A Shopify Plus agencythat qualifies you first.
Shopify Plus starts at $2,300 a month on a 3-year term, and the $399 you'll see on Shopify's own pages is a trial price that enrolls you in a full plan automatically if you do nothing. Before the price matters, one question settles it: does your roadmap need something Plus actually gates, like a custom Shopify Function, an app block on the checkout shipping step, or separate business entities per market? If it doesn't, we'll tell you to stay on the plan you're already paying for. If it does, we build what Plus unlocked.
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You Were Quoted For Shopify Plus. The Gate Is Narrower Than The Feature List.
The quote came in at $2,300 a month and the case for it was a feature list: unlimited staff, more locations, higher API limits. None of those name the one capability on your roadmap that your current plan can’t ship, and that capability is what decides whether Plus is worth a contract.
So you’re comparing a contract against a hunch, and Shopify’s own pages don’t make it easier. The pricing page puts a $399 button in the Plus column, directly above the line saying Plus starts at $2,300 a month. One of those is a trial. The other is the plan.
Meanwhile a competitor your size ships a custom discount function, a branded checkout and a second storefront in the EU. They’re not better than you. They just got a straight answer about which of those actually required Plus, and when.
Shopify Plus is a contract. Qualify for it before you sign it.
Most Plus conversations start at the price and end at a feature list. Ours starts at your roadmap, because the gate is narrower than the brochure and it's published. A custom Shopify Function, app blocks on the checkout information, shipping or payment steps, business entities per market, Multipass single sign-on, or more stores than one contract covers. If your next twelve months don't touch one of those, Advanced will carry you.
Shopify draws the sharpest line itself. Shopify's Functions documentation says stores on any plan can use public apps that contain functions, and restricts custom apps containing Shopify Function APIs to stores on Plus. Installing a public discount app on Advanced is fine. Having an agency write discount logic for your store alone is a custom app, and that's the Plus side of the line.
On price, we'd rather you hear this from us than find it in month three. The $399 on Shopify's Plus page is a paid trial of one to two months, and Shopify's trial documentation says that if you take no action by the end of it, your store is automatically enrolled in a full Plus plan.
So that's the job. We read your roadmap against what Plus actually gates, put the answer in writing before scope, separate the plan change from any real replatform, and then build the things Plus permits. Qualification first. Contract second. Build third.
Does Your Store Actually Need A Shopify Plus Build?
If your roadmap doesn't touch one of these, Advanced carries you another year. We'll put that in writing too.
The list is short, and every item on it sits on a Shopify page you can open in the next tab. Custom Shopify Functions, per the Functions documentation. Checkout styling and app blocks on the information, shipping and payment steps, per the checkout UI extensions docs. Business entities and per-market checkout blocks, per Shopify’s Markets requirements table.
The quieter ones decide more builds than the loud ones. Multipass, the single sign-on resource that lets an outside system log a customer into your storefront, is listed on Shopify’s Plus plan page as available to Plus stores only, alongside the GiftCard and User REST resources. If you run a membership or portal login today, that’s a hard gate, and it never appears on a comparison chart.
Then there’s headroom, where Shopify’s pricing page disagrees with itself. Its plan comparison table gives Plus “Up to 10x on select APIs,” while the “Just for Plus” list further down that same page reads “Up to 500% higher API call limits,” which is not the same multiplier. Use the figure an engineer can check instead: Shopify’s API rate limit documentation puts the GraphQL Admin API at 1,000 points per second on Plus, against 200 on Advanced and 100 on standard plans. Against Advanced, which is where most of these decisions are actually made, that’s five times the budget, not ten.
Plus doesn’t raise every ceiling. On the Customer Account API, Shopify’s same table gives Advanced and Plus the identical 200 points per second. If your load is customer-account traffic rather than Admin API traffic, that particular limit is not a reason to move.
- +Custom Shopify Functions: Plus only
- +App blocks on checkout information, shipping and payment: Plus only
- +Business entities per market: Plus only
- +Multipass single sign-on: Plus only
- +More than 10 stores on one contract: $300 a month each
- +GraphQL Admin API: 1,000 points a second on Plus, 200 on Advanced
What A Shopify Plus Agency Engagement Actually Builds
Custom Shopify Functions, Written For Your Store
Shopify's Functions documentation says "Only stores on a Shopify Plus plan can use custom apps that contain Shopify Function APIs." Bespoke discount logic, custom delivery and payment options, order routing and cart validation written for one merchant are custom apps by definition, which is exactly why they land on the Plus side of the line. When a public app already does the job, we'll tell you to install it and stay where you are.
Checkout Work Only Shopify Plus Can Ship
"Checkout styling customizations are available only to Shopify Plus merchants," per Shopify's checkout styling docs, and the checkout UI extensions docs restrict extensions for the information, shipping and payment steps to Plus stores. Logo, colors and fonts stay editable on any plan in the checkout and accounts editor, so what Plus buys is the Branding API and the three pre-purchase steps. What to put on them is a conversion question, and that's where our conversion rate optimization work starts.
