Shopify Plus vs Advanced: Which Plan Is Right for You?

What kind of subscription plans does Shopify have?

Shopify is a Canadian ecommerce SaaS platform that keeps growing in popularity. Its main plans are Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus. Prices below are US prices as of September 2026 – check the official Shopify pricing page for your country.

• Basic – an online store for $39 per month ($29 per month billed yearly); that plan is perfect if you set up your first store and you need a testing ground;
• Grow (until 2026 this plan was simply called “Shopify”) – a plan for small ecommerce stores that already have ecommerce experience; it’s priced at $105 monthly, with a lower monthly rate when billed yearly;
• Advanced – $399 monthly, also cheaper when billed yearly; we will tell you about this plan shortly;
• Shopify Plus – an enterprise version of Shopify, sold on a 1- or 3-year contract; it starts at around $2,300 a month on a 3-year term (in Europe: from EUR 2,100/month on a 3-year term or EUR 2,250/month on a 1-year term). More complex, high-volume businesses pay a variable platform fee based on revenue, agreed with Shopify’s sales team. See the Shopify Plus pricing page.

If you don’t have a Shopify store, you can start with a free trial, often followed by discounted first months. The exact offer changes frequently and depends on your region. Use our trial link to register and get to know the Shopify platform. When it comes to Shopify Plus development – schedule a call with us or the Shopify Plus salesperson.

Tip: Using Shopify to sell in Poland? Shopify Payments has been available to Poland-based merchants since 2025, including cards and local methods such as BLIK. If you choose a third-party payment provider instead (for example Przelewy24 or PayU), Shopify adds its own transaction fee on top of the provider’s fee – as of September 2026 it’s 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus.

In today’s article, we focus on Advanced Shopify and Shopify Plus comparison. We will show you when investing in Shopify Plus makes sense and when it is better to stick to the Advanced plan. Let’s start.

Shopify Advanced vs. Shopify Plus: simple plan comparison

The admin panels of Shopify Advanced and Shopify Plus look the same, yet they differ in functionalities. Here are the key differences at a glance (as of September 2026):

• Pricing model – Advanced: monthly or yearly subscription you can cancel; Plus: 1- or 3-year contract, cancellable when the term ends.
• Stores – Advanced: one store; Plus: main store plus up to 9 expansion stores included (one brand per contract).
• Checkout – Advanced: checkout editor and apps on the Thank you and Order status pages; Plus: additionally apps that customize the information, shipping and payment steps, plus the Checkout Branding API.
• B2B – Advanced: native B2B with up to 3 catalogs; Plus: unlimited catalogs, customer-specific price lists, deposits and partial payments.
• Staff accounts – Advanced: 15; Plus: unlimited.
• Inventory locations – Advanced: 10; Plus: 200.
• Third-party payment gateway fee – Advanced: 0.6%; Plus: 0.2%.
• Languages per store – Advanced: up to 20; Plus: up to 30.

Let’s look at the details, starting with Shopify Plus.

What makes Shopify Plus stand out?

Shopify Plus is Shopify’s enterprise plan, chosen by global brands such as On Running, Reebok, Red Bull, Gymshark, Huel, Lindt and Heinz – and even Taylor Swift’s official store. In Poland, brands like Selsey, Eveline Cosmetics, The Odder Side, GANT and Durex sell on Shopify Plus. What makes it so special?

Advanced checkout customization with Shopify Plus

Shopify Plus enjoys a lot of attention from merchants who run enterprise businesses, because it gives the most room to customize the store and the checkout. What does it mean?

Shopify has a great choice of various store themes that you can develop in whatever way you like. You can change colors or layout, you can add subpages and functionalities, etc. But you don’t need to use them if you can’t find a theme you like. You can create your own store theme and upload it in your Shopify Admin Panel – on any plan.

The checkout is where the plans really differ. The old way of editing the checkout code (checkout.liquid) stopped working in August 2024, and today every store customizes checkout through Checkout Extensibility. On every plan from Basic up, you can use the checkout and accounts editor and apps that customize the Thank you and Order status pages. Only Shopify Plus lets you add apps that customize the information, shipping and payment steps, and use the Checkout Branding API for deeper visual changes. Plus is also the only plan where you can build custom apps with Shopify Functions (your own discount, shipping, payment or validation logic); public App Store apps that use Functions work on any plan.

With Shopify Plus, you can also go headless with your e-commerce at a larger scale – Plus allows up to 25 headless storefronts, while Basic, Grow and Advanced allow one. What else is there?

