Shopify is known for its accessibility to small-business proprietors. But it’s also a choice eCommerce platform (also known as e-commerce platform) for fast-growth startups like Gymshark as well as heavyweights like Nestle among the Fortune 500s.
How is it possible that businesses, ranging from small startups to billion-dollar corporations, find their home on Shopify?
Well, Shopify offers varied eCommerce solutions or plans with features that can meet business needs no matter the size. Now, the question is, which Shopify plan is right for your brand?
If you’re looking into Shopify Plus, chances are your business is on the upswing. As your brand is growing, you naturally want more say in how your online store operates. So, we’re here to help you figure out if making the leap to Shopify Plus is the next big move for you.
In this blog, we look at common and distinct features of both the Shopify Plan and the Shopify Plus Plan:
• Common Features Across All Shopify Plans
• Shopify Plan Features
• Shopify Plus Features
• Shopify Pricing
• Reasons Your Business May Need Shopify Plus
• Expertise To Grow Your Shopify Business Website
Common Features Across All Shopify Plans
Before we dive into the two plans, let’s look at the common Shopify features you get from any plan offered by the eCommerce platform.
Unlimited Products
There’s no limit to the variety of items you can showcase in your Shopify store. Your offerings can range from physical goods and digital downloads to services and gift cards. To introduce a product on Shopify, simply input its details and upload accompanying images.
Should your product come with different options, such as color or size, you have the flexibility to include variants for each unique combination.
Unlimited Bandwidth
You won’t incur charges based on the number of online visitors browsing your store or the volume of files you upload. Bandwidth, simply put, is the data transmitted from a business website’s server to its users. For instance, if 100 people visit a page with 7MB of images and text, it would consume 700MB of bandwidth.
Alternative e-commerce solutions like Squarespace and Ecwid also have unlimited bandwidth across their plans.
Brand Assets
You can effortlessly add and manage your brand assets, such as your logo, brand colors and slogan. To meet the platform’s specifications for default logos, opt for PNG or JPEG formats with a minimum width of 512 pixels. Square logos for profile pictures or social media channels should be 512×512 pixels.
Bear in mind that Shopify may crop the secondary, square logo if circular images are necessary.
Fraud Analysis
When you opt for Shopify Payments, you automatically get the platform’s built-in fraud analysis feature. The feature actively identifies orders that may exhibit signs of potential fraud, alerting you to take necessary precautions. Ultimately, it aids in preventing chargebacks and minimizing financial risks in your online business.
In the case of stolen credit cards, only banks, not Shopify, have the authority to decide on reversing funds.
Manual Order Creation
You can create an order on behalf of a customer, or you can create a draft order in your Shopify admin. This proves especially beneficial when handling orders received via phone, in person or email, allowing you to seamlessly accept payments at a later time. You can send invoices to customers with a secure checkout link.
It’s a convenient and versatile feature for managing various transaction scenarios.
Discount Codes
Implementing discounts serves as a powerful marketing tactic to boost sales in your Shopify store. You have several options for providing discounts, including generating discount codes, configuring automatic discounts or establishing sale prices for specific products.
Customers can conveniently apply these codes during online checkout or in-person transactions when utilizing the Shopify point-of-sale (POS) system.
Custom Pricing by Market
You have the option to manage local pricing by configuring price adjustments for specific countries or regions. These adjustments involve applying percentage changes to base prices for customers in a particular location, allowing for a customized pricing strategy.
To view how each product price is calculated per market, you can view the breakdown here.
Abandoned Cart Recovery
An abandoned checkout occurs when a customer initiates the checkout process, providing their email, but fails to complete the payment. If the checkout remains incomplete for over 10 minutes after email submission, it is considered abandoned.
Recovery options are limited to the Online Store, Buy Button and Plus Wholesale Channel. Shopify POS and third-party sales channels are excluded from the checkout recovery email service.
Staff Logins
Empower your team with staff logins, enabling them to handle essential admin tasks while ensuring limited access to sensitive information. You can dive into your store’s timeline to track updates and changes made by each staff member.
The number of staff logins you can create varies based on your chosen plan, but keep in mind that the Starter plan doesn’t come with staff accounts.
Analytics
Explore the Analytics page to find essential sales, order and online store visitor data – all conveniently presented. Analytics gives you an instant overview of your store’s performance across various sales channels and any chosen date range.
The dashboard showcases vital metrics, offering insights into your store’s performance and customer behavior. Metrics are presented in both numeric and graph formats where applicable.
Finance Reports
Delve into essential financial insights for your business with the help of finance reports. The finance summary offers a comprehensive overview, allowing you to examine key aspects such as sales, payments and pending sales data at a glance.
There are several types of finance reports available, including sales tax and liabilities. You can learn more about finance reports here.
Customer Support
Through the Shopify Help Center assistant chat, you can access Shopify Support round the clock. If you require assistance, simply click the “I still need help” button. From there, you can choose your specific store, and a support advisor will be ready to assist you.
It’s a seamless and convenient way to get the help you need whenever you need it.
