What does a Shopify Plus developer do that a regular Shopify developer does not?
A Shopify Plus developer works with capabilities that stores on lower plans cannot use: custom apps that contain Shopify Function APIs, deeper checkout customization, native B2B, Launchpad and expansion stores. Theme work is the same Liquid everyone uses; the difference is everything around checkout, pricing logic and operations.
Shopify’s developer documentation is explicit on the most important point: only stores on a Plus plan can use custom apps that contain Shopify Function APIs, while public apps from the App Store work on every plan. That single rule shapes most Plus projects. A brand on Plus can have code written just for its own discount stack, shipping rules or payment filtering. A brand on Advanced has to find a public app that does roughly the same thing.
So when you hire a Shopify Plus developer, you are really hiring someone comfortable with the Shopify CLI, app extensions, GraphQL Admin API, WebAssembly-compiled Functions and the checkout editor, as well as themes. Ask to see how they deploy an extension, how they version it and how they would roll it back. If the answer is only about theme files, you are talking to a theme developer, which is fine for theme work but not for Plus-only features.
- Custom apps with Shopify Functions, deployed through the Shopify CLI
- Checkout UI extensions and web pixels
- B2B companies, catalogs and wholesale storefront logic
- Launchpad events, Flow workflows and expansion-store setup
- GraphQL Admin API integrations with ERP, 3PL and PIM systems
When is Shopify Plus worth it for a US DTC brand?
Plus is worth it when a feature it unlocks either earns or saves more than the subscription each month. Common triggers are wholesale on the same store, custom checkout logic, several storefronts for different regions or brands, and flash sales that need precise scheduling.
According to Shopify’s Plus pricing page, the platform fee includes the main store plus nine expansion stores, and Plus includes built-in B2B tools for running wholesale and direct-to-consumer business from one place. If you currently run a separate wholesale site, a second store for Canada or a third-party wholesale app, those lines on your budget are the ones to compare.
Plus is not automatically worth it for a brand that simply sells a lot. High volume on a standard plan can be perfectly fine if checkout is standard and there is no B2B. We tell brands honestly when an Advanced plan plus a few well-chosen public apps covers the need; the Shopify Plus developer you hire should be willing to say “you do not need Plus yet”. If you are still deciding on a platform at all, our ecommerce website development page compares options more broadly.
Strong reasons to upgrade
Wholesale buyers who need their own prices and terms, custom discount or shipping rules that no public app handles, and multiple storefronts managed by one team.
Weak reasons to upgrade
Prestige, a vague sense that big brands use it, or a single feature that a public app already provides on your current plan.
Checkout extensibility: what a Shopify Plus developer builds now that checkout.liquid is gone
Checkout is now customized with checkout UI extensions, the checkout editor, branding settings and web pixels, not by editing a checkout.liquid file. For Plus brands that relied on custom checkout code, the job is to rebuild those customizations in the supported way.
Shopify’s checkout developer documentation states that checkout.liquid is unsupported for the Information, Shipping and Payment steps, and that it was sunset for the Thank you and Order status pages on August 28, 2025. Script tags on those pages were sunset on the same date for Plus stores. The Shopify Help Center adds that the additional scripts box became view-only on that date, with blocks and web pixels as the replacements.
In practice, a Shopify Plus developer takes an inventory of everything that used to happen in checkout: tracking tags, gift notes, delivery date pickers, loyalty messages, custom fields for B2B purchase order numbers, and post-purchase surveys. Each item maps to one of four tools: a UI extension block, a web pixel for analytics, a Function for logic, or a native setting. We write that map down first, so you can see what will look slightly different and approve it before launch.
- Tracking and conversion tags move to web pixels
- Custom fields, notes and upsell content move to UI extension blocks
- Discount, shipping and payment logic moves to Functions
- Colors, fonts and layout move to checkout branding settings
Shopify Functions replaced Scripts: what changed on June 30, 2026
Shopify Scripts are gone. The Shopify Help Center states that Scripts were deprecated on June 30, 2026 and that any Scripts still published on a store were deactivated and no longer work. Functions are the successor.
If your checkout logic ran on Ruby Scripts, such as a buy-two-get-one rule, free shipping for VIP tags or hiding cash on delivery for certain carts, that behavior stopped at the deadline unless someone rebuilt it. Shopify describes Functions as running in under 5 milliseconds on WebAssembly, distributed as apps and configured in the admin, which also means your marketing team can often adjust settings without editing code.
