Somewhere past seven figures, every Shopify merchant gets the same advice: time to upgrade to Plus. Sometimes that is right. Often it is a year early and $23,000 too expensive. We build on both Advanced Shopify and Shopify Plus, so this is not a pitch for the bigger plan. It is the comparison we walk our own clients through, with the numbers on the table.
The short answer
Stay on Advanced if you sell direct to consumers, your checkout needs are covered by branding settings and apps, and wholesale is a side channel you handle with discount codes.
Move to Plus when checkout control starts costing you conversion, B2B becomes a real revenue line, you need more than 15 staff accounts, or your ERP and 3PL sync keeps queueing behind API limits.
As a revenue rule of thumb: below about $1M AUD a year, Plus rarely pays. Between $1M and $5M it depends entirely on your operations. Past $5M, the processing rates and tooling usually cover the fee on their own.
What each plan actually costs
Shopify publishes its pricing in US dollars, so that is what we use here. Figures are as at August 2026; confirm current pricing with Shopify before you sign anything.
| Cost line | Advanced Shopify | Shopify Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Platform fee | USD $399 a month, or about $299 a month on annual billing | From USD $2,300 a month on a three year term, $2,500 month to month. Very high volume stores move to revenue based pricing. |
| Shopify Payments rates | The lowest of the standard plans | Lower again, negotiated with volume |
| Third party gateway fee | 0.6% per transaction | Roughly 0.2% per transaction |
| POS Pro | Paid per location | Included |
| Additional stores | Each store is a separate subscription | Up to 9 expansion stores included |
The platform fee gap is roughly USD $23,000 a year. At $3M to $4M AUD in annual sales, the lower processing rates and included tooling claw back a large slice of that on their own. Below that, the upgrade has to earn its keep on features, which is where the honest conversation starts.
The feature differences that actually matter
| Capability | Advanced Shopify | Shopify Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Checkout customisation | Branding settings and apps around the checkout | Full checkout extensibility: custom UI extensions, validation and delivery logic inside the payment flow |
| Shopify Functions in checkout | Limited | Custom discount, shipping and payment logic, the territory Scripts used to cover |
| Native B2B | Not available. Wholesale means discount codes or third party apps | Company profiles, price lists, payment terms and vaulted cards on the same store |
| Staff accounts | 15 | Unlimited |
| API throughput | Standard limits | Materially higher limits, which is what ERP, 3PL and POS sync at volume actually need |
| Multipass SSO | Not available | Included. Sign customers in from an existing membership or university system |
| Support | Standard support | Priority support with Plus specialists |
What Plus gets you that Advanced cannot
Strip away the sales language and Plus buys you four real things.
- The checkout. On Plus you can put custom fields, upsells, trust content and validation logic inside the checkout itself, not just around it. For stores doing serious volume, checkout conversion work is usually the single biggest lever, and on Advanced most of it is simply out of reach.
- Real B2B. Company accounts, per-customer price lists, net payment terms and rep ordering, running on the same store as your retail channel. If wholesale is heading past 10 to 15 per cent of revenue, this alone tends to settle the question. We wrote about unifying wholesale and DTC on Shopify Plus separately.
- Integration headroom. The higher API limits are invisible until the day your inventory sync starts queueing behind them. Brands running ERP, 3PL and multiple sales channels feel this well before the feature list does.
- Multi-store and SSO. Nine expansion stores for new markets or brands, and Multipass to sign customers in from an external system. Our university platform work runs on exactly this.
What Advanced does perfectly well
Here is the part the Plus pitch leaves out. A direct-to-consumer store with clean operations, a good theme and a competent app stack runs beautifully on Advanced well past $5M a year. You get the lowest standard processing rates, custom reports, international selling through Shopify Markets, and enough automation through Flow to cover most back office work. The checkout converts fine for most catalogues without custom extensions.
Most merchants who ask us about Plus do not have a Plus problem. They have a conversion problem, a speed problem or an app-bloat problem, and those are cheaper to fix than USD $2,300 a month. A CRO audit or a speed pass answers the question honestly before the plan change does.
Six signals it is time to upgrade
- Your conversion roadmap keeps hitting the checkout wall. The tests you want to run need UI extensions or validation logic that Advanced cannot touch.
- Wholesale is becoming a business. Buyers are asking for price lists, net terms and repeat ordering, and you are faking it with discount codes and spreadsheets.
- You have hit the 15 staff account ceiling and people are sharing logins, which is an audit problem as much as a convenience one.
- Integrations are queueing. Inventory or order sync lags at peak because the API limits are the bottleneck, not your systems.
- You are opening new markets or brands and separate Advanced subscriptions with duplicated apps are getting expensive and messy.
- Processing volume has grown to where negotiated Plus rates and the lower gateway fee close most of the platform fee gap by themselves.
Upgrading is a plan change, not a replatform
Moving from Advanced to Plus keeps your store, theme, apps, products, customers and order history exactly where they are. Nothing migrates. The real work is making the upgrade pay: building checkout extensions and Functions properly, configuring B2B so wholesale actually moves off spreadsheets, and retuning integrations to use the API headroom you are now paying for. That is senior development work, and it is where we spend most of our time on Shopify Plus engagements.
Coming to Shopify from another platform entirely is a different conversation. We run fixed-scope, SEO-first migrations from Magento, BigCommerce and WooCommerce, and we will tell you straight whether Plus or Advanced is the right landing point.
Frequently asked questions
Is Shopify Plus worth it for a store doing $2M a year?
It depends on what is driving the question. If you are pure direct-to-consumer with straightforward operations, Advanced Shopify holds comfortably to $5M and beyond, and the Plus fee buys you very little. If wholesale is becoming a real revenue line, your checkout needs work that apps cannot reach, or your ERP and 3PL integrations keep queueing behind API limits, Plus starts paying for itself well before the platform fee gap closes on processing rates alone.
Can I customise the checkout on Advanced Shopify?
Within limits. Advanced gives you checkout branding controls and apps that work around the checkout, but you cannot build custom checkout UI extensions or run custom validation and delivery logic inside the payment flow. That is the single biggest practical difference between the plans. If your conversion roadmap keeps hitting things you cannot change on the checkout page, that is the Plus signal.
What does Shopify Plus cost in Australia?
Shopify bills Plus in US dollars: from about USD $2,300 a month on a three year term, or USD $2,500 month to month, which lands around AUD $3,500 a month at recent exchange rates. Very high volume stores move to revenue based pricing. Plus also carries lower payment processing rates and a lower third party gateway fee, which claws back a meaningful part of the platform fee at volume. Confirm current pricing with Shopify before deciding.
Do we lose anything upgrading from Advanced to Plus?
No. It is a plan change, not a replatform. Your store, theme, apps, products, customers and order history all stay exactly where they are. The work is in what you gain: checkout customisations get built as checkout UI extensions and Shopify Functions, B2B gets configured properly, and integrations get retuned to the higher API limits. Budget for that build work, not for a migration.
Do I need a Shopify Plus agency to upgrade?
Not for the plan change itself, which is a conversation with Shopify. You will usually want senior development help to make Plus pay: custom checkout extensions, Functions for discount and shipping logic, B2B price lists and company setup, and integration work that uses the API headroom you are now paying for. An upgrade that stops at the plan change is the most expensive way to keep running your store exactly as before.