Shopify Plan Features
The Shopify Plan offers all features of the Basic Shopify plan, lower transaction fees and supports five staff accounts. It provides powerful reports and supports international growth.
For small business e-commerce success, here’s a breakdown of Shopify features:
Competitive Transaction Fees
Experience the cost-saving advantage of Shopify through its competitive transaction fees. To understand the specifics tailored to your region, visit Shopify’s pricing page. There, you’ll find detailed information about transaction fees associated with different plans.
Five Staff Accounts
Add up to five members to your store and customize their permissions for tasks like adding products or managing orders. For collaboration with Shopify Partners, create collaborator accounts and use permissions to manage their access to specific sections of your store.
Reports
The Shopify plan comes with the analytics page, Live View, product analytics, acquisition reports, inventory reports, marketing reports, order reports, sales reports, profit reports, customer reports and so much more to help you make informed business decisions.
International Commerce
The Shopify plan supports international growth with Shopify Markets – a cross-border tool for configuring specific settings in each region. It streamlines the process of identifying, setting up, launching, optimizing and managing international markets, all within a single store.
Shopify Plus Features
Shopify Plus is a plan for high-volume merchants. It offers enterprise e-commerce features like customizable checkout, unlimited staff accounts and specialized apps.
So, including all of the Shopify benefits or features mentioned above, Shopify Plus plans offer:
Organization Settings
Shopify’s Organization Settings bring extra functions to the admin. If you’ve got multiple stores in your organization, you can handle tasks across all of them together instead of dealing with each separately.
Users with access to Organization Settings can make changes that affect users, store management and billing for all the stores. To use it, you just need access to at least one store in the organization.
Advanced Apps and Channels
Merchants on Shopify Plus can utilize specialized Shopify apps tailored for high-growth businesses. Exclusive access is granted to Shopify Plus merchants for the following channels and apps: business-to-business (B2B), Wholesale channel, Launchpad, Bulk Account Inviter and ShopifyQL Notebooks.
These tools cater specifically to the needs of high-growth merchants, providing them with advanced functionalities for elevated performance and efficiency in their operations.
Fully Customizable Checkout
Customize your checkout using the checkout.liquid file for enhanced control over your store’s branding. Note that checkout.liquid will be deprecated for the Information, Shipping and Payment pages and will be removed on August 13, 2024.
For Shopify Plus merchants, checkout extensibility is the new option for customizing these pages. If you’ve personalized the Information, Shipping or Payment pages, make sure to upgrade to checkout extensibility before August 13, 2024.
More API Resources
Shopify Plus goes the extra mile by providing additional API calls, allowing for seamless integration with custom apps tailored to your business needs. If you’re looking to boost your API rate limits, simply get in touch with the support team.
Exclusive to Shopify Plus merchants, a range of specialized API resources is at your disposal. These include GiftCard, Multipass, User for REST and publishablePublish and publishableUnpublish for GraphQL.
Unlimited Staff
The Basic Shopify plan provides two staff accounts, while the Shopify plan offers up to five. However, Shopify Plus takes it a step further by offering unlimited accounts, allowing you to expand your staff without incurring additional costs.
Granting staff access to manage your store involves assigning specific permissions to particular features in your Shopify admin. Depending on their role, you can provide broad access or restrict it to specific functions—customizing permissions to match each staff member’s responsibilities.
Additional Permissions
Although permissions can likewise be set in other Shopify plans, Shopify Plus provides greater control over your staff and their actions in the admin. This includes distinct report export permissions and permissions to access specific apps.
An example use case of permissions: Staff handling updates to your online store can be given permissions to create and edit products, as well as manage settings, themes, blog posts and pages and navigation.
More Expansion Stores
Shopify Plus facilitates the creation of nine expansion stores, offering a solution for internationalization, distinct physical locations and other related needs. Your brand has the flexibility to operate in diverse markets while adhering to region-specific regulations and requirements.
Creating a store in an organization designates you as the owner. To change ownership later, use the specific store’s Shopify admin. When setting up a store, providing a purpose may influence billing or setup but won’t restrict features. If unsure, consult Shopify Plus Support.
Unlimited Development Stores
Shopify Plus offers unlimited development stores, which are free Shopify accounts with certain limitations. These stores serve as testing grounds for themes and apps you create or for setting up Shopify accounts for clients.
Development stores with generated test data include demo products, sample items, test orders, a modified theme and more Plus-specific features. Establishing and transferring a development store to a client can provide you with a recurring commission.
Shopify Plus Partner Program
The Shopify Plus Partner Program, featuring service partners with specialized technical expertise, is designed to provide tailored solutions for high-growth businesses.
This program supports Shopify merchants in scaling their operations by ensuring a high standard of product quality, service, performance, privacy and support. For an overview of available services, check out the Shopify Plus Partner Directory.
Themes Flexibility
Shopify Plus allows you to add up to 100 themes to your account. This feature enables you to experiment with new themes, maintain seasonal versions of your published theme or test modifications on a duplicated version of your current theme.
A theme dictates your online store’s structure, functionalities and aesthetics. Each theme comes with unique styles and layouts, providing customers with a distinct browsing experience.
