SFCC vs Shopify Plus: The Definitive 2026 Platform Comparison

Two platforms dominate the enterprise eCommerce conversation in 2026: **Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC)** and **Shopify Plus**. Both are proven, both are used by hundreds of household-name brands — but they are built for fundamentally different businesses.

This guide gives you an honest, detailed comparison to help you make the right call.

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## The Core Difference

Salesforce Commerce Cloud is a fully managed enterprise platform built for complex, high-volume retail. It includes native B2C and B2B commerce engines, deep AI-driven personalisation, multi-site management, and an extensive partner ecosystem.

Shopify Plus is the enterprise tier of Shopify — a hosted platform built around simplicity, speed to market, and a vast app marketplace. It has grown significantly in capability but retains its origins as a merchant-first, developer-friendly SaaS tool.

The single most important question to ask yourself: **is your primary challenge complexity or agility?**

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## Architecture and Flexibility

**SFCC** is built for customisation at scale. Its cartridge-based architecture allows deep platform customisation at every layer — product data models, checkout flows, promotions logic, and storefront presentation. For brands with genuinely complex requirements, this flexibility is essential.

**Shopify Plus** uses a theme-based architecture (Liquid templating) with extensibility via apps and the Storefront API. It is highly flexible for standard commerce patterns but begins to show limitations when requirements become highly custom — particularly in checkout (though Shopify's recent Checkout Extensibility work has improved this significantly).

**Verdict:** SFCC wins on deep customisation and long-term architectural control. Shopify Plus offers a faster initial development experience — which matters less once you are operating at enterprise scale and need the platform to bend to your business, not the other way around.

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## Performance and Core Web Vitals

**SFCC SFRA storefronts** typically score 30–55 on Lighthouse out of the box, but this is a starting point, not a ceiling. SFRA's synchronous ISML rendering pipeline handles server-side rendering reliably at scale — the same architecture that powers Black Friday peaks for brands like Barbour and Karl Lagerfeld without going down. In practice, I have pushed SFRA Lighthouse scores up by 15–20 points through image optimisation, script deferral, and aggressive DIS caching. Headless SFCC implementations via SCAPI or PWA Kit routinely score 80–95, with the full control of a modern React frontend and the enterprise backend that Shopify's headless offering cannot match in depth.

**Shopify Plus** themes score 50–75 on average. The infrastructure is solid, but you are working within Shopify's constraints — CDN configuration, script injection limits, and Liquid rendering are all outside your control. When performance becomes a strategic priority, those constraints become a ceiling rather than a foundation.

**Verdict:** Shopify Plus offers acceptable out-of-the-box performance within its guardrails. SFCC gives you the tools to exceed those benchmarks — and headless SFCC is the stronger long-term architecture for brands where performance is a revenue driver.

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## AI and Personalisation

**SFCC Einstein AI** is deeply integrated into the platform — product recommendations, predictive sort, intelligent search, and A/B testing are all native capabilities without third-party tools.

**Shopify Plus** has Shopify Magic for some AI-assisted content and product description generation, but personalisation at scale requires third-party apps (Klaviyo, LoyaltyLion, Searchanise, etc.).

**Verdict:** SFCC's native AI capabilities are in a different league for personalisation at scale. Einstein is built into the platform — not bolted on — which means it learns from your actual transaction data, not a generic model. For brands where conversion rate is a commercial priority, this is one of the most consequential differences between the two platforms.

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## B2B Commerce

**SFCC B2B Commerce** is a purpose-built solution for complex B2B requirements: account hierarchies, custom catalogues, negotiated pricing, purchase approvals, and complex order workflows.

**Shopify Plus B2B** has matured rapidly and now supports company accounts, custom pricing, and wholesale portals natively. It works well for straightforward B2B use cases but still falls short for highly complex procurement workflows.

**Verdict:** SFCC is the clear choice for enterprise B2B. The platform was built for this use case from the ground up — account hierarchies, purchase approvals, and complex pricing workflows are native, not patched together from apps. Shopify Plus has made progress here, but it is still catching up to where SFCC has been for a decade.

