International Selling
Decide how you sell into new countries on Shopify: Markets or Managed Markets, merchant of record, cross-border shipping and translation.
Common Questions
Is Managed Markets worth it for a brand doing under $5M in international sales, or is that too small to justify the fee?
Managed Markets, where Global-e acts as merchant of record, is not too small a bet under $5M of international sales. Shopify charges 3.5% per transaction, or 3.25% on Plus (Shopify Help Center, October 2026), so the fee shrinks with your volume. The real disqualifiers are business location, 35 prohibited or restricted categories and duties never refunded after fulfillment (Shopify Help Center, October 2026).
Is Shopify Translate & Adapt good enough for a mid-market multi-language store, or do I still need a paid translation app?
Shopify Translate & Adapt is free (Shopify App Store) and good enough for most mid-market stores; only two of its limits decide most cases. It auto-translates two languages by default, eight in 12 European countries (Shopify Help Center, October 2026). It can't reach app content outside Shopify's translatable resources (Shopify Help Center), so pay for those gaps or workflow.
What's the honest, non-vendor-spin answer to 'should a $30M-GMV Shopify brand use Managed Markets', not Shopify's own pitch?
Managed Markets, Shopify's cross-border service, suits $30M brands while international sales are too small to staff, because its fee follows international sales, not revenue. On Shopify Plus that fee is 3.25%: $29,250 a year at 3% international, $292,500 at 30% (Shopify Help Center, October 2026; Deploi arithmetic). Shopify's "up to 40%" conversion claim rests on a before-and-after sales study with no control group described (shopify.com, Ernst & Young, October 2026).
Is Langify still worth paying for now that Shopify's native Translate & Adapt is free and improving?
Langify still earns its $17.50 Basic fee where customers see third-party app content, or where you machine-translate past Translate & Adapt's limit (Langify listing, October 2026). Translate & Adapt is free (Shopify App Store) and auto-translates two languages by default in the US and Canada, eight in 12 European countries (Shopify Help Center). So other stores save the whole fee.
What's Flow Commerce, and is it a real alternative to Shopify Managed Markets/Global-e?
Flow Commerce, a cross-border ecommerce software company, is not an alternative to Shopify's Managed Markets, because Global-e owns it. Global-e closed the purchase, valued at up to approximately $500 million, in January 2022 (Global-e investor relations, October 2026). Global-e is also the merchant of record behind Managed Markets (Shopify Help Center, October 2026), so both routes lead to one company.
Does Managed Markets support B2B/wholesale international orders, or is it DTC-only?
Managed Markets is direct-to-consumer (DTC) only: it doesn't support business-to-business (B2B) or wholesale orders. Shopify says "B2B orders aren't supported by Managed Markets", so you act as your own merchant of record for wholesale (Shopify Help Center, October 2026). International wholesale runs through Shopify B2B instead, on every plan from Basic up since April 2026 (Shopify Changelog, October 2026).