Products, editions and features are from Salesforce’s product, pricing, compliance and Trailhead pages, and from Shopify’s pricing pages, help center and published case studies, checked on 30 October 2026. Salesforce does not publish Commerce Cloud prices. Check the sources listed at the end before you decide.
Salesforce Commerce Cloud, which began life as Demandware, runs some of the world’s largest fashion, beauty and retail sites. It is also one of the platforms brands most often leave for Shopify Plus: Shopify has published case studies on Karl Lagerfeld, the three Orveon beauty brands, MZ Wallace, UrbanStems and Rainbow Shops, all of which moved from Commerce Cloud. This guide compares the two as they stand in 2026, including Salesforce’s new storefront and AI agents, and sets out when each makes sense.
The short answer
- Salesforce Commerce Cloud is a family of enterprise products: B2C Commerce, B2B Commerce, Order Management, Payments and Point of Sale. Pricing is not published. B2B Commerce is charged as a percentage of the sales that go through the storefront.
- B2C Commerce storefronts are built by specialist developers and have changed architecture several times, from SiteGenesis to SFRA, PWA Kit and, since June 2026, Storefront Next. Moving between them is a project in its own right.
- Shopify Plus is hosted software with published pricing, a hosted checkout, built-in B2B and a much larger pool of apps and partners.
- Commerce Cloud still suits businesses that run their sales and service on Salesforce, sell complex B2B through sales teams, or run many sites with a large in-house Salesforce team. Most direct-to-consumer brands get to market faster and run for less on Shopify Plus.
Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Shopify in 2026
B2C Commerce
Growth, Plus and Premium editions
- Up to 5 or 100 sites by edition
- Storefront Next, PWA Kit or SFRA
- Built by specialist developers
- Price on request
B2B Commerce
Growth and Advanced editions
- 6 or 10 shop fronts
- Runs on the Salesforce platform
- Quotes through Salesforce sales tools
- Percentage of storefront sales
Shopify Plus
Shopify’s plan for larger brands
- Hosted, with no upgrade projects
- Customisable checkout
- B2B and up to nine expansion stores
- Published pricing
Salesforce briefly branded the product line Agentforce Commerce in 2025 and 2026, and some of its pages still use that name. Its product and pricing pages now say Commerce Cloud. Commerce Cloud Foundations, a free starting set of commerce features, is available to businesses on Sales or Service Cloud Enterprise Edition or above.
Shopify vs Salesforce Commerce Cloud at a glance
| Salesforce B2C Commerce | Salesforce B2B Commerce | Shopify Plus | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hosting | Salesforce | Salesforce | Shopify |
| Pricing | Not published | Not published; a percentage of storefront sales | Published on Shopify’s pricing page |
| Storefront | Storefront Next, PWA Kit or SFRA, built with cartridges | Salesforce storefront templates | Liquid themes, or Hydrogen (headless) |
| Who builds it | Salesforce Commerce Cloud developers | Salesforce developers | Any Shopify partner or developer |
| Sites | 5 (Growth) or 100 (Plus, Premium) | 6 (Growth) or 10 (Advanced) shop fronts | Shopify Markets, plus up to nine expansion stores |
| Promotions | Up to 1,000 active promotions | Over 200 promotion types | Discounts, plus Shopify Functions for custom logic |
| Apps | Cartridges from LINK partners; Commerce Apps installed in Business Manager | Salesforce AppExchange | Shopify App Store, over 16,000 apps |
| Share of ecommerce sites (W3Techs) | 0.1% | 32.4% | |
Source: Salesforce Commerce Cloud product and pricing pages, Shopify’s help center and pricing page, and W3Techs, 30 October 2026.
Storefronts and upgrades
This is where many Commerce Cloud decisions start. B2C Commerce has had four storefront architectures. SiteGenesis is the oldest, and Salesforce partners now treat it as legacy. SFRA, the Storefront Reference Architecture, packages code in cartridges and builds pages in ISML, Salesforce’s own template language. PWA Kit, also called the Composable Storefront, is a React front end, and is still being released. Storefront Next, launched in June 2026, is the newest, built on React and included in every B2C Commerce edition.
Each storefront is built on a fixed version of its architecture and its cartridges. Moving a store from SiteGenesis to SFRA, or from SFRA to a newer front end, means rebuilding the storefront, and many brands weigh that rebuild against a move to another platform. Salesforce publishes B2C Commerce releases several times a year, and each one has to be checked against your code and cartridges.