The Function types listed in Shopify’s documentation include cart transform, discounts, fulfillment constraints and order routing, delivery customization, payment customization and cart and checkout validation. A good Shopify Plus developer builds each rule as a small, focused Function with a settings screen, rather than one giant block of logic. That keeps rules testable and lets you switch one off before a sale without touching the rest.
If your rules already stopped
Check the Scripts customizations report in your admin; it lists which Scripts were active and suggests replacements. We use it as the starting brief.
If a public app covers the rule
Use it. A custom Function is only worth building when no public app matches your exact logic or when app fees add up over time.
How do you rebuild old Shopify Scripts as Functions?
Rebuild by behavior, not by line of code: write down what each Script did for which customers and carts, then pick the Function type that owns that behavior. Line-item Scripts usually become discount or cart transform Functions; shipping Scripts become delivery customizations; payment Scripts become payment customizations.
Our steps look like this. First, export the old Script source if you still have it, plus the Scripts report from the admin. Second, write each rule as a plain-English test: “a cart with two or more items from the Bundles collection gets 15% off the cheapest one”. Third, choose the Function API and build it in a custom app with a configuration screen. Fourth, run it on a development store with test orders that cover edge cases: mixed carts, discount codes stacked on top, B2B buyers, international addresses.
Then we deploy to your store with the Function switched off, compare results against the written tests on a duplicate theme, and switch it on at a quiet hour. For a Shopify Plus developer, the risky part is not writing the Function; it is the interaction with discount combinations and other apps. That is why every rule gets its own test case sheet that you keep after handover.
- Collect the old Scripts and the admin Scripts report
- Rewrite each rule as a plain-English test case
- Choose the Function API and build inside a custom app
- Test on a development store with edge-case carts
- Deploy switched off, verify, then enable at a quiet time
B2B and wholesale on Shopify Plus: one store or two?
For most US brands, one store with native B2B beats a separate wholesale store. You keep one catalog, one inventory count and one order stream, while wholesale buyers see their own prices, payment options and content.
Shopify’s B2B documentation describes companies set up in the admin, catalogs and pricing per customer, draft orders and personalized experiences covering pricing, currency, products, payment and shipping methods and store content. For a brand that sells to boutiques, salons, gyms or distributors, that replaces spreadsheets and emailed order forms.
A Shopify Plus developer’s work here is part configuration and part theme. Configuration covers companies, locations, catalogs and which buyers see what. Theme work covers quick-order tables, case-pack quantities, reorder buttons and hiding retail-only promotions from wholesale buyers. Integrations cover pushing B2B orders to your ERP or accounting system. A separate expansion store still makes sense if wholesale needs a different brand, domain or product set entirely.
One store with B2B
Best when wholesale buyers order the same products at different prices and you want a single inventory and order history.
Separate expansion store
Best when wholesale uses a different brand, exclusive products or a completely different buying journey.
Shopify Plus developer help with Shopify Markets for Canada and international buyers
Shopify Markets lets a brand group countries into markets and set currency, pricing, language and domain per market from one admin. For a US brand, Canada is usually the first market, then the UK, Australia or Europe.
Shopify’s Markets documentation covers selling in different currencies, pricing in local currencies with market-level adjustments, translation and localization, duties and import taxes including duty- and tax-inclusive pricing, and international domains. A Shopify Plus developer sets these up and then deals with the edges: theme text that must be translated, product availability per market, shipping zones, hreflang tags so Google shows the right version, and analytics that separate markets cleanly.
We work in English. For a French-language experience for Quebec shoppers or any other language, you supply or approve the translated copy, and we wire it in. We do not give advice on your tax or customs obligations; your accountant or customs broker should confirm those settings. What we deliver is a written settings log per market so your team knows exactly what was configured. For search visibility across markets, ecommerce SEO services covers the content side.
- Currency and rounding rules per market
- Price lists or percentage adjustments per market
- Translated theme text and product content you approve
- Duties and import taxes settings, confirmed by your advisor
- Subfolders or domains with hreflang tags
Flow and Launchpad automations a Shopify Plus developer can set up
Flow automates routine store work with triggers, conditions and actions; Launchpad schedules sales events with a start and end time. Together they remove the late-night manual switching that drops and holiday sales used to require.
Shopify’s help center describes Flow as a free app on the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus plans, with the Send HTTP Request action limited to Grow, Advanced and Plus. Launchpad is listed on the Shopify App Store as available only to Plus customers, for scheduling product visibility, themes, discounts and more over a defined window. A Shopify Plus developer turns your operations playbook into these tools.
