Everyone within our industry knows Shopify - the reliable and insanely popular ecommerce platform geared for small ecommerce businesses.
Launched in 2004, Shopify now boasts roughly 275,000 stores, an integrated POS solution, mobile apps, and a healthy ecosystem of plugins and extensions. Most smaller ecommerce businesses (under $5 million in annual revenue) are either already using it or have considered it. Historically, Shopify has not been an option for the Enterprise Solutions-level, robust ecommerce players because it still suffers from a lack of features - namely data flexibility, integrations, and organization problems. Meanwhile, larger companies remain focused on more flexible and powerful products like Magento, Demandware (soon to be Salesforce Commerce Cloud), Hybris, and Adobe Marketing Cloud.
About a year ago, Shopify released a new product to simultaneously target this market, simply named Shopify Plus. It is a completely different way of managing Enterprise Solutions-grade ecommerce — rather than focusing on power and flexibility, they've doubled down on support, scale, and stability to accommodate large-value merchants who DON'T want to think about their ecommerce store.
Here are the benefits and key features of Shopify Plus in comparison to Shopify (all features of Shopify still apply).
- Built as an extension to Shopify, so it's just as easy to use and manage.
- No per transaction fees (credit card processing fees still apply).
- Advanced ecommerce reporting and analytics.
- White glove onboarding and service with a dedicated account manager.
- 24x7 application and configuration support.
The most notable new addition is direct support from Shopify. However, they also have an extensive network of implementation partners — like GRAYBOX — that provide more hands on implementation and technical support. Consequently if you operate a large ecommerce store and you are willing to trade some flexibility for scale, support, and stability, we advise you to give your consideration to Shopify Plus.
More information on Shopify Plus can be found at https://www.shopify.com/plus. You can also learn about what's part of the standard Shopify packages at https://www.shopify.com/online/ecommerce-solutions.
Check out GRAYBOX's extensive ecommerce portfolio.