Organization Admin And Multi-Store Governance
Shopify's organization settings let you review and manage the stores in your organization, add and manage organization users, apply additional security settings, and review billing for every store. Organization-level features are Plus-gated, and Shopify's trial page lists organization settings among the things that don't run during the Plus trial, so this is work that starts after the contract, not during the evaluation.
Business Entities And Per-Market Checkout On Plus
Two Markets capabilities are Plus-gated in Shopify's Markets requirements table: customizing blocks on the checkout page for each market, and business entities. Business entities are how one organization sells through separate legal entities with their own tax registrations and payouts, and Shopify's international management docs state that configuring them requires the Plus plan. Shopify's two pages disagree on one point worth checking against your own admin: the Plus plan page says B2B markets are available on the Advanced plan and higher, while the Markets requirements table shows them on Starter and Basic, capped at three catalogs.
Hydrogen Storefronts On A Shopify Plus Plan
Shopify's Plus plan page puts the allowance at 25 custom React storefronts built with Hydrogen and deployed on the Oxygen edge network. Shopify's pricing table puts Basic, Grow and Advanced at one. Whether you should build one is a different question, and our headless Shopify and Hydrogen development page answers it. Most brands are better served by a custom Shopify theme, and we'll say so when that's you.
Launchpad, Suppression And Plus-Only Operations
Launchpad schedules and coordinates sales, product drops and restocks, and its App Store listing states it's only available to Shopify Plus customers. Email suppression, which stops specific Shopify notification emails from reaching customers, is listed as exclusive to the Plus plan. Plus also extends payment authorization: Shopify's Plus plan page puts Visa, Mastercard and American Express at up to 30 days against a standard 7, Discover and JCB at 10, with a 1.75% additional charge when you capture after the standard 7-day period. For the workflow layer underneath a launch, see our Shopify automation services.
Find Out Whether You Need Shopify Plus At All
A free Growth Audit looks at your roadmap, names which items on it are genuinely Plus-gated, and tells you what the same work costs on the plan you already pay for. Not a sales call. Not a quote request.
What Shopify Plus Costs, And What The $399 Actually Is
$399 is a trial price with an automatic enrollment attached. Read the end date before you read the feature list.
Shopify’s Plus plan page publishes the fee in seven currencies across two term lengths. In USD that’s $2,300 a month on a 3-year term and $2,500 a month on a 1-year term, and the same split runs through CAD, EUR, GBP, JPY, AUD and INR. These are the published figures as of September 2026, and Shopify changes its pricing.
Above that sits the variable platform fee. Shopify says more complex, higher-volume businesses move to a fee based on their revenue and business model, and that the fee is different for B2B and D2C orders. It publishes no threshold, no percentage and no formula, so any agency quoting you one is guessing at your contract. That number comes from Shopify’s sales team, in writing, before you sign.
The $399 on Shopify’s Plus page and in the Plus column of its pricing page is a paid trial. The same pricing table also lists $399 a month as Advanced’s month-to-month price, so the number does double duty on one page. Shopify’s Plus trial documentation says “The trial length is 1 to 2 months, depending on your store status.” and “If you take no action by the end of your trial, then your store is automatically enrolled in a full Plus plan.”
Four things are switched off during that trial: expansion stores and unlimited staging stores, organization settings and organization-level features, Test Drive, and bot protection. Shopify’s note on that row reads “These features aren’t available during the Plus trial, even if the feature comparison in your admin indicates that they are.” Plan the trial around that list, or you’ll spend two months evaluating Plus without the parts you’re buying it for.
- +3-year term: $2,300 USD a month
- +1-year term: $2,500 USD a month
- +Published in 7 currencies, USD through INR
- +Variable platform fee: no published threshold or formula
- +$399 is the trial, not the plan
- +Trial runs 1 to 2 months, then enrolls you automatically
How A Shopify Plus Engagement Runs
It starts with a free Growth Audit. We read the roadmap, the current quote if you have one, and the store itself, then mark every line that genuinely requires Plus and every line that doesn't. No assumptions. No selling you a plan you don't need.
Before scope, not after. You get a written Plus-versus-Advanced recommendation naming the specific capability that decides it, whether that's a custom Function, an app block on a pre-purchase checkout step, business entities, Multipass, store count, or a ceiling you've already hit on staff or inventory locations. If Advanced covers it, that's what the document says.
If you're already on Shopify, moving to Plus is a plan change and we scope it as one. If you're coming from another platform, that's a replatform with a redirect map, and it runs on our Shopify migration services process instead. Two different projects, priced separately, so you can see which one you're actually buying.
