Shopify Plus is one of the most powerful eCommerce platforms to run an online business. Some businesses are reluctant to use Shopify because it is not open-source like WooCommerce or Magento. On the other hand, we also have Shopify advocates who claim no other platform could deliver the same capabilities as Shopify Plus.
Here, we try to break this age-old argument by analyzing twenty of the best Shopify Plus features. Apart from discussing the most compelling reasons to use the Shopify Plus platform, we also analyze when it is ideal for a company to migrate its online store to the Shopify Plus platform. If you are considering using the Shopify Plus platform for your business, this article is for you.
What is Shopify Plus?
Shopify Plus is an enterprise eCommerce platform ideal for brands and merchants with a high growth potential. The fully hosted platform can support your enterprise-level business with advanced eCommerce capabilities. Shopify offers different plans to eCommerce businesses, which include the following.
- Shopify Starter Plan
- Shopify Lite plan
- Basic Shopify Plan
- Shopify Plan
- Advanced Shopify Plan
- Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus is a premium plan perfect for merchants with high selling volume. To put it in Layman’s terms, if your online store has more than $60,000 worth of monthly sales, you need the premium Shopify Plus eCommerce platform.
Of course, you can always use a subpar eCommerce platform to run your business. But, if you do that, you’d miss out on many opportunities to maximize its reach, sales, and conversion. To understand this, you must first know the advanced features of Shopify Plus.
Shopify Plus Product Overview
Flexible, lightning-fast, and customizable are the three words that can best describe Shopify Plus. The average time required to launch your enterprise-level Shopify store is just 90 days, which can take up to a year in the case of traditional software.
Besides that, you get guidance from Shopify’s team of re-platforming experts for onboarding and migration. That’s not all. You can also get help on your ongoing strategy and help to achieve your business goals from a team of eCommerce experts.
Shopify Plus provides unlimited bandwidth and web hosting at zero extra cost. With the Plus plan, get everything your online store needs with a 99.99% uptime, global content delivery network, cloud-based infrastructure, and more.
And the best part is that these are just some of the features and capabilities of Shopify Plus. Below, we discuss the various features and capabilities of the Shopify Plus platform that makes it an ideal choice for your enterprise-level business.
Shopify Plus Features
A business owner only cares for advanced technologies in an eCommerce platform if it can help them sell better or improve customer experience. It is why we will skip over the boring part and list the top 20 features of Shopify Plus and how they can help your enterprise business.
1. Globalized eCommerce Selling With Multiple Stores
In this age of machine learning and AI bots, globalization is inevitable, and catering to audiences worldwide is no longer an option but a necessity. Shopify Plus is arguably the best eCommerce platform to reach and sell to a global audience. Why? Shopify Plus lets you add up to nine additional stores for your enterprise business.
You are creating clones of your original Shopify store and localizing it based on your target audience or country. It means you can provide a localized experience to users in different corners of the world with Shopify Plus. You can even use custom domains, such as .com, .uk, .in, etc., for your additional sites and add multiple currencies and languages to your site.
2. B2B Ready
Business organizations often want to be free to sell their products online or offline via a local retailer. It is one of the best ways to implement omnichannel capabilities for the retail industry. With Shopify Plus, this diversification for B2B companies becomes significantly more accessible as it comes equipped with a B2B feature.
With the B2B feature from Shopify Plus, you can present a separate password-protected Shopify storefront to B2B or wholesale buyers. That’s not all. You can provide the buyers with custom bulk prices and particular shipping policies. Besides, you can display wholesale-only products to such customers and provide B2B invoices effortlessly.
3. Save on Transactional Fees
Business organizations always seek ways to save money. Unfortunately, there needs to be more wiggle room to adjust the margins significantly in the retail industry. Moreover, other Shopify Plans, including Advanced Shopify, charge you a 0.5% fee for every transaction in your online store.
