Shopify Plus development services, starting with whether you still need Plus at all
B2B was the reason most merchants upgraded, and it is no longer exclusive to Plus. Company accounts, catalogues, payment terms and quantity rules now sit on the cheaper plans. Five capabilities remain behind the wall, and the honest question is whether you need any of them.
Checkout extensibility, Functions, B2B builds and expansion stores for merchants who genuinely belong on Plus.
What are Shopify Plus development services?
Shopify Plus development services are the enterprise tier of Shopify work: checkout customisation through UI extensions and Shopify Functions, native B2B builds with catalogues and payment terms, expansion stores for new markets or brands, automation through Flow and Launchpad, and integrations that need the higher API limits Plus provides.
Everything on our Shopify development page applies here too. Themes, sections, apps and the checkout migration are the same work.
Shopify Plus development services are what gets added on top: the capabilities that only exist on the enterprise plan, and the scale that makes them worth building.
What changed about Plus, and what it really costs
Start here before you talk to anybody about upgrading, including us.
B2B is no longer a reason to buy Plus on its own. Basic, Grow and Advanced now include company accounts, company locations, catalogues, payment terms, quantity rules, quick ordering and B2B automations. If you were told two years ago that selling wholesale meant upgrading, that advice has expired.
Five things still require Plus. Unlimited pricing catalogues, a dedicated B2B storefront on its own domain, vaulted card storage for buyer accounts, deposit and partial payment workflows, and checkout extensibility through Shopify Functions. That is the actual list, and it is worth checking your requirements against it line by line.
The price is not one number. Plus starts around $2,300 a month on a three year term, or roughly $2,500 on a one year term. Above approximately $800,000 a month in sales it moves to a variable fee of around 0.25% of revenue, capped. Advanced sits near $399. That is a gap of roughly six times, before anything is built.
Plus merchants hit the checkout deadline first. Enforcement of checkout extensibility ran ahead of the non-Plus timeline, so if you are on Plus and still have legacy checkout customisation, this is already overdue rather than upcoming. That is the one piece of Plus work with a date attached.
Shopify revises plan features and pricing regularly, so confirm the current position before committing. The point of this section is not the exact figures, it is that the comparison is worth doing rather than assuming.
Advanced against Plus, as it stands now
Only the rows where the answer differs. Everything not listed here is the same on both.
| Advanced | Plus | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | Around $399 | From around $2,300, variable above roughly $800k monthly sales |
| Core B2B | Included | Included |
| Pricing catalogues | Limited | Unlimited |
| B2B storefront | No separate domain | Dedicated storefront on its own domain |
| Deposits and partial payments | No | Yes |
| Checkout extensibility | Limited | Full, through Functions |
| Expansion stores | None | Nine included, ten storefronts in total |
| Staff accounts | Capped | Unlimited |
| Launchpad and Flow | Flow only | Both |
| API rate limits | Standard | Higher |
The expansion stores row is the one most under-weighted. Nine additional full stores under one subscription changes the maths considerably if you sell across several countries or run more than one brand.
What our Shopify Plus development services cover
The work that only exists at this tier, plus the ordinary development that comes with running a store of this size.
Checkout extensibility builds
UI extensions, Functions, branding API and web pixels. On Plus this is both the migration off legacy checkout and the ongoing customisation you could never do before.
Shopify Functions
Discount, shipping and payment logic running server side, including the complex tiered and conditional rules that used to need a stack of apps.
B2B implementation
Company accounts, locations, buyer roles, tiered catalogues, payment terms and the self service portal, built natively rather than through a wholesale app.
Expansion stores
Additional storefronts for new countries or brands, set up so catalogue, theme and content are shared where sensible rather than maintained nine times.
Flow and Launchpad automation
Operational workflows and scheduled campaign events. Merchants report saving twenty hours a week or more on Flow alone once the obvious tasks are automated.
ERP and systems integration
The higher API limits are one of the least discussed reasons to be on Plus, and they are what makes real time integration with an ERP practical.
Organisation and permissions
Unlimited staff accounts, role design across multiple stores, and access that survives people joining and leaving without anyone sharing a login.
Theme and storefront work
The same Online Store 2.0 development as any Shopify store, at a scale where a change has to be safe across ten storefronts rather than one.
Headless where it earns it
Plus is where headless occasionally makes sense. It is still a minority of merchants and we will tell you if you are not one of them.
How Plus work runs
Test the plan against the requirement
Your actual requirements checked against the five capabilities that still need Plus. If you do not need any of them, we will say so, even when that means a smaller engagement.
Clear the checkout position first
Legacy checkout customisation is the one item with a deadline behind it. On Plus it is already overdue, so it goes ahead of anything discretionary.
Build the capabilities you are paying for
B2B, Functions, expansion stores and automation. Most Plus merchants we meet are paying for a set of features and using two of them.
Measure against the fee
Plus costs roughly six times Advanced. We report what the Plus specific work returned so the plan justifies itself on numbers rather than on status.
When Plus pays for itself, and when it does not
The maths tends to work from somewhere around one to two million in annual revenue, but the threshold matters less than which features you will actually use.
You sell in several countries
Nine expansion stores under one subscription is genuinely hard to replicate. If you were about to pay for three separate stores, the comparison changes immediately.
