The short answer
A Shopify Plus migration is two decisions bundled together: whether to move your store to Shopify, and whether to pay for the Plus plan once you get there. Most of the cost and almost all of the risk sit in the first decision. The second is a commercial question with a clear answer once you know how your business sells.
Plus is worth it when you need what only Plus does: a large number of storefronts under one brand, checkout customisation beyond Shopify’s standard settings, custom business logic built with Shopify Functions, very high order volumes, or a B2B operation big enough to need unlimited price catalogues. If none of those describe you, Shopify’s Advanced plan will usually do everything you need for a fraction of the monthly fee.
I’ve engineered more than 350 Shopify stores and migrated over 500,000 products in 20 years. The most expensive Shopify Plus mistake I see isn’t a failed migration. It’s a retailer signing a three-year Plus contract for features they never switch on.
Not sure whether your store needs Plus? I’ll tell you in the free audit.
Book a free auditWho this guide is for
This guide is for established retailers weighing up a move to Shopify Plus. That usually means one of three situations:
- You’re on Magento or Adobe Commerce and have been told that Plus is the only Shopify plan that can handle your catalogue, your trade customers or your integrations.
- You’re on another hosted platform, such as BigCommerce or a proprietary system run by an agency, and your current plan already costs as much as Plus would.
- You’re already on Shopify and are being encouraged to upgrade as you grow.
If you’re a small shop with a few hundred products and no trade accounts, you don’t need Plus, and you may not need a managed migration either. I cover that honestly in the section on when Plus isn’t right for you.
What Shopify Plus adds over Advanced
The gap between Shopify’s Advanced plan and Plus has narrowed. Features that used to be Plus-only, such as Shopify Flow automation and core B2B tools, are now available on lower plans. What remains Plus-only is mostly about scale, control and the number of stores you run. These are the differences that matter in a migration, taken from Shopify’s own plan documentation in October 2026:
| Feature | Advanced | Shopify Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Stores per contract | One store | Main store plus 9 expansion stores, for the same brand |
| URL redirects | Up to 100,000 | Up to 20,000,000 |
| B2B price catalogues | Up to 3 active catalogues | Unlimited, assignable to individual companies and locations |
| Checkout customisation | Standard checkout settings and apps | Checkout branding API, editing through checkout extensions, separate B2B and retail checkouts |
| Custom apps using Shopify Functions | Not available | Available |
| Staff accounts | 15 additional | Unlimited |
| Admin API capacity (GraphQL restore rate) | 200 points a second | 1,000 points a second |
| Languages per store | Up to 20 | Up to 30 |
| Launchpad (scheduled sales and launches) | Not available | Available |
| Support | Standard Shopify support | 24/7 priority phone and chat |
Two rows in that table decide more Plus migrations than any other: the number of stores and the checkout. If you run separate storefronts for different countries or channels under one brand, Plus lets you do that on one contract. If your checkout has to do something unusual, such as complex trade terms, deposits or bespoke validation, Plus is where that becomes possible without workarounds.
The redirect limit matters more than most people realise. A Magento store with tens of thousands of products, years of discontinued lines and a history of layered navigation URLs can need well over 100,000 redirects. On a lower plan, that forces choices about which old addresses to keep. On Plus, it doesn’t.
B2B changed in 2026
For years, if a retailer asked whether trade customers meant Shopify Plus, the honest answer was yes. That changed on 2 April 2026, when Shopify made its key B2B features available on the Basic, Grow and Advanced plans.
On those plans you now get company accounts with multiple locations, payment terms, quantity rules, volume pricing, vaulted cards, invoicing through draft orders and purchase order numbers. The limit is up to three active price catalogues across your B2B markets. Advanced also gets a trade-specific checkout and storefront experience.
Plus still adds unlimited catalogues, the ability to assign a catalogue to an individual company or location, deposits and partial payments. So the question has become more precise:
- Three or fewer trade price lists, such as trade, installer and education: Advanced will usually do it.
- Many negotiated price lists, or prices that differ by customer or by site: you’re likely to need Plus.
