Shopify? Or Shopify Plus?

Deciding which Shopify platform is right for your company.

If you have a burgeoning eCommerce store, there’s a good chance it’s powered by Shopify. In a crowded and competitive category, it’s a popular choice, especially for startups or brands that want to sell directly to their customers.

If you’re looking at Shopify or already using it, at some point you’ll encounter another choice. That’s because you can select Shopify or Shopify Plus, the enterprise platform launched by the company in 2017 with more features and greater scalability. For many, it’s a solution for managing growth. For others, it’s the best option right from the start.

How is Shopify Plus different?

Good question. But let’s start by talking about how the two platforms are the same in order to avoid confusing anyone who is new to Shopify.

First, both operate in essentially the same way. The dashboards offer the same user experience, editing is done in a similar fashion, and you have access to the same help information. That makes sense, since Shopify wouldn’t want to launch a new platform that is a complete departure from the one that has been so popular, especially when many Shopify Plus customers migrate from the original offering.

Shopify lets you create and build an online store, and makes it easy to sell across all kinds of channels, whether it’s social media like Facebook and Instagram, or a marketplace giant like Amazon. This makes it easy to manage inventory and it is rich in features that facilitate eCommerce.

With its popularity among early-stage entrepreneurs established, it was a natural progression for the company to try to capture larger customers. Shopify Plus was the offering that was developed to make this happen.

At the most basic level, Shopify Plus was built to attract larger brands and enterprise-level businesses who have deeper organizations or need more processing power.

And the core Shopify product does have shortcomings. After all, we all know you get what you pay for, and Shopify has attracted many users because it is relatively inexpensive. If you’re in the bootstrapping, let’s-get-this-thing started phase of your company, it’s a solution that may not be feature-rich but does let you start selling online without a major cash outlay.

Of course, the difference between Shopify and Shopify Plus is right in the name. With Shopify Plus, you get everything that has made the Shopify platform a standout and, well, more.

What. exactly, is the plus in Shopify Plus?

First, it’s about scale. With Shopify Plus, you have unlimited staff accounts and can handle as many as 10,000 transactions per minute. It’s also easy to manage things like flash sales and variations in the checkout process. Shopify Plus is built to handle growth — many merchants relying on it are enjoying year-over-year online sales expansion of more than 100%.

Part of managing scale is also gaining a more efficient eCommerce site. Shopify Plus offers that. Runaway growth is great but it can be distracting — Shopify Plus gives you the features you need to keep your online store running smoothly so you can put your focus on building a great brand.

Are you going international? That's another reason to consider Shopify Plus — this platform gives you the freedom to build up to 10 different stores. While we all know the marketplace is global, managing it can create headaches — Shopify Plus makes it easier to handle different currencies and languages.

While Shopify always offered a high level of store customization, with Shopify Plus you’ll get — no surprise here — a lot more. It goes beyond fonts and colors and lets you use JavaScript or CSS to tailor everything to your tastes and marketing strategy. You can also design a custom checkout process that ensures shoppers are also buyers.

Finally, there’s more customer service. Shopify Plus sellers get a dedicated person in support who will help solve problems and provide insight into the many analytics tools that can be utilized to boost sales.

And what’s the minus in Shopify Plus?

This is easy: cost.

More features and extra services are add-ons that come with a price tag.

The core Shopify platform that many companies buy is $79 per month, with the most basic service starting at $29 and more advanced features running that number up to $299 per month.

For small online sellers, those relatively low costs are appealing. On Shopify Plus, merchants with anywhere from 0-$800,000 per month in sales will pay $2,000 per month and major online brands are paying up to $40,000 per month for their Shopify Plus platform. That’s a major difference, and it would be unwise make the investment in Shopify Plus before you have the sales volume to justify it.

Shopify or Shopify Plus — Lingo speaks both.

No matter which platform powers your eCommerce store, our Lingo software is built to help you manage orders from it, seamlessly merging them with transactions from other sales channels. While eZCom started as software for EDI, we have constantly upgraded Lingo as the retail environment has changed. Today, our platform is truly robust. Users can choose to work directly in Lingo or it can be integrated with an ERP, accounting software, 3PL or WMS. And if you ever have any issues, our Customer Support team is filled with Shopify experts who can help you deal with them quickly and efficiently.