in a very upgrade-proof method.
Shopify Functions can help customize features such as:
- Dynamic Pricing – Implement tiered discounts based on cart value or customer type (e.g., wholesale vs. retail).
- Shipping Rules – Define custom shipping methods, e.g., BOPIS (Buy Online, Pick Up In Store) or rates based on order criteria.
- Payment Gateways – Modify payment method availability dynamically.
03. Your Operations Have Grown Too Complex
As your business grows, the complexity of managing operations increases exponentially. From inventory management and order processing to customer service and fraud prevention, these tasks become resource-intensive and prone to errors when handled manually, particularly for B2B businesses.
Automate Workflows with Shopify Flow
While all plans include the capacity to enable Shopify Flow to create automated workflows without code, Shopify Plus has improved API rate limits and exclusive access to tasks created by custom partner apps, offering more cohesive benefits across your commerce ecosystem.
Event Automation with Launchpad
Further, Launchpad is a productivity and customer support tool exclusive to Shopify Plus, enabling merchants to automate and manage flash sales, product launches, and promotional events seamlessly. With Launchpad, you can:
- Schedule Sales and Promotions – Plan and automate the start and end times of sales events, ensuring timely execution without manual intervention.
- Automate Inventory Updates – Automatically adjust inventory levels and product visibility in sync with your promotional calendar.
- Theme Customization – Schedule theme changes to align with specific events, providing a cohesive and timely shopping experience for customers.
This level of automation reduces manual workloads and minimizes the risk of errors during critical periods.
Shopify Functions for Backend Customization
For businesses processing hundreds or thousands of orders daily, Shopify Plus provides access to Shopify Functions, which gives you the capability to customize the business logic, which is particularly crucial for supporting orders with:
- Custom Order Processing – Set up rules to automatically process orders based on predefined criteria, reducing manual intervention.
- Custom Order Routing – Automatically assign orders to specific warehouses or fulfillment centers based on location, stock availability, or customer priority.
- Automated Shipping Rules – Apply custom shipping rates or methods dynamically, such as free shipping for orders over a certain value or expedited shipping for VIP customers.
- Checkout Validation – Manage risk with validation rules.
- Personalizations and Dynamic Pricing – Serve up personalized, automated promotions based on buyer behavior and history, such as abandoned cart reminders, product recommendations, and discounts. Ideal for supporting dynamic pricing based on custom segments or purchase behaviors.
- Customize Checkout Processes – Automate specific checkout experiences tailored to different customer groups or product types.
B2B on Shopify
Shopify Plus introduces B2B capabilities for wholesale and direct-to-consumer (DTC) sales, including the advanced capabilities that have been missing from Shopify to meet the unique needs of B2B buyers. At lower plan levels, much of this work would be manual or require third-party apps.
- Customized catalogs and pricing
- Quantity rules
- Payment terms
- Personalized storefronts
- Self-serve portal with quick bulk ordering and reordering tools and role-based access
- Leverage all the Shopify tools you love to launch new storefronts (headless), create automations (e.g., bulk discounts), and more
Fraud Prevention and Risk Management
While merchants of all sizes are vulnerable to risk from fraud and malicious attacks, this risk level increases with the volume of transactions and increased brand visibility.
Shopify Plus includes tools to minimize risk and protect your reputation:
- Fraud Filters – Use Shopify Flow to automatically flag or cancel orders that meet predefined risk criteria, such as mismatched billing and shipping addresses or unusually high-value orders.
- Risk-Based Notifications – Use Shopify Flow to notify your team of potential fraudulent activity, enabling swift action without the need for manual reviews.
- Bot Protection – Shopify Plus includes added bot protection to protect your store during surges in traffic and sales.
04. You Are Expanding To Multiple Markets
For growing businesses, entering international markets is a key driver of revenue growth. However, expanding to multiple regions introduces complexities that basic Shopify plans may struggle to handle.
Here are the tools and capabilities Shopify Plus provides to manage market expansion:
Expanded Markets
Mid-tier plans may have limited capabilities to support localized global selling, with Shopify supporting only 3 markets and Advanced offering the capacity to add markets for $59 per month per market. At base level, Shopify Plus supports 50 markets, all from a single store interface.
Edge Inventory Management
As you expand across new markets, you may increase your inventory locations to simplify fulfillment from retail stores, warehouses, or pop-ups. Basic Shopify plans all cap at 10 inventory locations, while Shopify Plus expands this capability to 200.
Internationalization
All Shopify plans offer extensive international support, including language translation, currency conversion, market-based pricing, local domains, and local payment methods. Shopify Plus introduces:
- Expansion Stores – Rather than relying on translation, Shopify Plus supports 9 additional expansion stores that represent the same brand but operate as independent ‘stores’. This allows for greater customizations for each location to reflect cultural preferences and differences.
- Duties and Taxes – Estimate or collect duties and import taxes at checkout (Also available at Advanced).
- Customs Pre-Clearance – Reduce hold-ups and surprise fees.
05. You Think Your Margins Could be Better
As sales volumes increase, higher-than-necessary transaction fees begin to add unnecessary weight to the bottom line. While Shopify plans do differ on monthly/annual costs, they also differ on transaction fees, typically expressed for Shopify Payments as:
Shopify Payments – Card rate (%) + flat fee per transaction
Shopify Plus helps businesses keep more of what they earn by offering the most competitive rates across all critical Shopify Payments:
- Online card rates – Includes domestic, Amex, and international transactions.
- In-person payments – Includes card and Interac transactions.
