The Complete Guide to Shopify Plus: Features, Benefits and Use Cases

• Shopify Plus is an enterprise-level ecommerce platform designed for high-volume merchants
• It provides advanced customization, omnichannel selling capabilities, and tools for international expansion
• The platform enables automation for workflows, optimized performance through features like flash sales and tiered pricing
• Shopify Plus offers robust security, integrations with various third-party tools, and use cases across industries
• It provides merchants with scalability and predictive growth capabilities not available in standard Shopify plans

Ecommerce merchants experiencing rapid growth often reach a crossroads - either continue struggling with solutions not suited for scale, or make the leap to an enterprise-grade platform. 

Shopify Plus is the solution for high-volume brands ready to take their business to the next level.

As the enterprise-tier offering by Shopify, the platform goes far beyond standard Shopify plans to provide advanced and customizable features for complex ecommerce operations.

It enables cutting-edge shopping experiences, omnichannel selling across global markets, and intelligent automation unreachable for most software alternatives.

Whether you’re already using Shopify or looking to upgrade to an enterprise solution, understanding Shopify Plus is key for any high-volume brand.

Headless commerce refers to an architectural approach where the front-end website/app and back-end commerce engine work independently. 

This decoupled approach provides merchants with more flexibility and control over their technology stack.

Many modern enterprise platforms like Shopify Plus now offer headless APIs that facilitate this growing headless commerce trend.

Shopify Plus is an enterprise-level ecommerce platform created specifically for high-volume, complex merchants. 

As an extension of Shopify’s robust core offering, Shopify Plus provides advanced customization, scalability, and growth capabilities tailored to brands seeing rapid expansion.

At its core, Shopify Plus is an omnichannel commerce platform for enterprises needing to manage extensive catalogs, global distribution, and millions in sales. 

For context, some characteristics of Shopify Plus merchants include:

Shopify Plus removes the usual limitations facing high-volume merchants by providing powerful tools tailored to enterprise ecommerce. 

The platform handles complex catalogs, global distribution, promotions, and more with ease not seen in standard Shopify plans.

As an enterprise-grade solution, Shopify Plus offers numerous advantages over standard Shopify plans and legacy on-premise systems. 

These advanced capabilities empower high-volume merchants to create memorable customer experiences, tap into new markets, and efficiently manage of complex operations.

Customization 

Shopify Plus provides advanced customization of the front-end storefront and back-end functionality not accessible on standard plans.

Merchants can modify templates, checkout flows, discounts, and more to align with their brand.

Omnichannel Selling 

The platform natively supports dozens of sales channels like web, mobile, social, brick-and-mortar, and marketplaces.

Shopify Plus synchronizes inventory, pricing, and order data across all channels for a unified view.

International Expansion 

Shopify Plus easily supports multiple country storefronts with automatic currency conversion, language translation features, and locally-optimized checkout.

This simplifies entering new geographical markets.

Multiple Languages To facilitate global growth

Merchants can create translated storefronts in up to 100 languages out of the box. This localized content drives international conversions.

Organization Management 

The Shopify organization admin provides a single dashboard to view and manage permissions across your entire merchant account - including multiple stores, users, apps, and more.

Wholesale Channels 

Shopify Plus lets you set custom pricing tiers and account permissions to seamlessly sell to both retail and wholesale customers.

This supports the complex B2B sales relationships that many enterprises require.

Shopify Plus delivers unparalleled flexibility no matter how inventive merchants want to be with their brands.

The platform removes friction to entering new markets and channels.

As an enterprise platform built for complex ecommerce operations, Shopify Plus offers robust integration capabilities with essential third-party systems:

Payment Gateways 

Shopify Plus can connect to over 100 local, international, and custom payment gateways to support complex provider preferences and optimize conversion rates.

Shipping Carriers 

Pre-built connections make it easy to get real-time shipping rates from all major carriers across hundreds of regions while tracking deliveries end-to-end.

Marketing Automation Tools 

Email, social, SEO, and other marketing systems integrate seamlessly with Shopify Plus to unite customer data and extend campaigns to new channels.

Accounting Software 

Bi-directional sync with accounting systems helps accurately reflect financials and maintain integrity across departments.

Custom Apps 

An advanced API and app ecosystem enables the integration of niche functionalities like wholesale, subscriptions, sourcing, QC and countless other custom processes enterprises rely on.

Shopify Plus allows enterprises to preserve existing business-critical systems while uniting data flows across domains into a centralized commerce engine. 

This flexibility and extensibility is unmatched.

As an enterprise SaaS platform, Shopify Plus employs best-in-class technical infrastructure, developer resources, and commerce intelligence to empower high-growth brands.

These capabilities enhance performance, customization, analytics, and automation well beyond standard Shopify.

Automation

Server Cost Savings 

The fully managed, cloud-based architecture of Shopify Plus requires no investment in on-premise servers, hardware, or IT staff.

All hosting resources auto-scale flexibly with merchant growth. This results in capital expenditure savings of up to 80% over legacy systems.

Checkout Customization 

Complete control over code and Liquid templates enables modifying Shopify Plus checkout UIs and flows down to the product page level based on customer attributes and behaviors.

Promotions integrate directly at checkout.

SSL Certificates

Every Shopify Plus store includes a free custom SSL certificate to enable HTTPS and provide trusted identity verification for both shoppers and search engines. Reliable security inspires confidence at checkout.

Unlimited Staff Accounts 

Managing a growing team is facilitated by permission controls across dozens of roles. Admins maintain visibility of overall user activity logs to ensure continuity during employee transitions. 

