Shopify Plus vs Shopify for Growing Australian Stores

Shopify Plus costs from A$3,700 a month in Australia on a 3-year term, or A$4,000 a month on a 1-year term. Advanced, the plan below it, costs A$575 a month, or A$431 a month paid yearly (Shopify Plus pricing, Australia and Shopify Australia pricing, both read 5 October 2026). Plus runs on the same platform as the other plans. The extra money buys control: a fully customisable checkout, unlimited staff accounts, extra stores for other countries, deeper wholesale tools and higher API limits. On card fees alone it rarely pays for itself, so the real question is whether your store has hit a limit that only Plus removes.

What Shopify Plus commits you to

Plus is Shopify's plan for what its pricing page calls complex businesses. It is not a separate platform: the admin, themes and apps are the ones you already use, and a store upgrades from Settings, Plan (Shopify Help Center, billing plan changes, read 5 October 2026). Three things make it a different purchase from the lower plans:

• A term. Plus is sold on a 1-year or 3-year term and can be cancelled when the term commitment expires. Basic, Grow and Advanced can be changed or cancelled at any time.
• A price that can move with revenue. The A$3,700 and A$4,000 prices are for standard setups and integrations. Shopify says more complex, higher volume businesses switch to a variable platform fee based on revenue and business model, and it does not publish that rate on its Australian page.
• Local billing. The Help Center says local currency billing for new Plus merchants is available in Australia, in AUD.

You can try it first, but not for free. Eligible merchants can take a Plus trial with most Plus features for 1 to 2 months at A$575 a month, and a store that takes no action by the end is automatically enrolled in a full Plus plan (Shopify Help Center, Shopify Plus trial, read 5 October 2026).

What each plan costs in Australia

Shopify's own prices and Shopify Payments rates, from its Australian (/au) pages, which state them in Australian dollars. We read them on 5 October 2026 from outside Australia.

Sources: Shopify Australia pricing and Shopify Plus pricing pages, and the Help Center's Shopify Plus plan page, which lists the same term prices. All read 5 October 2026.

The other card rates step down the same way: American Express online is 2.7% + A$0.30 on Advanced and 2.6% + A$0.30 on Plus, cards issued overseas 3.3% and 3.2% (each + A$0.30), and in-person cards 1.65% and 1.45%. POS Pro for a physical shop is A$129 a month per location on the lower plans, while Plus includes 20 locations, or up to 200 with Shopify Payments (Shopify Australia pricing page, read 5 October 2026).

Shopify also adds 10% GST to the subscription unless your business is registered for GST and has added its ABN in Shopify's billing settings (Shopify Help Center, GST for Shopify billing, read 5 October 2026). Our Shopify cost guide for Australia lists the other running costs: themes, apps and domains.

What Plus adds over Advanced

Hosting, themes, the online store, Shopify Payments, marketing tools and the App Store are the same on every plan. The differences sit in a handful of limits and features.

Sources: Shopify Australia pricing page and the Shopify Help Center and developer pages listed at the end, all read 5 October 2026.

Some things stores assume need Plus do not. Shopify Flow, Shopify's automation app, is free on every plan (Shopify Help Center, Shopify Flow), live third-party shipping rates start on Advanced, and B2B and overseas selling work on every plan, as the sections below explain.

Checkout: the difference most stores notice first

On every plan you can brand the checkout with your logo, colours and fonts, and add eligible apps to the thank you and order status pages. Apps that change the information, shipping and payment pages, and the Checkout Branding API, are Plus only (Shopify Help Center, customising checkout, read 5 October 2026).

Shopify's own Checkout Blocks app shows where the line sits. On Basic and higher it can place static and dynamic content blocks on the thank you and order status pages only. Custom fields at checkout, hiding, renaming or reordering payment and delivery methods, order value limits and custom discounts are Plus only (Shopify Help Center, Checkout Blocks, read 5 October 2026).

A simple test: a change after payment can usually be made on any plan with an app. For a change before payment, such as a delivery date field or a payment method shown only to some customers, first look for a public App Store app, because any plan can use public apps built with Shopify Functions (About Shopify Functions, read 5 October 2026). If it needs Checkout Blocks or your own custom app, plan for Plus.

Already on Plus? As of 30 June 2026 Shopify Scripts is deprecated: Scripts still published were deactivated, and Shopify points merchants to Shopify Functions to rebuild them (Shopify Help Center, Script Editor, read 5 October 2026). If a discount or shipping rule stopped working this year, look there first.

Wholesale and B2B without Plus

Wholesale is a common reason retailers look at Plus, but B2B is not a Plus-only feature. Shopify B2B works on Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus, with company accounts, quantity rules and price breaks, net payment terms, draft orders sent as invoices, purchase order numbers and a quick order list on every plan (Shopify Help Center, B2B features by plan, read 5 October 2026). The differences are specific:

• Price lists. The lower plans can assign up to 3 active catalogues across all B2B markets. Plus allows unlimited catalogues and can assign one directly to a single company or company location, which is how each trade customer gets its own pricing.
• Payments. Deposits, partial payments and payment requests per fulfilment are Plus only.
• A separate B2B storefront and checkout through Shopify Markets needs Advanced or Plus.