Further, Shopify Plus offers the lowest rate for third-party transaction fees, which begin at 2% for basic plans and decrease to 0.2% for Shopify Plus plans. For businesses processing large volumes, this can result in significant savings.
In addition, merchants can realize significant operational savings using tools such as:
- Shopify Audiences – Improve ad performance and reduce customer acquisition costs.
- Shopify Functions – Customize backend logic to create tailored shopping experiences.
- Shopify Flow – Automate tasks and workflows to reduce manual efforts and operational costs.
What would transitioning to Shopify Plus mean for your business?
06. You Require Advanced Marketing Features
As your business grows, basic marketing tools may no longer meet your needs. Driving customer acquisition, retention, and loyalty requires sophisticated strategies and tools. This is where Shopify Plus tools really outshine the low-tier plans:
Find More Customers and Improve Your Ad Performance with Shopify Audiences
Ad campaigns using Shopify Audiences are seeing 2x more orders for every marketing dollar spent and 50% lower customer acquisition costs—impressive results exclusive to Shopify Plus. Shopify Audiences can:
- Help you find more customers – Build custom lists from deep commerce insights.
- Target with an edge – Leverage behavior insights to refine targeting strategies.
- Compare your performance – Use benchmark data to measure campaign success.
- Edit campaigns in real-time – Automate optimizations to boost ad efficiency.
- Connect to key marketing channels – Seamlessly integrate with leading ad platforms.
Best of all, the Audiences algorithms leverage AI to continue improving over time.
Build Personalized and Custom Promotions with Shopify Flow
Shopify Flow apps allow you to build personalized and custom promotions without the low rate limits of basic Shopify plans:
- Campaign kick-off – Trigger promotions based on order size or product tags.
- Tag, segment, or reward customers – Automate segmentation based on buying behavior or history.
- Restock and new product notifications – Automatically notify customers of restocks or new product drops.
Customize the Customer Journey with Shopify Functions
Shopify Plus customers have seen a 20% increase in average order value with Shopify Functions, enabling true customization of Shopify. Beyond custom development, you can take advantage of pre-built apps powered by Shopify Functions, including:
- Discount Kit – Create custom, tiered, and free gift discounts.
- ReConvert – Enable upsell, cross-sell, and bundle offers.
- HideShip – Hide, sort, and rename shipping methods.
- Bird Pickup – Support BOPIS (Buy Online, Pick Up In Store) and local delivery options.
- HidePay – Maximize revenue by emphasizing specific payment options depending on order value.
07. You Require Enterprise-Level Support
As brands expand and gain popularity, they may experience downtime, technical issues, or operational inefficiencies that must be effectively managed to maintain steady progress. These issues are not necessarily specific to the Shopify platform, but rather your unique implementation and its inherent customizations, integrations, and vulnerabilities.
Priority Support
While all plans benefit from Shopify’s unprecedented unlimited bandwidth, standard plans only offer support by chat, which can slow down issue resolution. Only Shopify Plus includes priority enterprise-level support by phone or live chat, ensuring you have the resources, expertise, and priority assistance required to maintain seamless operations, especially during critical moments like product launches or seasonal spikes.
Access to the Shopify Plus Partner Ecosystem
As a Shopify Plus merchant, you also gain access to an exclusive network of certified Shopify Plus Partners. These partners include developers, agencies, and consultants who specialize in helping you optimize your Shopify implementation, which could include:
- Architecture design and implementation – Expertise in headless and composable commerce solutions.
- Product and collection setup and auditing – Ensuring your catalog is structured for efficiency and performance.
- Performance auditing and optimization – Identifying bottlenecks and improving site speed and usability.
- Custom integrations and apps – Tailoring Shopify to fit your specific business needs.
- Best practices for Shopify Flow automations – Leveraging automation to enhance workflows and efficiency.
- Dedicated 24/7 monitoring and support – Ensuring uptime and immediate response to critical issues.
- Bespoke storefront designs – Creating unique and engaging user experiences tailored to your brand.
It can be difficult to choose a partner from such an extensive partner ecosystem. We’ve put together a helpful guide to hiring an eCommerce partner.
Partner with Net Solutions
The transition to Shopify Plus is not just a technical upgrade; it’s a strategic investment in scalability, efficiency, and customer experience.
The transition equips businesses with the advanced features needed to stay competitive in a dynamic eCommerce landscape. While Shopify offers a seamless path to upgrade to Shopify Plus, that does not mean you immediately know how to set up Shopify Plus or how to get the most out of your new investment. Without dedicated support from Shopify, you could end up making mistakes in your set-up that impact performance or that fail to set you up for success.
Leveraging an agency can optimize your transition to Shopify Plus, helping ensure you have all the technical and operational support needed to:
- Make critical decisions about architecture (traditional, headless, composable).
- Design new front-ends, leveraging deep understanding of the latest opportunities in personalization and interactive design.
- Choose the right third-party services and Function apps.
- Integrate with your services of record.
- Audit your product database to remove errors and optimize categorization structure.
- Optimize your site performance (speed, SEO, security).
- Onboard developers and editors with helpful training and resources.
- Provide ongoing support and maintenance.
Net Solutions is a leading eCommerce development agency and a Shopify partner, offering comprehensive commerce consulting, design, development, and optimization services. We take the time to understand your business goals and your user needs to set you up for success on your next stage of growth. At Net Solutions, we have over 20 years of experience working with large commerce brands, including a leading airline, American Golf, and Euro Car Parts.
