Shopify is the biggest ecommerce building platform that many are well aware of who endeavoured to know the top options to build their website, but for those who stumbled upon this name for the first time, let’s have a quick overview of what Shopify is.

It is a proprietary platform that allows you to build and host your ecommerce site as well as provides oodles of powerful tools and features that help to jack up the functionality of your site to make it soar in the ecommerce circuit. Shopify powers over myriad robust businesses spread across 175 countries. Now while dealing with Shopify we come across another name Shopify Plus.

How does it differ from Shopify?

That’s what it is all about this blog to learn the difference between both of them.

The basic key difference between Shopify and Shopify Plus is that the former supports small to medium sized businesses whereas the latter powers over high volume enterprise level businesses.

Many renowned companies use Shopify Plus for their website such as Nestle, Kylie Cosmetics, Harper Collins, Red Bull, Pixi Beauty etc. Both of them perform the same way but with better features for Shopify Plus for obviously supporting enterprises.

In this blog we will compare and contrast both of them to bring out their advantages and disadvantages and would acquaint you so that you can by the end of this blog have a clear idea with which one of them you should start your journey of reaching the heights in business.

Shopify Plus is the upgraded version of Shopify which means the core functionality remains the same. The only difference being the amount of additional features and benefits you get.

Shopify came up with this Plus version solely to power enterprise level businesses. The rest of the three versions of Shopify are equally good depending on the volume of your business.

Shopify Plus gives better scope for customization, for multi-channel selling, provides custom checkouts, can support over 8,000 transactions per minute, better inventory management all required to handle vast businesses.

Let’s first talk about the similarities in themes then will come to the differences.

Shopify and Shopify Plus both have over 1000 impressive themes and templates (both free and paid) especially designed by professional designers for ecommerce sites. The premium themes range between $ 140 to $ 180. And since it is a one time investment the price is considerable. Shopify’s themes are very well customizable. Both of them provide mobile responsive themes.

While coming to differences, the biggest difference is you get a dedicated launch manager in Shopify Plus who would handle the customizations of your website without you taking any hassle of understanding technical language.

Shopify is well known for its powerful ecommerce features because of which it is mostly preferred by the merchants. Whatever you choose, Shopify or Shopify Plus, you will get an extensive range of strong tools to handle and boost the performance of your business. There are a lot of features in common which we will first talk about then we will mention what more Shopify Plus offers.

Below mentioned the common ecommerce tools between Shopify and Shopify Plus:

• Abandoned cart recovery- Both of them have an excellent abandoned cart recovery measure. Card abandonment happens when customers add products to the cart but leaves it midway without completing the checkout process. This creates a negative impact in the inventory by reducing its level. Both of them aids by sending automatic emails to buyers to recover cart abandonment.
• Multi-channel selling- This feature helps companies to integrate their ecommerce site to various social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, as well as Amazon. This creates the lane to reach a large number of customers worldwide and allows the merchants to sell on different platforms.
• Payment Gateways- Shopify and Shopify Plus both support a large number of payment gateways, more than 100, making it easier to have transactions with your ecommerce site apart from having its own payment processor (Shopify Payments).

Features that you would get only in Shopify Plus:

• Business-to-Business functionality- Shopify Plus has a B2B feature where the merchant can sell orders in bulk as a wholesaler. It gives access to the customers to this B2B store where you set your own custom price, shipping rules, review and edit order before checkout etc.
• Custom Checkout- All the other plans of Shopify don’t allow you for custom checkout. Shopify Plus allows you to give your customer a benefit to have shopped with you by giving them a free product by using a discount code. You can add a gift message box, enable social login in checkout, auto fill address with address autocomplete.
• Internationalisation- Shopify Plus enables the merchants to proliferate worldwide by giving additional nine store clones for example- .com, .com.au, .com.co, .com.uk etc. by giving ecommerce personalizations for different languages.

When it comes to monitoring performance of your ecommerce business, both Shopify and Shopify Plus are the best of their kind.

Both of them have powerful inbuilt analytical features and provide a dashboard where you can check the stats of every happening in your business. Both of them have excellent inventory management, give real time view of the customers in your store, sales report, track customer’s behavior, give fraud alerts, statistics of the customers returning in your store. All these are built-in features of Shopify which again sets it apart from the rest of the platforms.

But as Shopify Plus is the upgraded version, it has to provide few extra features. Shopify Plus is partnered with companies like Glew, the leading analytics company, to provide powerful and advanced reporting. You can track sales performance with KPIs and daily reports, enable creating custom reports and give in-depth insight.

We never know when we encounter hurdles and if it comes in the way of running a big business, it can break the chains of running it in full force. And as not everyone is a tech pro, one always needs help.

Shopify provides the best features to enable you support from all the ways possible, the features enough to support small to medium sized businesses. Have a look into those:

• Video tutorials
• Shopify community
• Webinars
• Changelog
• 24/7 phone support
• 24/7 live chat support
• Email support
• Social media support

Shopify Plus has all the same features available as Shopify, and in addition it has dedicated expert support essentially needed for enterprise level businesses. As once mentioned prior, you will get a launch manager who would deal with all the integrations of your website and would set it up for you. After the complete set up of your ecommerce website you will be provided with a merchant success manager who will guide you through Shopify Plus and give you measures to run a full-fledged business smoothly.

Price plans are where both of them vary greatly. First let’s have a look into the monthly plans as well the additional credit card processing fee for using third party payment gateways of Shopify and then have a word on it.

• Basic Shopify- $ 29 per month + 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction
• Shopify plan- $ 79 per month + 2.6% + 30¢ per transaction
• Advanced Shopify- $ 299 per month + 2.4% + 30¢ per transaction

In all the three plans, you will get abandoned cart recovery, multi-channel selling, analytics, unlimited products to sell, free SSL certificate, 24/7 hours support. In Advanced Shopify you will get 15 staff accounts, unlimited storage, have access to advanced report builder and third party shipping rates, and enable giving gift cards to your customers.

Shopify Plus is expensive and it’s made to support large scale businesses. It has custom pricing. You can ask Shopify Plus to receive a quote for negotiation. The minimum monthly license fee is $ 2000 and can reach a maximum upto $ 40,000. In Shopify Plus there’s relaxation in the transaction fees, where it is variable and not fixed as other Shopify versions.

While considering which platform is best suitable for you, one must not forget Shopify and Shopify Plus are not competitors in the ecommerce world but belong to the same family tree.

After all the comparisons made, we now know each version of Shopify is made thoughtfully to support all types of business. That’s why it is preferred by merchants all over the world. Both of them will provide you a box full of tools for the smooth running of your business.

It is now your call what you are aiming to be. Unless you’re a flagship retailer or already are, and there is an enormous amount of sales and transactions taking place each day, Shopify Plus is not for you. The rest of the Shopify versions are well incorporated with powerful tools.