Shopify Plus vs Shopify: Real Costs and When to Upgrade

Shopify Plus starts at $2,300 a month, about seven times the price of Shopify’s Advanced plan, and for most stores the extra money buys features rather than savings. The Shopify Plus vs Shopify decision comes down to one question: does your store need something only Plus does, such as a custom checkout, wholesale catalogs for many buyers, or several stores under one contract?

This guide is for store owners and ecommerce managers already on Shopify who are being told they have outgrown it. It covers current US prices and contract terms, the break-even math on fees, what Plus adds over Advanced, and a simple test for whether your store is ready.

Shopify Plus vs Shopify plans side by side

Shopify Plus is the same platform as the standard plans, with a higher price, lower fees and extra controls. Your products, orders, theme and apps all carry over. When we plan a store on our Shopify development projects, this is the table we walk clients through first.

US pricing and limits	Basic	Grow	Advanced	Plus
Shopify plan price, billed monthly	$39	$105	$399	$2,500 on a 1-year term
Shopify plan price, billed yearly or 3-year term	$29	$79	$299	$2,300 on a 3-year term
Online standard card rate (Shopify Payments)	2.9% + 30¢	2.7% + 30¢	2.5% + 30¢	2.25% + 30¢
Extra fee if you use another payment provider	2%	1%	0.6%	0.2%
Staff accounts	None	5	15	Unlimited
Inventory locations	10	10	10	200
B2B catalogs	Up to 3	Up to 3	Up to 3	Unlimited
Apps on the information, shipping and payment steps of checkout	No	No	No	Yes
Expansion stores	No	No	No	Up to 9
Support	24/7 live chat	24/7 live chat	Enhanced 24/7 live chat	Priority 24/7 phone and chat

Sources: the US Shopify pricing page as captured on November 9, 2026, and Shopify’s Help Center articles on the Shopify Plus plan, location limits and checkout customization, read on November 10, 2026. Card rates are for US stores; premium and international cards cost more on every plan.

UK and EU stores pay in local currency. Shopify lists Plus at £1,950 a month on a one-year term and £1,800 on a three-year term in the UK, and €2,250 or €2,100 in the EU.

What Shopify Plus costs in a year, including the contract

Plus is sold on a term, not month to month. The standard plans can be cancelled at the end of any billing period, but Plus commits you for one or three years, so the real comparison is the yearly total.

Shopify plan and term	Monthly price	Cost per year	Commitment
Advanced, billed monthly	$399	$4,788	None; cancel any month
Advanced, billed yearly	$299	$3,588 Shopify plan fee	1 year, paid upfront
Plus, 1-year term	$2,500	$30,000	1 year
Plus, 3-year term	$2,300	$27,600	3 years, about $82,800 in Shopify plan fees

Three costs sit outside that table:

• The variable platform fee. Shopify’s Help Center says more complex, higher-volume businesses “might” pay a fee based on revenue and business model, and that it differs for B2B and direct-to-consumer sales. Shopify does not publish the rate or the threshold. Ask your Shopify sales contact for both, in writing, before signing.
• Theme licences for expansion stores. Each live expansion store needs its own theme licence, so a paid theme bought once for your main store is bought again for each extra store.
• Apps and development. Plus adds tools that need building: checkout extensions, Shopify Functions and integrations. Those are project costs, not part of the Shopify plan price.

The break-even math on Shopify Plus fees

Lower fees on Plus only pay for themselves at very high sales. The arithmetic is short enough to check yourself.

The Shopify Plus plan on a three-year term costs $2,001 a month more than Advanced billed yearly ($2,300 minus $299). Plus saves 0.25 percentage points on each standard online card payment (2.5% down to 2.25%). Divide the price gap by the saving: $2,001 ÷ 0.0025 is about $800,000. Below roughly $800,000 a month in online card sales through Shopify Payments, the lower Shopify Plus rate does not cover its higher plan price.

A worked example: a store selling $250,000 a month online would save about $625 a month in card fees on Plus. Against the $2,001 Shopify plan price gap, it would pay about $1,376 a month more, or roughly $16,500 a year, for the features alone.

The picture changes if you use a payment provider other than Shopify Payments. Shopify then adds its own fee of 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus. That 0.4-point gap covers the Shopify plan price difference at about $500,000 a month in sales through the other provider.

Two cautions. First, a store big enough to break even on fees is also the kind of store that may be moved onto the variable platform fee, which can cancel some or all of the saving. Second, premium cards (rewards and corporate cards) and international cards cost more on every plan, so check your own mix of cards in your payouts report before using these numbers.

What Shopify Plus does that Advanced cannot

The features are the real reason to upgrade. These are the ones that change how a business runs, taken from Shopify’s own plan documentation:

• Checkout customization. On every plan you can brand the checkout in the editor and add apps to the thank-you and order status pages. Only Plus allows apps on the information, shipping and payment steps, plus the Checkout Branding API. That is where custom fields, delivery-date pickers, gift options and B2B purchase-order fields usually live.
• Wholesale at scale. Standard plans allow up to three B2B catalogs. Plus allows unlimited catalogs assigned to individual companies and locations, deposits, partial payments and payment requests per fulfillment.
• Expansion stores. Up to nine extra stores under one Plus plan, for separate brands, regions or wholesale. Each runs its own theme and settings.
• People and places. Unlimited staff accounts with custom user groups, and up to 200 inventory locations instead of 10.
• Custom logic. Custom apps built with Shopify Functions for discounts, shipping and payment rules, and Plus-only API resources such as Multipass, which lets customers sign in once across another site and your store.
• Operations tools. Launchpad for scheduling sales and promotions, unlimited staging stores, up to 100 themes in the account, and the option to suppress Shopify’s notification emails.
• Retail. The first 20 POS Pro locations are included.

