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Charlie Semmence

In an ever-evolving and fiercely competitive ecommerce landscape, choosing the right platform is crucial for businesses looking to amplify their online presence. Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Shopify Plus are two popular choices that offer a range of features and solutions to meet the needs of online businesses. But which is better for you?
In this blog post, we’ll compare <a href="https://www.underwaterpistol.com/salesforce-commerce-cloud-to-shopify-plus-migration" target="_blank">Salesforce Commerce Cloud vs Shopify Plus</a>, examining each platform’s key features, pricing structures, customisation options and overall suitability for different business requirements. So, let's dive in and explore which platform might be the right fit for your ecommerce business.
 
<h2>Overview of Salesforce Commerce Cloud</h2>
 Salesforce Commerce Cloud, previously known as Demandware, is a cloud-based ecommerce platform that offers a robust set of features tailored to large-scale businesses. With a focus on B2B and B2C commerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud provides tools for managing complex catalogues, global sales, and customer experience. Historically, the platform has been a popular choice for mid-market and enterprise brands, however its demand has diminished in recent years as other, more cost-effective platforms have entered the market. A key benefit of Salesforce Commerce Cloud is that it integrates with other Salesforce products, allowing businesses to also leverage its CRM capabilities.
<h2>
 Overview of Shopify Plus
</h2>
 <a href="https://www.underwaterpistol.com/shopify-plus-agency" target="_blank">Shopify Plus</a> is another popular cloud-based ecommerce platform that’s known for its scalability, usability and flexibility. Introduced in 2014, Shopify Plus is the branch of the Shopify platform that’s designed for high-growth and enterprise-level ecommerce businesses. Shopify Plus is well-known for its more user-friendly interface, vast array of customisation options and extensive app marketplace, which features a wide variety of third-party apps and extensions. The platform’s popularity has increased dramatically in recent years, largely as a result of its significantly lower cost of ownership and impressive agility.
 
<h2>The key differences between Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Shopify Plus</h2>
 There are some key similarities between Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Shopify Plus, including the fact that they both provide fully managed SaaS solutions that allow brands to sell their products across multiple channels. They also both offer a wide range of features including product catalogue management, streamlined checkout processes, dynamic marketing campaigns, promotional tools and loyalty programmes.
However, there are also key differences. The Salesforce Commerce Cloud platform has a fairly limited ecosystem, but a wide range of native features. Customising these features can be a development-heavy process, which is why the platform has a reputation for being difficult to maintain.
Conversely, Shopify Plus, has a more consolidated core, and a vast ecosystem of third-party integrations that can be quickly and easily implemented, usually without heavy customisation work. This is a very different approach that can make it difficult to compare Salesforce Commerce Cloud vs Shopify Plus features side by side. But we’re going to do our best!
<h2>
 Salesforce Commerce Cloud vs. Shopify Plus: Comparison
</h2>
<h3>
 Features and functionality</h3>
 Both <a href="https://www.underwaterpistol.com/salesforce-commerce-cloud-to-shopify-plus-migration" target="_blank">Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Shopify Plus</a> come equipped with a rich set of features, but they differ in terms of their focus and approach. Salesforce Commerce Cloud emphasises enterprise-level functionalities, such as native visual merchandising tools, strong search features, advanced order management capabilities and a strong promotions engine. This can make it a good fit for businesses with complex merchandising and promotional needs.
The platform is also known for its advanced international capabilities, customer segmentation and personalisation features, and real-time dashboards and reporting, which allow businesses to optimise their ecommerce operations and drive growth.
On the other hand, Shopify Plus excels in simplicity and ease of use, providing a more intuitive interface. Shopify Plus is well-known for its seamless integration with a wide range of payment options, social checkouts, and support for various sales channels, making it a versatile platform for online merchants.
It also features impressive operational tools including a robust fulfilment network, native ERP integrations, built-in reporting, 24/7 support, scheduling features, and a vast selection of quality third-party apps through the app store.
When it comes to features and functionality, choosing between the two platforms ultimately depends on the specific needs and priorities of your business, whether it's focused on operational efficiency and scalability (Shopify Plus) or advanced merchandising and promotional capabilities (Salesforce Commerce Cloud). 
<h3>Price</h3>
 Let’s jump into one of the most important factors to consider when choosing the right ecommerce platform for your business: price.
In short, Salesforce Commerce Cloud is expensive. Rather than charging licensing fees upfront, <a href="https://www.salesforce.com/products/commerce-cloud/ecommerce/pricing/" target="_blank">SFCC’s pricing tiers</a> are scaled and merchants pay between 1-3% of their GMV (gross merchandise value). That means a retailer with sales of around £20 million could expect to pay around £200,000-£600,000 in licensing fees per year, plus charges for additional services. If you’re making £100 million, those fees could be between £1-3 million.
<a href="https://www.shopify.com/uk/plus/pricing" target="_blank">Pricing for Shopify Plus</a> starts at $2,000 (£1580) per month for retailers with revenue less than $800,000 per month. Brands whose revenue exceeds $800,000 per month pay 0.25% of GMV. Merchants on Shopify Plus should also expect to spend around £1500 a month on third-party apps. To make the same comparison, this means a retailer with sales of around £20 million could expect to pay around £37,000 a year.
There’s also a large discrepancy in build costs on the two platforms. The average build cost for a Salesforce Commerce Cloud site ranges from <a href="https://paulnrogers.com/salesforce-commerce-cloud-pricing-cost-of-ownership/" target="_blank">£300k – £500k</a>, depending on the scope of the project. For Shopify Plus, this range is significantly less at between £80k and £250k.
Ultimately, Shopify Plus is a considerably lower cost ecommerce platform. 
<h3>Customisation</h3>
 
