3 August 2026

What’s the difference between Multi Store and Shopify Markets?

Shopify Plus is a high-performance platform for international management. It allows you to target different markets with different product catalogs, prices, currencies, taxes, and country-specific requirements.

However, there are two ways to handle international sales in Shopify. You can either use multiple sites under a single license, or use Shopify Markets , a feature that allows you to manage different markets.

DATASOLUTION has set up Shopify sites that sell internationally for BARBARA BUI, PIERRE HARDY and Cotélac. We were able to evaluate the pros and cons of the various possible international architectures for these platforms.

So, what are the real pros and cons of each solution?

Let’s take a look together at the differences and how DATASOLUTION has overcome many customer challenges using Shopify.

Introduction to Shopify Markets

In each country, using Shopify Markets, you can manage: 

The estate
Language
Content
Products Offered
The motto
If you collect customs duties 
Shipping Rates
Collection of Local VAT

Below is a screenshot showing how to manage a marketplace in Shopify Markets.

For example, we use Shopify Market for the BARBARA BUI project so that we can serve both the French and European markets on a single website.

Our experts use Shopify Markets to manage multilingual content and shipping specifics.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when using Shopify Markets (aPlease note that the PSP will be the same for all countries)

The website’s features and IT workflows will be the same across all markets, but the content may vary by country.
It is also important to note that BackOffice users have access to all international features
Shopify Market is not suitable if you have subsidiaries with different legal entities that need to manage their own websites

It’s worth noting that Shopify Markets is constantly evolving; for example, catalog localization by country is a feature that was released in February 2023. Therefore, it’s important to regularly check the Shopify changelog to stay up to date on new features.

Spotlight on the multi-store

A multi-store setup involves having multiple stores under a single Shopify Plus license.

Shopify Plus allows you to have 10 different sites, whether they are different marketplaces, B2C or B2B sites, or production or pre-production environments.

Adopting a multi-store architecture on an international scale allows for much more granular control over this market, with the following features:

The estate
Language
Content
Products Offered
The motto
If you collect customs duties 
Shipping Rates
Collection of Local Sales Tax
User Management
Different features
A Different Legal Jurisdiction
A Different PSP

To meet the needs of our client PIERRE HARDY on Shopify, we separated the U.S. site from the French site to have different payment service providers (PSPs), particularly because the U.S. site has different features than the French-language site.

However, this comes with certain limitations that you need to keep in mind:

Having multiple locations requires more maintenance, and you also need to be careful about inventory management, which must be synchronized across all stores
Application fees are charged per site; the more sites there are, the higher the fees will be. It is therefore important to be mindful of the operating costs associated with applications.

A few years ago, to offer international support on Shopify, you absolutely had to have a setup with multiple sites or an app that overlaid the main site with translations—such as Transcy or Weglot—which aren’t ideal in terms of SEO (search engine optimization).

Shopify Markets is a native Shopify feature that was introduced two years ago and is an excellent solution for quickly launching your store internationally.

Every situation is unique depending on the brand ecosystem, but this guide provides you with the various factors to consider when making a decision regarding architecture.