Typical Flow workflows we build: tag and hold high-risk orders for review, alert the warehouse when stock falls below a threshold, tag wholesale buyers who order above a set volume, push VIP customers to your email platform and send a Slack or email alert when a product sells out. Typical Launchpad events: a drop that publishes a collection, switches to a campaign theme and enables a discount at 10 am Eastern, then reverts at midnight. We document each workflow so your team can pause it without a developer. Where language models help, such as summarizing customer notes, our AI agent development page explains the approach.
Migrating from Magento to Shopify Plus: what moves and what needs rebuilding
Products, customers, orders, content and URLs move; custom modules, checkout code and server-side logic get rebuilt as apps, Functions or native settings. The migration is really two projects: a data move and a feature rebuild.
Magento stores tend to carry years of extensions, custom attributes and configurable products. We start with an audit: every extension and what it does, every attribute and whether it maps to a metafield or metaobject, every customer group and whether it maps to B2B companies or tags. Configurable products usually become products with variants; if a product has more options than Shopify allows, we plan a bundle or split structure before anything moves.
URL structure changes, because Shopify uses fixed paths such as /products/ and /collections/. A Shopify Plus developer maps every old URL that earns traffic or links to its new home and loads those redirects before launch. Customer passwords cannot be carried across, so we plan an account activation email. We run at least one rehearsal import on a development store, check totals and spot-check records, then do the final import and cutover on a quiet day with a rollback plan.
- Extension audit: keep, replace with an app, rebuild as a Function, or drop
- Attribute mapping to metafields and metaobjects
- Customer groups mapped to B2B companies or tags
- Full redirect map for URLs with traffic or backlinks
- Rehearsal import, record counts and spot checks
Moving from BigCommerce to Shopify Plus
A BigCommerce move is usually lighter than a Magento move because both platforms are hosted and data structures are closer. The main work is product option mapping, customer groups, URL redirects and replacing apps with Shopify equivalents.
BigCommerce customer groups and price lists often map to Shopify B2B catalogs, which is one of the common reasons brands choose Plus as the destination. Product options and modifier rules need a close look, since complex modifiers may become line-item properties in the theme or a cart transform Function. Blog content and custom pages move across as pages and articles, with images re-uploaded to Shopify’s file storage.
As with any replatform, redirects protect search traffic. We export the old site’s URLs, pull the ones with clicks from Search Console, map each to its new address and test them after launch. We also compare page speed and structured data before and after. If you are planning a design refresh at the same time, doing it during migration saves a second round of work; our website redesign services page covers how we keep rankings intact through a redesign.
How much does a Shopify Plus developer cost?
A Shopify Plus developer is priced by the features you need, not by the Plus badge. With us, Plus store builds and migrations start at US$750, custom Function or extension apps start at US$900, and Flow or AI automations start at US$600.
What moves a Plus quote: the number of Functions and extensions, how many B2B catalogs and markets, integrations with an ERP, 3PL or PIM, catalog size and data quality on a migration, and how many custom theme templates are involved. A migration with ten thousand clean SKUs can cost less than one with two thousand SKUs and messy attributes, because cleanup is manual.
Other options, from US Plus agencies to in-house engineers, vary widely in price, driven by team size, strategy and creative work included, and support terms. We do not quote other people’s rates. We do make our own quote itemized so you can compare it line by line. For a broader view of hiring models, see the cost to hire a web developer in the US, and for smaller Shopify jobs, Shopify developer cost.
How to vet a Shopify Plus developer before you sign
Ask for proof of the specific Plus skills your project needs, not a general portfolio. A great theme portfolio says little about Functions, B2B or migrations.
Good questions: How would you rebuild this specific Script as a Function, and which API would you use? How do you test discount combinations? What happens to our tracking when additional scripts are gone? How do you handle a B2B buyer who also shops retail? How would you structure markets for Canada? What is your rollback plan on migration day? A capable Shopify Plus developer answers in concrete terms and admits when something needs a spike or a test first.
Also check working practices. Will they use collaborator access rather than asking for your owner login? Do they keep custom apps in a repository you own? Do they write handover notes? Will they tell you when a public app is the better choice? We work through collaborator accounts, keep code in your repository, and write a settings log and test sheet for every Plus feature we touch. There is no formal badge required to build on Plus; there is a lot of specific knowledge required.
- Ask for one Function they built and how it was tested
- Ask how they replaced additional scripts with web pixels
- Ask for their migration rollback plan
- Confirm collaborator access and a repository in your name
- Confirm handover documents: settings log, test cases, credentials list
Plus does not make a storefront faster by itself; the theme, apps and images do. A Shopify Plus developer should measure Core Web Vitals, remove app scripts that no longer earn their place and keep product and collection pages lean.