Your B2B is genuinely complex
Deposits, partial payments, vaulted cards and a separate wholesale domain. If you need those specific things, Plus is the only route to them.
Your checkout needs to do real work
Complex shipping rules, conditional discounts, custom fields at checkout. Reported checkout completion lifts of five to fifteen percent make this pay quickly at volume.
You are integrating an ERP
Higher API limits are the quiet reason many enterprises need Plus, and the one nobody puts in the sales deck.
Not for the badge
Being a Plus merchant does not rank you higher, convert better or impress customers, who will never know. It is a feature set, not a status.
Not for basic wholesale any more
The most common reason people upgraded is now available on Advanced at a fraction of the cost. This is the single biggest change to the Plus decision in years.
The difference between Advanced and Plus is roughly $23,000 a year at the entry price. Our eCommerce profit margin calculator will tell you what that represents in units for your business, which is a more useful way to think about it than a monthly figure.
What we will tell you that a Plus partner might not
Worth being direct about the incentives here, because they are not neutral.
Agencies are rewarded for putting you on Plus. Shopify partners can earn on referred Plus merchants, and Plus projects are larger. That is not a scandal, it is just a reason to get a second opinion from someone whose recommendation might be that you stay where you are.
Downgrading is harder than upgrading. Once you have built on Plus only capabilities, unwinding them is a project rather than a settings change. Three year terms exist for a reason. Decide deliberately.
Plus does not fix a store that is not working. If conversion is poor, the product page, the speed and the merchandising are the problem, and an enterprise plan changes none of them. It gives a working store more room, and gives a struggling one a larger bill.
If your requirements do not touch those five capabilities, we would rather build you an excellent Advanced store and say so on the first call.
How much do Shopify Plus development services cost?
Project priced, separate from what you pay Shopify. We do not take a share of your plan fee from anyone.
Plan and requirements review
Your requirements against the capabilities that genuinely need Plus, with a straight answer on whether the upgrade is justified. Free, and sometimes ends with us recommending you stay on Advanced.
Build projects
Checkout extensibility, B2B implementation, expansion store rollouts and Functions work. Fixed scope and price per project.
Development retainer
Ongoing capacity for merchants shipping regularly across multiple storefronts. Monthly, cancellable, with a visible backlog.
The fee above is for the build, not the plan. If you want to know whether any partner arrangement sits behind a platform recommendation, ours or anyone else’s, ask directly before you decide. It is a fair question and you should get a straight answer.
Plus alongside the rest of the store
Shopify development
Themes, sections, apps and the checkout migration. Everything there applies on Plus as well, at a scale where changes have to be safe across several storefronts.
See development →Shopify speed optimization
Plus does not make a store faster. App weight and theme bloat behave exactly the same way on an enterprise plan.
See speed work →B2B SEO services
If you are building a wholesale storefront, the buying committee and attribution window problems are a different discipline from the build itself.
See B2B SEO →Common questions about Shopify Plus
Usually not. Basic, Grow and Advanced now include company accounts, company locations, catalogues, payment terms, quantity rules, quick ordering and B2B automations. What still needs Plus is unlimited pricing catalogues, a dedicated B2B storefront on its own domain, vaulted card storage for buyer accounts, deposit and partial payment workflows, and checkout extensibility through Functions. Check your requirements against those five before upgrading.
From around $2,300 a month on a three year term, or roughly $2,500 on a one year term. Above approximately $800,000 a month in sales it switches to a variable fee of about 0.25% of revenue, capped. Advanced is near $399, so the gap is around six times before you build anything. Confirm current pricing with Shopify, since it changes.
The maths tends to work from somewhere around one to two million in annual revenue, but revenue is the wrong test on its own. A three million dollar single market direct to consumer store with a simple checkout may gain nothing. A one million dollar business selling into four countries with complex wholesale terms may gain a great deal. Which features you will use decides it, not the turnover.
Nine additional full stores included in your subscription, giving ten storefronts in total. Each has its own theme, domain and catalogue. This is the most under-weighted part of the offer, because merchants comparing plans on price often do not notice they were about to pay separately for three or four stores.
No. The infrastructure is largely the same and the things that slow a Shopify store down, apps, theme weight and third party tags, behave identically on any plan. Plus gives you higher API limits, which matters for integrations rather than for page speed. If speed is the problem, that is a separate piece of work.
Yes, enforcement ran ahead of the non-Plus timeline. If you are on Plus and still have legacy checkout customisation in place, this is overdue rather than upcoming, and it is the one piece of Plus work we would put in front of everything else regardless of what else is on the roadmap.
Technically yes, practically it is harder than upgrading. Anything built on Plus only capabilities has to be unwound or replaced, and terms are typically annual or three year. This is worth weighing at the point of upgrading rather than discovering afterwards, which is why we test the requirement against the feature list first.
Find out whether Plus is worth it for you
We will check your actual requirements against the capabilities that still need Plus, price the difference against what you would build, and give you a straight recommendation. If the answer is that you should stay on Advanced, that is what you will hear. No obligation, no sales pitch.
Get my free Plus review- Requirements against the feature list
- Cost difference in context
- Checkout deadline position