Is Deploi a certified Shopify Plus Partner, or does it not carry that badge?
Short answer
No: Deploi claims no Shopify certification or tier in Shopify's Partner Program (Deploi Shopify Builds, October 2026). Shopify sunset its standalone Plus Partner program in December 2024 (Shopify Help Center, October 2026). "Plus" is now one of five Partner Program tiers, earned in 2026 on revenue and new-merchant counts alone, because credentials are waived (Shopify tiering guide, October 2026).
- Deploi's Shopify tier or certification
- None claimedDeploi's LUS Brands storefront record: "We claim no certification or partner status of any kind.".Source: Deploi Shopify Builds (LUS Brands)
- Shopify Plus Partner program
- Sunset effective December 2024Shopify says retired program brands "should not be used beyond the sunset dates". Plus is now one of five Partner Program tiers.Source: Shopify Help Center (About the Shopify Partner Program)
- Plus tier revenue threshold (USD)
- $500,000 new or $2,500,000 existingRevenue from merchants a partner brought to Shopify or supports; the stronger figure counts. Plus also needs 2 Plus or Enterprise merchants, or 40 on standard plans.Source: Shopify (Partner Program Q4 2026 Tiering Guide)
- Credentials for a tier in 2026
- Waived; only commercial activity countsShopify's Q4 2026 tiering guide. Shopify's Directory eligibility page still lists 10 Verified Skills for the Plus tier.Sources: Shopify (Partner Program Q4 2026 Tiering Guide); Shopify Help Center (Eligibility for the Shopify Partner Directory)
Deploi’s call
Deploi carries no badge and will not invent one to clear a checkbox, because losing the deal is the better trade. Vet any Shopify agency on its shipped work and the people who review and deploy it, not on its tier.
BuyHire on shipped work, tier or no tier, when
- The agency shows you code you can read: a repository, a theme or a pull request.
- The agency names who reviews the code and who owns each deploy.
- The agency has shipped work like yours, such as product content in metafields (custom fields a store defines in its admin) or accessibility remediation.
- The agency's support terms are in writing before you sign.
DependsShortlist a tiered Shopify partner when
- Procurement requires a Shopify Partner Directory listing, and Shopify guarantees Directory eligibility only from the Plus tier up (Shopify Help Center, October 2026).
- You want Shopify's own teams in the deal: priority access to them is a benefit of Shopify's Premier and Platinum partner tiers (Shopify tiering guide, October 2026).
Does Deploi carry a Plus Partner badge or a Shopify certification?
No. Deploi carries no Plus Partner badge and claims no Shopify certification or partner tier. Deploi's Shopify Builds record for the LUS Brands storefront says so in one line: "We claim no certification or partner status of any kind" (Deploi Shopify Builds, October 2026). Deploi's About page names no partner program or certification either (Deploi's About page, October 2026).
So if your procurement process requires a tiered Shopify partner, Deploi does not qualify, and you should know that in the first conversation rather than the fifth. If your process has no such rule, compare agencies on their work, starting with what Deploi sells for a Shopify Plus project.
What does a Shopify Partner Program tier measure?
A Shopify Partner Program tier measures commercial impact: revenue from the merchants a partner brings to Shopify or supports, and how many new merchants it brings. Shopify's Q4 2026 tiering guide lists five tiers and says every tier above Registered is "earned through demonstrated commercial impact" (Shopify tiering guide, October 2026).
| Tier | New referral and co-sell revenue (USD) | Or existing merchant revenue (USD) | And new merchants brought to Shopify |
|---|---|---|---|
| Registered | No threshold | No threshold | None |
| Select | $100,000 or more | $500,000 or more | 1 Plus or Enterprise, or 10 on standard plans |
| Plus | $500,000 or more | $2,500,000 or more | 2 Plus or Enterprise, or 40 on standard plans |
| Premier | $2,000,000 or more | $10,000,000 or more | 4 Plus or Enterprise |
| Platinum | $5,000,000 or more | $25,000,000 or more | 6 Plus or Enterprise |
Read the revenue columns for what they are. Shopify's Directory eligibility page calls the Plus figures "annual revenue to Shopify" (Shopify Help Center, October 2026), so a tier tells you how much Shopify business an agency carries. It does not tell you whether anyone there can build a metafield-driven product page.
Does a Shopify partner tier certify an agency's skills?
A Shopify partner tier does not certify an agency's skills in 2026, according to Shopify's Q4 2026 tiering guide: "Credentials are waived for 2026; only commercial activity is evaluated" (Shopify tiering guide, October 2026). Skills are credentialed per person instead. Shopify Academy awards Verified Skills badges through courses and assessments (Shopify Help Center, October 2026), so ask which people on your project hold them.