Up to 9 expansion stores included with Shopify Plus

The price gap between Shopify Advanced and Shopify Plus accounts is large, but when you compare the two, you can see that Shopify Plus includes the main store and up to 9 expansion stores in the monthly fee. Each additional store costs extra (EUR 250/month per store or a revenue share, as of September 2026), and each separate brand needs its own Plus contract.

Expansion stores come in handy when you run very different operations in different regions, though currencies, languages, regional prices or a B2B offer can now be handled in a single store with Shopify Markets and native B2B. An expansion store can also serve as a testing environment, so a buggy feature doesn’t break your main store.

B2B on Shopify: available on every plan, extended on Plus

For years, B2B on Shopify was a Plus-only feature, first as the Wholesale channel and later as native B2B built into the store. Not so long ago, we helped build the very first Shopify B2B store – Protektor. Since April 2026, native B2B is also available on Basic, Grow and Advanced – but Shopify Plus still has the most complete toolset.

What do you get with Shopify B2B on any plan? Above all else, it allows you to manage B2B customers, prices and terms in the same store as your retail offer:

• companies and company locations with their own buyers and permissions
• up to 3 active B2B catalogs with separate prices
• volume pricing and quantity rules (minimums, maximums, increments)
• net payment terms, vaulted cards, draft orders sent as invoices and PO numbers

On Advanced and Plus you can also show B2B buyers a contextual storefront and checkout. What’s reserved for Shopify Plus? Unlimited catalogs, catalogs assigned directly to companies or company locations (so you can set customer-specific price lists), deposits, partial payments and payment requests per fulfillment. If your wholesale pricing is negotiated customer by customer, that’s a strong argument for Plus. You can read more in our previous blog entry: How to set up Shopify for B2B and wholesale.

Automation: Shopify Flow, Functions and Launchpad

Speaking about automation, the toolset has changed a lot. Shopify Scripts, the Ruby-based customization tool that used to be exclusive to Plus, was retired – scripts stopped running on June 30, 2026, and their role (discounts, shipping and payment logic) has been taken over by Shopify Functions.

1. Shopify Flow – use it to automate repetitive tasks, such as tagging customers, adding products into collections, alerting your team when inventory is almost depleted or reacting to new orders. Flow is a free app on Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus; Plus stores can additionally use tasks created by custom partner apps.
2. Shopify Launchpad – a Plus-only tool for scheduling sales, product drops and restocks. It changes product prices at the start and end of an event, publishes selected products to your sales channels at a chosen time, and schedules theme changes. That’s convenient, isn’t it?

Every plan can also combine product, order and shipping discounts natively; stacking several product discounts on one line item is Plus-only.

Tracking has changed, too: tools such as Google Tag Manager are now connected through customer events (custom pixels) instead of being pasted into the checkout code.

Multi-currency and international selling

A few years ago, international selling was one of the main reasons to pick Shopify Plus. Today, Shopify Markets is available on all plans and lets you create country or region markets with their own currency, language, prices, product availability and domains – in one store. Showing prices in local currencies and offering local payment methods requires Shopify Payments, which is now also available to merchants based in Poland. See more: Shopify or Shopify Plus: Which is better for launching a successful global e-commerce business immediately?

Where does Plus still have an edge? It supports up to 30 languages per store (20 on other plans), includes expansion stores and gives you unlimited B2B catalogs for international wholesale.

More development possibilities and faster API calls

API is a fast way of integrating Shopify with other apps. Shopify Plus has higher API limits than Shopify Advanced – up to 10x the standard rate on select APIs, compared with up to 2x on Advanced. With API, merchants can grow their stores, and introduce innovative concepts without needing to switching to a more complex ecommerce platform. Talking about store migration, Shopify has a nice feature for those of you who move their stores from other solutions.

Extra help with Shopify migration

A lot of Shopify merchants are experienced in e-commerce. They used an alternative solution but switched to Shopify for its simplicity and scalability (like Toys’R’Us Poland).

Replatforming to Shopify Plus is relatively easy. Besides having Shopify specialists to help you with the migration, you have a suite of tools that make the move painless. Why wouldn’t you change the platform then?

Unlimited staff accounts

Other plans limit the number of staff accounts that you can create to manage your store: Grow allows 5 and Advanced 15. Shopify Plus doesn’t have those limits. You can create a separate account for every person who takes care of your online store and manages the Shopify admin panel. Plus also raises the limit of inventory locations from 10 to 200, which matters if you run many warehouses or retail stores.