For a business with high transaction numbers, it can hurt its profitability and overall revenue. The good news is that the transaction fee is significantly lower (0.15%) if you use Shopify Plus. For an enterprise-level company, this could mean a significant hike in its overall revenue or profit.
4. Add Omnichannel Selling Capabilities
Omnichannel selling is one of the most effective but challenging eCommerce strategies. Implementing omnichannel capabilities for your website on the standard Shopify platform may require specialized Shopify development services from an expert like Virtina.
Retail businesses can sell their products via twenty different integrations and social channels with a Shopify Plus store. The Shopify Plus store also allows you to target audiences across 175 countries and over 6000 mobile apps or partners. As a result, you can easily leverage influencer marketing, user-generated content, and more.
5. Robust and Fast eCommerce Store
One of the most common reasons eCommerce store owners switch to Shopify Plus is when the website can no longer handle the load. It generally happens in two situations. It could be when the site’s popularity grows and gets regular high traffic. Or it could be when you are having a sale (or something similar) that could cause a spike in traffic.
Moreover, not every eCommerce can seamlessly handle the high volume of transactions like Shopify Plus. The Plus plan from Shopify is best for handling high-traffic campaigns. With unlimited bandwidth and trades, your website can quickly manage sudden and gradual spikes in your website traffic.
6. Unlimited Staff Accounts
Every business requires more staff as they expand its operations and grow. eCommerce businesses are no exception to this rule because even online brands need employees to run various aspects of the business.
Your online business will likely need to give access to the admin dashboard for more than one staff. You can create unlimited staff accounts for your online business using the robust Shopify Plus platform.
The Shopify Plus store owner can add multiple staff members to the admin dashboard and manage various vital aspects of your online business. As a result, you can efficiently manage your sales promotions, update product pages, and even provide approval for customer reviews from the dashboard.
7. Advanced Custom Automation Support
Automation is no longer a luxury but a necessity for businesses everywhere. Automation can help you simplify various processes in your storefront, including marketing. Most eCommerce platforms support some amount of automation in them. But with Shopify Plus, you get advanced automation capabilities that let you enable automation capabilities for various business operations.
For instance, applying rule-based discounts to customers is significantly easy on Shopify Plus. Not only can you provide discounts to customers, but you can also cater to the needs of various customer segments. Besides that, you can also define the timeline for offering discounts in your Shopify Plus store.
8. Advanced Promotional and Marketing Features
Running successful promotions and marketing strategies is becoming increasingly difficult. Shopify Plus ensures you have everything you need to run a successful campaign for your business. One of the best features you get with Shopify Plus is the Launchpad. You can use it to plan and execute marketing campaigns effortlessly with automation.
The advanced platform of Shopify Plus enables you to run flash sales, product launches, and online sales campaigns. It is also worth noting that Shopify Plus lets retailers schedule bulk changes on their online store depending on ongoing campaigns. The Launchpad also enables you to monitor your marketing campaigns and manage them most efficiently.
9. Faster and Customizable Checkouts
When it comes to eCommerce, faster is always better. With Shopify Plus, you get a super-fast checkout which can significantly impact the user purchase journey and even conversion rates. In eCommerce, you can be sure that your competitors are offering the same product and possibly at a better price too. A faster checkout is an effective way to stand out and boost conversions.
You can use the Shopify Plus platform to optimize the speed of your online store and prepare it for better conversion. And the best part is that Shopify Plus enables you to customize the checkout with a mobile-first design approach. Shop Pay offers a 60% quicker checkout, boosting your conversion rate.
10. Enhance Your Online Store With AR, 3D, and Video Content
One of the critical aspects of running a successful eCommerce business is how effectively you can engage with the user. The average consumer is familiar with advanced digital interactions that use technologies like Augmented and virtual reality. Shopify Plus lets you tap into these advanced technologies and utilize them in your online store.
Leading brands like IKEA already use AR technology to make shopping more accessible and engaging for customers. With Shopify Plus, you can utilize augmented reality and 3D in your product pages, significantly enhancing the shopping experience. The platform also lets you use true-to-life videos to convey your brand story to your target audience.