Salesforce Commerce Cloud provides extensive customisation options, allowing businesses to tailor their online stores to their unique requirements. The platform offers a powerful yet complex development environment, enabling brands to create highly tailored and unique customer experiences.
However, this does come at a cost. Customisation on SFCC requires specialist Salesforce developers, who can be expensive given that their knowledge and skills command higher rates in the market.
On top of this, due to the intricacy and complexity of the Salesforce Commerce Cloud platform, extensive customisation and development work requires a significant amount of time and effort, further contributing to the overall cost of your online store.
Shopify Plus, although not natively as flexible as Salesforce Commerce Cloud, provides a wide range of options and integrations to customise your online store, and experienced agencies like <a href="https://www.underwaterpistol.com/" target="_blank">Underwaterpistol</a> can extend its capabilities to create almost limitless opportunities for customisation. Shopify Plus’ more user-friendly interface allows brands to make changes to their site and checkout more easily, without expensive dev support. This, coupled with the wide range of <a href="https://apps.shopify.com/collections/plus-certified-apps" target="_blank">Shopify Plus Certified Apps</a>, make it easier than ever for merchants to create immersive digital experiences on their terms. 
<h3>Time to market</h3>
 Shopify Plus is undoubtedly the leader when it comes to time to market. The platform’s intuitive back end makes it possible to launch a new store in just 3-6 months (other platforms can take up to a year) and implement ongoing feature development fast.
Shopify’s APIs are extremely well documented, enabling developers to integrate external applications and build custom functionalities with relative ease, saving time, effort and budget in the development process.
The level of customisation and personalisation Salesforce Commerce Cloud offers means it demands an extensive investment of time and effort to get the platform fully operational.
 
<h2>Salesforce Commerce Cloud vs. Shopify Plus: Which is best?</h2>
 As we’ve illustrated above, while both Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Shopify Plus offer a range of features, their emphasis and approach cater to different audiences. Salesforce Commerce Cloud targets enterprise-level businesses with advanced functionalities and complex management capabilities. The drawback: the sky-high cost of ownership and tricky-to-maintain platform.
Shopify Plus, on the other hand, is better suited to more agile, high-growth businesses who value ease of use and the ability to adapt quickly. With its intuitive interface, seamless inventory management and array of powerful third-party apps, Shopify Plus empowers businesses to scale and grow, without heavy time- and budget-consuming development work.
Ultimately, evaluating the features of <a href="https://www.underwaterpistol.com/salesforce-commerce-cloud-to-shopify-plus-migration" target="_blank">Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Shopify Plus</a>, and considering how they align with your unique requirements, will help you make an informed decision about which platform is the best fit for your business.
 
<h2>The best partner to help you excel on Shopify Plus</h2>
 Decided Shopify Plus is right for you? To get the best out of the platform, you need a <a href="https://www.underwaterpistol.com/" target="_blank">partner agency</a> that knows it inside out, offering tailored solutions and expert guidance to accelerate the growth of your business.
Since 2014, we've been working with hypergrowth brands to boost conversions, enhance retention and curate industry-leading customer experiences on Shopify Plus. We have the expertise to take your site to the next level. <a href="https://www.underwaterpistol.com/contact" target="_blank">Talk to us</a> about creating your roadmap to success.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud vs. Shopify Plus: Comparison