Frequently Asked Questions

Start with Shopify's native features and the App Store. Build custom when the job is specific to how your business runs, like West Paw's Quick Order Tool for wholesale buyers, or when an off-the-shelf app would load far more than you need.

No. Shopify's B2B features, including company accounts, catalogs, price lists and payment terms, run on Basic, Grow and Advanced too. You need Plus for more than three catalog assignments, or for deposits, partial payments and catalogs assigned directly to a company.

Yes. Access is controlled with customer tags and rules, and the real work is the application, approval and renewal flow around them. Bioelements Pro runs five gated customer types, from spas to students, with automated expiration and reapply flows, and launched on schedule on August 4, 2026.

It depends on how many bundles, subscribers and customer notices have to move. Moon Juice's subscription program moved to Recharge in 25 days, with its bundles converted to native Recharge and its subscriber touchpoints updated.

No. We don't build headless Shopify storefronts, and honestly, most brands shouldn't be on headless in the first place. Unless you have a very specific technical or business case that requires it, headless adds cost and complexity without a meaningful return. If you're currently on a headless setup and questioning it, we can help you migrate back to native Shopify.

Yes. We build custom themes and heavily customize existing themes depending on what a brand needs. We build on Shopify's native theme architecture in Liquid.

Yes. We take on defined project engagements for redesigns, migrations, custom feature development, and audits. Many one-time project clients become retainer clients afterward.

Yes. We handle migrations from platforms like WooCommerce, Magento, BigCommerce, and custom-built storefronts. We manage the technical, design, and data transfer components.

Yes. Many of our clients are on Shopify Plus, and we're experienced with Plus capabilities like checkout customization and expansion stores, along with B2B and multi-market setups.

Yes. We build and migrate subscription programs on Shopify, including platform moves. We migrated Moon Juice's subscription program to Recharge in 25 days.

Yes. We offer an initial conversation at no cost to explore whether there's a fit. Reach out through softlimit.com to start that conversation.

Not as a standalone service. We don't do keyword research, content SEO, or ongoing SEO retainers. What we do is build Shopify stores that are technically sound and well-structured from the ground up, which means fast load times, clean markup, proper metadata, and solid site architecture. If you need a dedicated SEO agency, we're happy to recommend partners we trust.

Yes. We have a strong niche working with music labels, artists, and music-adjacent brands selling merchandise, vinyl, limited editions, and digital products through Shopify. Clients include Polyvinyl Records, Sacred Bones Records and Merge Records.

Yes. We track Shopify's roadmap closely, including agentic commerce.

Yes. We're experienced with most major Shopify-adjacent tools including Klaviyo, Gorgias, Recharge, Yotpo, Okendo, Rebuy, and many others. We can recommend, implement, or optimize around whatever stack you're already on. At Verb Products, the Rebuy recommendations and cross-sells we built into the storefront produced a 59% ROI and a 15% lift in AOV in the first 30 days, per Rebuy's case study.

Yes. We build on Shopify's native B2B features, including wholesale pricing, company accounts and trade portals, and hybrid DTC and wholesale setups. Bioelements Pro launched a gated B2B platform, a full rebrand and a new Pro Academy with us, on schedule.

Yes. We work with brands across music, consumer goods, and specialty retail, including record labels and product sellers with loyal, sophisticated audiences.

Email hello@softlimit.com or start a project at softlimit.com/pages/contact-us.

We use Slack for day-to-day client communication and ClickUp for task and project management. Clients get visibility into what's being worked on and when.

Builds run mid-five figures into six figures, depending on complexity. Retainers start at $5,000 a month on a 25-hour floor.

We scope every Shopify Plus migration to cover order history, customer accounts, redirects for every URL that carries organic traffic, and subscription continuity through the billing cutover. Polyvinyl Records moved off 15 years of custom code to Shopify Plus with us, and revenue grew 20% year over year since launch, per Shopify's case study.

Large migrations and complex projects typically run 12 to 16 weeks, depending on content readiness and how much custom development is involved, and smaller redesigns move faster. Against a hard deadline on tightly constrained scope, faster still is possible: we relaunched Verb Products in 8 weeks and migrated Moon Juice's subscriptions to Recharge in 25 days.

Softlimit has been building on Shopify since 2011, through major platform shifts including Shopify Plus, Online Store 2.0 and checkout extensibility.

Shopify lists Plus from $2,300 a month. One- and three-year terms are available, and Shopify sets the final price with you. Our work on top of it is priced separately: builds run mid-five figures into six figures depending on complexity, and retainers start at $5,000 a month.

Yes. Softlimit is a Shopify Premier Partner.

Not if you're already on Shopify. Upgrading is a plan change on the same store, made in the admin under Settings > Plan or through a quote from Shopify's Plus team, rather than a move to a new store. The work is in using what Plus adds: checkout extensions, Shopify Functions, expansion stores and B2B. Coming from another platform is a migration, with data, redirects and integrations to move.

Yes. For Julie Vos we built gift notes, gift boxing and send-as-a-gift options into the cart and checkout experience. Boxing and notes need a path through your warehouse, and a send-as-a-gift flow has to handle a recipient address that differs from the buyer's.

Shopify limits how many variants a single product can hold, so a catalog that outgrows the limit needs a deliberate design. For The Perfect Jean we engineered a custom solution that manages 23,000 variants within one product page.

