Shopify B2B: How It Works, What It Costs, and What to Watch For

Updated August 2026 with current plan availability, pricing, and B2B feature limitations.

The short answer

B2B is built into Shopify — companies, customer-specific catalogs, net payment terms, and self-serve wholesale ordering, with no third-party app required.

The most common misconception, repeated across most guides on the subject: you do not need Shopify Plus. B2B features are available on the Basic, Grow, Advanced, and Plus plans. Plus raises the ceiling; it is not the entry ticket.

The thing almost nobody tells you before you switch it on is what B2B turns off — accelerated checkouts like Shop Pay and Apple Pay stop working, along with subscriptions, tipping, and local delivery. That section is further down and it is the part worth reading before you commit.

What you get on each plan

For a wholesaler with a handful of accounts on similar terms, the Advanced plan covers the ground. The three-catalog ceiling is the constraint that pushes growing operations to Plus — that, and deposits, if you take large orders from new customers.

What it costs

Current US list pricing, billed monthly:

Plus is quoted rather than listed — the figure varies with contract term and volume, and larger merchants move onto a variable fee arrangement. Treat $2,300 as the floor, not the price.

There is no separate charge for B2B; it is part of the plan. Third-party wholesale apps still exist and generally start around $30 a month, but since native B2B reached the lower plans they are worth considering only for a specific capability Shopify does not cover.

How B2B on Shopify works

Three concepts carry most of the system.

Companies are the B2B equivalent of a customer record. A company holds multiple contacts and multiple locations, and each location carries its own addresses, payment terms, tax exemptions, and assigned catalog. A regional chain with six branches is one company with six locations, not six customers. Staff permissions can be scoped so a sales rep sees only their assigned accounts.

Catalogs and price lists control what each company sees and what they pay. Price lists support per-SKU pricing, percentage adjustments across a whole collection, and fixed-price overrides. Volume breaks work the way wholesale expects — 10% off above 100 units, 20% above 500, for example — and quantity rules let you enforce order increments, minimums, and maximums so a customer cannot order 7 units of something that ships in cases of 12.

Payment terms replace the pay-now assumption of retail. Payment can be due immediately, on fulfillment, or on net terms — Net 15, 30, 60, or 90 — alongside vaulted cards for repeat ordering. On Plus, you can additionally require a deposit and request payment per fulfillment rather than per order.

The selling models it supports

Which features matter depends less on your size than on how you sell.

Manufacturers selling direct. The wins here are product configuration, spare-parts ordering, and SKU lookup deep enough that a maintenance buyer can find the right component from an exploded diagram without calling anyone. The strategic payoff is shifting reps out of order-taking and into actual account work.

Distributors and wholesalers. Reseller portals with downloadable marketing collateral and line sheets, volume discount ladders, and channel-specific catalogs. Some run B2B2C, shipping direct to the retailer's end customer on the retailer's behalf.

CPG and food brands. A distinct set of problems: case-pack and pallet quantities rather than units, a promotional calendar that changes pricing seasonally, and channel conflict to manage between direct-to-retail accounts and distributors. Quantity rules and per-company catalogs handle most of it — the harder part is deciding which accounts see which pricing, and that is a commercial decision before it is a technical one.

Enterprise procurement. Large buyers may expect punchout catalogs — the buyer punches out from SAP or Oracle into your store, builds a cart, and returns it into their own approval workflow — and EDI for automated purchase-order and invoice exchange. Shopify's 2026 releases added EDI purchase-order sync from SPS Commerce and Crstl directly into draft orders, closing a gap that used to require custom middleware.

How B2B buying actually works

Understanding the buying process matters more than any feature list, because most B2B storefronts fail at the approval step rather than the cart.

A typical purchase runs: a junior buyer builds the cart, a manager approves it, and accounts payable settles on Net 30. Three people, three moments where the order can stall. For large or nonstandard orders there is often a request-for-quote step first — the buyer sends the cart to a rep for a final price before committing.

This is why B2B cart abandonment looks nothing like retail abandonment. The buyer usually has not changed their mind; they are waiting on someone else. Three things reduce it materially: save-for-later and downloadable quotes so a cart survives an approval cycle, reminder emails at around 24 hours rather than the retail cadence of minutes, and one-click manager approval of a subordinate's cart.

