Top 10 Benefits Of Shopify Plus Vs Advanced Shopify
Shopify has taken over the ecommerce world. It became the choice of online shop owners for 2 important reasons that are; its simplicity and an amazing ecosystem.
Hence once you are done with choosing Shopify for your online store. Now this is the time when you have to decide whether to opt for ‘Advanced Shopify’ or ‘Shopify Plus’. Therefore here we are with top 10 benefits of Shopify Plus Vs Advanced Shopify to make it easy for you to choose the best for your online store.
Before moving towards the benefits let’s have a look at its pricing.
Shopify Plus
USD $2,000* p/m , USD $24,000 p/a
Advanced Shopify
USD $299 p/m , USD $3,588 p/a
Difference
USD $1,701 p/m , USD $20,412 p/a
*Shopify Plus fees go up once you start doing over US$800k p/m (US$9.6M p/a) at a rate of 0.25% of online sales. This means if you’re doing $2.5M p/m ($30M p/a) online, your platform fee will be $6,250 p/m ($75k p/a).
Let’s find out the Top 10 benefits of Shopify Plus VS Advanced Shopify.
1. Internationalization
One of the amazing benefit in Shopify Plus is you get 9 additional store clones to grow your business internationally (example: .com, .com.au .co.uk, etc). Which means you can add stores under the same Shopify Plus license.
It delivers an ecommerce experience tailored for different languages, currencies and seasonal trends with localized marketing. It’s a great way to setup additional stores to support multiple languages for those merchants doing business in other countries.
2. Wholesale B2B functionality
Shopify Plus wholesale channel gives an easy way to expand into the B2B market. The wholesale channel gives your buyer access to a separate password protected B2B store. You can there enable the tiered and custom pricing per buyer, bulk discounts, shipping rules, add wholesale-only products and review. Also it allows editing orders before invoicing.
This feature enables you to effectively execute account-based marketing (ABM) and offer customers a personalized experience that will increase ROI and improve retention.
3. Lower Transaction Fee
In Advanced Shopify you will be charged 0.5% per transaction and in Shopify Plus only 0.15%. Thus, if you do $1M p/a in sales the fees will be $2,500 p/a in Advanced Shopify and $1,500 p/a in Shopify Plus. You can say you do $10M p/a that means you’re savings total an amount of $10,000 in annual fees, only ifyou choose to go with Shopify Plus. Note: If you use Shopify Payments there is 0% transaction fee on both Advanced Shopify and Shopify Plus.
4. Unlimited Staff Accounts
Another benefit of Shopify Plus is unlimited staff accounts. This allows you to grow your admin team. Whereas, Advanced Shopify limits the staff accounts to 15 only.
5. Exclusive and Faster API calls
API is basically a connector for integration between systems. Shopify has a limit on the number of API calls that take place per app used in an online store. In simple words, an API call takes places when an app takes an action, typically as a result of an interaction between a visitor/customer and your store. Additionally, Shopify limits the number of calls each app can make per second primarily to manage server load.
With Shopify Plus you get access to exclusive APIs, such as:
Gift Cards
Discounts
Adjustments
Multipass/single sign-on and user
Without these you are limited with what can be integrated from third party apps and systems. Moreover, Shopify plus also provide increased API limit 500% more which means faster API call rates.
6. Smart Promotional Tools
Store and product updates can be a hassle for brands especially when you are preparing for a product launch. With Shopify Plus sellers get exclusive access to Launchpad for relieving some pain to make it easy for you to plan product launch or to execute a successful flash sale.
Launchpad is a scheduling tool that exists inside your Shopify admin allowing you to schedule product visibility, Shopify Scripts, themes, discounts, and more with a defined start and end time.
Moreover, Launchpad gives you the power to schedule bulk changes to your store that match with the start/end of your desired campaign/event.
As well as with Launchpad, you can also monitor and manage campaigns and can create invitation-only and limited-release product collections too.
7. Custom Checkout
This is one of the most desirable benefits of Shopify Plus. It enables access to customize and improve on-site checkout experience. The entire shopping cart and store has already been coded and designed. These customizations can ensure brand consistency and unsurprisingly, up your online conversion rates. For Shopify Plus merchants, the standard two-page checkout can be fully customized, allowing merchants to alter the checkout into a single page, 3-page checkout, or any other variation.
What’s more you can get with Shopify Plus is:
Add a free product to cart via discount code
Create extra, custom fields in checkout e.g. gift message box
Utilize social logins via multipass
Enable address autocomplete
If you want a ‘green bar’ aka EV SSL to increase customer trust then Shopify Plus is a must. Also, Custom SSL certificates are also exclusive to Shopify Plus.
8. Operations/Automation
In Shopify Plus Flow is an immense time saver for inventory, customer and order management. It allows you to construct, import and configure automation processes and business logic. Flow also provides the agility necessary to create backend customizations designed to instantly boost productivity.
For example with Flow, retailers can automatically change shipping rates for high-volume customers or provide rule-based discounts.
This kind of automation is a massive benefit to growing enterprise brands with numerous opportunities for use.
Furthermore, Shopify Plus also gives you access to Avalara AvaTax which automatically handles international sales tax calculations from over 12,000 taxing jurisdictions.
9. Advance Discount engine
In Shopify Plus Script Editor app lets you create scripts that are run each time a customer adds items to their online cart. It also covers line items, shipping and payments. Using Shopify’s Scripting feature, there are countless ways to customize discounts, such as:
Free shipping or free gift promotions
Tiered pricing to give special discounts to certain VIP customers
Combination offers and product bundles that boost average order value
Product-specific BOGO discounts
Percentage-based discounts
10. Service and Support
Being a Shopify Plus merchant you will get special support to Shopify priority support with a Launch Manager to assist during the build and migration. Also, you will get Merchant Success Manager to provide ongoing support post-launch.
Moreover, merchant success provides a wealth of services including:
Design modifications
Advocates for feature requests and internal suggestions
Assistance with regional store setup
Assistance with custom integrations for marketplaces
Strategies to help you reach business goals
Advice on international expansion, including languages and currencies
Wrapping Up
Both of the Shopify platforms are good enough but it depends upon your business which one suits you the most. If you are running a small business then Shopify Advanced is the best option for you. There are many businesses for which Shopify Plus would not be a great fit. But, for large enterprises, you should choose Shopify plus.
Still not sure if you need Advanced Shopify or Shopify Plus? Contact us today.