Shift to Shopify Plus: When and How You Do This Properly

It goes without saying that Shopify is one of the most efficient platforms for e-commerce businesses. Shopify is beloved by online sellers for its advanced features that allow sellers to elevate the efficiency of their online stores to a new level. What’s more, Shopify offers unparalleled flexibility when it comes to business scale. It’s great for both beginning stores and large market participants who can afford to invest in bigger budgets.

Obviously, if you have a limited budget, you will start from the basic plan. However, even at this point, you might get curious about Shopify and Shopify Plus capabilities compared. How should you assess the necessity to shift to Shopify Plus and how to conduct this shift smoothly with the help of the Shopify Plus ecommerce agency? Let’s take a closer look.

How Shopify Works on a Basic Plan

When you first come to Shopify, the platform will offer you to use any of its plans for just $1 per month, so you can use this possibility and explore both Basic, Shopify, and Advanced plans. However, when you finally begin working full-time, you’ll probably start with the Basic plan. You can either buy a monthly subscription for $32 or a yearly subscription for $24 per month.

Even though this is the most limited plan on Shopify, it offers a lot of great functionalities for solo entrepreneurs. You can build a full-features website for your store with multiple sales channels, live support chat, 1 headless storefront, and collaborator accounts. The Basic plan also enables you to sell an unlimited amount of products and work with 10 inventory locations.

However, it’s important to mention that the basic plan has the highest transaction fees of 2%. Besides, it enables limited opportunities in terms of international markets and excludes B2B, advanced customization, additional stores, and educational possibilities, which are available only with the Shopify Plus pricing. But how to make sure your ecommerce business needs all those mentioned and some more features?

When It’s Worth Moving to Shopify Plus

The Shopify Plus cost is $2,300 per month, so, obviously, not every online store needs it. Nonetheless, there are certain criteria that will help you understand whether your ecommerce business needs services from the Shopify Plus agency. Consider the following:

• Annual revenue: Experts suggest that there’s no point in upgrading to Shopify Plus unless you make at least $1 million in annual revenue. Considering the Shopify Plus rates, at this point of revenue, the upgrade to the most expansive plan becomes financially beneficial and justified in terms of business scaling. Consider that with Shopify Plus the transaction fee is only 0.3% while the basic plan charges 2%. The credit card processing fee on Shopify Plus is also more beneficial compared to the Basic plan — 2.15% vs 2.4%. These savings of 0.95% on transactions only (without considering other ones that occur due to better customization) might cover the whole Plus plan fee for large-scale businesses, saving thousands of dollars of your revenue.
• Business scale: Obviously, at the point when your online business makes more than $1 million a year, you can run it on your own. It goes through the scaling process, which requires an extra workforce. Shopify Plus partners can access those additional resources in the form of better-customized features and more attention to your business from the platform itself.
• Markets of operating: Ecommerce businesses that are going to expand and become global, need to switch to the Shopify Plus pricing plan. It gives you the necessary tools to manage inventory on international territories as well as monitor the efficiency of different domains. Besides, Shopify Plus allows expanding your brand by creating 10 clone stores under the same label but customized for different international markets.
• Repetitive task: When you pay time and effort to some basic repetitive task, you can focus on the business growth. This is when it’s worth upgrading to Shopify Plus. This pricing plan opens the possibility of using Shopify Flow, which makes many repetitive tasks, which were used to be performed manually, automated. This includes managing such operations as buyer experience and promotions. Also, there’s Shopify Launchpad that enables you to launch products and proceed with marketing campaigns in an automated mode.
• B2B cooperation: Shopify Plus is the only plan where you can set up efficient B2B cooperation. This feature is especially relevant for wholesalers who deal with huge amounts of inventory and corporate customer data.
• Growing staff: The basic plan doesn’t include any functionality for your potential staff because it’s designed for solo entrepreneurs. However, you cannot grow your business in solo. Staff growth is an important part of business scaling. With Shopify Plus, there are no limitations on the number of staff accounts. So, if your ambitious goal is to have more than 15 staff accounts, Shopify Plus is the only option.