Multi-region, Plus Markets vs Adobe Commerce multi-store, real-world experience?

Different architectures for different problems.

Shopify Plus Markets: single storefront serving multiple regions. Currency conversion, market-specific pricing tweaks, regional tax, geolocation, language toggling. Best for: same brand, same catalog, different pricing/language per region. Tradeoff: catalog is shared, hiding products per market requires Markets-aware tagging or scripting. Works great for D2C brands with one catalog and 4-region pricing.

Plus multi-org / expansion stores: Plus includes 9 separate orgs, each its own admin / catalog / theme / staff accounts. Closer to true multi-store but at the cost of maintaining N catalogs in parallel (a SKU change has to propagate across orgs). PIM (Akeneo / Shopify Pro Sync) helps but adds tooling.

Adobe Commerce native multi-store: 1 codebase / 1 admin → N websites → N stores → N store views. Each level can independently override catalog (selective), pricing, tax rules, currency, language, payment methods, shipping methods, customer groups, even product attributes. Best for: retailers running different brands per region, B2B-and-B2C-per-region, fundamentally-different catalogs per market.

Real-world rule: 1 brand, same catalog, 4+ regions, region-specific pricing → Plus Markets is faster (3-month build vs 6-month). 1 brand, different catalogs per region OR B2B-and-B2C-per-region → AC saves the catalog-duplication tax indefinitely. Multi-brand parent company with 3+ brands → AC wins on shared infra. Hybrid, Plus Markets for the consumer brand + AC for B2B catalogs, is real at $100M+ but operationally heavy.