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Shopify Plus Consulting

The independent Shopify Plus consultant not selling you the build

Upgrade evaluation, replatform decisions, headless architecture review, agency selection, and proposal review, scoped and priced separately from delivery, so the recommendation isn't a sales document.

  • The fee does not depend on what we recommend
  • Doing nothing is evaluated as a real option
  • Written recommendations with the reasoning and the uncertainties
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Why independence matters

Most Shopify Plus advice comes from people who benefit from a particular answer

Most Shopify Plus advice comes from people who benefit from a particular answer. Agencies benefit from projects existing. Platform vendors benefit from upgrades. App companies benefit from apps. None of that makes the advice dishonest, but the incentive rarely points toward the smallest sufficient solution. Consulting is the part of our work where nobody is paying us to build anything. The engagement is scoped and priced on its own, separately from delivery by our Shopify Plus agency and Shopify Plus development teams, and the recommendation is not contingent on us executing it.

The decisions that warrant this are the ones with long consequences: whether to upgrade to Plus (our Shopify Plus pricing guide covers what the platform fee includes), whether a Shopify migration or replatform is justified, whether to go headless on Shopify Hydrogen, how to structure expansion stores, and which agency to trust with the build. The common factor is a decision large enough that the cost of being wrong exceeds the cost of a second opinion. The useful question at the start of each is almost always the same: what specifically will this let us do that we cannot do now, and is that the thing currently constraining us?

When people call us

The decisions that warrant an independent read

These are the situations where the cost of getting it wrong is high and the available advice is structurally conflicted.

  • A replatform proposed as the answer to everything

    Rebuilds get commissioned to fix conversion, speed, merchandising, and brand perception at once. A rebuild reliably fixes none of those on its own, and it consumes the year in which you could have fixed them directly.

  • A Plus upgrade nobody can justify specifically

    If the answer to which Plus-only capability your roadmap depends on is vague, the upgrade is probably premature. The capabilities are well-defined; the justification should be too.

  • Proposals that cannot be compared

    Three agencies quoting different scopes against a loose brief, with prices that vary by a factor of four for reasons nobody can articulate. The problem is usually the brief, not the agencies.

  • A build that has stalled without explanation

    Deadlines moving, scope arguments, and no shared account of what went wrong. Usually it is an integration nobody scoped properly, or ownership that was shared without being defined.

  • Internal team and agency in deadlock

    Two credible groups disagreeing on architecture, with no neutral party to resolve it. This stalls roadmaps for months and is often settled quickly once someone independent looks at it.

  • Headless bought on ambition

    Commissioned because it sounds like where serious brands are going, rather than because of a front-end requirement Liquid cannot meet. The costs arrive later, as a merchandising team that can no longer change a page.

Engagements

What our Shopify Plus consultants advise on

Defined engagements with a written output, or retained days for teams that want independent judgement available as decisions arise.

  • Platform assessment

    A written account of the current state: theme, apps, integrations and their failure modes, data, performance, SEO position, and release process, with current-state architecture documentation, prioritised findings, a view on sequence, and an explicit account of what is uncertain. Also used as technical due diligence on an ecommerce asset.

  • Shopify Plus upgrade evaluation

    Whether the capabilities you would be paying for are the ones your roadmap actually depends on, and what the alternative looks like on your current plan.

  • Replatform decision support

    Whether a rebuild is justified, what it would need to deliver to pay for itself, and what could be achieved without one. Options are assessed on cost, risk, and time to value, with the do-nothing option evaluated seriously.

  • Headless and architecture review

    An independent read on whether Hydrogen or headless is the right trade, including the operational costs that tend to be left out of the pitch.

  • Shopify agency selection

    A requirements brief specific enough to produce comparable bids, a shortlist with evaluation criteria, technical participation in pitches, and an assessment weighted toward what predicts delivery.

  • Proposal review

    Independent review of scope, architecture, timeline credibility, and commercial terms, including saying when a proposal is good.

  • Project rescue diagnosis

    Where a build has stalled: what actually went wrong, what is recoverable, and what the realistic options are from here.

  • Roadmap, sequencing and app stack

    What to do in what order, given your team, budget, and trading calendar. Includes an app stack audit: what each app is actually doing, what overlaps, what is costing performance, and what native platform capability could replace.

  • Expansion store and B2B strategy

    Whether additional storefronts are the right structure for new markets or brands, what should be shared between them, and whether B2B on Shopify fits your wholesale model.

