The Shopify platform is used by over one million ecommerce stores across the globe. These online stores come in all shapes and sizes, and operate in every ecommerce industry imaginable. Due to the varying nature of each store, different Shopify plans are available to merchants depending on what they want to get out of the platform. Shopify Plus vs Advanced are the most cutting-edge out of the available options. Choosing between Shopify vs Advanced can be a difficult task as the difference in pricing and available features can quite significantly affect how businesses’ profitability and how they can operate. This article weighs up Shopify Plus vs Advanced to help you choose which plan is best for your ecommerce store.
Shopify & Shopify Plus Plans
There are 5 versions of the Shopify platform in total. These consist of: Lite, Basic, Shopify, Advanced and Shopify Plus.
Shopify Lite is essentially a starter version of the platform for merchants selling via other channels and not yet requiring an online store itself. These sales channels could be via POS, Facebook, blogs and so on. Shopify Lite has higher rates for payments.
Basic is more suited to startups as it provides a lot of the basic core functionality that is needed to run an ecommerce store, while having a low price tag. While this is excellent at lowering the barrier to entry, it comes with a cost of higher payment rates, and lacks some features such as allowing more than 2 users to control the store and others like implementing gift cards. This makes the Basic Shopify plan less viable for larger businesses.
The standard Shopify plan is the same as basic, but with the advantage of having competitive rates and better features such as report builder, gift cards, more Point-of-Sale features etc. This Shopify plan also increases the limit of users to 5 to access and make changes to the ecommerce store.
The Shopify Plus vs Advanced Shopify plans include everything that the above plans have, but are far more feature rich and offer better payment rates, making these plans a much more worthwhile investment for larger businesses with higher sales volumes. We’ll delve in a bit deeper into the comparisons between these two powerful SaaS-based platform.
Shopify Advanced Pricing & Fees
The Advanced Shopify plan includes all the features of the Shopify plan, while having the lowest transaction fees and credit card rates. This makes the Advanced Shopify plan perfect for merchants looking for growth of their business, using analytics to aid them to identify opportunities to improve and move forward. When comparing Shopify Plus vs Advanced, the Advanced Shopify rate is cheaper than with a flat rate of $299 per month, and the Shopify Payments rates are the same as Shopify Plus with a higher cost for using an external gateway.
One big difference between Shopify Plus vs Advanced is the fact that merchants are limited to one store with Advanced Shopify, meaning a merchant with two stores, for example one in the US and one in the UK would have to purchase two Advanced Shopify plans separately, making it $598 per month. In addition to this, the accounts would be isolated from each other. Unlike Shopify Plus where merchants can access and make changes to all their stores from one single admin dashboard.
Advanced Shopify Features: Custom Report Builder
Along with Shopify’s professional reports which come with the lower tiered plans, the Advanced Shopify plan lets merchants create custom reports. Merchants can customise default reports and create unique reports from the ground up.
With Advanced Shopify, merchants can track sales by referral sources such as Google Ads. This means that if you are paying for a referral service, then you can create a custom report that tracks the sales of your products based on that referral service. Additional reporting can be done using the Advanced Shopify plan such as accessing reports on your at-risk and loyal customers. These more intricate reporting features can be very beneficial to the analysis and refinement of market strategy.
Advanced Shopify Calculated Carrier Shipping
Advanced Shopify lets merchants integrate with a third-party shipping service to provide customers with up-to-date shipping rates as and when they place an order in the merchant’s store. What’s more is that customers can also choose from a variety of shipping options such as standard, express or one-day delivery.
With Advanced Shopify, merchants can build more trust with their customers by providing them with accurate shipping rates when they place an order, eliminating the worry of overcharging them or having to cover losses that result from giving estimated or rounded calculated shipping rates.
What is Shopify Plus?
Since we have covered the pricing and features of the more basic Shopify plans, we can now properly delve into Shopify Plus vs Advanced. As businesses grow, so does the complexity and so Shopify Plus is the ultimate flexible solution which gives merchants the opportunity to build a bespoke e-commerce store around their model. Shopify Plus offers the same core dashboard and features as the plans previously mentioned in this article, but with Shopify Plus vs Advanced etc. Shopify Plus comes with access to extra features, flexibility, intelligent automations, integrations, dedicated support options and ability to handle greater numbers of sales at once.
Shopify Plus Pricing
When comparing Shopify Plus vs Advanced, the pricing model needs to be taken into consideration. The pricing of Shopify Plus is based on the merchant’s usage of their service, measured in monthly sales volume through the Shopify platform. Comparing Shopify Plus vs Advanced, the Shopify Plus service starts at $2,000 until a merchant’s revenue exceeds $800,000 per month. This is when the pricing model switches to 0.25% of a merchant’s monthly revenue.
Shopify Plus vs Advanced Apps
When comparing Shopify Plus vs Advanced, the access to apps and third-party software varies between the two plans. Although Advanced Shopify does host a diverse range of free apps, a lot of the more enterprise feature-rich tech comes with a monthly fee. While it’s likely that app integrations can pay for themselves through the increased sales generation through subscription payments, upselling, loyalty etc. the monthly payments can be quite substantial. There are many certified Shopify Plus apps which are made specifically for larger businesses that use the Shopify Plus platform. With the increased flexibility of Shopify Plus, Shopify developers can also build bespoke features for your store from scratch without relying on third-party apps saving you monthly fees.
Multistore & Multi-Currency
A big advantage of Shopify Plus vs Advanced is that the Plus platform allows users to create up to 9 additional stores alongside their main store - often used to offer unique store fronts based on the location the customer is visiting from. Merchants can improve customer trust and improve sales by offering a truly personalised geographic experience to maximise sales with tailored product suggestions, multi-lingual stores and the local currency. The best part is you can manage your product inventory, sales & customers all in one place.
Shopify Flow & Launchpad
Another difference between Shopify Plus vs Advanced is the access to Shopify-Plus-only apps such as Shopify Flow and Shopify Launchpad. Shopify Flow is an e-commerce automation platform that allows you to automate everyday tasks. The possibilities are substantial, some examples include; 'create a support ticket when you receive a negative review' or 'SMS Text a discount code after a customer's second order'. If you can dream it, Flow can automate it. Other apps include Shopify Launchpad which allows you to schedule tasks in the future. Tasks include new product releases, campaigns, flash sales and more.
Shopify Plus Advanced Access to Code
Another major benefit of Shopify Plus vs Advanced is the fact that the Shopify Plus platform allows your development team to build truly bespoke e-commerce solutions with unlimited access to the code of your store. Shopify Plus allows full access to the checkout page code file (standard Shopify accounts cannot change the checkout page). Shopify Plus also allows full access to running advanced functions through with additional API calls that are not included with standard Shopify accounts. This is major advantage when choosing between Shopify Plus vs Advanced.
Shopify Plus vs Advanced: Summary
So there you have it, Shopify Plus vs Advanced. The decision to choose which plan is right for your business will ultimately depend on how much sales volume you can expect your store to generate, and what features you want access to. Every business and industry is different so take care in weighing up the differences between Shopify Plus vs Advanced.
As always, please do contact us if you need any help setting up or optimising your Shopify Plus or Advanced store to ensure it can flourish to its full potential.