Google’s web.dev guidance treats a Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint of 200 milliseconds or less and Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.1 or less as good at the 75th percentile. Plus brands often run many apps, and every storefront script competes with the product image for bandwidth. We measure before and after, lazy-load below-the-fold media and replace display-only apps with theme sections.
For search, Plus brands with markets need correct hreflang, faceted navigation that does not create endless crawlable filter URLs, product schema and clean collection copy. For AI search, clear product facts, comparison content and question-led FAQ blocks help assistants describe your products accurately. Headless builds with Hydrogen are possible, but for most DTC brands a well-built Liquid theme is faster to launch and cheaper to maintain; we recommend headless only when there is a clear reason. Our technical SEO services cover audits in depth.
Working with a remote Shopify Plus developer in India from the US
The overnight rhythm suits Plus work well: you send requests during your day, we build and test during ours, and you review on a staging theme or development store in your morning. US Eastern mornings overlap with IST evenings for live calls.
In the first week, you add us as collaborators with only the permissions needed, share your app list, Scripts report, B2B and markets plans, and any ERP or 3PL documentation. We send an itemized USD quote in about two working days and start after written approval. In the second week, you usually see the first extension or Function running on a development store with a test sheet, and a settings log that grows as work progresses.
We never need your owner account. Custom apps live in a repository you own; invoices come from India and are paid by wire, Wise or PayPal. There are no site visits, no US office and no local entity. Contract terms come from your written quote and our published terms; send your own NDA if you need one. For the wider picture of remote teams, hiring developers in India explains how the arrangement works.
- Calls: roughly 8 to 11 am US Eastern
- Reviews: duplicate theme or development store links
- Access: collaborator account with scoped permissions
- Payment: USD by wire, Wise or PayPal
Worked example: a hypothetical skincare brand adding wholesale and Canada on Plus
Say a hypothetical skincare brand in Austin sells direct to consumers, wants spas and salons to order wholesale, and plans to launch in Canada. It upgrades to Plus. Here is how a Shopify Plus developer might scope it; the brand and details are illustrative.
Phase one is B2B: create companies for spa accounts, a wholesale catalog with case-pack pricing, a quick-order page in the theme and a Function that validates minimum order quantities. Phase two is Markets: a Canada market with Canadian-dollar pricing, a French translation the brand supplies for Quebec shoppers, duties settings confirmed by its customs advisor and hreflang tags on the subfolder. Phase three is operations: a Flow workflow that tags wholesale orders for the warehouse and a Launchpad event for the Canadian launch morning.
The quote would list each phase separately: B2B configuration and theme work under the store line from US$750, the validation Function under the custom app line from US$900, and the workflows under automation from US$600. The brand approves phase one first, sees it working on a development store, then approves the rest. After launch, two months of maintenance are free. Nothing here is a real client or result; it shows how the work breaks down.
Risks on Shopify Plus projects and how we reduce them
The biggest Plus risks are silent: a discount Function that stacks with a code in an unexpected way, a tracking pixel that stops firing, or redirects missed during migration. Each one can cost money quietly for weeks.
We reduce discount risk with written test cases for every rule and every combination setting. We reduce tracking risk by comparing conversion events in your analytics before and after checkout changes. We reduce migration risk with a rehearsal import, record counts, a redirect test on launch day and a rollback plan. We reduce app risk by listing every installed app, what it touches and whether it still earns its fee.
There are also risks we cannot remove. Shopify changes APIs on a regular versioning schedule, so custom apps need occasional updates; that is what the care plan covers. Third-party apps can change behavior without notice. And if your ERP vendor’s API is slow or poorly documented, integration takes longer. We flag these in the quote so the timeline is honest.
- Discount stacking and combination settings
- Tracking gaps after checkout changes
- Missed redirects on migration
- API version updates for custom apps
- Third-party app changes outside anyone’s control
Shopify Plus developer handover checklist
Before you sign off any Plus project, walk through this list with your Shopify Plus developer. Anything missing is cheaper to fix before final payment than after.
- All custom apps in a repository your business owns
- Settings log for B2B, Markets, Flow and Launchpad
- Test-case sheet for every Function and discount combination
- Web pixels verified against analytics conversion events
- Redirect map loaded and spot-checked after launch
- Collaborator access removed or reduced as you choose
- List of installed apps with purpose and monthly cost
- Care plan scope agreed for the period after free maintenance
When you are ready to scope your Plus work, send your app list and goals through the contact page or WhatsApp, and we will reply with questions or an itemized quote.