  • Retained advisory

    Ongoing access for decisions as they arise, typically a few days a month: architecture decision review, roadmap review against results, and a technical counterpart during delivery.

First call

What you get on the first call

A 30-minute call about the decision in front of you, before any engagement is scoped.

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  1. Whether you need an engagement at all

    We use the 30 minutes to work out whether the decision warrants a consulting engagement, and what the real version of the question is.

  2. The decision, framed properly

    What is actually being decided, who has to agree, what has already been tried, and what a good outcome would look like twelve months out.

  3. A first read on any proposal on your desk

    If an agency has proposed something large, tell us. A proposal review covers scope, architecture, timeline, and terms, and we will also tell you when a proposal is good.

  4. A scope priced on its own

    A defined engagement with a written output, or retained days. Either way it is scoped and priced separately from any build.

Process

How a consulting engagement runs

  1. Step 01

    Framing the decision

    What is actually being decided, who has to agree, what has already been tried, and what a good outcome would look like twelve months out. Decisions are often framed too narrowly at the point someone asks for help.

  2. Step 02

    Evidence and interviews

    Analytics, Search Console, the storefront, the theme and app stack, integration documentation, and any proposals on the table. Then the internal team, the current agency where appropriate, and the commercial owners. The disagreements surfaced here are usually more informative than the documentation.

  3. Step 03

    Analysis

    Options assessed against cost, risk, time to value, and what each would actually change. Including, explicitly, the option of doing nothing.

  4. Step 04

    Written recommendation

    A document with the recommendation, the reasoning, the alternatives considered, and what remains uncertain. We walk it through with the people who have to act on it, with time set aside to argue.

  5. Step 05

    Execution support

    Optional: brief writing, agency selection, or acting as technical counterpart during delivery so the decisions made in the assessment survive contact with the build.

Consultant vs. agency

Two different things to buy

Both are legitimate. The mistake is buying the second when you needed the first, which is how most unjustified rebuilds start.

  • What you are buying

    Consulting engagement
    Judgement and a written recommendation
    Agency build engagement
    Delivery of a defined scope

  • Commercial incentive

    Consulting engagement
    Fee is fixed regardless of the recommendation
    Agency build engagement
    Revenue depends on the project happening

  • Can recommend doing nothing

    Consulting engagement
    Yes, and frequently does
    Agency build engagement
    Rarely, structurally

  • Typical duration

    Consulting engagement
    2 to 6 weeks, or retained days per month
    Agency build engagement
    3 to 6 months per project

  • Typical cost

    Consulting engagement
    $5K to $25K per engagement
    Agency build engagement
    $50K to $250K+ per build

  • Main output

    Consulting engagement
    A decision you can defend
    Agency build engagement
    A shipped store

  • Best used

    Consulting engagement
    Before the decision is made
    Agency build engagement
    After the decision is made
Why Conversion

How we work

  • Practitioners, not career advisors

    We build and run Shopify stores. The advice comes from having delivered the work and seen what actually goes wrong, not from a framework.

  • Written, so it survives the meeting

    Recommendations are documented with reasoning, alternatives, and uncertainties. Decisions made in a room get relitigated; decisions written down get executed.

  • We work with your internal team

    Internal teams usually know what is wrong. An assessment that talks over them does not get implemented, however correct it is.

  • We will point you elsewhere

    If the work needed is outside our strength, we will say so and help you find a better fit. That costs us a project and keeps the advice worth having.