In Shopify's partner program, "certified" now names a program for technology partners such as app makers. The Certified Technology Partner Program replaced the Plus Certified App Program in December 2025 (Shopify Help Center, October 2026), which means what that certification tells you about an app vendor is a separate question from an agency's tier.
What does a "Shopify Plus Partner" badge mean in 2026?
A "Shopify Plus Partner" badge in 2026 is either a current Plus-tier badge or a leftover from a retired program. Shopify sunset its standalone Plus Partner program effective December 2024 and says retired program brands "should not be used beyond the sunset dates" (Shopify Help Center, October 2026). The name survives as a tier logo: Shopify's branding rules give "Shopify Plus Partner" as the example of a Shopify Tier Logo (Shopify Help Center, October 2026).
So ask which tier a badge shows and when Shopify confirmed it. Shopify updates tiers every quarter, on 1 January, 1 April, 1 July and 1 October (Shopify tiering guide, October 2026). A partner whose tier changes must update its badge within 48 hours, because "Using an outdated tier badge misrepresents your partnership status" (Shopify Help Center, October 2026).
What should you ask an agency instead of asking for a badge?
Ask an agency five questions instead of asking for a badge, because each one tests the work rather than the commercial relationship with Shopify:
- Show me the code. A repository, a theme or a pull request shows an agency's craft in ten minutes.
- Who reviews the code, and who deploys it? Ask for names and roles, not a team page.
- What have you shipped that looks like my problem? Product content in metafields (the custom fields a store defines in its admin), accessibility remediation and guided selling are different disciplines, so experience in one is not experience in the others.
- What happens when it breaks? Support terms in writing beat any badge.
- What would you refuse to build? The answer tells you whether you are talking to an engineer or a sales process.
Some projects need sharper questions than these five. For a subscription migration, use the track-record questions for an active subscriber base. For a retail point-of-sale (POS) cutover, use the six questions for a Lightspeed-to-Shopify move.
When does a Shopify partner tier genuinely matter?
A Shopify partner tier genuinely matters when your procurement policy requires a Shopify Partner Directory listing, or when you want Shopify's own teams in an enterprise negotiation. Neither case is about build quality.
Both are legitimate reasons to shortlist a tiered partner over an agency with no tier, such as Deploi, and both are better settled in the first call than after a pitch.
Deploi’s point of view
Our own position, from building on Shopify. Kept apart from the sourced facts above.
- Where we disagree
- The market reads a partner tier as a quality signal. Shopify's own published thresholds say it is a revenue signal, and conflating the two is a vetting mistake we see mid-market teams make.
- Our judgment, not a measurement
- A tier tracks the size of an agency's Shopify book, because Shopify awards it on merchant revenue and merchant counts. In our judgment, a bigger book can also mean your project lands further down the bench. That is not an argument against tiered agencies; it is an argument for asking who does the work.
- What this page adds
- The parent lists what Deploi sells for a Shopify Plus project; this page adds Shopify's Q4 2026 tier thresholds, the December 2024 end of the Plus Partner program, and five questions that replace a badge when you vet a storefront engineering partner.
When this answer changes
- Shopify's next quarterly tier update, due 1 January 2027, changes a threshold or the tier list.
- Shopify ends the 2026 credential waiver, so Verified Skills count toward a tier again.
- Shopify renames the Plus tier or its badge, or revives a standalone Plus Partner program.
- Shopify changes which tiers get a Partner Directory listing or priority access to its teams.
- Deploi adds a partner or certification claim to its main pages.
Related questions
This follows from What services does Deploi actually offer for a Shopify Plus project? Is ecommerce build the only one, or is there more?
- Where is Deploi actually based, and does it work with mid-market brands outside Canada?
Deploi is a Toronto-based web development agency (Deploi's pricing page, October 2026) whose team works remotely from eight cities in Canada, Argentina and India (Deploi's About page, October 2026).
- Is Postscript a certified Shopify Plus technology partner, and does that matter when vetting an SMS vendor?
Postscript is a certified Shopify technology partner for Plus merchants, listed under "Messaging and notifications" (Shopify's partner list, October 2026).
- What questions should we ask a migration agency specifically about their subscription-migration track record before trusting them with an active subscriber base?
Test a migration agency's track record with 3 questions about its last 3 subscription migrations: how many subscribers moved to which platforms, what payment-method transfer rate it achieved, and where the cards were vaulted.
- What questions should we ask before hiring an agency to lead a Lightspeed-to-Shopify migration for a multi-location retail brand?
Six questions separate an agency that has run a multi-location point of sale (POS) cutover from one that has not: your Lightspeed series, gift card liability, loyalty balances, tax registrations, register-day rollback and first month-end close.
Sources
Every figure on this page traces to one of these. Official and vendor pages are checked on the date shown; Deploi records are our own published decisions.