Yes, with architecture that accounts for them. Native pre-order support is minimal, and the real work is in how inventory, apps, fulfillment holds and customer communication are configured between purchase and ship date. It is a scoping decision, not a platform limitation.

It is a music discovery site, not a store. It holds no inventory, processes no purchases and has no checkout. Buyers click through to the artist's, label's or independent shop's own Shopify store and pay the merchant there. Softlimit built and operates it on Shopify's Global Catalog.

Solid Gold Pet's rebuild took about five months, from a December 2025 kickoff to a May 13, 2026 go-live, including two full QA rounds. Scope sets the timeline for any pet brand, and brands with regulated claims should plan claims review inside the schedule.

Yes. Shopify's native B2B runs in the same store as the direct-to-consumer storefront, so retailers get their own pricing and ordering while pet owners subscribe through an app such as Ordergroove. We have built each half for pet brands: subscriptions on Ordergroove for Solid Gold Pet, and native B2B with a Quick Order Tool for West Paw. The work is in giving each buyer their own experience on one catalog. If the build includes a migration, existing subscribers and wholesale accounts should be scoped as deliverables from the start.

Advanced covers most of what a single-store brand needs, including B2B with up to three catalog assignments, Shopify Flow and international Markets. Plus adds expansion stores, checkout customization on the information, shipping and payment steps, custom apps with Shopify Functions, Launchpad, Shopify Audiences in eligible markets, unlimited B2B catalogs with deposits and partial payments, and higher API limits.

We start with a discovery conversation to understand the brand's goals, pain points, and current stack. If there's a fit, we produce a scoped proposal or SOW. For most clients, we'll also run a Signal audit before or during onboarding to ground our strategy in data.

Retainers typically cover ongoing development, CRO work, A/B testing, technical maintenance, and strategic guidance. Engagements start at $5,000 per month and are scoped based on what the brand actually needs.

Shopify Premier Partner status is earned through commercial impact with Shopify merchants, including Shopify Plus engagements, measured over the trailing two years. It means Shopify recognizes our track record with growing brands.

We don't screen by revenue. Most of our clients are established DTC brands, many on Shopify Plus, and we're built for larger, more complex projects. The fit is about the depth of the work and a team that wants a real partner. Low-lift ticket work and price-shopping aren't a fit.

GEO stands for generative engine optimization. It measures how well your store is positioned to be cited and recommended by AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. Signal includes a GEO readiness score as part of its audit output.

Shopify Plus is Shopify's highest published plan, built for larger and more complex brands. It runs on the same platform as the other plans and adds up to nine expansion stores, checkout customization on every step, custom apps that use Shopify Functions, Launchpad, higher API limits and unlimited staff accounts.

Signal is Softlimit's proprietary AI-powered audit system. It evaluates a Shopify store across multiple dimensions including conversion readiness, SEO health, and GEO readiness, and produces a scored, prioritized roadmap for improvement.

Softlimit is a Shopify Premier Partner agency headquartered in New York. We're a senior team that rebuilds, migrates and grows brands on Shopify and Shopify Plus.

We work with brands that are doing well but think they should be doing better. We figure out why and fix it.

The skill set is specialized and the hiring pool is thin, the platform changes twice a year, one or two developers become a single point of failure, and QA and release discipline rarely survive a team of one. Most mid-market brands end up with a hybrid: an in-house team plus an agency partner. Our guide compares the models: softlimit.com/blogs/insights/the-complete-guide-to-scaling-shopify-development.

Rebuilds and redesigns, Shopify Plus migrations, B2B and wholesale, subscription programs, app integrations, strategy and audits, and ongoing retainers.

Ask which Shopify-native capabilities they used on their last build where an app was the obvious shortcut, what made a past subscription or ERP integration reliable, what their QA covers before launch, and what the work looks like in months two through six. Our full list: softlimit.com/blogs/insights/questions-to-ask-a-shopify-plus-agency-in-2026.

Usually when something in the business changes: moving to Shopify Plus, a site that can't keep up with growth, adding wholesale, a catalog that outgrew its theme, a subscription program that needs to move, or needing a senior team that stays after launch.

We work primarily with direct-to-consumer brands. We have particular depth in music (labels, artists, merchandise, vinyl, limited editions), pet, lifestyle and consumer goods. We don't limit ourselves to a single industry, but we do gravitate toward brands with a strong product story and an audience that cares deeply about the buying experience.

Usually when unplanned fixes keep displacing the roadmap, small changes turn into projects, apps are doing the platform's job, and integrations fail without anyone noticing. Those are four of eight signs we cover, each with a check you can run, at softlimit.com/blogs/insights/signs-you-need-scalable-shopify-development.

On payment fees alone, at about $9 million a year in online card sales through Shopify Payments. Plus lists from $2,300 a month against $399 a month for Advanced billed monthly, and charges 2.25% + 30¢ on standard online card sales against 2.5% + 30¢. On another payment provider, Shopify's fee drops from 0.6% to 0.2%, which covers the difference at about $5.7 million a year. Rates are from Shopify's pricing page in November 2026; larger brands get a quote from Shopify. Below that, it pays when it replaces workarounds: a second store, checkout logic an app can't handle, or wholesale past three catalogs.

When the plan itself is the limit: you need more than one store, checkout logic an app can't provide, custom discount or shipping rules, wholesale beyond three catalogs, or higher API limits for an ERP or 3PL. If the problem is a slow theme or a stretched team, an upgrade won't solve it.