Questions

Shopify Plus consulting, answered

What does a Shopify Plus consultant do?
A Shopify Plus consultant advises rather than builds. The work is diagnosis and decision support: whether to upgrade to Plus at all, whether a replatform is justified, how to structure an expansion store strategy, whether to go headless, which agency to hire, and what the roadmap should prioritise. Consultants are typically brought in when a decision is large enough that getting it wrong is expensive, and when the people who would normally advise on it, agencies and platform vendors, have a commercial interest in a particular answer.
How is a consultant different from an agency?
An agency is paid to build something, which means it is structurally biased toward there being something to build. A consultant is paid for judgement, and the most valuable engagements frequently end with a recommendation not to do the project. That distinction matters most at exactly the moments when the stakes are highest: replatform decisions, headless decisions, and Plus upgrade decisions. We do both kinds of work, and we keep the consulting engagement separable from the build so the advice can be trusted.
Should we upgrade to Shopify Plus?
Only if your roadmap depends on a specific Plus-only capability in the next twelve months. Those capabilities are real and well-defined: checkout extensibility with Checkout UI Extensions and Shopify Functions, B2B with company accounts and price lists, expansion stores on one contract, Shopify Flow's wider automation surface, and substantially higher API limits. Much of what brands assume requires Plus does not: custom themes, most apps, Markets internationalisation, subscriptions, and nearly all conversion work run fine on lower plans. Upgrading to fix a problem a lower plan already solves is an expensive way to not fix it.
What does a Shopify Plus consultant cost?
Market rates run roughly $150 to $400 an hour, or $5,000 to $25,000 for a defined engagement such as a platform assessment, replatform decision, or architecture review. Retained advisory arrangements are usually a few days a month. The relevant comparison is not against an hourly rate but against the cost of the decision: a wrong replatform decision is a six-figure mistake plus a year of lost roadmap, which makes a five-figure assessment straightforwardly good value when the decision is genuinely uncertain.
When is the right time to bring in a consultant?
Before the decision, not after the project is underway. The highest-value moments are: when you are weighing a replatform, when an agency has proposed something large and you want an independent read, when you are choosing between agencies, when the current build has stalled and nobody can say why, and when an internal team and an external agency disagree about architecture. The least useful moment is halfway through a build that is already going badly, when the options have narrowed to bad ones.
Can you give a second opinion on an agency proposal?
Yes, and it is one of the more common requests. We review the proposal against what you are actually trying to achieve, look for scope that is padded or missing, check whether the architecture choices are justified or defaults, assess whether the timeline is credible given the integration landscape, and flag the commercial terms that tend to cause problems later. We will also tell you when a proposal is good, which happens often. The useful output is a clear read, not manufactured criticism.
Do you help select an agency?
Yes. That usually means writing a brief that is specific enough to get comparable proposals, building a shortlist, sitting in on the technical parts of pitches, and evaluating responses on the things that actually predict delivery: process, version control, how they scope integration, and what they say when asked about a project that went wrong. Portfolios are the least predictive part of an agency pitch and the part most brands weight most heavily.
What does a platform assessment cover?
The current state honestly described: theme and customisations, app stack and what each app is actually doing, integration landscape and its failure modes, data and analytics, performance, SEO position, and the release process. Then the commercial context: markets, channels, roadmap, and team capability. The output is a written assessment with prioritised recommendations, an honest account of what is uncertain, and a view on sequence. Sequence is often the most valuable part, because doing the right things in the wrong order is a common and expensive failure.
Should we go headless?
Usually not, and this is one of the decisions where independent advice is worth most, because nearly everyone else in the conversation benefits from a yes. Headless is justified when your front-end requirement genuinely exceeds what Liquid can express. It is not justified by page speed, design ambition, or conversion problems, all of which are cheaper to solve in a theme. It also moves rendering, caching, SEO, and merchandising workflow onto your team permanently, which is the cost most often left out of the pitch.
Can you work alongside our internal team?
Yes, and that is frequently the point. Internal teams often know exactly what is wrong and lack either the authority or the outside standing to say it. An independent assessment that reaches the same conclusion can unblock a decision that has been stuck for months. We are careful to work with internal teams rather than over them, because an assessment that alienates the people who have to execute it does not get executed.
What if your advice is that we should not do the project?
Then that is the advice, and you have bought the most valuable outcome the engagement could produce. The projects that damage brands most are not the ones that fail visibly. They are the ones that succeed on their own terms while solving a problem the business did not have, consuming a year of roadmap in the process.
Do you take the build after the consulting?
Sometimes, and we keep the two separable so the advice stays trustworthy. A consulting engagement is scoped and priced on its own, and its recommendation is not contingent on us being the ones to execute it. If our advice is to hire a different agency because the work is outside our strength, we will say so, and we would rather do that than win the build and deliver it badly.
Pairs well with Shopify Plus consulting

Where the advice leads to delivery

These are the areas a recommendation usually points at.

Book a call

Tell us what you are trying to decide

A 30-minute call to work out whether you need a consulting engagement at all, and what the real version of the question is.

What happens next

  1. 1Pick a time for a 30-minute call.
  2. 2Bring the decision you are weighing and any proposals already on the table.
  3. 3Leave knowing whether you need a consulting engagement at all, and what a scoped one would cover.

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