Shopify Plus is the enterprise tier of Shopify. Same platform underneath, same admin your team already knows, but with the limits lifted and a set of features aimed at brands doing real volume or running something more complicated than a single shop selling to consumers.
The question most UK brands actually want answered is not what it is, but whether it is worth it for them. This guide covers what Plus adds over standard Shopify, its benefits and disadvantages, who it suits, what it costs and how to tell when the upgrade pays for itself.
| The short answerShopify Plus is Shopify’s enterprise plan. Its main benefits are a checkout you can customise, unlimited B2B catalogues, nine expansion stores, lower card rates, higher API limits and more automation, from £1,800 a month in the UK on a three year term. It suits brands outgrowing standard Shopify, selling trade alongside consumer, or expanding internationally. If none of those apply, standard Shopify is almost certainly still the right home. |
What is Shopify Plus?
Shopify Plus sits at the top of Shopify’s plan structure. You are not moving to a different platform or rebuilding from scratch, which is the main reason brands choose it over jumping to something like Adobe Commerce. The store, the theme, the apps and the admin all carry across. What changes is what you are allowed to do.
Standard Shopify is deliberately constrained. Those constraints are why it is so reliable and so easy to run, and for most stores they never bite. Plus removes the ones that start to hurt at scale: the checkout you could not touch, the single storefront, the API rate limits, the manual processes nobody has time for.
Shopify Plus features at a glance
| Capability | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| B2B and wholesale | Unlimited B2B catalogues, where standard plans allow three, with company accounts, customer-specific price lists and payment terms, run from the same store as your consumer site. |
| Multiple storefronts | Additional expansion stores for separate regions, languages or brands, without paying for and managing entirely separate accounts. |
| Checkout customisation | The one part of standard Shopify you cannot meaningfully change. On Plus you can add logic, fields and upsells to the highest-value page on the site. |
| International selling | Markets, currencies, duties and localisation handled properly, so a new territory is a configuration decision rather than a rebuild. If you trade through more than one company, multi-entity payouts route each market’s sales to the right one. Our Shopify Plus international guide covers the options. |
| Automation | Shopify Flow for the repetitive work your team currently does by hand: tagging, fraud checks, inventory rules, customer segmentation. |
| Higher limits | Higher API limits, unlimited staff accounts and 200 inventory locations rather than 10. The ceilings you only notice once you hit them. |
| Support and account management | Priority support from Shopify, which matters more than it sounds on a peak trading day. |
The pattern is worth noticing. Almost everything on that list is about complexity rather than size. A brand doing modest revenue but selling B2B, internationally and direct to consumer will get more from Plus than a larger brand doing one simple thing well.
The benefits of Shopify Plus
These are the advantages of Shopify Plus over Shopify’s Advanced plan, using Shopify’s own published UK figures. Some of them only pay off for certain kinds of business, so the next section covers the downsides too.
1. A checkout you can change
On standard plans the checkout steps are fixed. On Plus you can add checkout UI extensions to the information, shipping and payment steps, and run custom Shopify Functions for your own discount, delivery and payment rules. Shopify Scripts stopped working on 30 June 2026, so Functions and checkout extensions are now how checkout logic is built.
2. Lower card and gateway fees
The UK online card rate with Shopify Payments falls from 1.5% + 25p on Advanced to 1.3% + 25p on Plus. If you use a third party payment provider, Shopify’s extra fee falls from 0.6% to 0.2%. At high volume those differences offset part of the higher subscription, which our Shopify Plus pricing guide works through.
3. B2B without the catalogue cap
Every Shopify plan now includes B2B, but standard plans are limited to three catalogues. Plus removes the limit, lets you assign catalogues directly to a company or a company location, and adds deposits and partial payments for trade orders.
4. Expansion stores
Plus includes your main store and nine expansion stores, with further stores at £250 a month each. They suit separate regions, brands or a wholesale front end, and the organisation admin lets you manage users and settings across all of them in one place.
5. More automation
Shopify Flow is free on every plan, but Plus has the highest Flow limits and is the only plan that can use tasks from custom partner apps. Launchpad, which schedules sales, product releases and theme changes, is only on Plus. Our Shopify Flow guide covers what each plan can do.
6. Retail included
POS Pro costs £69 a month per location on other plans. Plus includes it for 20 locations, or up to 200 with Shopify Payments, which changes the maths quickly if you run several shops.
7. Room for a bigger team and operation
Advanced allows 15 staff accounts and 10 inventory locations. Plus gives unlimited staff accounts, 200 inventory locations and higher API limits, which matters once the store is connected to an ERP, warehouse system or several apps at once.
8. Selling through more than one company
Multi-entity, which lets one store take payments through several legal businesses and pay each one out separately, is only available on Plus. Our multi-entity payouts guide explains how it works.
9. Built for big trading days
Shopify says Plus handles more than 10,000 checkouts a minute and averages 99.99% uptime during major sales events. Hosting and scaling are Shopify’s job, so there are no servers to plan for Black Friday.
The disadvantages of Shopify Plus
It costs a lot more. Plus starts at £1,800 a month on a three year term, £21,600 a year, or £1,950 a month on a one year term, against £344 a month for Advanced paid monthly. Larger businesses move to a variable fee based on revenue.
It is a contract. Pricing is set on one or three year terms, so it is a bigger commitment than a monthly plan.
The benefits have to be built. Checkout extensions, custom Functions, B2B catalogues and expansion stores all need setting up, and the first two need a developer.
