Selling internationally on Shopify used to mean a second store for every country. Today most of it happens inside one store, through Shopify Markets, and most of Markets is available on every Shopify plan. So the real question for a UK brand looking at Shopify Plus for international growth is narrower than it first looks: what does Plus add that Markets on Advanced does not, and when do you still need separate stores? This guide explains how Shopify Markets works, what Shopify Plus adds for cross-border selling, how to choose between one store and expansion stores, and how to handle currencies, duties and international SEO. Plan details come from Shopify’s own help centre and UK pricing page.
| The short answerShopify Markets lets one store sell to many countries with local currencies, languages, prices, domains and duties, and it is included on every Shopify plan with no limit on country markets. Shopify Plus adds the parts that matter once international gets complicated: a separate business entity per market, checkout customisation per market, unlimited B2B catalogues for international trade, lower international card rates, and nine expansion stores for when one store is not enough. Most UK brands start with one store and Markets. Plus earns its place when you trade through more than one company, need different checkouts or ranges per region, or sell wholesale abroad. |
What Shopify Markets does
A market is a group of customers who get a tailored version of your store. Shopify describes each market as two things: conditions, which decide who the market applies to, and customisations, which decide what changes for them. Anything you do not customise is inherited from your store’s defaults, and submarkets inherit from their parent market.
The customisations available per market include currency, product availability and pricing through catalogues, theme content, domains and subfolders, languages, and how duties and taxes are shown and collected. Customers who do not match any active market see your backup region, which by default is your store’s home country.
There are four types of market, and they are not all limited to Plus:
| Market type | What it is for | Plan availability |
|---|---|---|
| Country or region | Selling to customers in specific countries with local currency, language and pricing | All plans, with no limit on the number of country or region markets |
| B2B | Trade customers with their own catalogues, pricing and payment terms | All plans, up to 3 active B2B catalogues on Basic, Grow and Advanced; unlimited on Plus |
| Retail | Shops and other physical locations | All plans; customising catalogues for retail markets needs POS Pro or Plus |
| Channel | Tailoring the experience on specific sales channels | Shopify does not list a plan restriction |
Two requirements catch people out. To accept payments in more than one currency you need Shopify Payments or Adyen as your payment processor, and you can only activate a market for countries where you have shipping rates set up.
What Shopify Plus adds for international selling
Because Markets is on every plan, the case for Plus is about the edges. These are the international differences that come from Shopify’s help centre and UK pricing page:
| Capability | Advanced | Shopify Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Country and region markets | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Theme content per market | Yes | Yes |
| Checkout and accounts page customisation per market | Yes | Yes |
| Checkout blocks on the information, shipping and payment steps, per market | No | Yes |
| Business entity per market | No | Yes, so each market can be paid out to its own company |
| B2B catalogues across your B2B markets | Up to 3 | Unlimited |
| Online international card rate (UK, Shopify Payments) | 2.5% + 25p | 2.3% + 25p |
| Extra stores | Separate plans | Main store plus 9 expansion stores, more at £250 a month each |
| Retail market catalogues and POS Pro | POS Pro at £69 a month per location | POS Pro included for 20 locations |
Read down that list and a pattern appears. Plus is not what makes a store international. It is what lets an international business run as more than one shape at once: several companies, several checkouts, trade and retail side by side, or regions that need their own store. If you sell one range to consumers in a handful of countries through one UK company, Markets on Advanced may be all you need. Our Shopify vs Shopify Plus guide covers the rest of the comparison, and our Shopify Plus pricing guide shows when the fees start to balance out.
One store with Markets, or expansion stores?
Shopify Plus includes your main store plus nine expansion stores, with further stores at £250 a month each. Each contract covers one brand, so separate brands need separate contracts. The choice between one store and several is the biggest structural decision in an international Shopify build:
| One store with Markets | Expansion store per region | |
|---|---|---|
| Catalogue, theme and apps | Managed once and shared | Duplicated in each store, unless you sync them |
| Regional differences | Currency, language, pricing, availability, domains and theme content per market | Anything at all, because each store is separate |
| Admin and reporting | One admin and one set of reports | Separate admin and reports per store |
| Different companies per region | Business entities per market on Plus | Each store has its own payments set-up |
| SEO | One domain authority, with subfolders or local domains per market | Each store builds its own authority |
| Best for | The same range sold to several countries | Different ranges, sites, apps or operations per region |
Start with one store unless you have a clear reason not to. Expansion stores make sense when a region needs a different product range, a different site design, apps that do not suit the other regions, or a team that runs it independently. If the only reason is a separate company for each country, look at Shopify multi-entity payouts first, because it keeps one store while routing each market’s payments to the right company.
Prices, currencies and payouts
Each market can show local currency using automatic or manual exchange rates. Pricing is set through catalogues: you can raise or lower every price in a catalogue by a percentage, and set fixed prices for individual products, which override the percentage. If a product appears in more than one catalogue at different prices, Shopify uses the more specific price, and if neither is more specific it shows the lower one.
Three things to plan for:
- Fixed-amount discounts are set in your default currency and converted at checkout, so a £10 off code will not land as a round number in euros.
- Post-purchase apps only work in your default currency and will not show for markets using a different one.
- Payouts. Shopify Payments offers Multi-Currency Payouts on Advanced and Plus, so one company can be paid in more than one currency, with a fee of 1% to 1.5% on non-domestic currency payouts depending on plan. If you trade through separate companies, multi-entity on Plus pays each one out in its own currency instead.
Duties, taxes and Managed Markets
Estimating and collecting duties and import taxes at checkout is included on every Shopify plan. For the calculation to be accurate, each product needs an HS code and a country or region of origin, so product data is usually the first job in any international project. Collecting duties up front means customers are not surprised by a charge on delivery, so they are less likely to refuse the parcel.