On Shopify there are no version upgrades. Shopify updates the platform and checkout itself. Themes are built in Liquid and edited in the theme editor, so marketers can change pages without a developer. Brands that want a custom front end can use Hydrogen, Shopify’s headless framework, but most brands are better served by a native theme. We moved Allbirds’ Canada and South Korea stores from headless back to native Shopify. See headless to native Shopify.
Pricing
Salesforce does not publish Commerce Cloud prices. Every edition on its pricing pages reads ‘contact for pricing’. For B2B Commerce, Salesforce says it takes a percentage of gross merchandise value, defined as sales through the storefront minus tax and shipping, with the rate depending on the edition. It does not say how B2C Commerce is charged.
Shopify publishes its Plus pricing (see Shopify vs Shopify Plus), with one-year and three-year terms. Shopify also publishes its own comparisons with Salesforce, including a claim that Salesforce’s total cost of ownership is higher on average, based on a study it commissioned. Treat any vendor’s comparison as a starting point and run the numbers for your own business.
B2B
B2B Commerce runs on the Salesforce platform, alongside Sales Cloud and Service Cloud, so a sales team can raise quotes in Salesforce and buyers can see them online. Salesforce lists a reorder portal, negotiated pricing, buying on behalf of other accounts or locations, and over 200 promotion types. In June 2026 Salesforce added a Buyer Agent that lets trade customers place orders and move them through approvals over WhatsApp and SMS.
| Salesforce B2B Commerce | Shopify (all plans) | Shopify Plus | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Company accounts | Salesforce accounts | Yes, with locations | Yes, with locations |
| Negotiated prices and catalogs | Yes | Up to three catalogs | Unlimited, assigned to companies and locations |
| Net terms and pay on account | Not stated on Salesforce’s B2B page | Yes | Yes, with deposits and partial payments |
| Quick order and reorders | Reorder portal | Yes | Yes |
| Quotes | Through B2B Commerce for Sales | Draft orders, or an app | Draft orders, or an app |
| Link to a CRM sales team | Native to Salesforce | Through an integration | Through an integration |
Source: Salesforce B2B Commerce product page and June 2026 announcement, and Shopify help center, B2B features by plan.
If your trade sales depend on sales reps working in Salesforce, that link counts for a lot. For most brands selling direct and to trade, Shopify’s built-in B2B covers what they use. Funkin Cocktails runs direct and trade sales on Shopify Plus. See Shopify B2B.
Several sites and countries
B2C Commerce is organized into realms. A realm can run many sites with different brands or locales, sharing or separating catalogs, and large groups often run several realms. Salesforce says B2C Commerce supports more than 7,000 languages and 169 currencies, with price books, promotions and catalogs shared or set per site.
Shopify Markets sells in other countries from one store with local currencies, languages, domains and prices. Shopify Plus adds up to nine expansion stores for separate brands, countries or wholesale. Shopify says Karl Lagerfeld moved from Commerce Cloud to one Shopify store serving 35 markets in eight languages. Ceva runs four brands, more than 20 sites and eight countries on one Shopify Plus codebase that we built. See international expansion.
Apps, integrations and the Salesforce estate
Commerce Cloud’s strongest argument is the rest of Salesforce. Brands that already run Sales Cloud, Service Cloud and Salesforce marketing tools get commerce on the same platform. Third-party features arrive as cartridges from Salesforce’s LINK partners, and since June 2026 as Commerce Apps installed from Business Manager, starting with Stripe, Adyen and Mirakl.
The Shopify App Store lists over 16,000 apps that install without a developer, and Shopify connects to ERP, warehouse and CRM systems, including Salesforce, through its APIs and integration partners. Shopify Plus allows 1,000 GraphQL points a second on its Admin API, ten times the standard rate. See ERP integration.
AI and agents
Both platforms are building for AI shopping. In June 2026 Salesforce made its Shopper Agent, Buyer Agent and Merchant Agent generally available, with ChatGPT checkout following in July and Google’s AI Mode and Gemini later in the summer. Shopify sells through Google’s AI Mode and Gemini with Shopify checkout, lists products for AI agents through Shopify Catalog, and builds Sidekick into the admin. See our guide to Shopify Editions Fall ’26.
Checkout and PCI compliance
Salesforce publishes a PCI attestation of compliance for B2C Commerce, with a responsibility matrix that sets out which parts are Salesforce’s and which are the merchant’s. Custom storefront code sits with the merchant.