Unlimited seats further support evolving headcount needs.

Advanced Analytics 

A rich analytics engine tracks hundreds of data points surrounding inventory, supply chain workflows, channel performance, merchandising, payments, fulfillment, and more. 

Tools like Advanced Report Builder help uncover actionable insights.

Predictive Marketing 

Integrations with data science platforms empower leveraging purchase signals, browsing history, campaign responses, inventory flows, and other datasets for propensity modeling and campaign optimization via AI. 

This drives conversion lift through hyper-personalization.

Shopify Plus lays a highly technical foundation to unlock growth through automation, customization, actionable data, and intelligent features that keep merchants ahead of the competition.

The advanced capabilities of Shopify Plus lend themselves well to ecommerce brands across verticals managing enterprise complexities.

Its flexibility has attracted merchants of all types - from digitally native fashion labels to Fortune 500 CPG conglomerates.

Fashion and Apparel

The platform readily supports complex inventory scopes, global fulfillment workflows, pop-up shops, and frequent new product launches.

CPG and FMCG

Major consumer packaged goods brands like Nestle, Heinz, and Pepsi as well as smaller agile startups rely on Shopify Plus to own customer relationships in a Direct-to-Consumer capacity while interfacing smoothly with established B2B distribution systems.

Media and Publishing 

The transition from print subscriptions to digital experiences has led publishers and broadcasters to Shopify Plus.

From optimizing paywalls, we are leveraging metered models, facilitating signups, to enabling profile-based content recommendations to drive readership, memberships, and circulation.

B2B Product Companies 

Wholesale functionality, negotiated quotes, volume pricing tiers, account manager portals, and advanced ordering processes available in Shopify Plus empower B2B merchants to align sales models with both high-volume distribution partners and SMB resellers.

While Shopify Plus delivers value across categories, it sees exceptional traction in evolving spaces like DTC where its APIs, global support, and scalability serve as catalysts for breakout growth unachievable via other systems.

Leading-edge merchants continue pushing boundaries with Shopify Plus as their enterprise ecommerce engine.

Handling sensitive customer data securely is non-negotiable, especially for enterprise merchants processing a high volume of transactions.

Shopify Plus provides reliable security measures and compliance certifications to establish trust.

PCI Compliance 

Shopify Plus undergoes rigorous quarterly assessments to maintain Level 1 PCI compliance - the industry gold standard for securing payment card data. 

Achieving this level of certification demonstrates the commitment to best practices in encryption, access controls, policies, and more.

Fast Page Loads

Speed establishes credibility with customers while improving organic visibility.

DDOS Protection 

Sophisticated technology and partnerships with security leaders shield Shopify Plus merchants from around 30 billion attempted security threats and attacks annually.

This resilience ensures uptime and continuity during adverse events.

Regular Audits: Shopify Plus assesses vulnerabilities through white box penetration testing, 3rd party black box penetration testing, and rigorous disaster recovery testing multiple times annually. 

Proactively identifying opportunities raises the security threshold.

GDPR Adherence: As an international platform, Shopify Plus helps merchants uphold regulations like GDPR for European customers through built-in capabilities for the right to access, and export customer data, delete personal information, and more. 

This simplifies compliance.

Offering progressive security layers, timely patches, and extensive auditing gives Shopify Plus merchants assurance their brand integrity remains intact. 

Certifications like PCI Level 1 and SOC 2 Type 2 reassure customers that their data stays protected across a robust, compliant infrastructure.

While the enterprise-grade architecture of Shopify Plus establishes a high-performance baseline, further optimizations maximize revenue opportunities for brands. 

Tools to manage flash sales events, leverage social channels, build loyalty, personalize pricing, tap global demand, forecast growth, and drive results.

Flash Sales 

Time-based campaigns with unique discounts or early product access drive urgency. 

Shopify Plus synchronizes launch schedules, limited inventory, and merchandising across channels through Launchpad while handling spikes.

Social Selling 

Direct buying functionality within Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, WeChat, and more digital platforms streamlines the path to purchase from discovery.

This bridges traditional ecommerce with emerging spaces.

Customer Loyalty 

Offering exclusive perks and personalized promotions to high-value customers nurtures retention.

Bulk imports loyal customer lists and then targets them automatically via flows and custom discounts at scale.

Tiered Pricing 

Volume pricing, negotiated rates for B2B buyers, and advanced segmentation lift order values based on purchase histories and profiles. Strategic discounting incentivizes bigger baskets.

Global Customers 

Localizing language, payments, and taxes opens up expansion opportunities abroad. Shopify Plus makes entering new international Shopify stores and marketplaces simple.

Predictable Scaling 

Shopify Plus allows modeling upcoming campaigns, estimating traffic bursts and inventory needs, and executing flawlessly with Launchpad. Confidently forecast and scale breakthroughs globally.

With optimization levers across priorities like events, analytics, and global distribution, Shopify Plus empowers merchants to judiciously scale revenue.

Conclusion

Shopify Plus represents the gold standard for enterprise e-commerce.

Key Takeaways:

• Automation and customization simplify complex catalog and order management
• Omnichannel sales open up new revenue streams across channels
• Integrations preserve existing systems while linking data flows
• Predictive intelligence and control planes optimize performance
• Unrivaled security and compliance measures establish trust

The platform makes easy work of complexities holding most merchants back. Book a discovery call with us to determine if now is the time to take your brand to the next level. 

Evaluate your growth trajectory and opportunities for optimization. The upside of Shopify Plus may surprise you.