Shopify's approach to international selling has shifted. For most of the past decade, brands operating across multiple regions ran separate expansion stores — one per market, one per entity. It was operationally expensive, but it gave teams the autonomy and legal separation they needed. That trade-off has changed significantly.
This guide, written for Vervaunt in October 2025, lays out the full decision framework: when Shopify Markets is now the right default, when expansion stores still make sense, and what a consolidation project actually involves end to end. It draws on Vervaunt's direct experience across a client base where the average Shopify Plus brand runs two to five expansion stores — most of whom are now consolidating or planning to.
The central shift is multi-entity support. Shopify now allows a single storefront to map multiple legal entities to Shopify Payments, unlocking local payouts and domestic alternative payment methods per region. That alone removes the most common reason brands maintained separate stores.
The guide covers what consolidation leaves on the table — subscription systems that can't isolate by entity, third-party gateways that still attach to the primary entity, and the edge cases where expansion stores remain the right tool: regulated markets, genuinely divergent catalogues, independent B2B setups. It also includes illustrative cost figures for multi-store duplication, a migration readiness checklist, and a side-by-side comparison across every major decision vector: licensing, domains and SEO, payments, assortment, apps, integrations, and total cost of ownership.
