Shopify Plus pricing: Here’s how much Shopify Plus really costs

Shopify Plus pricing starts from $2,000 per month for businesses with revenues up to $800,000 per month. For stores with monthly sales above that, Shopify charges an additional fee, called a variable fee, of 0.25% per transaction.

If you’re considering switching to Shopify Plus but are worried about the costs, I recommend reading the rest of this article.

I’ll explain everything you need to know about Shopify Plus pricing, including its costs and benefits, and share alternatives to help you make an informed decision.

Let’s start with the basics.

What is Shopify Plus?

Shopify Plus is an enterprise ecommerce software for high-growth companies that need advanced ecommerce functionality. It builds on the standard Shopify platform and offers access to features like advanced reporting, Shopify Audiences, and B2B on Shopify.

How much does Shopify Plus cost?

Shopify Plus costs $2,000 per month for online stores with sales of up to $800,000 per month. For stores with sales over $800,000, Shopify charges a variable fee of 0.25% per transaction.

While a turnover-based variable fee might not sound appealing, it’s an excellent pricing strategy. Let’s look at an example to understand why.

Let’s say you sell around $1.2 million worth of products each month through your Shopify Plus store. You’ll pay $2,000 for the first $800,000 in revenue and 0.25% on the other $400,000, which works out to $1,000. That means you’ll pay $3,000 for Shopify Plus.

Spending $3,000 per month on a store that generates a turnover of $1,200,000 is incredibly low, especially considering the functionality you get in exchange.

Speaking of which, let’s look at Shopify Plus’ features.

Shopify Plus features explained

Shopify Plus includes everything available to Shopify users and several extra features. Here’s a breakdown of all the additional features you get with Shopify Plus:

1. Unlimited staff accounts: Shopify Plus lets you create unlimited staff accounts and customize the permissions for each user to control what they can see and do inside your Shopify admin.
2. Advanced report builder: Shopify Plus offers an advanced report builder that lets you create custom reports for detailed insights into your online store performance.
3. Shopify Flow: Shopify Plus gives you access to a visual automation tool to automate repetitive tasks like customer segmentation and fraud prevention using custom workflows.
4. Shopify Audiences: Shopify Audiences is a new feature that lets you find new customers that are likely to buy from you.
5. Shopify organization admin: Shopify Plus lets you set up an organization admin account to oversee your entire ecommerce operation and make changes across all your stores from a single dashboard.
6. Free expansion stores: Shopify Plus gives you access to 9 free stores to test new markets or product lines without incurring additional costs.
7. Shopify Functions installed with custom apps: Shopify Plus includes a new feature called Functions that lets you run custom code on Shopify servers.
8. Launchpad: You can set up complex rules and triggers to schedule and automate sales and promotions with Launchpad.
9. Checkout customizations: Shopify Plus lets you customize your checkout process with custom fields, scripts, styling, and payment methods to match your brand.
10. B2B on Shopify: Shopify Plus includes features that make it easy to sell B2B from your B2C/DTC store with a separate wholesale channel, custom pricing, order approvals, and advanced product filtering.
11. Tax automation: Shopify Plus users can access automated tax calculations and filings for over 12,000 tax jurisdictions with a paid subscription to Avalara AvaTax.
12. Bot protection: Shopify Plus includes built-in bot protection to protect your store from bots and other bad actors looking to exploit your store.
13. Oxygen hosting: Shopify Plus users get complimentary access to Oxygen, Shopify’s global hosting infrastructure for headless stores.
14. Shopify POS Pro: Shopify Plus gives you access to Shopify POS Pro with 20 free locations or 1,000 locations when using Shopify Payments.
15. Global ecommerce: Shopify Plus makes it easy to sell globally with built-in support for up to 20 languages, multiple currencies, and country-specific tax regulations.
16. Advanced security: Shopify Plus protects your store with security features such as Level 1 PCI compliance, SSL encryption, DDoS protection, and SOC2 Type II compliance.
17. Dedicated support: Shopify Plus gives you access to a dedicated support team, available 24/7 by chat, email, and phone.

Shopify vs. Shopify Plus: What is the difference?

Wondering if you should choose Shopify or Shopify Plus? Here’s a side-by-side comparison to help you make an informed decision:

If you’re still wondering why you should choose Shopify Plus over Shopify, here’s my advice: You should only choose Shopify Plus if you’re making more than $200,000 a month. If you’re making five figures or low six figures, you’re better off with Shopify’s Advanced plan.

Shopify Plus total costs of ownership explained

The Shopify Plus pricing system is pretty simple. They charge you $2,000 per month if you’re selling up to $800,000 and a 0.25% variable fee on sales above that amount. But when you build an actual Shopify Plus store, you realize there are more costs to owning a Shopify Plus store.

Let’s break down each of those costs to understand the total monthly ownership costs for a Shopify Plus store.

First, there’s the monthly subscription fee. Let’s assume you’re making $500,000 per month from your online store. That means you’ll pay $2,000 per month for your Shopify Plus subscription.

Next, there’s the credit card fees you’ll pay for each sale. Although it varies by country, you’ll pay around 2.15% of each sale plus a fixed fee of $0.30 on domestic transactions and an additional 1% for Amex and international payments.

Here’s how those fees add to your Shopify Plus costs of ownership.

