When Should You Upgrade to Shopify Plus?

Shopify excels as the leading ecommerce platform on the market, powering over 4.6m stores across the internet. It’s a versatile solution that makes it easy to start your own store thanks to a $1 first month offer and flexible plans for stores of all sizes, which include three different standard tiers.

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However, there’s another option: Shopify Plus. Shopify’s premium plan includes more features, better rates, added support options, and many other benefits that make it tempting to switch.

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Once you reach a certain point, you have to consider whether you should upgrade to Shopify Plus to save money, add functionality, and improve performance. 

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But, when does it make the most sense to upgrade, and why should you invest in a better Shopify solution? We’ll tell you.

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When Should You Upgrade to Shopify Plus?

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Choosing when to upgrade to Shopify Plus comes down to balancing cost and performance.

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The most significant benefit of Shopify Plus is the discounted fees, which can save you a ton as a high-volume store. For that reason, Shopify recommends upgrading once your business is achieving $80,000 in sales per month to offset the monthly cost with fee savings. Plus, you enjoy all the other benefits.

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If you’re unsure if your business is ready for the switch, keep reading to learn more about the benefits of upgrading to Shopify Plus, or calculate your savings potential with our Shopify Plus calculator.

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Why It’s Worth Upgrading to Shopify Plus

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Shopify Plus offers a variety of exclusive features to help you grow your business, including B2B sales and lower transaction fees to save you money and Checkout Extensibility customization apps that allow you to generate more income.

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Lower Transaction Fees

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Transaction fees can put a significant strain on your profit margins and bottom line. Businesses not utilizing Shopify Plus are required to pay transaction fees on all credit card purchases, with rates varying by country and whether you’ve opted into Shopify Payments or use a third-party payment processor. 

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In comparison, Shopify Plus users receive the most competitive rates possible, with a 0.2% third-party transaction fee versus Basic plan users’ 2% fee. 

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Ability to Customize Your Checkout

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An effective checkout process is essential for maximizing your conversions and generating more income. Unfortunately, basic Shopify plans are limited when it comes to checkout customization. 

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With non-Plus plans, you can change fonts, color schemes, element positioning, and even payment and shipping methods (with a checkout extension app) to help brand your checkout page. However, you can’t make some of the more impactful changes like adding entirely new elements or accessing the backend of your checkout page to create unique conditions for checkout. 

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With Shopify Plus, you can add custom content fields to collect more information, enable or disable checkout based on cart contents or customer information, validate addresses, implement a loyalty program, and make advanced visual customizations that more accurately reflect your branding.

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Plus, you can add in a Shopify upselling app like UpsellPlus to add upsells, cross-sells, and downsells to your entire checkout process, including checkout and customizable post-purchase pages.

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Set Up Automatic Discounts

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Sometimes, a good deal can be the difference between losing or winning a sale. But, if you want to get creative with bundles, tiered discounts, and other advanced promotions to encourage sales, you’ll need Shopify Plus. 

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Standard Shopify plans don’t offer any native solutions for creating strategic discounts that will help you sell more. Fortunately, with a Shopify Plus plan, you’ll have access to Script Editor, an exclusive tool that allows you to automatically apply discounts to items in your customers’ carts and create custom promotions that can increase your AOV.

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Higher API Limits

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Many Shopify stores interact with third-party apps, integrations, and functions that help you expand what you can do with your Shopify data. However, Shopify limits how many requests you can make in a certain period of time, which slows and even delays your data insights and API performance.

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With Shopify Plus, you get a rate limit that’s 20 times higher than standard plans, allowing you to scale better without worrying about limitations.

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24/7 Support

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If something goes wrong, it can be catastrophic for your business–especially if you don’t have 24/7 dev support to address critical problems as they arise.

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While all Shopify plans include 24/7 chat support, Shopify Plus offers priority phone support from a dedicated team only available to Plus users and access to exclusive community resources.

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With this support, you can more quickly resolve issues that arise or get your questions answered so you can make informed business decisions.

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Access to Script Editor

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Standard Shopify stores generally aren’t able to access the backend of their store’s core features, including cart and checkout data. This limits the type of discounts they can offer, the checkout customizations they can make, and the rules they can employ to better control the checkout experience.

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With Shopify Plus, your checkout process is unlocked so you can access data like cart contents, cart totals, customer information, payment methods, shipping methods, checkout fields, and much more. With this access, you’re able to tailor your checkout experience to deal with limited drops, high-risk purchases, and local or international customers.

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Automation Ability

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All Shopify merchants have access to Shopify Flow, an app that allows you to create and customize automated workflows for tasks like tagging customers, detecting and monitoring fraud, and hiding out-of-stock products. Each plan has its own limitations on tasks that can be created and usage limits – which partially depend on the amount of API included in your plan. 

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Exclusive to Shopify Plus users, Launchpad is a scheduling tool designed to help you plan and automate sales, related theme changes, and product launches, with total control over when select products are made available without the stress of manual scheduling. 

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Advanced Analytics

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Data, statistics, and the insights they generate are essential for all online businesses. They help you refine your marketing, implement conversion rate optimizations, and create more effective upsells and cross-sells.

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Shopify offers reporting and analytics for all plans, including stats like traffic, unique visitors, total sales, average order value (AOV), and conversion rates. However, with the ‘Basic’ and ‘Shopify’ plans, you’re limited to basic reports you can’t fully customize to address your key KPIs.

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‘Advanced’ and Shopify Plus plans provide advanced reports and analytics, which includes custom-generated reports, advanced segmentation to help analyze specific audiences, and access to Shopify’s reporting API to add shop data to third-party programs for easier monitoring.

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Shopify vs Shopify Plus Pricing

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Shopify’s three primary plans range from $24 to $299 per month with an annual commitment, or $39 to $399 monthly, and have specific transaction costs for each plan.

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Shopify Plus starts at $2,300 per month on one- and three-year contracts.

Knowing Whether It’s Worth it to Upgrade to Shopify Plus

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While it’s always great to get more features for your Shopify store, whether you upgrade to Shopify Plus will likely depend on how much you can save with its lower transaction fees.

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Fortunately, we’ve created a Shopify Plus calculator to help you find out how much you’d need to sell for Plus to pay for itself.

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Getting Started With Upgrading to Shopify Plus

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If you’re a high-volume Shopify store, upgrading to Shopify Plus can both save you money and help you offer a better experience to customers that drives greater revenue.

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Once you’re ready to elevate your Shopify store, schedule a free consultation with an expert to see just how much of a difference Plus can make.

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