Shopify Plus Costs $2,300+ Per Month - Here's What You Actually Get

Shopify Plus is the expensive version of Shopify that you graduate to when regular Shopify starts breaking during high traffic.

I've watched companies blow through their monthly app limits on Black Friday, crash their sites with too many third-party scripts, and realize they need something that doesn't fall apart when shit gets real.

You actually need Plus if:

• You're doing $5M+ annually and can actually afford the monthly bill
• Your current platform crashes during traffic spikes (looking at you, Woo

Commerce)

• You're managing 5+ different storefronts and losing your mind
• Your B2B customers need custom pricing that doesn't involve discount codes
• You've hit Shopify's 100 variant limit and it's killing your business

The Infrastructure Actually Works (Most of the Time)

Plus runs on beefier servers than regular Shopify, which means your site won't die when you get featured on TikTok and suddenly have 10,000 people trying to buy your shit at once.

I've seen regular Shopify stores throw HTTP 503 Service Unavailable errors during flash sales, but Plus handles traffic spikes without falling over.

That said, Plus stores can still go down. I remember when Shopify had that massive outage in July 2024 that took down everyone, Plus customers included. Their "99.99% uptime" looks good on paper, but when it breaks, it breaks hard. Learned that one during a client's product launch.

Checkout Customization That Actually Matters

The biggest win with Plus is checkout.liquid access

• you can finally customize the checkout without being stuck with Shopify's basic-ass form. Want to add a PO number field for B2B orders? Done. Need different payment options based on location? Easy.

But here's the catch: checkout.liquid is being sunset on August 28, 2025 in favor of Checkout Extensions.

Shopify's forcing everyone to migrate, and if you've customized the hell out of your checkout, you're in for months of rebuild work. I've seen companies spend $50K+ just redoing their checkout when this migration hit. One client spent 6 months rebuilding functionality that worked perfectly fine.

What You Actually Get for $2,300/Month

API Limits That Don't Suck: 40 calls per second instead of 4 means your integrations won't get throttled to death.

I've debugged countless regular Shopify stores hitting 429 Too Many Requests errors during inventory syncs. Nothing like watching your entire catalog go out of sync because of rate limits.

Multi-Store Management: Unlimited stores from one dashboard.

Great if you're running multiple brands or countries. Pain in the ass to set up properly

• plan for 2-3 months of migration hell per store.

Support That Actually Responds: You get a dedicated Launch Engineer instead of waiting 3 days for chat support to tell you to "clear your cache." Your Launch Engineer will ghost you after go-live, but the Merchant Success Manager usually knows their shit.

Flow Automation: Visual workflows that work about 80% of the time.

The other 20% you'll be debugging why orders aren't routing correctly and customers are pissed. Better than managing 12 different Zapier integrations that break every time Shopify updates something, though.

The speed improvements are real, but don't trust those conversion rate numbers

• they're averaging stores that moved from garbage hosting to Shopify's CDN. Your mileage will vary.

The bottom line: Plus gives you enterprise features but at enterprise prices. Before you commit to $60K-$120K annually, understand exactly what you're getting compared to alternatives.

Here's what Plus features actually do in the real world, based on 3 years of debugging enterprise stores that started working fine until they didn't. Some features are genuinely useful, others are half-baked and will cause you headaches.

Flow Automation: Works Until It Doesn't

Shopify Flow is like Zapier but built into Shopify. It works about 80% of the time, which sounds good until you realize the 20% failure rate happens during your biggest sales days.

I've debugged Flow workflows that worked perfectly for 8 months, then suddenly stopped firing during a flash sale because some webhook got stuck in retry hell. Your fraud detection stops working, orders don't route to the right warehouse, and customers get pissed. Always fun explaining to your boss why $50K in orders went to the wrong coast.

Real production failures I've seen:

• Flow stopped tagging VIP customers during Black Friday 2023, missing $100K in targeted campaigns
• Order routing broke for 6 hours, shipping everything from the wrong coast
• Inventory alerts failed for 2 weeks, running out of best sellers without warning. Found out when customers started complaining about backorders.

Launchpad schedules your campaigns and usually works. The catch is when it fails, it fails silently. You'll wake up to find your flash sale didn't launch, or worse, it launched with the wrong pricing. I've seen a 50% off sale accidentally go live at 75% off. Always have a backup plan and check that shit manually.

Checkout Customization: Powerful But Doomed

checkout.liquid was the killer feature of Plus - you could finally make the checkout not suck. But Shopify is sunsetting it and now you have to migrate everything to Checkout Extensions by August 28, 2025. Thanks for the notice, Shopify.

What you could do (until the deadline):

• Add custom fields without using shitty apps that slow down checkout
• Implement dynamic shipping logic that actually works
• Create B2B flows with PO numbers and approval processes

The migration nightmare:
I've spent $60K helping one company migrate from checkout.liquid to Extensions. Everything you built custom has to be rebuilt using their new system. Some functionality just can't be replicated, so you'll need to compromise or find hacky workarounds. The client wasn't thrilled.

Checkout Extensions reality:
The new system is more limited but more stable. You lose some flexibility but gain better performance and fewer ways to break checkout. Whether that's worth months of rebuild work depends on how heavily you customized.

Multi-Store Hell: Looks Great, Costs a Fortune

Multi-store management sounds amazing until you realize each store counts against your Plus plan. Running 5 stores = $11,500/month minimum, plus apps for each store.

Migration reality:

• Each store takes 2-3 months to migrate properly
• Data doesn't sync between stores automatically (you need apps for that)
• Theme updates have to be done manually for each store - hope you like repetitive work
• Staff permissions are a nightmare across multiple stores

What actually works:

• Inventory can be shared between stores (when the sync doesn't break)
• Reporting consolidates if you pay extra for enterprise analytics
• Single sign-on works most of the time

B2B Features: Good But Incomplete

B2B on Plus is better than bolting 15 apps together, but it's not as comprehensive as dedicated B2B platforms.

What works well:

• Company accounts prevent sharing discount codes
• Custom pricing lists replace hacky discount combinations
• Net payment terms work (when they don't get flagged by fraud detection)

What's missing:

• No RFQ system built in - still need third-party apps
• Approval workflows are basic compared to real B2B platforms
• Integration with accounting systems requires expensive middleware that breaks during updates

API Integration: Better But Still Not Perfect

API limits don't suck: 40 calls per second means your inventory syncs won't constantly hit rate limiting errors. I've debugged too many regular Shopify stores getting 429 Too Many Requests during peak sync times. Nothing like having your entire catalog go out of sync right before a big sale.

Webhook reliability is decent: Webhooks actually get delivered most of the time, unlike regular Shopify where they mysteriously disappear. But when Plus webhooks fail, they fail spectacularly - I've seen order notifications just stop working for entire days. Fun times trying to explain that to accounting.

Integration gotchas:

• GraphQL has different rate limits than REST (nobody tells you this upfront)
• Some endpoints still don't work properly with bulk operations
• Shopify's partner app approval process can delay integrations by months

Bottom line: The APIs work well enough for most needs, but you'll still need middleware for complex ERP integrations. Don't believe anyone who says you can skip the integration layer - I've never seen a direct ERP connection that didn't break within 6 months.

After 3 years of debugging Plus stores, here's my honest take: some features genuinely work, others are overhyped marketing bullshit. Now let's address the questions every merchant asks but vendors dodge.