Custom Functions, Checkout Branding API work, app blocks on the information, shipping and payment steps, business entities per market, and the theme or Hydrogen work in front of them. Every build ties back to the capability named in step two, so the scope and the plan recommendation stay the same document.
Organization settings, users, security and billing get configured before a second store exists, along with the eligibility check on branding, goods and billing currency that decides whether that store is covered by the contract or costs $300 a month. Apps, themes and inventory are planned per store, because Shopify doesn't sync them.
What was built, which Plus entitlement it depends on, and what would break if the plan changed. Shopify's own downgrade documentation is the clearest list of what Plus is holding up, and your handover should read the same way.
Bring Us The Plus Quote You Were Just Sent
Send over the scope and we'll mark every line that genuinely requires Shopify Plus, every line that doesn't, and what the difference costs across a 3-year term. No obligation, and no pitch attached to the answer.
What Changes When A Shopify Plus Build Is Scoped Honestly
Shopify Plus Questions We Get Before Every Engagement
Shopify's Plus pricing page says migration is your responsibility, and that a Shopify Plus representative can outline potential costs and resources needed. Shopify sells and provisions the plan. Building what Plus newly permits is the work: custom Shopify Functions, checkout branding and app blocks on the information, shipping and payment steps, organization and expansion store setup, business entities per market, and the theme or Hydrogen storefront in front of all of it.
Only if your roadmap touches something Plus gates. The short list is custom Shopify Functions, which Shopify restricts to custom apps on Plus, app blocks and Branding API styling on the three pre-purchase checkout steps, business entities and per-market checkout blocks, Multipass single sign-on, more than ten stores on one contract, and ceilings you've already hit such as 15 staff accounts or 10 inventory locations on Advanced. If none of that is on your list, Advanced will carry you, and we'll say so in writing before any build contract.
Shopify publishes $2,300 USD a month on a 3-year term and $2,500 USD a month on a 1-year term, in seven currencies. Above that, it says more complex, higher-volume businesses move to a variable platform fee based on revenue and business model, and that the fee differs for B2B and D2C orders. Shopify publishes no threshold, percentage or formula for that fee, so the only reliable number comes from its sales team in writing. These figures are as of September 2026 and Shopify changes its pricing.
It's a paid trial, not the plan. Shopify's trial documentation puts the length at 1 to 2 months depending on your store status, and says that if you take no action by the end of the trial, your store is automatically enrolled in a full Plus plan. Four things don't run during the trial: expansion stores and unlimited staging stores, organization settings and organization-level features, Test Drive, and bot protection. Shopify also notes those features aren't available during the trial even if the feature comparison in your admin indicates that they are.
No. Since April 2, 2026, Shopify B2B runs on Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus, and Shopify's B2B plan features page lists companies, catalogs, net payment terms, self-serve ordering and Flow automations as available across all of them. A short list of B2B capabilities is still Plus-gated, including unlimited catalogs and direct catalog assignment to companies and locations. Our B2B ecommerce agency page carries that argument in full, including the plan math for running wholesale on Basic.
Not if you're already on Shopify. It's a plan change made in the admin under Settings and then Plan, so the store doesn't move, the URLs don't change, and there's no redirect map to build. Coming from another platform is a real replatform with a redirect map, a data migration and post-launch verification, and that work lives on our Shopify migration services page and the platform pages under it.
Shopify's docs restrict checkout styling customizations to Plus merchants, and restrict checkout UI extensions for the information, shipping and payment steps to stores on Plus. Logo, colors and fonts stay editable on any plan in the checkout and accounts editor, so the accurate version is narrower than needing Plus to customize checkout at all: what Plus buys is the Branding API, app blocks on the three pre-purchase steps, and per-market checkout blocks. Shopify documents the limits too, including no per-page styling and no SVG support for checkout styling.
Ten at no additional cost: one main store and nine expansion stores, with staging stores excluded from that count. Additional stores cost an extra $300 USD per month per store, or a revenue share across all stores. Expansion stores have to extend the main brand, match its name and branding, carry the same types of goods, and bill in USD or INR, and Shopify notes that changing your billing currency immediately bills any pending charges. Stores don't share settings, products or inventory by default, apps are billed per store, and each store needs its own theme license.
Shopify publishes round-the-clock access to priority phone and chat support on the Plus plan, and its pricing table labels that priority support. It doesn't publish a named account role for Plus; the technical account management and launch support language sits on Shopify's enterprise tier, which is a different product. On uptime, Shopify's own sentence is conditional: it says the Plus plan might also include a 99.99% uptime SLA. Might is Shopify's word, so treat the SLA as a contract term to confirm in writing rather than a published guarantee.
Nothing, and there's no obligation attached. It's a clear look at your roadmap, which items on it genuinely require Shopify Plus, what the same work would cost on the plan you're already paying for, and where your store is losing visitors or conversions today. Not a sales call. Not a quote request.