- Trade orders that need deposits or staged payments: that’s Plus.
If you’re leaving Magento, map your customer groups and tier prices before anyone quotes you for Plus. The answer often turns on a single spreadsheet of who pays what.
What Shopify Plus costs
Shopify publishes a starting price for Plus. In the UK, as of October 2026, Plus starts at £1,950 a month on a one-year term, or £1,800 a month on a three-year term. In US dollars, it’s $2,500 a month on a one-year term or $2,300 on a three-year term. Those prices are for what Shopify calls standard setups.
| Cost | What Shopify publishes | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Plus subscription | From £1,800 a month (three-year term) or £1,950 (one-year term) | Term length, and when the price can change |
| Variable platform fee | Higher-volume businesses move to a fee based on revenue and business model | No public rate: ask for it in writing before you sign |
| Extra stores beyond the 10 included | £250 a month each, or a revenue share | Whether you’ll actually need more than ten |
| Third-party payment providers | 0.20% fee if you don’t use Shopify Payments | Whether your gateway or finance provider forces this |
| Apps | Set by each app developer | Which Magento extensions become paid apps, and which become theme code |
For comparison, Shopify’s published US pricing puts the Advanced plan at $399 a month billed monthly, or $299 a month billed yearly. On a standard setup, Plus therefore costs several times as much as Advanced every month, for every year of the contract. That’s why the decision deserves an hour of proper analysis rather than an assumption.
Set against a Magento or Adobe Commerce estate, though, the sums often look different. Hosting, security patching, version upgrades, monitoring and the developer retainer that keeps them running can add up to more than a Plus subscription. If you’re comparing, compare the whole cost of running each platform, not the licence alone.
Three routes to Shopify Plus
“Shopify Plus migration” means different work depending on where you start.
From Magento or Adobe Commerce
The biggest and most common route. Your data, URLs, extensions and integrations all change, and Plus is a real possibility because of catalogue size, trade customers or multiple store views. I cover it in detail below and in my Magento to Shopify migration guide.
From another platform
BigCommerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, proprietary agency platforms and custom PHP builds all migrate to Shopify Plus in broadly the same way: data mapped, URLs redirected, features rebuilt as theme code or apps, and integrations reconnected. What varies is how cleanly your data can be exported and how much of your current functionality is bespoke.
Upgrading an existing Shopify store
If you’re already on Shopify, moving to Plus is a plan change, not a migration. Your products, customers, orders and URLs stay where they are. The work is in using what Plus unlocks: setting up expansion stores, building checkout extensions, moving B2B onto catalogues, or writing custom Functions. Anyone who quotes you for a full migration to move an existing Shopify store onto Plus should explain exactly what they’re migrating.
Magento to Shopify Plus migration
Magento and Adobe Commerce stores are the ones most often pointed towards Plus, and the reasons are real. Large catalogues, customer groups, multiple store views and heavily extended checkouts all sit closer to what Plus offers than to the standard plans. Here’s how the main pieces map:
| Magento / Adobe Commerce | Shopify Plus | What to decide |
|---|---|---|
| Configurable products | Products with variants (up to 2,048 per product) | Whether your themes and apps support high variant counts |
| Attribute sets | Options, metafields and metaobjects | Which attributes buyers filter on, choose between or compare |
| Customer groups and tier prices | B2B companies, locations and catalogues | How many price lists you really need |
| Store views (countries, currencies, languages) | Shopify Markets | Whether one store with Markets is enough |
| Separate websites | Expansion stores | Whether they’re the same brand (a Plus requirement) |
| Checkout customisations | Checkout extensions and Functions | Which customisations still earn their keep |
| Custom modules | Theme code, apps or custom apps | What each module actually does for revenue |
There’s also a timing reason many Magento retailers are looking now. Adobe’s published lifecycle policy shows regular support for Adobe Commerce 2.4.6 ended on 11 August 2026, with 2.4.7 following on 31 May 2027. Those releases run on PHP 8.1, 8.2 and 8.3, and the PHP project’s own support for 8.2 ends on 31 December 2026. None of that means a particular store is at risk. It does mean another upgrade project is coming for anyone who stays, and that’s often the moment the cost of staying gets weighed against the cost of moving.
