Ecommerce
11 Reasons to Use Shopify Plus Over Shopify
- Written by Rachael Pilcher
In 2014, Shopify announced the launch of their premium Shopify Plus upgrade. This gave ecommerce retailers an attractive alternative to the handful of more clunky and time-consuming software solutions that were available for large sellers at that time.
Hypergrowth retailers could now take advantage of all of Shopify’s standard features, while enjoying Shopify Plus benefits such as extra developer tools, customizations, and automated workflows.
In this blog we’re looking at 11 reasons to use Shopify Plus if you’re an enterprise business, or if you’re ready to scale.
A quick overview of Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus is a cloud-based solution that was created by Shopify to meet the demanding needs of high-growth startups and billion dollar brands like Allbirds, Nestle, Gymshark, Kanye West, and Unilever, while still remaining user-friendly and shopper-friendly.
Unlike many similar software solutions, Shopify Plus can save its retailers a ton of money on transaction fees, hosting, CDN, and licensing, simply by signing up.
Monthly pricing plans for the Shopify Plus upgrade start at $2,000 USD, which seems steep, but for enterprise businesses, it can be a worthwhile investment based on transaction fee savings alone.
Brands typically upgrade from a standard Shopify store to Shopify Plus when their online sales reach about $80,000 per month — but rates and plans can be negotiated with Shopify if you feel you’re ready to take the leap and get more control over the customization of your ecommerce empire.
11 Reasons to use Shopify Plus over Shopify
If you’ve got an established or high-growth brand, a solid customer fanbase, and a stable monthly income, upgrading to this premium Shopify plan is definitely worth investigating.
Here are some of the top benefits of Shopify Plus that enterprise customers love.
1. Handle high order volumes with ease
If you’re a high-volume seller, holiday events and flash sales like Black Friday and Cyber Monday can send a tsunami of traffic in the direction of your storefront. This can cause a bunch of hair-pulling tech problems if your web hosting provider isn’t set up to cope with high demand.
With Shopify Plus hosting, you’ll get peace of mind that your store can breezily handle 500,000+ hits every minute without crashing.
The 99.98% average uptime means you can avoid awkward site errors and grumpy customers, and keep your inventory ticking over like clockwork.
2. Developer tools
Need more customization than standard Shopify offers?
As a Shopify Plus customer, you can use custom scripts to improve checkout workflows and conversions, and improve the shopper experience with discounts and personalized product recommendations.
You’ll get full access to unique API resources including GraphQL scripts to automate product listings. and Multipass, Gift Card, and User for REST API on private and custom apps.
You’ll also benefit from advanced developer tools and extra API calls, and you can chat to your dedicated Shopify Plus support manager if you need to set up a high monthly API call volume.
The custom script feature alone can be worth the cost of upgrading to Shopify Plus, as the API integrations mean you can easily add third party plugins, tools, and solutions to improve tracking, shipping management, customer service, and more.
You can run all of your custom coding and integrations through Shopify's servers for speed and performance, which is something that Shopify standard doesn’t offer.
3. Workflow automations
Automations are essential for large ecommerce stores. Many of your daily tasks will be repetitive, which can take up a lot of human resources if they’re done manually, and automations can also reduce the risk of human error.
This means more happy customers, and more time for your team to focus on high-growth activities instead of boring admin.
As a Shopify Plus customer, you’ll get exclusive access to Shopify Flow, allowing you to:
Get access to hundreds of pre-built templates for popular use cases
Customize your workflows with conditional logic and unlimited actions
Use tags, fulfillment, metafields, Slack, Google Sheets, and more
Automate purchase tracking, email sequencing, and customer segmentation
Generate algorithm-powered product recommendations
Shopify Flow makes it simple to create unique workflows for your specific business needs — without code.
From automating common inventory tasks like restocking and reordering, to managing fraud risk and keeping customers in the loop about their orders, you can automate just about any task you can think of.
Further reading: Shopify Plus Demystified
4. Multi-channel integrations
Shopify Plus helps enterprise customers keep up with the changing face of ecommerce, and the evolving needs of online shoppers by keeping their finger on the pulse of new apps and marketplace opportunities.
Retailers on Shopify Plus plans have the ability to sell to customers who use mobile, desktop, and third party apps, and sell across multiple sales channels including:
100+ social media channels
80+ online marketplaces
This means you can reach more customers in the place they spend time online, and efficiently manage every sale, from every channel in one place.
In your central Shopify Plus dashboard, you can run the backend management of all your stores separately, while keeping all of your sales and customer data in one place on the front end.
If cross-channel management is a big headache for your business, Shopify Plus can help you get everything under control.
5. Shopify Payments
If you’re looking for a simpler way to manage cash flow, payments, and taxes for your ecommerce store, Shopify Plus can help you manage all of these (and more) with its Shopify Payments features.
Built-in tools can help your store prevent, detect, and manage fraud at checkout, authenticating each payment with 3D Secure, and securing your checkout with integrated card-testing protection.
