Shopify Plus is Shopify's top plan for high-volume businesses, adding things like 9 expansion stores, unlimited staff accounts, up to 200 locations, checkout customisation and priority 24/7 support. You can start a paid Plus trial from Settings and then Plan, and if you take no action before it ends, your store is enrolled in the full Plus plan automatically.
That automatic roll-over is the catch most people miss. The trial lasts 1 to 2 months depending on your store status, and the term of the full plan, either 1 year or 3 years, is based on what you selected during trial setup. Several Plus features also aren't in the trial at all, even where the comparison in your admin suggests they are.
Plus trial against the full Plus plan
| Feature | Plus trial | Full Plus plan |
|---|---|---|
| Themes | Up to 20 | Up to 100 |
| Expansion stores and unlimited staging stores | No | Up to 9 expansion stores |
| Organization settings, groups, analytics and advanced security | No | Yes |
| Test Drive sandbox for new features | No | Yes |
| Bot protection during flash sales | No | Yes |
| B2B | Blended storefront only | Yes |
| Locations | Up to 200 | Up to 200 |
| Unlimited staff accounts | Yes | Yes |
Checkout customisation, custom apps with Shopify Functions, Hydrogen headless storefronts, combined listings, Launchpad and 24/7 priority support are in both, as of October 2026. Shopify Audiences is too, but only for merchants in the United States and Canada.
What the full plan adds over standard Shopify
- Custom user groups, so you can assign permissions to a whole group at once.
- Email suppression, which stops specific Shopify notification emails going to customers. It's exclusive to Plus.
- 1 TB of file storage per store, up to 100 themes and unlimited staging stores.
- Up to 25 custom storefronts built with Hydrogen and hosted on Oxygen.
- Longer card authorizations: Visa, Mastercard and American Express up to 30 days, Discover and JCB up to 10 days, against the standard 7 days.
- Level 1 PCI DSS and SOC2 certification, plus bot mitigation for high-demand launches.
Each live expansion store needs its own theme licence, which is easy to forget when you're planning an international rollout.
Starting, upgrading or leaving the trial
- From your Shopify admin, go to Settings and then Plan.
- In the Plan details section, click Change plan.
- Click Select Plus or Try Plus, then follow the on-screen steps to choose the trial.
- To go full Plus early, click Upgrade early on the same page, confirm a 1 year or 3 year term, review payment details and subscribe.
If you decide Plus isn't for you, cancel from the same Plan page by choosing the plan you want to drop to. Before you do, check what you'll lose:
- Markets, locations or staff above your new plan's limits are deactivated automatically.
- App blocks you added to checkout pages are removed, though ones on the Thank you and customer accounts pages stay.
- Custom apps lose access to Shopify Functions, and third-party calculated shipping rates switch off unless your new plan includes carrier-calculated shipping.
- Only one Hydrogen storefront stays public.
- Core B2B stays, with up to 3 catalogs, but Plus-only B2B features such as unlimited catalogs, deposits and partial payments go. They come back if you upgrade again.
Prep to do weeks before launch
Shopify's go-live guide asks you to find out, at least four weeks ahead, which domain registrar you use, who has access to it, and whether services such as AWS hosting or Cloudflare will still be needed or are compatible. About 1 week before go-live, change the TTL with your domain provider to 300. The Plus plan includes an SSL certificate, but you can't transfer an existing certificate from another provider.
The warning I'd underline twice: Shopify doesn't offer a way to back up your store data. If you delete every product, there's no way to restore it, so plan manual or app-based backups, especially if a big team or several integrations can change your products, inventory or customers.
Migration order matters too. Import products first, then customers, then historical orders so each order links to the right product and customer. Shopify recommends bringing in 2-5 years of orders, and at minimum everything still inside your return window. Imported orders trigger new order notifications, so switch those off first. Move gift cards right before launch, because you can't edit or delete them in Shopify, and only the last 4 digits of each number show in your admin afterwards.
Launch day, step by step
- Create domains for all your stores and add them to Shopify.
- Set payments to live mode and deactivate private mode.
- Add URL redirects and put 404 monitoring in place.
- Change your root domain's A record to Shopify's IP address and the CNAME record to your Shopify-hosted domain.
- Connect your domain in Shopify and set your primary domain.
- Launch the online store, then resubmit your sitemap to Google Search Console.
- Send account invitations to the customers you imported.
Before you flip anything, Shopify's checklist also asks you to test a plain checkout, one with a discount code, one with a gift card, an abandoned checkout and a failed transaction, both logged in and logged out, on different browsers and devices.
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My verdict on Shopify Plus
I'd start the Plus trial if you're already selling at volume and need expansion stores, B2B depth or checkout control, and you've got a launch plan ready to run during those 1 to 2 months. I'd skip it if you're mainly curious, because the trial's paid and quietly turns into a full term if you forget to act. Put a reminder in your calendar the day you start. If wholesale is the reason you're looking, read my guide to Shopify B2B first, and if Plus feels like too much platform, compare Shopify alternatives before you commit.
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Frequently asked questions
How long is the Shopify Plus trial?
The trial lasts 1 to 2 months, depending on your store status.
What happens when the Shopify Plus trial ends?
If you take no action by the end of the trial, your store is automatically enrolled in a full Plus plan, with terms based on the options you selected during trial setup.
Is the Shopify Plus trial free?
No. The Shopify Plus trial is a paid trial, and the cost depends on your billing currency.
How many expansion stores does Shopify Plus include?
The full Plus plan supports 9 expansion stores, each needing its own theme licence when live. Expansion stores aren't available during the trial.
Can Shopify restore deleted store data?
No. Shopify doesn't offer a backup option, so if you delete products there's no way to restore them. Back up manually or with a third-party app.