Advanced already covers more than most stores need

Before paying for Plus, check whether Advanced already solves the problem. Advanced gives you 15 staff accounts, live carrier-calculated shipping rates, a different theme and checkout look for each market, three B2B catalogs and the lowest card rates below Plus. Many requests we hear as reasons for Plus, such as better product pages, faster loading, bundles, subscriptions or a CRM connection, work the same on Advanced, because they live in the theme and in apps.

Selling in several countries is a common trigger, but Shopify Markets works on every plan, with unlimited country markets. You need Plus for this only when each region needs its own store, with separate stock, staff or catalogs.

If page speed or search traffic is the worry, Plus will not fix it. Those problems sit in the theme, the apps and the content, the same on every plan; our Shopify SEO checklist covers what to fix first.

Signs your store is ready for Shopify Plus

Use this as a quick test. One strong yes in the right-hand column is usually a better reason to upgrade than revenue alone.

Your situation	Stay on Advanced	Move to Plus
Online card sales per month	Under about $800,000 through Shopify Payments	Consistently above it, after you know the variable fee
Checkout needs	Branding, upsells on the thank-you page	Custom fields or rules on the shipping or payment step
Wholesale	Up to three price lists	Price lists and payment terms per company
Brands or regions	One store, translated with Markets	Separate stores with their own stock, staff or catalogs
Team	15 people or fewer in the admin	Larger teams that need custom permission groups
Locations	Up to 10 warehouses or shops	More than 10
Launches	Occasional sales run by hand	Frequent timed drops that need scheduling and staging stores
Commitment	Want the freedom to change plans	Comfortable with a one- or three-year term

If nothing in the right-hand column applies, the better spend is usually on the store itself: theme work, product content and integrations. Our ecommerce website cost guide breaks down where that money goes.

What changes when a store moves to Shopify Plus

Shopify upgrades your existing store, so there is no replatforming and no SEO migration. Products, customers, orders, URLs and the theme all stay where they are. The work is in putting the Plus features to use, and it usually runs in this order:

1. Get the terms in writing. Plan price, term, the variable platform fee and when it applies.
2. List the checkout changes. Decide which fields, rules or offers go on the information, shipping and payment steps, and build them as checkout extensions.
3. Set up permissions. Create staff accounts and user groups before inviting a larger team.
4. Plan expansion stores and B2B. Decide what each extra store shares with the main one (products, theme, apps) and how stock syncs between them.
5. Connect systems. ERP, CRM, inventory or 3PL integrations, using the higher API limits Plus offers on request.
6. Test on a staging store, then launch. Plus includes unlimited staging stores, so checkout and theme changes can be tested away from real customers.

From our projects: we build every custom Shopify theme so it runs on Plus without rework, which is why our Custom Store plan is listed as Shopify Plus ready. A store can launch on Advanced and upgrade later without paying for the theme twice. Shopify’s own fees are always paid by you directly to Shopify, so you keep the account and the contract in your name.

If the integrations are the bigger job, our guide to planning an ecommerce ERP integration covers which data to sync and in which direction.

Build and setup costs around a Shopify Plus store

The Shopify plan fee pays for the platform. Building, connecting and looking after the store are separate costs. These are our published prices, with Shopify’s fees, themes and apps paid by you on top:

Work	Our price	What it includes
Shopify Small Store	$1,290, one-time	Up to 30 products, branded theme, payments, shipping and tax set up; 2–3 weeks
Shopify Growing Store	$2,490, one-time	Up to 150 products, custom sections, email flows, speed checks; 4–5 weeks
Shopify Custom Store	From $4,490, one-time	Fully custom theme that is Shopify Plus ready, ERP or CRM sync, several currencies and languages, migration with redirects; 6–10 weeks
Two-way system sync	From $1,490, one-time	Store and CRM or ERP kept in step, with retry logic and error alerts
Store maintenance, Priority	$599 a month	8 developer hours a month, small feature work and a staging environment for testing

For a store that is upgrading rather than starting over, the work is often smaller: checkout extensions, an expansion store and one or two integrations. That is quoted as a fixed price after we review the store. All our plans are on the pricing page, and integration work is described on our API integration services page.

If Shopify itself is in question, our Shopify vs WooCommerce comparison covers when an open-source store costs less to run at scale, and the ecommerce replatforming checklist covers a move between platforms.

Still choosing a platform for a first store? Our Shopify vs Wix comparison covers the entry plans, card fees and a three-year cost.

Check whether your store needs Plus before you sign

Attors Technologies builds and maintains Shopify stores for businesses in the US, UK and Europe. Send us your store address, your rough monthly sales and the feature you want from Plus. We will tell you whether Advanced can already do it, and if Plus is the right move, we will reply with a fixed written quote for the setup work.

Get a fixed quote for your Shopify store