When the work is done, Shopify runs the platform, the hosting and the security patching. That is the whole point: your team’s time goes into selling, not into keeping the software standing up.
Checkout on Plus
Checkout is where Plus differs most from the other plans, and where old advice is most likely to be out of date.
Shopify used to let Plus stores edit a theme file called checkout.liquid. That route has closed. Shopify switched off checkout.liquid for the information, shipping and payment pages on 13 August 2024, and for the thank you and order status pages on Plus stores on 28 August 2025. Customisation now happens through checkout extensibility: checkout UI extensions, the branding API, Shopify Functions for discounts, delivery and payment logic, and pixels for tracking.
For a migration, that means two things. First, nothing about your old checkout is copied across. Every customisation is rebuilt, or dropped, using the current tools. Second, many of the customisations you depend on today may not need Plus at all. Public apps from the Shopify App Store that use Functions work on any plan. It’s custom-built Functions, and some checkout editing, that need Plus.
I list every checkout behaviour your current store has during the audit, from trade terms and finance options to delivery rules and age checks, and mark each one as standard, app, or Plus-only. That list usually settles the plan question on its own.
Data and SEO at Plus scale
Stores big enough for Plus bring bigger migration problems. The principles are the same as any migration. The volumes are not.
- Import order. Shopify’s own guidance is to import products first, then customers, then historical orders. Doing it in that order means orders link to the right customers and products.
- Order history. Historical orders come in through a migration app or the API, not the admin. Staff notifications for new orders are switched off first, or your team gets an email for every order you import.
- Passwords. Customer passwords can’t be moved between platforms. Shopify’s current customer accounts sign people in with a one-time code sent to their email, so returning customers don’t need to set a new password.
- Redirects. Every old URL is mapped to its new address, including discontinued products, old categories and filter pages that earn traffic. Shopify only follows a redirect when the old address would otherwise return a 404, so the map is tested in bulk after launch.
- The delta. Orders and customers keep arriving while the new store is being built. A final delta migration on launch day brings across everything since the main import.
- DNS. Shopify’s own Plus launch checklist suggests lowering your domain’s TTL to 300 seconds about a week before launch, so the switch-over is quick and predictable.
Google’s guidance on site moves recommends permanent redirects, such as 301s, kept in place for at least a year, and warns that rankings can fluctuate while Google recrawls. That’s why I capture rankings, traffic and revenue before launch and check them every day afterwards: so any dip is caught and fixed while it’s small.
Ways to migrate to Shopify Plus
There are three realistic ways to run a Shopify Plus migration. Each has a place.
Migration app
Tools such as Cart2Cart, LitExtension and Matrixify copy products, customers and orders. They don’t restructure your catalogue, design your store, rebuild your checkout or decide your redirects.
Right for: simple catalogues with an in-house team to do the rest.
Freelancer
A capable freelancer can move a mid-sized store well. At Plus scale, check they’ve handled checkout extensibility, B2B catalogues and large redirect maps before.
Right for: stores with few integrations and a clear brief.
Managed migration
One senior person accountable for the data map, the design, the redirects, the integrations and the launch, with a fixed fee and scope agreed in writing.
Right for: established retailers whose revenue depends on the move going right.
Whoever you choose, ask to see their redirect process and their launch-day plan. My guide to choosing a Shopify migration agency has the full list of questions.
How a Shopify Plus migration runs
My Shopify migration package runs over four weeks from signed brief to a live store. Very large catalogues and complex integrations can take longer, and I’ll tell you if yours will after the audit, before you commit to anything.
- Week 1: audit and mapProducts, attributes, customers, trade pricing, integrations and rankings reviewed. Plus or Advanced decided on evidence. Every URL mapped.
- Week 2: design and buildA custom theme built around your catalogue, with checkout behaviour rebuilt using current Shopify tools.
- Week 3: move and connectProducts, customers and order history imported in the right order. Payments, shipping, stock and ERP connections tested. Redirects loaded.
