4 Shopify Plus Features That Will Make Your Life Better

The jump from Shopify Advanced to Shopify Plus is not insignificant.

Shopify Advanced plans are currently $399 / mo with 2.4% + $.30 credit card processing fees if you're using Shopify Payments.

Shopify Plus starts at $2,000 / mo, and while CC rates are variable depending on location, we usually see them come in at 2.15% + $.30. If you're a high volume store, you can experience all of the benefits that Shopify Plus has to offer while breaking-even or even getting cost savings with Plus.

While Plus touts many benefits in addition to the processing fee savings, these are the three benefits that have made the biggest impact across the businesses that we've experienced.

1. Scheduled promotions through Shopify Launchpad

After you've run one sale starting at midnight and ending at 3am so the west coast can have the full day of sales, you'll realize that manually adjusting themes, prices, or discount codes can become a daunting experience.

And this was precisely our experience with most stores before upgrading to Shopify Plus.

Today, however, the Shopify Launchpad App gives us the ability to: 

1. Schedule a start & end time
2. Publish or hide products across sales channels
3. Enable theme switching
4. Enable line item scripts
5. Enable shipping scrips
6. Handle discounts by product or collection

These are typically the primary components of a sale, and have sped up our workflow tremendously.

When we have a sale coming up, we duplicate our existing theme to make the creative & copy adjustments we need, and then we schedule a launchpad to publish the duplicated theme during the promotion. It will allow you to determine what theme you'd like to publish after the promotion is over as well.

2. Complex promotions via Shopify Scripts (transitioning to Shopify Functions) 

Discounts in Shopify have been limited for quite some time. Due to the restraints on discount code stacking until the middle of last year, it was a challenge to run complex promotions on Shopify.

Shopify Scripts, however, changes that with Plus. (Quick disclaimer: Shopify Scripts will be deprecated August 13th, 2024, and is being replaced by Shopify Functions, but because it is still usable for over a year and will have similarities with Shopify Functions, I think it still deserves a mention here.)

Shopify Scripts can handle advanced functionality for three main areas: 

1. Line Items (discounting / discount code rejection, etc.) 
2. Shipping
3. Payments

In our experience, we've typically used Scripts for Line Items & Shipping, for some of the following use cases: 

1. Conditionally hiding shipping rates based on loyalty / customer tag status
2. Conditional discounts (buy x, get x discounted, or buy x, get y, etc.) 
3. Rejecting discount codes based on certain criteria or during a sale
4. Tiered discount codes
5. Quantity limiting an item in specific circumstances
6. Granting free shipping rates to a customer based on a cart or customer criteria

While there are apps that can handle some of these scenarios, it's been very beneficial to handle these cases in one place, and not spend additional money on these functionalities when a brand is already paying for Shopify Plus.

If you're looking to write Shopify Scripts, this free Script Builder tool is very helpful in putting together Scripts for your store.

3. Automated workflows through Shopify Flow

As you scale a Shopify store with a small or lean team, automation is king. The ability to automate tasks, updates, communication, and even ordering is essential to maximizing your efficiency as a team.

Shopify Flow allows you to access large amounts of workflows & apps to do just that.

Outlining all that Flow can do would be an arduous task, so instead I'll share an example from one of our brands, 2POOD, below.

We had 2 challenges: 

1. We have thumb tape that is sold individually, in 3 packs, and 24 packs. We have to manually adjust inventory to account for what current quantities will be available for sale.
2. Backpack inventory was a challenge, with longer lead times than other products, and we were really hurting sales every time we ran out of stock.

Because of that, we built the following flow:

1. When inventory is changed for any product... (sale, inventory deduction, etc.)
2. Check to see if it's a thumb tape variant, and the available quantity is at 5. If it is, send a message to our store manager & let them know to update inventory to new levels based on a set of criteria.
3. If not, check to see if it's a backpack and under 35. If so, send a slack message to our ordering manager, and also add a row with the product name, variant title, and available quantity to our inventory ordering spreadsheet. That way the ordering manager can log on, know what products need to be ordered for backpacks immediately without just browsing through available quantity amounts.

This is just one of many examples of a Flow that can help improver internal operations and automations to help your team run a

4. Higher quality, quicker, support when challenges arise

Shopify Support is sometimes a challenge to work with. To their credit, they have a massive platform with many unique challenges to handle. But when you reach out to them, it's often met with long wait times or unhelpful solutions.

However, on Shopify Plus, we have had a much different support experience. Wait times are shorter (usually under 1-2 minutes), and every time we've interacted with Plus support, we've had a positive experience. Either the problem is solved, or we're pointed in the right direction that gets us where we need to go.

The failed wholesale channel

I think it's fair to mention one aspect of Shopify Plus that has not lived up to what was offered to us through the Plus sales process: the wholesale channel.

The Wholesale sales channel used to be promoted as a benefit of Plus as well, though it left a lot to be desired. It was pretty clunky, not very customizable, and did not create a great wholesale experience. Shopify recently announced that they would be deprecating this channel in April of 2024. In my opinion, there's still a big opportunity for an app in the space to really dominate the Wholesale management / sales channel opportunity.

So is it worth it?

If you're considering moving to Shopify Plus, there's a lot to consider:

1. The costs
2. The technical benefits
3. The operational benefits

If you need help making this decision, feel free to reach out for a complimentary call and we'll walk through your situation together.