A Shopify Plus consultant who has actually run Plus at scale.
A Shopify Plus consultant advises on what to do with Plus, and an implementation agency builds it. The agency ships the scope you hand it; the consultant makes sure that scope is right first. On Plus that means checkout extensibility, B2B, Markets and international, and the order you take them in.
I'm Taylor Sicard. I was an early Shopify employee who helped build and scale the Partner Program, then co-founded WIN Brands Group, and have run portfolios of consumer brands to the mid nine figures on Plus.
A Shopify Plus consultant is a senior operator who decides what should be built on Plus and why. That is a different job from the agency that builds it. Brands buy Plus for control, and control means more decisions: checkout logic, B2B, multi-store, staff permissions and app sprawl all become choices somebody has to own. The consultant owns that brief before an agency scopes against it, because a Plus build scoped against the wrong constraint costs a quarter and rarely gets rebuilt.
Plus is bought for control. Control adds decisions.
I pressure-test Plus roadmaps for brands already on the platform and for the ones being quoted for a migration.
On standard Shopify the platform makes a lot of decisions for you, and that is useful. On Plus it hands them back: how checkout behaves, how B2B and DTC coexist, how you sell across countries and currencies, how much you automate. Each one adds a capability and a decision you now own. The brands that do well on Plus spend that control carefully and leave some of it unused.
Already on Plus
You have the control and now face the decisions that come with it: checkout customization requests stacking up, a B2B question you keep deferring, an international launch nobody can price, and a roadmap that's really a wish list. I sequence that list by return and reversibility.
Weighing the move to Plus
You are being quoted for a migration and can't tell whether the capabilities map to constraints you have. Before you commit, separate what you will use from what merely sounds powerful. Start with when to move to Plus and the real all-in cost.
An agency ships the build. Someone has to own the brief.
A Plus implementation agency is necessary and often excellent at what it does: building the store, wiring integrations, shipping checkout work. Structurally, it won't tell you the project you commissioned is the wrong priority this quarter, because an agency is paid to deliver the scope and the scope is yours to get right.
| Your gap | The right tool | Why |
|---|---|---|
| The roadmap itself is the question | Fractional Plus advisor | Judgment on which Plus capabilities earn their maintenance |
| Roadmap is clear, you need it built | Plus implementation agency | Execution capacity once the brief is right |
| A whole function, all day, ongoing | Full-time hire | True ownership the business cannot run without |
The two roles work best together, the advisor shaping the roadmap and the agency executing it. That division is the whole argument in Shopify Expert vs consultant vs agency, and the cost math sits in fractional advisor vs agency vs a full-time hire. Advisory runs from $10,000 a month against $25,000 to $35,000 fully loaded for the equivalent full-time hire, or $12,000 to $22,000 for a fractional executive covering one function. For plenty of Plus brands an advisor is the wrong tool, and I'll tell you when yours is one of them.
Four places Plus complexity bites.
Most of the hard Plus decisions concentrate in four areas, and none of them is a code problem. Each one is a judgment call an implementation team is not positioned to make, because its job is to build what you ask for.
| Area | The real decision | Cost of getting it wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Checkout extensibility | Customize where, and how much | Maintenance debt, blocked updates |
| B2B on Plus | When to run wholesale and DTC together | Mispriced channels, ops drag |
| Markets / international | Which markets, and when | Unprofitable expansion |
| Org & process | What to build in-house vs buy | Scaling the wrong cost base |
If a replatform is the live question rather than the roadmap, the comparisons are in Adobe Commerce vs Shopify Plus and enterprise TCO.
The expensive Plus decisions are the ones made in week two of a build that nobody writes down. If you are mid-build or about to start one, this is the moment it is worth most.
Thirty minutes before either of us commits.
30-minute call
We settle what Plus is being asked to solve, and more often than not that answer reframes the roadmap. The call is free.
The Read
Two weeks, fixed fee. I go through the storefront, the Plus configuration, the backlog, and the numbers, then hand you a written read on sequencing. You tell me where it's wrong. Credited back if you sign a tier within 30 days.
Pick a tier
Consulting, Advisory, or Partner, from $6,000 a month. Plus work usually sits in Advisory, a weekly call plus Slack, often running alongside your implementation partner.
Hand off
It ends once your team makes the Plus calls without me, whatever the contract term says.
I have paid for these mistakes myself.
The most useful Plus advisor has operated at this scale as well as consulted on it. Having handled the checkout trade-offs, the B2B configuration, the international P&L, and the org strain of scaling changes the advice, because you know from experience which mistakes hurt.
I joined Shopify early to help build and scale the Partner Program, which gave me the platform from the inside, the builders selling into it, and the merchants growing on top of it. From there I co-founded WIN Brands Group, the acquirer behind Homesick and Qalo, and built Uptime and sold it to Tiny, a publicly traded acquirer. If the roadmap isn't obviously right, that is the call worth pressure-testing before you fund it. Selected outcomes are in the case studies, the longer version is in the full background, and the broader remit is in Shopify growth consulting.
Five questions I get before the call.
Get the brief right before the build starts.
Use the free 30 minutes to tell me what Plus is being asked to solve and what the roadmap looks like. I'll tell you where it's wrong, and whether I'm the right person to fix it. If you'd rather see a number first, the free Plus cost calculator gives you the all-in monthly figure.