How to set up a Shopify Plus account

Shopify Plus is sold through a Plus Account Executive (not self-serve). Request a quote at shopify.com/plus → 'Talk to sales.' Expect a 2-3 week sales cycle.

The base is $2,300/mo for up to $800K/mo revenue, then 0.20% over that, capped at $40K/mo. Negotiate: 1-year ramp pricing if you're under $250K/mo currently, 3-year deals for discount, and bundled expansion stores (default is 9 included, ask for 11-15).

Confirm what's included: Launchpad (campaign scheduling), Flow (automation), Wholesale/B2B, ShopifyQL Notebooks, Functions limits, and Audiences. Some are 'available' but rate-limited — get the limits in writing.

Sign the contract through the AE. Shopify generates your Plus org and sends an 'Activate your Plus organization' email to the contract signer.

Click the activation link from Shopify's email. You'll land on https://admin.shopify.com/organization — this is the Plus org admin (NOT a store admin).

Set the organization name (legal entity name is best, e.g., 'Brand Holdings Inc.'). This shows on invoices and in audit logs.

Configure SSO: Organization → Users → Authentication. Connect Google Workspace, Okta, or Azure AD if you have it. SSO is Plus-only and worth setting up day one — it lets you provision/deprovision staff via your IdP instead of one-by-one in each store.

Set up the billing contact and tax info. Org-level billing is consolidated across all stores — no more per-store invoices.

Important: the org admin is where you'll create new expansion stores, manage cross-store users, and view audit logs. Bookmark it separately from any store URL.

Migrating from standard Shopify: your AE schedules an in-place upgrade. The store keeps its URL, products, orders, and apps — but gains Plus features. Schedule for a low-traffic window (e.g., 2am Sunday).

Starting fresh: Organization admin → Stores → 'Add store.' Choose 'New store' (production), 'Development store' (free, unlimited for testing), or 'Plus sandbox' (mirror of prod for QA).

Set the store's primary market (country), currency, and timezone. These are hard to change later — get them right now.

Install your theme, products, and apps. If migrating from standard, your existing apps mostly carry over — but verify each app's Plus compatibility (some apps charge differently for Plus).

Connect domains: Settings → Domains → Connect existing domain. Use a CNAME flatten or ALIAS at your DNS provider — Shopify Plus supports apex-domain CNAMEs unlike standard Shopify in some cases.

Organization admin → Users → Add user. Enter email, assign Organization-level role (Org Owner, Admin, Staff) and Store-level access.

Recommended role templates: (1) Marketing — read products, manage themes, manage marketing channels, no orders/customers; (2) Customer Service — read/edit orders, read customers, no themes/products; (3) Finance — read orders, read reports, no edit; (4) Dev — full themes/apps, no orders/customers.

Create these templates via Permissions → Custom roles. Apply per-staff. Audit quarterly — staff role creep is the #1 finding in SOC 2 audits for Plus accounts.

Enable 2FA enforcement: Organization → Security → Require two-step authentication for all users. Non-negotiable on a Plus account.

Organization admin → Stores → Add store → 'Expansion store.' Each expansion store is a separate Shopify admin with its own products, orders, and customers — but billed under the org.

Common patterns: (1) US-primary + EU-store + AU-store for tax/currency separation; (2) Wholesale-only B2B store separate from DTC store; (3) Sub-brand stores under one parent org.

Alternative: Shopify Markets handles multi-country on ONE store with localized currency, language, and shipping. Use Markets unless you have specific reasons for separate stores (different tax entity, different inventory, different team).

Plan inventory: each store is a separate inventory system unless you connect them via a multi-store inventory app (Stock Sync, Trunk, or Shopify's native multi-location).

Plan customer accounts: customers in Store A don't auto-exist in Store B. If a customer needs unified profile across stores, use Shopify's New Customer Accounts + customer sync app.

Launchpad: Plus org admin → search 'Launchpad' → install. Used to schedule flash sales, theme swaps, and discount toggles for time-bound campaigns. Not needed day-one; install when you run your first campaign.

Flow: Shopify Admin → Apps → Flow. Free for Plus. Used for automation (low-stock alerts, fraud holds, tag-customer-by-spend). Set up 3-5 baseline workflows in week 1.

B2B/Wholesale: Plus admin → Settings → Customers → Companies. Enable companies + price lists. This is the modern Shopify B2B (replaces the old Wholesale Channel which was deprecated).

ShopifyQL Notebooks: Analytics → Reports → ShopifyQL Notebooks. Plus-only SQL-like query interface against your store data. Skip if your team doesn't have SQL chops.

Functions: Apps → Build → Shopify Functions. Replaces Shopify Scripts (which were deprecated August 2024). Code-deployed via Shopify CLI. Likely needs a developer.

Test SSO: log out, log back in via your IdP. Confirm it lands on the org admin, not a single store.

Test staff roles: have a marketing-role user attempt to view Customers list. Should fail with permission error.

Test expansion store admin access: org Admin should see all stores in the org switcher (top-left of admin).

Subscribe to Shopify Status: status.shopify.com → Subscribe to all incidents. Plus customers get faster incident reports but you still need the public status feed.

Set up Shopify uptime monitoring at your own monitoring tool (Datadog, Better Uptime, Pingdom). Check the storefront URL + checkout page + admin. Alerts if any go > 30s response.

Document everything: org structure, staff roles, expansion stores, integrations. Plus accounts get audited (SOC 2, vendor due diligence). Documentation saves hours later.