Let’s say you sell domestically and accept payments via Visa and Mastercard credit cards. Assuming you have an average order value (AOV) of $200, you can use this formula to estimate the amount of credit card fees you’ll pay Shopify:

Credit card fees = (Total sales x Transaction fee percentage) + (Total number of sales x Fixed transaction fee)

Using this formula, the credit card fees for a turnover of $500,000 with an AOV of $200 are approximately $10,750. That amount is deducted from each sale and isn’t billed separately in the monthly subscription invoice.

Besides subscription and transaction fees, you’ll also need to invest in apps. Shopify apps can cost anywhere from $30 to $500 per month.

Let’s keep things simple and assume you spend $1,000 per month on Shopify apps.

Considering all the expenses above, here’s a summary of estimated recurring costs of ownership you will incur with a Shopify Plus store:

Based on these numbers, you’ll spend at least $13,750 in monthly recurring ownership costs on a Shopify Plus store with an AOV of $200, generating a monthly revenue of $500,000. That amount doesn’t include costs associated with custom development or other expenses like SEO, Ads, or promotions.

Looking at the numbers, it’s clear that most of the costs are due to credit card fees. And unfortunately, there’s no way to reduce it.

Even if you use a third-party payment processor with Shopify, you’ll still pay 0.15–0.30% per transaction besides the fees to your provider.

So is Shopify Plus worth investing in? The answer is yes.

Although it might seem excessive, Shopify’s service is worth investing in. The amount of functionality, convenience Shopify Plus offers is second to none.

To say we’re all in on Shopify Plus is an understatement.

Shopify Plus customer Nate Checketts, co-founder and CEO of Rhone.

If you choose Shopify Plus, you’ll pay a fair amount in fees each month but there’s no doubt you’ll get tons of value in return. However, if you want to keep your costs of ownership low, it might be worth considering a different ecommerce platform.

Speaking of which, let’s explore some Shopify Plus alternatives you can consider.

Shopify Plus alternatives: 3 enterprise-grade ecommerce platforms you can consider

There’s no doubt that Shopify Plus offers tons of value. But if you want to keep your costs of ownership low, it might be worth considering a different ecommerce platform.

Here are three alternatives to Shopify Plus that offer similar functionality at different price points.

1. Magento Open Source

Magento Open Source is an excellent free, open-source e-commerce platform that is highly customizable and scalable. One of the best things about Magento is that it gives you complete control over your online store without limits on how much you can or cannot sell.

Magento is also perfect for big businesses because it can handle a lot of products and has features to make sure your store is secure, like strong encryption and two-factor authentication. 

But unlike Shopify Plus, Magento is a self-hosted platform. That means you need a lot of technical skills to set up and secure it. It’s an excellent alternative to Shopify Plus if you have an in-house technical team. If you don’t, I’d recommend considering a different platform.

Key Magento Open Source features:

• Powerful catalog management tools.
• Multi-store support.
• Multiple security features.
• Built-in upsell and cross-sell options.
• Flexible catalog and price rules.

Magento Open Source price: Magento Open Source is free to use. Fully managed hosting for Magento usually starts from $50 per month on average.

2. Adobe Commerce

Adobe Commerce is a premium version of Magento Open Source, just like Shopify Plus is for Shopify. It gives you everything in Magento plus some advanced features like AI-powered product recommendations and search functionality.

Adobe Commerce is an excellent choice for large enterprises because it offers more flexibility than Shopify Plus. Its pricing is nearly identical to Shopify Plus and doesn’t come with any transaction or credit card fees. You pay those directly to your payment processor.

The only downside is that Adobe Commerce is much more expensive to customize. Yes, there’s tons of flexibility on offer, but it comes at a massive cost. Adobe Commerce and Magento development services are generally more expensive than Shopify development.

Key Adobe Commerce features:

• Everything in Magento Open Source.
• AI-fuelled product recommendations.
• Advanced inventory management with real-time sourcing algorithms.
• Multiple fulfillment options.
• Level 1 PCI-compliant hosting.

Adobe Commerce price: Starts from $2,000 per month. Pricing for large turnover enterprises is calculated based on annual Gross Merchandise Value.

3. BigCommerce Enterprise

BigCommerce Enterprise is a modern SaaS platform that gives you the convenience of a fully managed SaaS with the customizability of an open-source platform. It’s an excellent alternative to Shopify Plus, especially if you want to sell across multiple sales channels.

BigCommerce is highly versatile and can support all types of businesses. Whether you’re a small B2B business or a large DTC startup, it has something for everyone.

On the B2B side, you get features like customer groups, quote management, and purchase order support. And for DTC, you have checkout customization, 70+ native discounts and promotions, and integrations with leading social media platforms and online marketplaces.

BigCommerce doesn’t have the best template options, and many apps don’t play too well with headless stores. Considering it isn’t as popular as Shopify or Magento, I’d only recommend BigCommerce Enterprise for its B2B features.

Key BigCommerce Enterprise features:

• Real time shipping quotes.
• Customer groups and segmentation.
• Custom product filtering.
• Special credit card rates with Braintree.
• Unlimited API Calls.

BigCommerce Enterprise price: Starts from approximately $549 per month for up to $600,000 in online sales.

Shopify Plus pricing explained: Ready to take the next step?

There you have it. I’ve explained how Shopify Plus pricing works and its features and shared three alternatives you can consider.

One of the most common hangups for people who reach out to us about Shopify Plus is its pricing. But here’s the thing: when you factor in the features and convenience it offers, Shopify Plus’ cost and even the extra fees are fully justified.

No other platform provides the same convenience, performance, and functionality at that price point. If you still have questions about Shopify Plus, feel free to contact us. We’ll do our best to help you out.

Frequently asked questions about Shopify Plus pricing