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## Multi-Site and International Commerce

**SFCC** has multi-site management built into its core. Managing 20 storefronts across 15 countries with shared product catalogues and independent promotional calendars is a standard SFCC use case.

**Shopify Plus** includes up to 9 expansion stores per plan and Shopify Markets for international selling. This works well for most brands but can become unwieldy for large multi-brand groups.

**Verdict:** SFCC is the dominant platform for multi-site, multi-brand, and multi-region operations. The 9-store cap on Shopify Plus expansion stores is not a minor footnote — it is a structural ceiling that enterprise groups regularly hit. SFCC has no equivalent constraint.

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## Total Cost of Ownership

| Cost Component | SFCC | Shopify Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Licensing | GMV-based (typically 1–3%) | From $2,300/month + revenue share |
| Implementation | €500K–€2M+ | €50K–€500K |
| Ongoing development | High (specialist SFCC developers) | Medium (broader developer pool) |
| App/integration costs | Medium | Medium–High (app subscriptions) |
| 3-year TCO estimate | €2M–€5M+ | €500K–€2M |

Those numbers look daunting until you model the revenue upside. On a €50M GMV site, a 1.5% conversion lift from Einstein predictive sort and AI-driven recommendations covers the platform's annual cost. The ongoing development investment is real, but it buys you a platform that compounds — every custom integration, every optimisation, every piece of business logic you build stays in your codebase and serves you for years. With Shopify Plus, a meaningful share of that budget goes to app subscriptions that can be withdrawn, repriced, or deprecated by third parties.

**Verdict:** SFCC's investment is higher — and for brands operating at scale, it is consistently the better allocation. The ROI from native AI personalisation, purpose-built B2B, and multi-site management outpaces the cost premium within 2–3 years for well-run implementations. Shopify Plus's lower entry cost is a genuine advantage at smaller GMV — but it is a temporary one as complexity grows.

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## When to Choose SFCC

- Annual GMV above €15M with ambitions to scale further
- Multiple storefronts across different regions or brands
- Complex B2B commerce requirements with account hierarchies, negotiated pricing, or purchase approvals
- Personalisation, AI-driven search, and conversion optimisation as strategic priorities
- Complex integrations with ERP, OMS, and PIM systems
- Brands where the platform is a competitive differentiator, not just plumbing

## When Shopify Plus May Be a Fit

- Early-stage DTC brand under €10M GMV that needs to launch in weeks, not months
- Standard commerce patterns with limited customisation requirements
- A deliberate short-term choice before the business outgrows a simpler architecture

The honest reality: most brands that start on Shopify Plus and grow past €20M eventually face a platform migration. The lower entry cost of Shopify Plus can mask the longer-term cost of that migration — new implementation fees, replatforming disruption, and the opportunity cost of operating on an architecture that cannot keep up with your business.

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## The Bottom Line

Below €10M GMV, Shopify Plus is a reasonable starting point. It deploys faster, requires less specialist resource, and the app ecosystem covers most standard requirements.

Between €10M and €15M, the decision comes down to trajectory and complexity. If you are growing fast, operating in multiple markets, or already hitting the limits of your current platform, SFCC is worth the conversation now — the cost of replatforming mid-scale is higher than starting right.

Above €15M GMV — particularly with multi-site operations, B2B requirements, or a genuine personalisation strategy — SFCC is the more defensible long-term choice. I have built on both platforms, and the brands that choose SFCC for the right reasons rarely look back. The platform's depth — native AI, purpose-built B2B, cartridge-based extensibility, enterprise multi-site management — consistently delivers at a scale that Shopify Plus cannot match without significant app stacking and architectural workarounds.

For a detailed cost breakdown, see the [Salesforce Commerce Cloud pricing guide](/en/blog/salesforce-commerce-cloud-pricing). If you want to understand the platform's technical depth before committing, the [SFCC expert guide](/en/sfcc) covers architecture, cartridge development, and what the platform looks like from the inside.