Shopify Plus development

Most Plus stores use a fraction of what they are paying for. The upgrade happens because of a volume threshold or a feature someone needed once, and the store carries on being built the way it was before. The checkout is the default. Discounts run through an app doing a job a Function should be doing. B2B is a second store nobody wanted.

That is not a criticism of the brands. Plus is documented as a list of features rather than as a way of building, and the difference between the two is where a developer earns their keep.

What Plus development covers

Checkout extensibility. Plus stores can add fields, validation, content and branding to checkout through extensions, now that editing checkout.liquid is gone. Delivery instructions, gift messaging, address validation, upsells that are in the checkout rather than bolted on before it. This is the area most stores have not touched, and the one with the most direct effect on conversion.

Shopify Functions. Discount, shipping and payment logic that used to be Scripts, or an app, now runs as Functions. Tiered pricing, bundle discounts, hiding a payment method for a customer group, free shipping rules that depend on more than a cart total. Written once, running inside checkout, with no app subscription attached. If you still have Scripts, the migration has its own page.

B2B on Shopify. Company accounts, price lists, payment terms and quantity rules on the same store as your consumer catalogue, without a second store. Most brands who moved to Plus for B2B are still running it the old way, because the tooling arrived after they upgraded.

Markets. One store selling in several currencies, languages and domains, with pricing and catalogue set per market. This replaces the store-per-region model, and consolidating the stores you already have is a job in its own right.

Flow and Launchpad. Automation for the operational things a team does by hand: tagging orders for review, holding fulfilment on a fraud signal, scheduling a sale to start and end without anyone being awake for it. Unglamorous, and used by almost nobody.

The theme. All of the above sits behind a storefront, and on Plus the storefront is usually custom. Building one that gives the marketing team what they need without a developer, and stays fast while doing it, is the bulk of the front-end work.

B2B on Shopify Plus

Shopify's B2B tooling is a Plus feature, and it is the reason a lot of brands moved up. Company accounts with several buyers and locations, a catalogue and price list per company, payment terms, quantity rules, and a checkout that respects all of it, on the same store as the consumer catalogue.

The decision is whether to blend or separate. A blended store serves trade and consumer customers from one theme, with the price and the catalogue changing on login. A dedicated B2B store, under the same Plus contract, suits a wholesale operation with its own branding and a catalogue the public should not see. Both are built here, and the audit is usually where the choice gets made.

If wholesale currently runs through a second Shopify store, a password-protected collection, or an app that rewrites prices in the browser, that is the old way. B2B on the standard plan means an app doing what Plus does natively, which works at low volume and becomes a ceiling after that. Moving it onto native B2B is a contained piece of work rather than a rebuild.

What a Plus Partner is, and is not

Plus Partner status means Shopify has reviewed the studio's work on Plus and lists it as a partner for merchants on the plan, with a route into Shopify when a platform issue needs escalating.

What it does not mean is that the badge says anything about who will do the work. At a large Shopify Plus agency, the person who sells the project and the person who builds it are rarely the same. Here they are the same person.

How the work is done

One senior developer on every project, writing the code. Specialists in design, CRO and content brought in when a project needs them, and introduced rather than hidden behind an account manager.

Work happens in your Shopify and GitHub accounts, so nothing lives somewhere you cannot see it. Anything that touches checkout is built and tested on a development store or a staging theme, never on live.

Estimates are for the whole job. If something turns out to be harder than expected, that is a conversation about scope, not an invoice.

When you do not need Plus

Worth saying, because it comes up. Plus starts paying for itself when one of its features is doing real work: a customised checkout, B2B alongside consumer, Markets at scale, or volume high enough that the pricing tips in its favour. If none of those apply, the standard plan with a well-built theme is usually the better answer, and it is the one you will get.

Who it is for

Brands already on Plus who suspect they are not using it. Brands on the standard plan, or on another platform, weighing the move. Agencies who need Plus-level development on a project, which has its own page.