Shopify also offers Managed Markets, powered by Global-e. Global-e acts as merchant of record, which means it is the legal seller in the destination country and handles tax registration and remittance, duties and local payment methods. Shopify says Managed Markets is only available to merchants based in the continental United States and to certain stores in Canada and the United Kingdom, so check eligibility for your store before you plan around it.
If you are not using a merchant of record, VAT and sales tax registration and filing in each country stay with you. Agree the structure with your accountant before you open a new market, particularly if you are considering separate companies for different regions.
International SEO on Shopify
This is where international Shopify builds often go wrong, and where the platform now does more for you than it used to. Shopify gives three URL structures for international markets:
| Structure | Example | How search engines treat it | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Subfolders | yourstore.com/fr/ | Shares the authority of your main domain | Most stores |
| Subdomains | fr.yourstore.com | Builds its own authority, so starts weaker | Clear separation between markets |
| Country domains | yourstore.fr | Strongest local signal, separate authority | A strong, resourced presence in that country |
Whichever you choose, Shopify now handles the technical basics automatically once each market has its own domain, subdomain or subfolder and language. It adds hreflang tags to every page, including an x-default tag pointing to your primary domain. Each version gets a self-referencing canonical. Sitemaps include every market URL with hreflang annotations. And known search engine crawlers are excluded from automatic redirection, so every version can be indexed.
What Shopify does not do is make your content good in another language. Translated pages are only as strong as the translation, and Shopify’s Translate & Adapt app also lets you adapt content per market, such as product descriptions, promotions and legal text. Our advice for most UK brands:
- Use subfolders unless you have a team and budget to build a separate presence in a country. They inherit the authority your main domain has already earned.
- Translate the pages that earn money first: collections, top products, delivery and returns information, then the rest.
- Do keyword research per market. People in France and Germany do not search for a direct translation of your English keywords.
- Do not turn off automatic hreflang unless you have a deliberate alternative in place. Shopify warns that doing so can hurt your SEO.
Our Shopify SEO team plans the international structure before the build, because changing it later means redirects across every market.
How to set up international selling on Shopify Plus
1. Decide the structure. One store with Markets, or expansion stores, and one company or several. This decision shapes everything else, so make it with your finance team, not just your developers.
2. Prepare product data. HS codes and country of origin for duties, translations for each language, and any products that should not be sold in certain markets.
3. Set up payments and shipping. Shopify Payments or Adyen for multiple currencies, shipping rates for every country you will activate, and business entities per market if you trade through more than one company.
4. Create markets and catalogues. Group countries into markets, set currencies and languages, and set pricing with percentage adjustments and fixed prices where you need them.
5. Assign domains and languages. Subfolders, subdomains or country domains for each market, then check the hreflang tags and sitemap are generated as expected.
6. Customise where Plus allows it. Checkout blocks, theme content and B2B catalogues per market, only where a market needs something different.
7. Test every market. Place a test order from each market and check currency, prices, duties, tax, shipping, discounts and which company takes the payment.
The mistakes we see most often
- Opening a store per country by default. It multiplies the admin, splits your SEO authority and is rarely needed now that Markets exists.
- Machine translating everything and stopping there. It gets pages indexed, but rarely gets them ranking or converting.
- Leaving duties to the customer. Refused deliveries cost you the return shipping and the customer.
- Forgetting the apps. Post-purchase apps and some checkout apps only work in your default currency or primary entity. Check every app against every market.
- Treating tax as a Shopify setting. Shopify collects and shows tax. Registration and filing are still yours unless a merchant of record takes them on.
If you are planning an international launch, our Shopify Plus agency team designs the markets, payments, duties and SEO structure together, and our Shopify consultants can review an existing set-up before you add more countries. Moving an international business onto Shopify from another platform is covered in our Shopify Plus migration guide.
Frequently asked questions
No. Shopify Markets is included on every plan, with no limit on country or region markets, local currencies, languages, domains and duty collection. Shopify Plus adds business entities per market, checkout customisation per market, unlimited B2B catalogues, lower international card rates and nine expansion stores.
Shopify Markets is the part of Shopify that lets one store sell to different groups of customers. Each market has conditions, such as countries or B2B companies, and customisations, such as currency, language, pricing, domain and duties. Anything you do not customise is inherited from your store’s defaults.
Use one store with Markets when you sell broadly the same range to several countries, because it keeps one catalogue, theme and admin. Use expansion stores when a region needs a different range, design, apps or team. Shopify Plus includes nine expansion stores, with more at £250 a month each.
Your main store and nine expansion stores are included in the Shopify Plus fee. Additional stores cost £250 a month each, or a revenue share across all stores. Each contract covers one brand, so separate brands need separate contracts.
Yes. When each market has its own domain, subdomain or subfolder and language, Shopify adds hreflang tags to every page automatically, including an x-default tag, along with self-referencing canonicals and an international sitemap. Shopify advises against turning automatic hreflang off unless you have an alternative in place.
Yes. Estimating and collecting duties and import taxes is included on every Shopify plan. Each product needs an HS code and a country or region of origin for the calculation to be accurate. Registration and filing remain your responsibility unless you use a merchant of record.
Managed Markets is Shopify’s international service powered by Global-e, which acts as merchant of record and handles tax registration and remittance, duties and local payment methods. Shopify says it is only available to merchants based in the continental United States and to certain stores in Canada and the United Kingdom.
Related reading: Shopify multi-entity payouts, Shopify Plus pricing, Shopify vs Shopify Plus and What is Shopify Plus?.
| Planning an international launch on Shopify?A 30 minute call with the co-founders who run our Shopify Plus projects. We will look at your markets, companies and products and tell you whether one store with Markets will do the job, or whether you need Plus and expansion stores. Book a growth call. |