Two more details worth building in: requisition templates saved per job site or department, so a repeat order is one click rather than forty; and credit-limit checks before a pay-on-account order is accepted, so terms are not extended past what a customer has actually earned.

What stops working when you enable B2B

This is the section most guides skip, and the one that causes the unpleasant surprises. Some limitations are permanent; others are defaults you can have reversed.

Incompatible with B2B — cannot be re-enabled:

• Accelerated checkouts. Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Amazon Pay do not work for B2B orders. If your D2C conversion rate leans on Shop Pay, understand this before running a blended store.
• Subscriptions cannot be used with B2B customers.
• Local delivery and pickup points are unavailable for storefront B2B orders.
• Tipping.
• Legacy customer accounts — B2B requires modern customer accounts.
• Agentic storefronts are not supported for B2B wholesale.
• Checkout.liquid customizations.
• Some third-party apps have no B2B compatibility. Audit yours before committing.

Off by default — can be re-enabled by contacting Shopify Support:

• Pickup in store
• Line item scripts
• Abandoned checkout notifications
• Gift cards at checkout

One consequence worth planning around: in a blended store, these restrictions apply to both your B2B and your D2C customers. That single fact is the strongest argument for a separate store, and it deserves more weight than it usually gets.

Blended store or separate store?

Both are legitimate architectures. Neither is required, and a separate expansion store is an option rather than an obligation.

A blended store — B2B and D2C on the same storefront — keeps one inventory pool, one product catalog, and one set of marketing assets. It is simpler to run and cheaper to maintain. The cost is the shared-restrictions problem above, plus the design challenge of serving two very different buyers from one storefront.

A separate store gives each audience its own storefront, checkout behavior, and messaging, and keeps D2C conversion tooling intact. The cost is duplicated catalog and inventory management, and a second store to maintain.

The deciding question is usually not size but overlap: if your wholesale range differs substantially from your retail range, separate. If it is the same products at different prices, blended.

Setting up B2B

1. Create a company. In Shopify admin, go to Customers > Companies > Add company. Add the company name, main contact, and billing and shipping addresses.
2. Add locations and contacts. Each location can carry its own addresses, payment terms, tax exemptions, and catalog assignment.
3. Build a catalog and price list. Decide whether pricing is per-SKU, a percentage off a collection, or volume-tiered — and set quantity rules for case packs and minimums.
4. Set payment terms. Immediate, due on fulfillment, or net terms, plus deposits on Plus for new or large accounts.
5. Add a company account request form so prospective wholesale customers can apply from your storefront rather than emailing sales.
6. Assign staff permissions, scoped to each rep's own accounts and locations.
7. Test a full order — placed by a company contact, with terms applied and an invoice issued — before opening to real accounts.

Storefront and buying experience

Wholesale buyers reorder; they do not browse. The features that matter reflect that.

Quick order forms let a buyer add many SKUs by code or search without navigating product pages — the single biggest usability win for repeat wholesale ordering.

Hidden pricing for logged-out visitors keeps wholesale rates private, which most B2B sellers need. Shopify's Trade theme supports this natively, and a wholesale-only storefront can be password protected entirely.

Advanced search scoped to the account — filtering by past orders, contract terms, or technical attributes — matters more than merchandising when a catalog runs to thousands of SKUs.

Draft orders cover the negotiated path: build an order, send it for review, let the customer approve and pay.

Headless is available if your buying experience genuinely requires it — but it is a significant undertaking and rarely the right first move.

Automating the repetitive parts

Shopify Flow is included on all B2B-capable plans and handles most wholesale admin. Four automations worth building early:

• Tag customers automatically by pricing tier when a company is created
• Notify a manager when an order exceeds a value threshold, or comes from a new account
• Send payment reminders as net terms approach their due date
• Alert on low stock for SKUs your wholesale accounts depend on

For deeper customization, Shopify exposes B2B APIs for ERP, CRM, and PIM sync, customer account UI extensions, Discount Functions — useful for keeping B2B and D2C discount logic separate in a blended store — and the Payment Customization API. Theme-level changes, including B2B-specific email templates and branding, run through Liquid as usual.