More POS With Shopify POS Pro
The Shopify POS app facilitates selling products in diverse locations, from brick-and-mortar stores to markets and pop-ups. Syncing seamlessly with Shopify, the POS app ensures order and inventory tracking across your retail outlets, online store and other active sales channels.
All Shopify Plus plans include the first 20 POS Pro locations, with extra Shopify POS Pro billed individually for each activated location. You have the flexibility to opt for monthly or annual billing cycles.
Integrations
Exclusive to Shopify Plus merchants, certain integrations, like Avalara AvaTax for Tax services, offer specialized features. Avalara AvaTax is an advanced sales tax software that automates calculations and filing with real-time rates from over 12,000 tax jurisdictions.
If your Shopify Plus store has an Avalara AvaTax account, you can activate it for your plan, allowing you to charge taxes using Avalara’s services instead of Shopify’s built-in tax engine. This integration is also compatible with mobile devices.
Shopify Plus Academy
Shopify Plus Academy provides specialized content for merchants on the Shopify Plus plan. It features self-directed online courses covering Shopify Plus, eCommerce best practices and technical integrations.
Accessed directly through the Shopify Plus Academy website or from your Shopify Plus account, this resource allows you to undergo self-guided training on essential topics for business growth.
Shopify Pricing
Now that we’ve covered Shopify features for both of the plans, let’s talk about Shopify Pricing.
Shopify Plan Pricing
Ideal for entrepreneurs looking to set up a small business e-commerce shop, the Shopify Plan is priced at $65 per month for monthly billing and $49 per month for annual billing.
Shopify has a special promotion allowing you to avail the first three months at just $1 per month.
Shopify Plus Plan Pricing
The Shopify Plus Plan starts at $2,000 per month with annual billing for standard setups and integrations. For higher-volume enterprise e-commerce business websites, your potential additional cost could be determined by a variable fee amounting to 0.25% of your monthly revenue.
When your store’s monthly transactions surpass $800,000, the pricing structure transitions to 0.25% of your monthly Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV), capped at a maximum monthly fee of $40,000.
For more information on the costs of the e-commerce platform, you can visit the Shopify Pricing page.
So, Does Your Business Need Shopify Plus?
Given the Shopify benefits or features of Shopify Plus, the plan is clearly geared for larger or high-volume merchants. The Shopify Plus Plan is recommended for businesses that:
• Need to operate multiple Shopify stores.
• Want absolute control over the checkout stage.
• Have multiple physical stores requiring POS features.
• Have advanced API needs.
• Manage a large staff that needs access to several Shopify stores.
How Can eCommerce Experts Help?
This section looks at how eCommerce experts, specifically from Thrive, can assist businesses.
“Whether a business already has an eCommerce site or they’re ready to begin selling directly to consumers online, Thrive can help,” said Danielle Russell, Thrive’s resident Shopify expert.
For businesses already engaged in eCommerce selling through Shopify:
“For businesses already selling online, Thrive will conduct a conversion rate optimization audit to understand the points of friction on an existing site that may inhibit shoppers from completing a purchase.
By analyzing the user experience (UX) of a client’s site through visitor recordings and/or heatmaps, Thrive can help eCommerce sellers understand how and why shoppers are getting hung up in the checkout process,” Russell said.
“We’ll then make recommendations for optimizing the path to purchase, and provided the client is aligned, Thrive’s web development team will redesign or make adjustments to the Shopify site to help increase conversion rates.”
For businesses wanting to set up shop through Shopify:
“For clients who aren’t yet selling online, Thrive will build a Shopify site from the ground up!” Russell said.
“Thrive’s marketing consultants will work with business owners to understand their products, what makes them unique, how and where they are used and who is most likely to purchase them.
Then, we’ll go about designing a site that brings to life the client’s brand look and feel in a conversion-focused user experience that will lead to seamless checkouts. Our team of designers and content creators will develop search-optimized content and visuals that will not only help shoppers find our clients’ products but also persuade them to buy.
Once a client’s Shopify site is designed, passed through quality assurance and approved, Thrive’s team of digital marketing experts will help establish a go-to-market plan to launch the site.
For eCommerce sites, it’s important to have a full-funnel approach that will engage prospective customers where they are. These plans might include organic and paid social media marketing to build anticipation ahead of the launch, with PPC to serve up shopping ads that are relevant to consumers’ searches.
It might also include programmatic paid media leveraging lifestyle and interest targeting, as well as retargeting to help move shoppers down the purchase funnel.”
Russell rhetorically asked what Shopify site would be complete without an email marketing program designed to cultivate a loyal customer base that is eager to receive new product news and updates.
Digital Marketing Expertise for Your Shopify Business Website
The utilization of Shopify benefits businesses in various ways. Although user-friendly in many cases, Shopify can be overwhelming to explore for some.
Our e-commerce solutions experts at Thrive can help ensure you maximize Shopify’s powerful platform to scale your online business. Thrive’s services include:
• Shopify Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Shopify Web Design
• E-commerce Optimization
• Content Writing