So a business with one or two trade price lists may not need Plus for wholesale; one that negotiates pricing account by account, or takes deposits on large orders, will. Puzzle Art Australia, a Shopify store we built and also market, sells retail online and also offers NDIS and professional ordering with invoices and a wholesale link (Puzzle Art Australia case study).

Selling overseas: Markets or expansion stores

Selling to New Zealand, the UK or the US does not by itself need Plus. Every plan includes unlimited country or region markets for local currencies, languages and domains (Help Center, Shopify Plus plan page, read 5 October 2026). Supacore, a compression garment brand whose Shopify store we designed, has country and language selectors in English, French and German that serve buyers outside Australia (Supacore case study).

Plus adds expansion stores: separate stores that Shopify describes as being for internationalisation, separate physical locations and similar purposes. Up to 9 are included, each live expansion store needs its own theme licence, and more cost A$500 a month each or a revenue share. A contract covers one brand, so two brands need two Plus contracts (Shopify Plus pricing, Australia, read 5 October 2026).

Do the lower fees pay for Plus?

Usually not. These sums use the prices and rates above, read 5 October 2026, before GST:

1. Plus on a 3-year term costs A$3,269 a month more than Advanced paid yearly (A$3,700 minus A$431).
2. The domestic online card rate falls from 1.35% to 1.15%, and the A$0.30 per transaction stays the same, so the saving is A$2 on every A$1,000 of domestic online card sales.
3. On our arithmetic, that saving covers the extra A$3,269 only above about A$1.63 million a month of domestic online card sales (A$3,269 divided by 0.2% is A$1,634,500).
4. With another payment provider, Shopify's fee falls from 0.6% to 0.2%, and the break-even drops to about A$817,250 a month of sales through that provider.

Two things push the break-even further out: a business that big may be moved to the variable platform fee, and the American Express and overseas card rates on Plus are only 0.1 points lower than on Advanced. For most growing stores, Plus is a features decision, not a fees decision.

Signs your store has outgrown Advanced

If none of these describes your store today, Advanced or a lower plan is very likely enough.

• You need to change the information, shipping or payment steps of checkout in ways no public app covers on your plan.
• More than 15 people need their own staff account, or you run more than 10 inventory locations.
• Wholesale customers each need their own price list, or you need more than 3 B2B catalogues.
• An ERP, warehouse or marketplace integration keeps hitting Shopify's API rate limits.
• You run product drops and want them scheduled with Launchpad and protected from bots.
• A migration needs more than 100,000 URL redirects to keep old links and search rankings working.

How to decide, step by step

1. 

   Step 1 · Before anything else

   List the limits you have actually hit

   • Free
   • Decides the plan

   Write down each sign above that your store has run into, with an example. No entries means a better build on the current plan, not a bigger plan. Two or three make a real case for Plus.

2. 

   Step 2

   Get Shopify's quote in writing

   • Free
   • Ask about the variable fee

   Ask Shopify's Plus team for the term, the billing currency, whether a variable platform fee applies to your business, how many POS Pro locations and expansion stores are included, and the card rates for your location, which Shopify's Plus pricing page says vary by country.

3. 

   Step 3

   Budget for the build work Plus unlocks

   • Quoted on scope

   Plus makes features available; someone still has to set them up. Checkout apps, Functions, B2B catalogues and expansion stores are build work, and Shopify's Plus pricing page says to budget for custom development, theme purchases and third-party apps.

Where Digitalis Global fits

We design, build and look after Shopify stores for Australian businesses. For Lux & Co Australia, a Sydney candle and diffuser maker, we built the Shopify store in 2023 and since 2025 have managed its development, email and digital marketing and design (Lux & Co Australia case study). Whether a store needs Plus is one of the first questions we answer when scoping a build or rebuild, and we quote the work after that scoping. Our Shopify and e-commerce development service explains what that covers.

Common questions about Shopify Plus in Australia

Sources

Every source below was read on 5 October 2026, from outside Australia, using Shopify's Australian (/au) pages for prices, which state them in Australian dollars. Shopify changes prices and features without notice, so check the linked page before you decide.

• Shopify Australia: Pricing (plan prices, card rates, transaction fees, POS Pro, feature comparison, cancellation)
• Shopify Australia: Shopify Plus pricing (term prices, variable platform fee, expansion stores, one brand per contract)
• Shopify Help Center: Shopify Plus plan
• Shopify Help Center: Shopify Plus trial
• Shopify Help Center: Billing plan changes
• Shopify Help Center: GST exemptions for Shopify billing
• Shopify Help Center: Customising your checkout and accounts pages
• Shopify Help Center: Checkout Blocks app
• Shopify Help Center: Script Editor (Scripts deprecation)
• Shopify Help Center: B2B features by plan
• Shopify Help Center: Shopify Flow
• Shopify Help Center: Launchpad
• Shopify Help Center: URL redirects
• Shopify developer docs: About Shopify Functions (plan availability)

Drafted with AI assistance; researched and reviewed by Saad Ali.