11. eCommerce Website That Grows With Your Business
An eCommerce business can only grow as much as the platform lets it. While most companies can use a standard eCommerce platform, scalability remains a primary concern. Running an eCommerce store without worrying about its scalability is challenging enough. Shopify Plus effectively eliminates these concerns for you with its highly scalable platform.
To put things in perspective, a Shopify Plus store can effortlessly process 8000 orders per minute. Shopify Plus accomplishes this with unlimited bandwidth and a cloud-hosted SaaS solution. It also means that Shopify Plus store owners can quickly manage complex variable checkouts and flash sales.
12. Easily Handle High-volume Traffic With Launchpad
Flash sales tend to bring many new customers to your eCommerce store. However, it also brings in many concerns about whether the online store can handle the sudden surge in traffic. Shopify Plus has an advanced Launchpad tool that lets you set up all the necessary processes to run a successful flash sale.
The Launchpad in Shopify Plus serves three primary functions. You can use the Launchpad to schedule and automate manual tasks like publishing new content, products, etc. The second function of Launchpad is to help you create complex scripts, such as the ones you use for giving freebies on select purchases. Finally, you can use the Launchpad to monitor sales, inventory, and more in real-time.
13. Superior Customization Capability
Customization is one of the essential requirements of an online store. eCommerce stores, in general, have a high customization capability. But Shopify Plus takes this customization capability to a whole new level. Even the standard Shopify plan comes with ready-to-use themes that you can customize per your requirements.
With Shopify Plus, you get all of this and more. More extensive online stores can use the Shopify Plus platform to fully utilize custom CSS and JavaScript to provide a tailored checkout experience to their customers. As a result, you can effectively use optimization techniques to boost your online conversions and sales.
Besides, you can also hire a Shopify theme development service from an expert like Virtina. The advantage of hiring our expert team is that we can ensure that your Shopify Plus website aligns with your branding. We can customize the theme exactly how you envisioned it without compromising the website’s features and functionalities.
14. Advanced Security for Your eCommerce Store
Another reason to choose Shopify as your eCommerce platform is its advanced security capability. With a Shopify Plus eCommerce store, you can access Level 1 PCI DSS compliance, which applies throughout the eCommerce platform. It means the security burden falls on the Shopify platform. Besides that, you receive a dedicated SSL certificate for every Shopify page you create.
15. Highly Customizable Workflows With Shopify Flow
Workflow for an enterprise-level company can be complex and challenging to manage. With Shopify Plus’s advanced platform, you can easily handle even the most complex workflows. Shopify Plus comes with a native eCommerce automation platform called Shopify Flow.
You can use Shopify Flow to set up fully customized back-end workflows for your online business. Customized workflows enable your online business to organize its internal operations better. More importantly, the condition-based builder is ideal for setting up automated workflows. You can even set triggering actions for initiating custom workflows in your eCommerce store.
16. More Apps and Integrations
One of the common reasons why businesses often opt for Shopify’s eCommerce platform is its extensive app marketplace. Shopify’s app marketplace offers more than 1500 verified apps, which you can use to enhance your Shopify Plus store. Integrating Shopify apps into your Plus store lets you improve its functional features and capabilities.
Business organizations can improve everything from customer service to inventory management with the appropriate Shopify apps. And the best part is that Shopify Plus can support practically unlimited APIs. It means you can integrate numerous apps and ERP solutions to enhance your online store’s functionality and ease of management.
17. Offer Customizable Discounts Via Shopify Scripts
Another attractive feature you can access in a Shopify Plus store is Shopify Script. It allows you to evolve how your online store interacts with customers during checkout. This nifty feature allows you to play around and experiment with your pricing models.
Shopify script lets you create these pricing models using data findings, such as customer responses from specific marketing campaigns/efforts. The feature is also ideal for attracting new customers to your Shopify Plus store.
