Cost, Features, Pros and Cons of Shopify Plus

 The larger your store, the more money you'll spend on upgrading the technology infrastructure. Shopify Plus is a solution that offers cloud-based software with full enterprise features.

While Shopify's plans are geared toward small and medium-sized businesses, Shopify Plus is geared toward high-performance stores. Shopify Plus is used by well-known brands such as RedBull, Budweiser, and The Economist.

In this article, we will give you detailed Shopify Plus reviews, what it has to offer, and whether it's the right choice for your business.

What is Shopify Plus?

Shopify Plus is an enterprise-level ecommerce solution from Shopify. It can handle the technical aspects of running a large online store by providing a hosted platform that is tailored, staffed, and priced for large brands.

Shopify Plus is currently the platform of choice for over 5,300 merchants, including billion-dollar brands such as Rebecca Minkoff, Pepsi, Unilever, and Kylie Cosmetics.

The primary benefit of Shopify Plus is that it combines a hosted SaaS platform with more automation, control, and customization for your standard eCommerce setup.

Unlike traditional self-hosted platforms, Shopify Plus is constantly upgraded and monitored without your intervention.

You get a secure, robust, and fast network with the cloud host, ensuring a high-performance site without relying on your servers or other hosting companies.

Following that, we will look at the main features of Shopify Plus and why they are appropriate for the enterprise level.

Shopify Plus Key Features

Aside from all of the features available on the basic plans, such as an own payment gateway and sales channels, Shopify Plus offers the following additional capabilities:

Fully Hosted

With a SaaS platform, you are getting the platform as a service – both the server and software are sold as a package. The server is made to work correctly with the software platform, and the software is meant to be easy to use and integrate.

The platform provider (Shopify) is responsible for keeping your website up and running. You are responsible for the design, marketing, and everything customer interacts.

Shopify's highly-scalable SaaS platform assures 99.97% uptime for your site and gives your visitors a fast and enjoyable experience. The SaaS model reduces your IT hardware, and human resources cost vastly, meaning you can concentrate on your business rather than IT.

Security

Shopify Plus is a Level 1 PCI DSS compliant platform that employs continuous risk management and annual on-site compliance. This means that Shopify bears the security burden; you won't have to worry about it.

You'll also get SSL certificates for the entire shopping experience.

Unlimited Bandwidth

Shopify Plus enables you to concentrate solely on growing your business rather than worrying about your website. It provides unlimited bandwidth to merchants and can process up to 8,000 orders per minute per store.

Shopify Plus is also powered by scalable SaaS (cloud-hosted software), allowing for highly variable checkouts and flash sales that are both flexible and easy to manage.

To demonstrate, Shopify Plus can withstand massive demands such as:

• - Over 200,000 people flooding the Kylie Cosmetics site when a New York pop-up event happened.
• - Death Wish Coffee's taking $2,083 a minute right after their Super Bowl commercial aired.

Complete customization

Shopify already has a plethora of fantastic ready-to-use themes that you can customize to meet your eCommerce requirements. This includes experimenting with colors, fonts, and changing the content and layout of your homepage.

You can even take your store's customization to a whole new level with Shopify Plus. JavaScript and CSS can be used to fully customize your store's checkout experience, allowing you to incorporate your conversion techniques for larger stores looking for something more unique.

Scalability

Simply put, Shopify Plus handles technical updates and bug fixes for you. This can help you save money and give you financial peace of mind (no shock bill for site maintenance).

If you outsource the technical management of your website to Shopify, you will save money on IT support and labor.

This means you can effectively scale your store.

You will have more time to focus on marketing and business strategies to expand your store. Furthermore, as your business expands, you can be confident that Shopify will handle any additional technical strain.

Not only that, but you also get excellent customer service and technical support at every stage of development, which we will discuss further later.

Shopify Plus pricing

Shopify Plus's website does not list any pricing plans, and you are encouraged to contact them for a quote. This is because Shopify Plus pricing is heavily based on usage and sales volume. This means that it can vary greatly from business to business, and even from month to month.

Here's a breakdown of what to expect in terms of Shopify Plus pricing:

• - Build costs. You can use a pre-designed template, but most enterprise merchants will want something unique to align with branding. Paying a quality third-party design agency costs anywhere from $30,000 to $250,000 and beyond.
• - Licensing costs. The monthly fee starts at $2,000 and can run up to $40,000.
• - Transaction costs. Payment processing fees are determined at 1.6% + $0.35/£0.20 per transaction if using Shopify Payments. There's also a 0.15% fee if using a third-party processor.

So, if you use Shopify Plus, you will need to spend between $1,500 and $2,000 per month and generate over $500,000 in revenue to be eligible for the price.

And to be clear, Shopify Plus's pricing is quite fair for several reasons:

• - The more money your Shopify store makes, the more you can pay.
• - Bigger revenues mean Shopify Plus is helping you turn your store into a success story.
• - When your store gets bigger, Shopify has more to offer. Because the more activity your site has, the more tech resource it will take to maintain.

Shopify Plus Pros and Cons

So as a quick recap, let's see all the pros and cons of Shopify Plus that we've seen so far.

Pros	Cons
Scalability	Backend Customization Limitations
Shopify Plus provides unlimited bandwidth, nearly 100% uptime, and unlimited sales. Your site can easily scale bigger and bigger without you worrying about technical capability.	You have to rely on apps to extend the core functionality of your site. Although this is not much of a limitation for most ecommerce stores. Only those that sell personalized products, or require complex tracking.
Unrivaled Customer Support	Product Variant Limit
Shopify Plus's support is easily the best on the market. Your business will get a Launch Manager (to help you sign up with Shopify Plus) and also a Merchant Success Manager (to help your store grow). This is like having full-time staff members to help with every aspect of your business.	No Shopify Plan, nor Shopify Plus, allows you to have more than 100 product variants. Variants are different combinations of a product. For example, you might sell a shirt that comes in green and blue; two variants will be a green shirt and a blue shirt. This won't be much of a problem for most Shopify merchants, who sell a limited number of products. But it can be a challenge if you're selling a product that naturally comes in many different versions, like wallpaper. (BigCommerce offers a much higher product variant limit of 600).
In-depth Analytics Reporting	Wholesale Limitations
With Shopify Plus, you'll be able to access reports and analytics unavailable on other plans. The more you can know about your customers, the better you can make your store. The better your store is, the more sales you make.	If you want to sell business-to-business on Shopify Plus, you will need to integrate third-party apps. Some stores could see this as a downgrade. But Shopify is continually making significant upgrades in this area, though.
Security	Platform lock-in
Shopify Plus has Level 1 PCI DSS compliance - a critical level of security you will need if you want to serve customers using credit or debit cards. So you are sure your customers' private data is protected, and your store is safe from cybercrime and fraud. You also won't have to buy an SSL certificate as well.	If Shopify runs into problems financially, then your store will be in trouble. That's the big issue with any hosted platform, though.
APIs	Learning curve
The APIs and SDKs available from Shopify Plus are incredibly easy to use for whatever your strategy might be.	Using Shopify Plus requires some knowledge of the Shopify Language Liquid, although it's relatively easy to learn.
Marketing
Marketing support is prioritized with Shopify Plus – you'll have any problem with everything from SEO to applying your marketing strategy on social media.
Customization
Shopify Plus is fully customizable with a host of integrations and changes to choose as you wish. You can also adjust the look and feel of your checkout for a better experience.

Was the article helpful? Thanks for reading