How Much Does Shopify Plus Cost?
2 Min Read
Shopify Plus has made a splash in the ecommerce world by bringing enterprise functionality to a price point that is more accessible to mid-market retailers. With any ecommerce solution, there are typically four major areas that influence the total cost of ownership: platform costs, technology costs, hosting costs, and operational costs to maintain and improve the online store.
When it comes to platform costs, Plus has done an excellent job leveling the playing field for small businesses in the age of Amazon. Shopify Plus starts from as low as $2,000 per month for a single license, making it a relatively inexpensive alternative to many enterprise solutions on the market. Platform fees also provide development sandboxes and hosting. One license includes expansion stores for that brand as well. An example of this may be one U.S. site: “allbirds.com” and its international clones: “allbirds.ca” and “allbirds.co.uk.” For multi-site/multi-brand setups such as a brand licensed out by country, to separate entities, or very complex B2B storefronts, more than one license may be required. We recommend coordinating closely with the Shopify Plus team to ensure everyone is on the same page.
Pricing will be determined by which other technology solutions a retailer wants to connect to their ecommerce site and the ease of integrating them. Third-party technology may be used to extend the platform in a number of ways, such as tax calculation, fraud detection, or product recommendations and site personalization, to name a few. These tools will usually have their own annual fees on top of platform costs. Fortunately, most third-party tools provide a plug-in to connect the platform, and the installation of these third-party solutions is especially fast and easy on Shopify Plus, which saves merchants time and money. For certain specialty software (such as an older ERP or CRM) a plug-in might not exist. In these cases, there will be some cost associated with the development of a custom integration.
Hosting is one of the most critical choices a retailer can make and the wrong partner could result in downtime during peak traffic times. Not only is this one of the largest costs ecommerce managers are saddled with, but it can be one of the most confusing as well. Retailers looking to reduce costs on maintenance and managed services for hosting are turning to Shopify Plus because it is a fully-hosted, cloud-based platform. This means that the hosting costs and operations are transferred to Shopify’s capable worldwide team and are included in the platform cost. Hosting includes Level 1 PCI compliance, unlimited bandwidth, and a CDN operated by Fastly.
The fourth and perhaps most important cost to consider is the personnel cost associated with administering, improving, and optimizing a successful online storefront. Successful ecommerce managers understand that their own people are a brand’s biggest asset and try to allocate them to meaningful tasks like Commerce Optimization that contribute to a company’s bottom line—not to maintenance. Businesses on Shopify Plus often enjoy low costs to “keep the lights on,” although that’s not to say there’s nothing that needs to be done. Maintenance and upgrades could include infrastructure scaling for peak-season, or updating API integrations due to changes in Shopify’s APIs.
The cost of implementation at Corra varies and depends greatly on the specifics of each project. Corra is a Shopify Plus partner who can work with merchants with even the most complex requirements. If you’re a merchant interested in learning about Shopify Plus pricing, get in contact with Corra today. We’re more than happy to introduce our services and guide you through the process.
Dan is the Strategic Alliances Manager at Corra. He oversees Corra's partnership with Shopify Plus, as well as various technology partners. Dan acts as a liaison between internal teams and partners, cultivating strategic partnerships, and vetting the very best ecommerce technologies on the market.
Corra, a Publicis Sapient company, is the global commerce leader and SI helping brands and organizations grow by evaluating, building, and optimizing their digital commerce ecosystems. Our vast experience with composable and headless implementations speeds time-to-value and provides technical freedom to our clients. Our TotalCare managed services program provides gold-standard support, enhancements and ongoing commerce strategy. We are strategic thinkers, accomplished engineers, and award-winning experience designers. We believe outstanding customer experiences can’t exist without flawless technology, and that flawless technology is pointless without beautiful, human-centered design. Our clients are an integral part of our team. Together, we remove the obstacles that are limiting growth and discover new opportunities. We don’t rest until our clients achieve their full potential. Our clients’ KPIs are our KPIs. We have 20 years of experience in commerce technology, but we also know that customer expectations are constantly evolving. For this reason, we’ve built future-proof solutions and refined an agile execution process that helps our clients achieve more with less. As a Publicis Sapient company, Corra joins a global network spanning 20,000 people with 53 offices around the world enabling us to accelerate our clients’ businesses through designing and building the experiences and services their customers demand.
