Shopify vs Shopify Plus: Which Plan Does Your Store Need?

Most growing stores reach the same question: is it time to move from Shopify's standard plans to Shopify Plus? Plus costs many times more than Advanced, so the move only makes sense when you'll actually use what it adds. This guide compares the plans feature by feature, using Shopify's own pricing and developer pages (checked on 10 November 2026), and lists the signs that a store has genuinely outgrown the standard plans.

Short answer: stay on Basic, Grow or Advanced while your checkout, wholesale and staff needs fit inside their limits. Move to Plus when you need to customise the checkout's information, shipping and payment steps, run unlimited B2B catalogs, use custom apps built on Shopify Functions, give more than 15 people their own staff accounts, or run several expansion stores for different countries or brands.

What are Shopify's plans in 2026?

Shopify currently sells four main plans: Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus. ("Grow" is the plan many people still call "Shopify".) All four include the online store, unlimited products, Shopify's checkout, Shopify Markets for selling internationally, the Sidekick AI assistant and 24/7 support. The differences are in limits, fees and how far you can customise.

What does Shopify Plus add over Advanced?

From Shopify's plan comparison table:

• Checkout customisation: Advanced: Limited; Plus: Full
• Fee when using a third-party payment provider: Advanced: 0.6%; Plus: 0.2%
• Staff accounts: Advanced: 15; Plus: Unlimited
• Inventory locations: Advanced: 10; Plus: 200
• B2B catalogs: Advanced: Up to 3; Plus: Unlimited
• API rate limits: Advanced: Up to 2x on select APIs; Plus: Up to 10x on select APIs
• Headless storefronts: Advanced: 1; Plus: 25
• Expansion stores: Advanced: None; Plus: Up to 9 included
• POS Pro: Advanced: Paid add-on per location; Plus: 20 locations included
• Support: Advanced: Enhanced live chat; Plus: Priority support

Plus also lists features "just for Plus": high-volume checkout, Shopify Combined Listings, bot protection, custom user groups, testing new features before launch, and custom functions.

What can you change in the checkout on each plan?

This is the difference that matters most to many brands. According to Shopify's developer documentation:

• Checkout UI extensions for the information, shipping and payment steps are available only on Shopify Plus. That covers things like a gift message field, a delivery-date picker, or a custom upsell block inside checkout.
• Shopify Functions (custom discount, shipping and payment logic) work on all plans except Starter when they come from a public app in the Shopify App Store. Custom apps that contain Shopify Functions can only be used on Plus. If you want your own bespoke logic, for example "hide cash on delivery for orders over a set value" or a tiered wholesale discount nobody sells as an app, Plus is usually required.
• Branding the checkout through the GraphQL Admin API is a Plus feature; other plans use the checkout editor's settings.

If a public app already does what you need, you may not need Plus for checkout at all. Check that first.

Do you need Plus to sell wholesale (B2B)?

Not always. Shopify B2B is now on every plan, with up to 3 catalogs on Basic, Grow and Advanced. That's enough for a simple wholesale price list or two. Plus removes the cap, which matters when you have many customer-specific price lists, company locations with different terms, or several regions with their own wholesale pricing.

How much does Shopify Plus cost?

Shopify publishes regional prices. On 10 November 2026 its pricing pages showed:

• UK: Advanced (billed yearly): £259/month; Plus: Starts at £1,800/month
• Canada: Advanced (billed yearly): $389 CAD/month; Plus: Starts at $3,400 CAD/month
• Australia: Advanced (billed yearly): $431 AUD/month; Plus: Starts at $3,700 AUD/month

US prices are on shopify.com/pricing when viewed from the US. Plus is quoted per store and usually involves a term agreement, so ask Shopify for a quote that matches your sales volume. Remember to compare the whole cost: the lower third-party payment fee on Plus (0.2% vs 0.6%) and the included POS Pro locations offset part of the price for some stores, while custom checkout work and Plus-only apps add to it.

What are the signs you've outgrown Advanced?

1. You've hit a hard limit. More than 15 staff, more than 10 inventory locations, or more than 3 B2B catalogs.
2. Checkout requests keep getting "we can't do that". Your team wants fields, offers or rules inside the checkout steps, and no public app covers them.
3. You run, or plan to run, several stores. Separate storefronts for regions or brands are cheaper as Plus expansion stores than as separate paid stores.
4. Flash sales or drops strain the store. Plus's high-volume checkout and bot protection are built for heavy traffic spikes.
5. Integrations hit API limits. ERP, warehouse or PIM syncs that are throttled on Advanced get up to 10x headroom on select APIs.

If none of these apply, Advanced (or Grow) is usually the better value. Many stores selling well into seven figures run happily on standard plans.

How do you move from Advanced to Plus?

Upgrading is a plan change, not a re-platform: products, orders, customers and theme stay where they are. The work is in what you add afterwards: checkout extensions, custom functions, B2B setup, expansion stores and any integrations that need the higher limits. Plan these before you sign, so you get value from the first month.

If you're moving to Shopify Plus from another platform, such as Magento, WooCommerce or BigCommerce, treat it as a migration project, with a data map and a redirect plan.

Checklist before you decide

• List every requirement your current plan can't meet, and check the Shopify App Store for a public app that already solves each one.
• Count staff accounts, inventory locations and B2B price lists you'll need in the next 12 months.
• Ask Shopify for a Plus quote in your currency, and compare it with Advanced plus the apps you'd otherwise need.
• Price the custom work (checkout extensions, functions, integrations) separately from the subscription.
• Decide which features you'll launch in the first 90 days on Plus.

Dzimark's Shopify development team builds and extends stores on every plan, including Plus checkout extensions and custom functions, for brands in the USA, UK, Canada and Australia.

Sources

• Shopify pricing and plan comparison (UK, Canada and Australia pages), checked 10 Nov 2026: https://www.shopify.com/uk/pricing, https://www.shopify.com/ca/pricing, https://www.shopify.com/au/pricing
• Shopify Plus
• Checkout UI extensions (Plus availability)
• Checkout customisation technologies by plan
• Shopify Functions (custom apps on Plus)