It does not change how your store looks or loads. Theme flexibility is the same on every plan, so a dated or slow store is a design and build problem, not a plan problem.
The gap is smaller than it used to be. Flow, B2B with up to three catalogues and Shopify Markets are now available on standard plans, so some of the old reasons to upgrade no longer apply. Our Shopify vs Shopify Plus comparison goes through the decision in detail.
Who Shopify Plus is actually for
Shopify markets Plus at high-volume brands, and volume is one trigger, but in practice we see four situations where it earns its place:
- You are selling trade and consumer from the same brand. If wholesale customers are still ordering by email and someone is rekeying it into a spreadsheet, that is the clearest case for Plus there is.
- You are expanding into new markets. Multiple currencies, languages and regional storefronts are painful to bodge on standard Shopify and far simpler on Plus.
- Your checkout is costing you money. If you have a real reason to change how checkout behaves, and you have tested enough to know it, Plus is the only way to get at it.
- Your team is drowning in manual admin. When people are spending hours a week on tasks a rule could handle, automation stops being a nice-to-have.
If none of those describe you, standard Shopify is still the right home and your money is better spent on growth than on platform. We would tell you that on a call, and we would rather say it now than after a migration.
What does Shopify Plus cost?
In the UK, Shopify Plus starts at £1,800 a month on a three year term or £1,950 a month on a one year term, and more complex, higher volume businesses move to a variable platform fee based on revenue. It is a big step up from Advanced at £344 a month, and the subscription is only part of it: the build or migration, the integrations and any specialist apps all need budgeting alongside. Our Shopify Plus pricing guide breaks down the card rates, extra stores and full cost.
What it does change is your processing rate, which falls as you move up Shopify’s plans. For a store doing serious volume, that reduction offsets a chunk of the higher subscription. If you want to see where that crossover sits for your own numbers, our Shopify fee calculator compares the standard plans side by side.
Shopify Plus vs standard Shopify
The decision is rarely about whether Plus is better. It obviously is, in the sense that it does more. The question is whether you will use what you are paying for.
A useful test: write down the three things you cannot currently do on Shopify that are actively costing you revenue or hours. If all three are on the Plus feature list, the upgrade is an easy call. If you struggle to name three, or the ones you name are really app or process problems rather than platform limits, Plus will not fix them and you will have added cost without adding capability.
The other consideration is timing. Migrating to Plus during peak trading is a bad idea, and rushing it to hit an arbitrary date is how brands lose rankings and revenue in the move. If you are weighing it up, plan it for a quiet quarter.
Does moving to Shopify Plus affect SEO?
It can, and this is the part most often left out of the sales conversation. Moving to Plus usually means a rebuild or a restructure, and any time URLs, templates or internal linking change, rankings are at risk.
Handled properly it is a non-event. That means mapping redirects before launch rather than after, keeping template structure and structured data intact, preserving internal links to your best-performing pages, and monitoring rankings through the transition so anything that slips is caught in days rather than discovered in a quarterly report. Our Shopify SEO team plans this alongside the build rather than after it, and our Shopify Plus SEO guide has the checklist.
Frequently asked questions
What is Shopify Plus in simple terms?
It is Shopify’s enterprise plan. The same platform and admin as standard Shopify, with the limits raised and extra capability added for B2B, multiple storefronts, international selling, checkout customisation and automation.
What are the benefits of Shopify Plus?
The main benefits are a checkout you can customise with checkout extensions and Shopify Functions, lower card rates (1.3% + 25p online in the UK against 1.5% + 25p on Advanced), unlimited B2B catalogues, nine expansion stores included, Launchpad and the highest Flow limits, POS Pro for up to 20 locations, unlimited staff accounts and higher API limits.
What are the disadvantages of Shopify Plus?
It costs from £1,800 a month on a three year term, its main benefits need development work to set up, and it does not change theme flexibility or site speed. Some former Plus features, such as Flow and basic B2B, are now on standard plans too.
Is Shopify Plus worth it?
It is worth it when you will use what it adds. If you sell B2B alongside consumer, run multiple regions, or have a specific checkout problem you have tested and cannot solve on standard Shopify, it pays for itself. If you cannot name concrete things you would do differently on Plus, it will not fix what is holding you back.
What is the difference between Shopify and Shopify Plus?
Standard Shopify is deliberately constrained, which is why it is reliable and simple to run. Plus removes the constraints that start to hurt at scale: a locked checkout, one storefront, lower API limits and a three catalogue cap on B2B. The underlying platform is the same.
Do I need to rebuild my store to move to Shopify Plus?
Not necessarily. Because it is the same platform, a straight upgrade is possible. In practice most brands take the opportunity to rebuild or restructure, because the reasons they are moving usually need design and architecture changes anyway.
Is Shopify Plus good for B2B?
Yes, and it is one of the strongest reasons to move. Company accounts, customer-specific price lists, payment terms and self-serve ordering are built in, so trade customers can order online instead of by email. Our guide to B2B eCommerce covers what a trade platform needs to handle.
Related reading: Shopify Plus pricing, Best eCommerce platform in the UK, Shopify vs WooCommerce and How to choose a Shopify Plus agency.
| Not sure whether Plus is the right move?A 30 minute call with a senior eCommerce specialist. No pitch, just a straight answer on whether the upgrade is worth it for your store, and what it would involve. Book a growth call. |
If you have decided Plus is the direction, our Shopify Plus agency team handles the build, the migration and the growth work that follows. If you are still on standard Shopify, our Shopify agency page covers builds, SEO, email and growth in one place.