Besides that, it can provide incentives for high-value purchases or more significant cart values. You can even create custom product bundles and market them directly to high-value customers. Tiered pricing and minimum value discounts are some aspects you can experiment using Shopify Scripts.
18. Dedicated Merchant Success Manager for Priority Service
Shopify Plus comes with a dedicated Merchant Success Manager. A Shopify Plus store owner can seek the help of the dedicated Merchant Success Manager to monitor and ensure its successful launch.
They can assist you with basic inquiries and introduce you to Shopify tools that can help you boost sales. The Merchant Success Manager can also help you with customizable checkout pages, payment gateway integrations, etc.
However, there is a limit to the services you can get from the Merchant Success Manager. Advanced Shopify store development requires the experienced hands of an eCommerce expert like Virtina.
19. Shopify Storefront Renderer for Lower Response Time
Shopify Storefront Renderer is an application that works from the server side to minimize the response time for your online store. It is responsible for loading the storefront Liquid theme and returning the appropriate HTML response to your browser. You can also hire a Shopify developer to optimize your store further and speed up your online store.
20. Automatic WebP Image Conversion
WebP image files are (30%) lighter, and it works seamlessly with Google, as the tech giant developed it themselves. With Shopify Plus, you get an automatic WebP image conversion feature. It can significantly speed up your response time without you having to lift a finger. It is also one of the reasons why many online businesses seek Shopify migration services and switch to a more sustainable eCommerce platform.
Why Should you Consider Shopify Plus for Enterprise eCommerce?
There are several reasons for considering the Shopify Plus platform for your enterprise eCommerce business. The attractive features above can probably convince you to seek Shopify website development services for your business.
With superior scalability and advanced features like multiple stores, Shopify Plus is arguably the best eCommerce platform for an enterprise. Besides, Shopify provides various migration tools that ensure a seamless transition to its platform.
Business organizations need to realize their growth potential earlier and prepare themselves. Shopify Plus is the best and most convenient way for a (growing) enterprise-level business to deliver a memorable shopping experience to its customers.
When Should You Migrate to Shopify Plus?
Any business organization with immense growth potential can switch to the Shopify Plus platform without a second thought. The platform comes with advanced capabilities that can efficiently serve enterprise-level companies. However, Shopify Plus is a premium plan that can cost you $2000 monthly to use the platform.
If your business can handle this monthly fee, you can opt for Shopify Plus as your eCommerce platform. Of course, you can use many cheaper, open-source alternatives, but most need more support or advanced out-of-the-box capabilities. Moreover, if your annual revenue exceeds $1 million, you need the advanced capabilities Shopify Plus offers.
Shopify’s scalability to adapt to the rapid growth of your business is unprecedented. The same logic also applies to Shopify vs. Shopify Plus argument. You only need to switch to the Plus version if the existing one can not handle sudden traffic surges or accommodate your growing business needs.
Shopify Plus Pricing
The primary concern of most business organizations when using a premium eCommerce platform like Shopify Plus is its price. You can start or migrate your online store to the Shopify Plus platform at a monthly starting price of $2000.
However, Shopify also offers a variable fee for higher-volume businesses. You may be eligible for a better deal from Shopify with custom capabilities if it considers your business a higher volume one.
Final Thoughts and Recommendations for Businesses Considering Shopify Plus
Many high-volume businesses use the Shopify Plus platform. Business organizations are migrating from other and standard Shopify platforms to the Shopify Plus platform.
It is because Shopify Plus has all the features and capabilities to meet the needs of fast-growing businesses. However, you don’t want to take unnecessary risks with an advanced eCommerce platform like Shopify.
And the best way to do this is to hire Virtina’s team of experts to build or migrate your online store to Shopify Plus. Our experts can create a custom Shopify Website from the ground up and equip it with all the capabilities to provide a seamless user experience.
