How to Use Multiple Domains in Shopify to Power Global Ecommerce

February 2, 2025

When expanding your ecommerce business globally, Shopify offers a powerful feature called Shopify Markets. It lets you tailor shopping experiences for international customers—with localized pricing, languages, and even unique domains per market. Whether you’re on a Basic, Shopify, or Advanced plan, you can configure your store to serve different countries using Shopify Markets and multiple domains. Here’s how to make it work without needing Shopify Plus.

Can You Use Multiple Domains in Shopify?

Yes. Shopify allows you to connect multiple domains to a single store. You can assign specific domains or subdomains to different markets based on geography.

Examples:

yourbrand.in → India market
yourbrand.ae → UAE market
eu.yourbrand.com → Europe
us.yourbrand.com → USA

These can be configured right within the Shopify admin under Settings > Markets and Settings > Domains.

What is Shopify Markets?

Shopify Markets is Shopify’s native internationalization system. It lets you:

Set up custom pricing by country or region
Offer localized languages and currencies
Create automatic redirects based on visitor location
Assign domains/subdomains to each market

It’s available from the Basic Shopify plan onwards.

Global Ecommerce Made Easy – No Shopify Plus Needed

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need Shopify Plus or Shopify Markets Pro to start international ecommerce. Here’s what you get with plans up to Shopify Advanced:

What You Can Do:

Assign a custom domain or subdomain to each market
Display local pricing (manual adjustment or percentage-based)
Offer multi-language support
Enable IP-based redirection
Use Shopify Payments for multiple currencies

What You Can’t Do (Without Plus or Markets Pro):

You can’t guarantee tax and duties at checkout
No built-in fraud protection or chargeback management
No discounted DHL Express international shipping
No merchant of record support for tax compliance
Cannot customize site content per market (e.g., banners or collections)

What is Shopify Markets Pro (Managed Markets)?

For stores in the U.S., Shopify offers Markets Pro, now rebranded as Managed Markets. It’s powered by Global-e and offers a turnkey solution for:

Handling taxes and import duties
Prepaid shipping with customs clearance
Currency exchange rate locking
Local payment methods
End-to-end fraud protection

It acts as the merchant of record, simplifying compliance. However, it comes with a fee (around 6.5% + 2.5% forex margin) and is currently available only in select regions.

SEO Benefits of Using Multiple Domains in Shopify

Setting up market-specific domains offers clear SEO advantages:

Geo-targeting: Each domain is indexed for the target country (e.g., .in for India, .ae for UAE)
Better rankings: Search engines reward localized content on relevant TLDs
Improved CTR: Users trust domains in their local language or region

Make sure to:

Use hreflang tags for multilingual pages
Set a canonical domain in Shopify
Submit separate sitemaps in Google Search Console for each domain

Final Thoughts

With Shopify Markets, you don’t need to upgrade to Shopify Plus to go global. Using multiple domains and assigning them to target regions, you can build a seamless, localized shopping experience that scales internationally.

If you’re serious about global ecommerce with Shopify, start by:

Purchasing geo-targeted domains
Enabling Shopify Markets
Configuring region-based pricing and currency
Redirecting users automatically

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