With Shopify Payments, you also get exclusive access to the one-tap checkout feature “Shop Pay”. Customers can securely save their payment and shipping information for faster future purchases, and next-level fraud protection is included, giving you and your customers peace of mind over their data.
You’ll get higher approval rates, automated dispute resolution, advanced user blocking, and zero chargeback fees for all eligible Shop Pay orders within the United States.
Shop Pay can give businesses an average 4x faster checkout experience, and a 91% higher mobile conversion rate compared with standard checkout, which can add up to a serious revenue increase if you’re a large retailer.
6. Omnichannel selling
If you sell online and in physical stores, you already know that managing inventory and customer needs across these two channels can get messy.
Thankfully, Shopify Plus has a solution for that! You can merge your online and offline channels, and even pop-up stores, together in one place to provide a seamless multi-channel shopper experience at every touchpoint.
Your customers can:
Buy online and pick up in-store
Browse in-store and buy online
Buy in-store and get their order shipped to them
Return or exchange online or in-store, whichever is most convenient
Combining your ecommerce and POS systems in the same place can help you give your customers a more personalized experience, no matter how or where they shop with you.
Plus, you can stay on top of your sales, inventory control, and product trends with unified analytics that give you a complete picture of your in-store and online sales together.
7. B2B commerce management
Studies have shown that 90% of B2B buyers want a direct-to-consumer experience when they’re shopping for wholesale supplies. Unlike other ecommerce platforms, Shopify Plus makes it simple to match up to your B2B buyers’ expectations.
You can easily manage the wholesale and retail sides of your business from one place (without needing extra apps or coding) to create a smooth, end-to-end experience offering personalized products, pricing, quantity rules, and payment terms for each customer.
Built-in wholesale features enable your business to:
Offer curated buying experiences using product catalogs assigned to specific buyers or locations
Reach wholesale customers all over the world by offering localized storefronts, local currencies, and tax exemptions
Create a unique buyer experience for every customer using Liquid support for store themes, emails, and branding
Automatically assign payment terms, then track and collect on orders as they fall due
Encourage more sales by making it easy for wholesale customers to reorder frequently
In addition to the great feature set that’s already available with Shopify B2B, they’re also planning to release more complex wholesale features in 2023 and beyond for Shopify Plus users.
8. Shopify Functions
One of Shopify Plus’ newest features is Shopify Functions, which can give businesses a 20% higher average order value using automated promotions.
Functions essentially “unlocks” the backend of your Shopify store to allow developers to replace or extend parts of the logic behind their storefront with custom code.
Once set up, these powerful customizations can execute in milliseconds, and can be scaled up to meet demand for your biggest sales events.
At the moment, you can create backend customizations for Shopify shipping, payment methods, and discounts, but Shopify is planning to add support for checkout, shipping rates, return validations, cart validations, and order routing for Functions users in the near future.
9. Shopify Launchpad
Launchpad helps Shopify Plus customers easily schedule, coordinate, and execute important brand events, such as flash sales, hot new product drops, and popular inventory restocks.
You can use Launchpad to:
Release selected products for sale at a specific date and time
Increase inventory levels for the start of an event
Password protect your online store before an event to build hype
Change product pricing at the start and finish of your event
Schedule customizations to highlight key products during an event
Customize scripts to grant discounts at checkout
During your promotional events, you can track progress in real time in your app and analytics dashboard, and generate reports to show you how successful your event was when it’s finished.
10. Shopify Plus Academy
If you upgrade to Shopify Plus, you’ll get exclusive access to the Academy, which is a growing resource of webinars, self-directed courses, technical how-tos, and up-to-the-minute information on how to scale your business, increase conversion rates, and create unforgettable customer experiences.
Whether you’re a merchant, partner, or developer, the Academy will give you everything you need to make the most of the features in the Shopify ecosystem.
11. Partners and support
With Shopify Plus, you can get expert advice anytime you need it — without having to trawl through tedious help documentation or talk to chat bots.
You’ll get access to 24/7 priority tech support, award winning Shopify Plus certified apps and partners (like Veeqo!) and, best of all, you can talk to real humans who can help you with things like migration, strategy, and business success.
The merchant success program will help you grow your Shopify knowledge with professional industry insights, and if you’re planning to switch from your existing storefront hosting to the Shopify ecosystem, you’ll get personalized migration, launch, and account management support — at no extra cost.
Further reading
Shopify vs eBay: Which Is Best to Grow Your Ecommerce Business?
Reliable Alternatives to Auctane's 10 Shipping Software Brands
Shopify Plus gives enterprise-level retailers and scaling companies a simple, flexible solution to grow their online business — without the steep time and money overheads associated with custom builds.
Busy brands no longer need to hire specialized employees to handle design and development, so more resources can be focused on things that move the needle to improve customer experience, product development, and conversion.
And if you’re a Veeqo customer, you can also cut the cost of shipping your orders with our powerful Shopify Plus certified suite of inventory management, shipping, and warehouse management tools, which are designed to meet the unique demands of high-volume sellers.
Create your free Veeqo account today to discover how fast and simple it is to manage your inventory and shipping at scale.