- Week 4: test and launchCheckout tested end to end on real devices, a final delta sync, DNS switched, then 30 days of monitoring and fixes against the pre-launch baseline.
You keep trading on your current store throughout. Nothing changes for customers until the domain points at Shopify.
What the migration costs
My Shopify migration package starts from $19,997 USD, or £14,997 + VAT for UK clients, with flexible plans depending on the deposit paid. It covers the audit and data map, a custom theme, migration of products, images, customers, orders and content, every old address redirected, integrations connected, launch, and 30 days of post-launch fixes. I’m UK-based and work remotely with retailers all over the world. Outside the UK, the package starts from $19,997 with no VAT, quoted in US dollars after the free store audit.
What moves the price on a Plus project is rarely the plan. It’s the number of integrations, the amount of custom checkout behaviour, how many expansion stores are launched at once and how messy the source data is. My Shopify migration cost guide goes through each of those in detail.
The Shopify Plus subscription itself is paid to Shopify, not to me, and so are any apps.
Get a fixed price for your Shopify Plus migration.
Book a free auditCommon Shopify Plus migration mistakes
Buying Plus before scoping the store. Sign the contract after you know which Plus features you’ll use, not before.
Assuming B2B still needs Plus. Since April 2026, many trade setups fit on Advanced.
Trying to recreate the old checkout. checkout.liquid is gone. Rebuild what earns money; drop what doesn’t.
Under-sizing the redirect map. Large Magento catalogues often hold far more historic URLs than anyone expects.
Launching every expansion store at once. Launch the main store, prove it, then roll out the rest.
Forgetting the delta. Orders placed during the build need bringing across on launch day.
When Shopify Plus isn’t right for you
- You run one store in one or two markets. Shopify Markets on Advanced handles multiple countries, currencies and languages from one store.
- Your trade pricing fits in three catalogues. Advanced now covers that.
- Your checkout is standard. If your customers pay, choose delivery and go, Plus checkout features add cost without adding sales.
- You’re a small or early-stage shop. If you sell a few hundred products with no integrations, a lower plan and a self-service migration app may be all you need. I’d rather tell you that now than sell you a migration you don’t need.
- You’re already on Shopify and happy. If nothing on the Plus list solves a problem you have today, stay where you are and revisit it when one does.
If you do need Plus, it’s a strong platform for an established retailer, and the move is very manageable when it’s planned properly. The Lipton’s Shopify migration case study shows what that planning looks like on a real catalogue of more than 2,800 products. For the full service, see my Shopify migration service.
Shopify Plus migration: FAQ
Sources
Shopify Plus pricing: shopify.com/uk/plus/pricing and shopify.com/plus/pricing, accessed 24 October 2026. Advanced plan pricing: shopify.com/pricing (US), accessed 24 October 2026. Plan features, expansion stores, staff accounts, languages and Launchpad: Shopify Help Center plan and feature pages, accessed 24 October 2026. B2B on non-Plus plans: Shopify changelog, “Key B2B features now available on non-Plus plans”, 2 April 2026, and Help Center B2B plan features, accessed 24 October 2026. checkout.liquid deprecation: Shopify changelog, 13 February 2023, and shopify.dev checkout.liquid documentation, accessed 24 October 2026. Shopify Functions plan requirements and GraphQL Admin API rate limits: shopify.dev, accessed 24 October 2026. Variant limit of 2,048: Shopify changelog, 15 October 2025. URL redirect limits and rules: Shopify Help Center, URL redirects, accessed 24 October 2026. Import order, historical orders and Plus launch checklist: Shopify Help Center, accessed 24 October 2026. Customer passwords and customer accounts: Shopify Help Center, accessed 24 October 2026. Adobe Commerce lifecycle dates: Adobe Experience League lifecycle policy, updated 18 September 2026. PHP 8.2 end of security support: PHP project, as reported by isitpatched.com, 23 October 2026. Site moves: Google Search Central, “Site moves with URL changes”, updated 20 August 2026. KA Consultancy prices and proof points as published on the Shopify migration services page.