Shopify Plus costs £1,950 a month in the UK on a one-year contract, which is £23,400 a year before anything else, or £1,800 a month on a three-year contract. The plan below it, Advanced, is £259 a month. That gap only makes sense if you need something only Plus does, such as a fully customisable checkout, B2B selling or several storefronts, or if your sales are high enough that Plus’s lower transaction fees cover the difference by themselves.
This piece uses Shopify’s own published UK prices, works out where the fees break even, and says plainly which costs Shopify doesn’t publish. It’s written for a store on Advanced wondering whether to move up, or one on another platform pricing a move to Shopify Plus.
What Shopify Plus costs
Shopify publishes its standard plans and the starting price of Plus. Here they are side by side, from the UK pricing page and the Plus pricing page.
| Basic | £19 billed yearly, £25 monthly | 2% | None |
| Grow | £49 billed yearly, £65 monthly | 1% | Up to 5 |
| Advanced | £259 billed yearly, £344 monthly | 0.6% | Up to 15 |
| Plus | £1,950 on a 1-year term, £1,800 on a 3-year term | 0.20% | Unlimited |
The annual floor
On a one-year term, Plus costs at least £23,400 a year. On a three-year term it’s £21,600 a year, £64,800 over the contract. That’s the platform alone: before apps, development, payment fees or anyone to run it.
The three-year trade-off
The three-year term saves £150 a month, £1,800 a year. It also commits you for three years. For a business still deciding whether Plus is right, the one-year term is the cheaper way to find out.
The variable platform fee
Shopify offers a variable platform fee for more complex, higher-volume businesses, based on revenue and business model, with different terms for B2B and direct-to-consumer. It doesn’t publish the rates or thresholds: they’re agreed with its sales team. Any figure you see quoted for it online is second-hand.
Extra stores
Plus includes a main store and nine expansion stores for one brand. Shopify’s page lists additional stores at £250 a month each, which matters if you run several brands or many regions.
What Plus adds over Advanced
Plus isn’t just Advanced with lower fees. Shopify lists a set of things only Plus does, and they’re the real reason most stores move.
A checkout you can customise
Shopify describes Plus as having a fully customisable checkout, built with checkout extensions and Shopify Functions. On other plans the checkout is largely fixed. If your checkout needs custom fields, custom validation, specific payment or delivery logic, or a design that matches the rest of the store, this is the headline difference.
B2B and wholesale
Shopify’s comparison lists unlimited B2B catalogues on Plus, with more limited B2B on the plans below it. A business selling to trade customers with their own price lists, payment terms and company accounts gets the full version on Plus instead of stretching a lower plan with apps and workarounds.
More stores, staff and capacity
Plus includes nine expansion stores, unlimited staff accounts where Advanced allows 15, up to 200 POS Pro locations, and API call limits that Shopify says are up to 10 times higher. Shopify also cites capacity for over 10,000 checkouts a minute. For a brand with busy launches, several regions or a heavy integration with an ERP, those limits start to matter.
My view: most stores don’t need it yet
If none of those features is something you need this year, Advanced does the job. The move to Plus is worth making for a specific capability or a specific volume, not because a store feels too big for the plan it’s on.
When the fees pay for it
The other way Plus can pay for itself is transaction fees. This is where Shopify’s published numbers let you do the sum yourself.
On a third-party payment provider
If you take payments through a provider other than Shopify Payments, Shopify charges a fee on each transaction: 0.6% on Advanced and 0.20% on Plus. The difference is 0.4% of everything you sell. Plus costs £1,691 a month more than Advanced on yearly billing, so the saving covers it once monthly sales reach about £422,750, or about £385,250 on a three-year term.
◆ Where Plus pays for itself on fees alone, third-party payments
On Shopify Payments
With Shopify Payments there’s no separate transaction fee, only the card rates: 1.5% plus 25p on Advanced. Shopify says Plus has the lowest card rates of any plan, but doesn’t publish them. To do the sum for your store, ask Shopify’s sales team for the Plus rate, then compare the difference in card fees on your monthly sales with the £1,691 difference in plan price.
The costs that aren’t on the pricing page
Plus features don’t build themselves. A customised checkout, B2B price lists and connected expansion stores all need development, and some apps charge more for Plus stores than for standard ones. Budget for the work that uses the features, not just the plan that unlocks them. A Shopify custom app or checkout extension is often where that money goes.
