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. If the move also means reconnecting an ERP or OMS, price that integration work before you compare platform fees. If you are coming from another platform, the trade-offs are in BigCommerce vs Shopify Plus and Salesforce Commerce Cloud vs Shopify Plus.
If you are moving from Magento, BigCommerce or Salesforce Commerce Cloud, the integrations usually set the budget: the ERP, the OMS and the 3PL feeds all have to be mapped and tested before cutover. The platform-by-platform trade-offs are in Magento to Shopify migration, BigCommerce vs Shopify Plus and Salesforce Commerce Cloud vs Shopify Plus.
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 $30,000 to $45,000 or more 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.
Who should you hire to migrate to Shopify Plus?
Most Plus migrations need two hires. A Shopify Plus partner agency does the build: theme, data migration, apps and integrations. An independent consultant writes the brief, checks the quotes and owns the cutover plan, so the agency is building the right thing. Published 2026 agency ranges put a mid-market migration at $20,000 to $75,000 and an enterprise or B2B build with an ERP at $60,000 to $250,000 or more, over roughly eight weeks to ten months. Plus itself starts at $2,300 a month on a three-year term.
| Who | What they own | What it costs |
|---|---|---|
| Plus partner agency | The build, the data move, apps, integrations, launch | $20,000 to $75,000 mid-market; $60,000 to $250,000+ enterprise or B2B with an ERP |
| Independent consultant | The brief, agency selection, quote review, cutover plan, the first 90 days | The Read at $5,000 to $15,000 fixed, or Consulting from $6,000 a month |
| Your own team | Everything after launch | The people you already pay |
Four questions sort migration partners quickly. Have they moved two stores from your platform to Plus in the last year? Can they list the logic that lives outside your catalog (checkout rules, customer-group pricing, ERP sync, custom modules) before they quote? What is their redirect plan, and what do they expect in the first week? Shopify calls a 5% to 10% traffic dip common even with perfect redirects. And who fixes what breaks in the first 30 days?
The cost detail by source platform is in Magento to Shopify migration: the cost, and what breaks, and the case for moving at all is in when to move to Shopify Plus.
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.
What a Shopify Plus consultant costs.
My tiers are published, so you can price this before a call. The market anchors beside them are 2026 US ranges, and how consultant rates are set across the market is in what a growth consultant costs.
| Option | What it costs | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| The Read | $5,000, $10,000 or $15,000, fixed | An optional two-week written read, credited if you sign a tier within 30 days |
| Consulting | From $6,000 a month | A 60-minute call every two weeks, email between calls |
| Advisory | From $10,000 a month | A weekly call, Slack between calls, the models we decide from |
| Partner | From $20,000 a month | Two calls a week and a seat in your leadership meetings |
| Boutique strategy consultancy | $200 to $500 an hour | Project work, staffed by whoever is free |
| DTC growth agency retainer | $15,000 to $50,000 a month plus a share of media | Execution, with creative and landing pages billed on top |
The platform fee is a separate line from any of these. Model it against your own GMV with the Shopify Plus cost estimator.
The 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.