The Numbers Side by Side
| Advanced | Plus | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $399 ($299 annually) | From about $2,300, contract-dependent |
| Online card rate (US) | 2.5% + 30¢ | Negotiated; the best rates Shopify offers |
| Third-party gateway fee | 0.6% | 0.2% |
| Staff accounts | Up to 15 | Unlimited |
| Checkout customisation | Limited | Full, via Shopify Functions and checkout extensibility |
| Expansion stores | No | Yes, included |
| B2B | No | Yes, native |
| Support | Standard 24/7 | Dedicated launch and merchant success team |
The Arithmetic, Done Honestly
Plus costs roughly $1,900 a month more than Advanced. For that to be recovered through payment fees, the rate improvement has to cover it.
Plus rates are negotiated and not published, but a realistic improvement over Advanced's 2.5% is on the order of 0.15–0.25 percentage points. At 0.2 points, recovering $1,900 a month requires:
$1,900 ÷ 0.002 = $950,000 per month in card sales
That is roughly $11 million a year. If someone tells you Plus pays for itself in payment savings, ask them at what revenue — the honest answer is a number most merchants considering the question are nowhere near.
The picture changes if you run an external gateway, where the third-party fee falls from 0.6% to 0.2%. That 0.4-point saving recovers $1,900 at $475,000 a month. Still high, but half. And if you are doing that volume on an external gateway, the prior question is why.
Conclusion: upgrade to Plus for capability, not for arithmetic. Below roughly $500,000 a month the fee argument does not hold, and anyone presenting it as the reason has not done the division.
Reason 1: Checkout Control
This is the most common legitimate reason, and the one Advanced genuinely cannot solve.
On Advanced, checkout is essentially fixed. You can style it within limits, and that is the extent of it. On Plus you can change how it behaves — custom discount logic, delivery and payment method rules, validation, additional fields, and UI extensions at specific points in the flow.
That matters when your business model needs something checkout does not do by default: complex bundle discounting, age or licence verification, delivery-date selection, wholesale minimums, region-specific rules. If you have been working around a checkout limitation with apps and scripts for a year, that workaround has a cost, and Plus is the alternative to it.
If your checkout works fine and you are simply unhappy with its colours, that is not a reason.
Reason 2: B2B and Multiple Storefronts
Plus includes B2B natively — company accounts, per-customer price lists, payment terms, quantity rules, separate wholesale catalogues — without running a second platform or a wholesale app.
It also includes expansion stores: additional storefronts at no extra subscription cost, which is how multi-region and multi-brand operations are meant to be run. On Advanced, a second market usually means a second full subscription.
The arithmetic here is different and much more favourable. If you are paying for a wholesale app, a second Advanced store for another region, and a translation stack, the gap to Plus is smaller than the list prices suggest. Add the real costs up before comparing $399 against $2,300 — frequently you are not comparing $399 against $2,300 at all.
Reason 3: Limits You Are Actually Hitting
Plus raises ceilings that Advanced stores occasionally run into:
- API rate limits — materially higher, which matters for ERP and warehouse integrations
- Checkout throughput during flash sales and drops
- Staff accounts — unlimited rather than 15
- POS locations — substantially more
- Automation — Launchpad for scheduled events, and the fuller Flow capability
The word doing the work is actually. "We might hit the API limit" is not a reason. "Our integration fails every Monday during the inventory sync" is.
What to Do on Advanced First
Most stores considering Plus have room left on Advanced. Before you commit to a contract:
- Fix conversion rate. A 0.3-point improvement at $300,000 a month is worth more than the entire Plus fee saving at that volume. Start with conversion optimization and product page CRO.
- Raise average order value. Upsells, bundles and free shipping thresholds reduce your effective processing rate without changing plan, because the fixed 30¢ is amortised over a larger order.
- Audit the app stack. Stores at this size routinely carry $400–$800 a month of apps, some of which exist only to work around something Plus would solve natively. Price that honestly — it is part of the comparison.
- Confirm you are on Shopify Payments. If you are not, the third-party fee is probably a larger problem than your plan.
We cover the wider comparison in Shopify Plus vs standard Shopify.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much more does Shopify Plus cost than Advanced?
Advanced is $399 per month billed monthly, or $299 billed annually. Plus starts around $2,300 per month depending on contract terms and volume, so the gap is roughly $1,900 per month or about $23,000 per year.
At what revenue does Shopify Plus pay for itself?
On payment fees alone, roughly $950,000 per month in card sales through Shopify Payments, assuming a 0.2 percentage point rate improvement. If you use an external gateway, the third-party fee falling from 0.6% to 0.2% brings the crossover down to about $475,000 per month. Below those levels, Plus has to be justified by capability rather than savings.
What can Shopify Plus do that Advanced cannot?
The three that matter are checkout customisation through Shopify Functions and checkout extensibility, native B2B with company accounts and price lists, and expansion stores at no additional subscription cost. Plus also raises API rate limits, checkout throughput, staff accounts and POS locations, and adds Launchpad.
Is Shopify Plus worth it for a store doing $200,000 a month?
On fee savings, no — that is well below the crossover. It may still be worth it if you are hitting a hard checkout limitation, launching B2B, or opening a second regional storefront that would otherwise need its own Advanced subscription. Price the workarounds you are currently paying for before comparing list prices.
Can I negotiate Shopify Plus pricing?
Plus pricing is contract-based and varies with volume and term length, so the starting figure is a starting figure. Longer commitments and higher volumes generally improve both the subscription and the card rates, which are also negotiated rather than published.
Should I upgrade to Plus for the lower transaction fees?
Almost certainly not. The fee difference only outweighs the roughly $1,900 monthly price difference at very high volume. If fees are your concern, the higher-leverage moves are ensuring you are on Shopify Payments, raising average order value so the fixed per-transaction charge is spread further, and reducing refunds.
💡 Ready to put this into practice? Shopify's free 3-day trial — then $1/month for 3 months, plus 1% of sales back in credits — is long enough to set it up and see the numbers. Start your free trial → (affiliate link)