Shopify Plus Features - Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
You can quickly run an eCommerce store on the standard Shopify platform without upgrading to Shopify Plus. However, if your business is rapidly growing and can’t handle sudden surges in traffic, you may want to consider Shopify Plus. An enterprise with $1 million annual revenue requires the scalability of a Shopify Plus platform.
The Shopify Plus plan for your business can vary depending on your unique needs and is customizable for each store owner. The starting price for the Shopify Plus plan is $2000 per month. You can contact Shopify directly to get a tailored quote for your business. It is also worth noting that Shopify Plus charges a 0.25% transaction fee for every sale.
It is only possible to say whether the Shopify Plus plan is worth the money for a brand by knowing its specific business requirements. Suppose your business has an annual revenue of over $1 million or can easily afford the basic Shopify Plus fee of $2000. Shopify Plus is worth every penny for enterprise-level companies that often face sudden traffic surges.
You can upgrade or migrate to Shopify Plus by yourself with the help of the Shopify team. All you have to do is directly contact Shopify and get a personalized quote. However, it is always best to seek the help of an expert like Virtina, who can take care of everything from Shopify Plus migration to custom Shopify feature development.
Shopify Plus and Shopify are different versions of the same eCommerce platform with distinct features and capabilities. Shopify is ideal for small to medium-sized businesses with moderate traffic. But when it comes to larger enterprises with over $1 million in annual revenue, you need an advanced eCommerce platform like Shopify Plus.
A variety of industries use Shopify Plus for running their heavy-traffic business. The clientele of Shopify Plus includes large enterprises to high-volume retailers: Gymshark, Lindt, and several other leading brands run on Shopify Plus. The experts at Virtina can assess the compatibility of the Shopify Plus store and ensure a secure migration.
A Shopify Plus store owner can create unlimited stores on their Shopify account. It is an excellent feature if a company wants to diversify its operations and expand them via sister websites. You can use the sister websites to complement the main website. Besides that, it is also best for companies with a noticeable presence in different countries.
Shopify offers one of the most technologically advanced eCommerce platforms for running your online store. Shopify Plus can perform faster than the average eCommerce store if utilized right. With advanced features like automatic WebP image conversion, Shopify Plus can ensure that your online store has the optimal loading speed.
The Shopify Plus partner is a Shopify-certified organization or person specializing in services and support for the Plus platform. Hiring a Shopify Plus partner is always the better choice, as it ensures your enterprise-level store’s integrity and functionality. Our experts can help you with all Shopify Plus projects, including custom development.
Shopify provides all the support for migrating your online store to Shopify Plus. Unlike other open-source eCommerce platforms, you can customize the look and feel of your website with the online store builder. However, an enterprise-level website needs an expert like Virtina to implement these advanced features and capabilities.
Shopify Plus may seem too expensive for smaller businesses. But it is an ideal fit for online stores with over $1 million in annual revenue. Considering the advanced scalability and ability to handle high and sudden surges in online traffic seamlessly, Shopify Plus is well worth a purchase. It is arguably the best platform for enterprise-level businesses.
You can integrate all the major external solutions into your Shopify Plus store. However, this is only sometimes the case. Although Shopify offers an extensive app marketplace, it does not have all external applications. Fortunately, Virtina’s experts can help you create custom apps to enhance the features and capabilities of your Shopify Plus store.
Shopify Plus does have extensive documentation, which includes everything from the initial setup to website management. You can find all the answers to your Shopify Plus queries in the documentation. Of course, the more convenient approach would be to hire the expertise of Virtina, as we are already familiar with the platform from head to toe.
Shopify Plus comes with numerous advanced features and functionalities for marketing your business. For instance, Shopify Plus lets you install countless applications for marketing to incorporate additional marketing capabilities, including advanced automation. The platform even supports advanced marketing strategies using the latest tech.
Shopify Plus has numerous options to customize your online store. However, more extensive online businesses must use custom CSS and Javascript to provide a tailored experience. The best way to ensure superior customization for your Shopify Plus store is to hire an expert like Virtina. We can create a fully customized website for your business from the ground up.