Shopify is certified as a Level 1 PCI DSS provider and hosts its own checkout. On Shopify Plus, brands customize it with checkout extensions, Shopify Functions and the Checkout Branding API, without taking card data into their own code.
Peak trading
Salesforce reports 99.99% uptime for B2C Commerce during Cyber Week 2025. Over Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2025, Shopify served more than 81 million shoppers and peaked at 489 million requests a minute at its edge. Both platforms carry peak load for you.
What it costs to run
Salesforce does not publish its prices, so any figure you see online is an estimate. Compare these costs over three years:
- Licence, and how it rises with sales
- Storefront build, and the next storefront rebuild
- Specialist developers to maintain cartridges and releases
- Apps, cartridges and integrations
- Payment processing fees
- Your team’s time running the platform
Our Shopify Plus total cost of ownership calculator adds up the Shopify side.
When Commerce Cloud still makes sense
- You run sales, service and marketing on Salesforce and want commerce on the same platform.
- Your trade sales are led by reps who quote in Salesforce.
- You run dozens of sites from shared catalogs, with a large in-house Commerce Cloud team.
- You have recently invested in a new Commerce Cloud storefront and it is meeting your needs.
When Shopify is the better fit
- You sell direct to consumers, or direct and to trade.
- Your storefront is due a rebuild, from SiteGenesis or SFRA, and you are weighing the cost.
- Your team wants to run content, promotions and launches without specialist developers.
- You want published pricing and terms.
- You want the largest pool of partners, developers and apps to choose from.
Moving from Commerce Cloud to Shopify
A Commerce Cloud to Shopify migration moves products, customers, historical orders and content, rebuilds integrations with your ERP, order management and CRM, and sets up a redirect from every old URL so you keep search rankings.
Customer passwords cannot be moved. Shopify’s new customer accounts sign shoppers in with a one-time code sent by email, so no password is needed.
Shopify’s published case studies give a sense of timing: Karl Lagerfeld moved in about six and a half months, and MZ Wallace in four. Orveon moved bareMinerals, Laura Mercier and Buxom in phases. See Shopify migration for how we run these projects.
Questions to ask before you choose
- Which storefront architecture are you on, and what would the next rebuild involve?
- What do license, developers and releases cost you each year?
- How much of your business depends on Salesforce CRM, and how would Shopify connect to it?
- Do your trade customers buy online, through reps, or both?
- How many sites, brands and countries do you run, and do they share catalogs?
- Which cartridges and integrations would need replacing, and which have a Shopify app?
FAQs
Is Salesforce Commerce Cloud the same as Demandware?
Yes. Salesforce bought Demandware in 2016 and renamed it Commerce Cloud. B2C Commerce is the Demandware product. B2B Commerce runs on the core Salesforce platform.
How much does Salesforce Commerce Cloud cost?
Salesforce does not publish prices. B2B Commerce is charged as a percentage of storefront sales, and B2C Commerce is priced on request.
Is Shopify Plus better than Salesforce Commerce Cloud?
For most direct-to-consumer and mixed D2C and trade brands, yes: it has published pricing, no storefront version upgrades and far more apps and partners. Commerce Cloud suits businesses built around Salesforce CRM or running many sites with an in-house Salesforce team.
Can Shopify Plus handle enterprise brands?
Yes. Shopify’s case studies include Karl Lagerfeld, bareMinerals and Laura Mercier, all of which moved from Commerce Cloud.
How long does a Commerce Cloud to Shopify migration take?
Shopify’s case studies show four to seven months for single brands, and longer for phased moves of several brands.
Will we lose SEO rankings moving from Commerce Cloud to Shopify?
Not if the migration maps every old URL to a redirect, keeps page titles and content, and is checked in Search Console after launch.
Can customers keep their passwords?
No. Passwords cannot be moved to Shopify. With Shopify’s new customer accounts, customers sign in with a one-time code by email.
Sources
Checked on 30 October 2026: Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Commerce pricing, B2C Commerce pricing, B2B Commerce pricing, B2C Commerce and B2B Commerce pages; Salesforce’s June 2026 commerce announcement; Trailhead on B2C Commerce architecture and the developer environment; Salesforce PCI attestation for Commerce Cloud; PWA Kit releases; Shopify Plus pricing, platform comparison, security, BFCM 2025 data and case studies on Karl Lagerfeld, Orveon, MZ Wallace, UrbanStems and Rainbow Shops; Shopify help center pages on B2B plan features and customer accounts; Shopify App Store; W3Techs usage statistics for Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Shopify.