Lower rates for high-volume stores

Plus has the lowest Shopify Payments rates and the lowest fee for third-party gateways (0.2% vs 0.6% on Advanced). For example, as of September 2026, online card payments via Shopify Payments for Poland-based stores cost 1.65% + PLN 1.20 on Advanced and from 1.45% + PLN 1.20 on Plus. Rates differ by country – check the pricing page.

Shopify Plus support and community

Extra features are a plus for sure. But aside from them, Shopify Plus has another benefit. As a Shopify Plus merchant, you get 24/7 priority support. You can ask Shopify’s team to help you fix issues faster when something goes wrong.

If you are more of a do-it-yourself person, you can access Shopify Plus Academy courses and the Shopify Community forums, where merchants share their tips and tricks.

Shopify plus vs Advanced plan – what do you get?

We went over the most important perks of Shopify Plus. What about the Advanced plan? What kind of functionalities does it have? After reading about Shopify Plus, it may be not so easy to see advantages of Advanced Shopify. Yet, we may surprise you – that’s also a great choice.

Shopify Plus has expansion stores, deeper checkout customization, extended B2B and extra automation tools, but are they necessary? It all depends on your business. Let’s see what you can count on when you choose Advanced Shopify.

Growing an online store is also frictionless with Shopify Advanced

Shopify Advanced integrates well with third-party tools via API. It allows merchants to connect with their payment tools and courier services, as well as build original functionalities.

The Advanced pricing plan has its limits when it comes to API, and custom apps built on Shopify Functions are reserved for Plus. So, if you’re going to build a lot of custom solutions on top of Shopify, choose the Plus version. If you can manage with Shopify that has a smaller suite of apps connected to it, go for Advanced Shopify.

Shopify Advanced has great sales channels

Advanced now includes native B2B as well, so you can serve wholesale buyers with up to 3 catalogs, net terms and a contextual B2B storefront and checkout. Like every plan, it also lets you use social media and marketplaces as sales channels, so you can connect to Shopify and sell or promote your collection via platforms, such as

• Facebook store
• Instagram store
• YouTube
• Pinterest

Channel features depend on the platform and your country. Moreover, Shopify Advanced gives you access to Shopify POS – POS is available on every plan, with POS Pro as a paid add-on per location (on Plus, 20 POS Pro locations are included). In-person payment options depend on your country. Advanced also syncs with Google Ads or Google Merchant Center, isn’t that a plus?

International sales on Shopify Advanced

What about international sales with Shopify Advanced? If you sell your products abroad, Advanced covers most needs: with Shopify Markets you can translate your store, set prices per market, show local currencies and configure payment and shipping options in one store. Advanced (like Plus) also supports multi-currency payouts with Shopify Payments. Plus is better suited when you need more than 20 languages, separate regional stores or customer-specific B2B pricing.

Marketing and sales tactics made easy

No matter what plan it is in, every Shopify store sends cart abandonment emails. The admin panel connects with social media profiles and Shopify themes have loads of interesting marketing and sales-enabling functionalities (cross-selling, etc.). They also make it easy to position the store in Google (learn more about Shopify SEO).

See: Best Shopify store examples

Shopify Advanced vs. Shopify Plus, which plan is better?

We compared two plans: Shopify Advanced and Shopify Plus, but we can’t declare the winner. Truth be told, it all depends on the seller’s needs, and that’s what we usually advise our customers, when we help them choose the plan for them.

Before you make any decision, study your needs when it comes to e-commerce store.

👉 Do you need a well-performing store that holds traffic? You will get it with Shopify regardless of what you’re paying.

👉 Do you need a responsive store that can handle m-commerce? You will get it no matter which plan you choose.

👉 Do you want to scale sales? Both plans are suited for that.

If you need customer-specific B2B pricing, a customized checkout flow, custom Functions, several stores for one brand or unlimited staff accounts, choose Shopify Plus – and remember it comes with a 1- or 3-year commitment. If it is hard to establish what you want your ecommerce to be right now, stick with Shopify Advanced. For that price, you will get an excellent ecommerce platform. Shopify Plus has its purpose if you have a strategy for it (building new features, headless commerce, customizing the checkout, making the user journey personal).

Launch a Shopify store with WeCanFly

Did you make up your mind? We would love to hear which plan you picked. And if you’re looking for a partner to grow Shopify or Shopify Plus, we would love to work with you. We have years of experience creating, growing, and maintaining Shopify-based ecommerce stores. We develop features, build themes, and help you achieve your business goals. Reach out to us via the form below.