My view: do the sum with your own numbers
Take last year’s monthly sales, your payment provider and the features you actually need. If the fees don’t cover the difference and none of the Plus-only features is essential, stay on Advanced and revisit when either changes.
Three stores, worked through
These are illustrations, not client figures: three typical situations run through Shopify’s published UK prices, so you can see how the decision changes with the numbers.
| A small fashion brand | £150,000 | £600 | £1,691 | Stay on Advanced |
| A homeware brand with trade customers | £600,000 | £2,400 | £1,691 | Plus pays for itself |
| A growing brand needing a custom checkout | £300,000 | £1,200 | £1,691 | Costs £491 a month for the feature |
The small brand
At £150,000 a month on a third-party provider, the lower fee saves about £600 a month, well short of the £1,691 difference. Unless it needs something only Plus does, Advanced is the right plan, and the money is better spent on the store itself.
The brand with trade customers
At £600,000 a month, the fee saving is about £2,400 a month, more than the extra cost of Plus. And a business selling to trade customers gets the full B2B features too. Here Plus pays for itself before counting anything else it adds.
The brand that needs a custom checkout
At £300,000 a month, the fee saving is about £1,200, so Plus costs roughly £491 a month more than Advanced once fees are counted. That’s the real price of the customisable checkout. If the checkout change is worth more than that in extra orders, it’s a good trade; if nobody can say what it’s worth, it isn’t yet.
Run it with your own numbers
Swap in your own monthly sales, and if you use Shopify Payments, the Plus card rate Shopify quotes you instead of the 0.4% fee difference. The sum takes five minutes, and it turns a vague sense that the store has outgrown its plan into a figure you can decide on.
How to keep the cost of Plus down
If Plus is the right plan, there are still ways to pay less for it and get more from it.
Choose the term deliberately
The three-year term saves £1,800 a year but commits you for three. Take it once you’re sure Plus is right for the business; take one year while you’re finding out.
Ask about the variable fee
For higher-volume or more complex businesses, Shopify offers a variable platform fee based on revenue and business model. Its terms aren’t published, so the only way to know whether it beats the fixed price for you is to ask, with your real sales figures in hand.
Compare the payment options properly
The fee sum changes completely depending on whether you use Shopify Payments or another provider. Get the Plus card rate in writing, compare it with what your current provider charges plus Shopify’s 0.20%, and choose on the total.
Build only what you’ll use
Plus unlocks a lot, and every capability costs development to use. Start with the one or two features that justified the move, measure what they return, and add the rest when they’ve earned it.
When Plus is worth it, and when it isn’t
◆ Shopify Plus, in practice
Worth it when
- Your checkout needs custom logic or design
- You sell to trade customers with their own prices and terms
- You run several regions or brands from one team
- Monthly sales on a third-party provider are around £400,000 or more
- Launches or integrations are hitting API or checkout limits
Not yet when
- The main reason is that the store feels big
- Advanced already does everything you use
- The fee saving doesn’t cover the price difference
- Nobody has budgeted to build what Plus unlocks
- A three-year term would lock in a plan you’re unsure about
Moving to Plus from another platform
If you’re pricing Plus as part of a move from Magento, WooCommerce or a custom build, the licence is the smaller part of the cost. Implementation, data migration and integrations are most of it, and the article on what a UK replatform costs breaks that down. Whether to move at all is a separate question, covered in replatform or repair.
Getting a second opinion
A move to Plus, or onto Shopify from another platform, is a decision worth making on evidence. The complete audit looks at the store, its systems and its numbers together, and the Shopify development page explains how I work on Shopify builds.
◆ Glossary
- Shopify Plus
- Shopify’s plan for larger businesses, with a customisable checkout, B2B selling, expansion stores and higher limits.
- Advanced
- The highest of Shopify’s standard plans, below Plus.
- Variable platform fee
- A Plus pricing option based on revenue and business model, agreed with Shopify’s sales team rather than published.
- Third-party payment fee
- The fee Shopify charges on each transaction when you use a payment provider other than Shopify Payments.
- Expansion store
- An extra storefront on the same Plus contract, typically for another region or market.
- Checkout extensions
- Shopify’s way of adding custom fields, logic and design to the checkout, available in full on Plus.
◆ Sources