Rolling it out

Most B2B implementations run three to twelve months depending on integration depth. The pattern that works is phased rather than complete: launch with the core catalog and customer-specific pricing, add deep ERP integration second, and leave personalization for last. An MVP that a handful of real accounts use beats a complete build nobody has tested.

Two obstacles cause most delays, and neither is technical.

Product data is almost always dirtier than expected — scattered across spreadsheets and legacy systems, with inconsistent SKUs and missing attributes. Start cleaning it before you choose a platform, not after.

The sales team resists, because a self-service portal looks like a threat to their role. The honest counter-argument is that it removes order-taking, which is the least valuable part of their job, and frees them for the account work that actually wins renewals.

Measure adoption rather than just revenue: what share of orders arrive through the portal versus phone and email, average order value, order frequency, and the volume of "where is my order" support tickets. That last one falls fast when self-service works, and it is the clearest early signal that the rollout is landing.

How Shopify B2B compares

The honest summary: if the online store is already on Shopify, B2B is the path of least resistance and the unified inventory is the reason. If inventory complexity is the defining problem — thousands of SKUs, serialized items, deep purchase-order workflows — Lightspeed is stronger.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need Shopify Plus for B2B?

No. B2B features are available on the Basic, Grow, Advanced, and Plus plans. Plus adds unlimited market catalogs (the others cap at three active), direct company catalogs, and advanced payment options like deposits and partial payments. Most small wholesalers can start on Advanced or lower.

How much does Shopify B2B cost?

Nothing beyond your plan. Plans run $39 (Basic), $105 (Grow), and $399 (Advanced) per month billed monthly, or $29, $79, and $299 billed annually. Shopify Plus starts at $2,300 per month and is quoted individually. Card processing rates apply separately.

Can I run B2B and D2C from the same Shopify store?

Yes — that is a blended store, and it is a common setup. The catch is that B2B's feature restrictions apply store-wide, so your D2C customers also lose Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Amazon Pay. If accelerated checkout is doing real work for your retail conversion rate, weigh a separate store instead.

What features don't work with Shopify B2B?

Permanently incompatible: accelerated checkouts (Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Amazon Pay), subscriptions, local delivery, pickup points, tipping, legacy customer accounts, agentic storefronts, and checkout.liquid customizations. Off by default but re-enabled on request to Shopify Support: pickup in store, line item scripts, abandoned checkout notifications, and gift cards at checkout.

Is Shopify good for B2B manufacturers?

Yes, with the caveat that highly configurable products may need custom work. The native strengths that matter for manufacturers are deep SKU search for spare parts, company accounts that model real buying committees, and quote-to-order via draft orders. Where manufacturers usually need help is product configuration and connecting the storefront to an ERP that holds the real inventory and pricing.

Does Shopify B2B work for CPG and food brands?

Yes. Quantity rules handle case packs and pallet minimums, per-company catalogs handle the pricing differences between direct-to-retail accounts and distributors, and price lists can be swapped seasonally for promotional calendars. The genuinely hard part is not technical — it is deciding which accounts see which pricing without creating channel conflict.

What payment terms does Shopify B2B support?

Payment due immediately, on fulfillment, or on net terms — Net 15, 30, 60, or 90 — plus vaulted credit cards for repeat orders. On Shopify Plus you can also require deposits, take partial payments, and request payment per fulfillment rather than per order.

Do I need a separate store for wholesale?

No. A dedicated B2B store is one option, not a requirement — many merchants run B2B and retail from a single blended store, and an expansion store is never mandatory. Separate makes most sense when your wholesale range differs substantially from retail, or when you cannot afford to lose accelerated checkout on the D2C side.

The bottom line

Shopify's B2B tooling is genuinely capable and available far further down the plan ladder than most guides suggest. If you already run retail on Shopify, adding wholesale is a configuration exercise rather than a platform migration.

The decision that deserves real thought is blended versus separate, and it hinges on the restrictions rather than the features. Work out what B2B turns off, check it against what your D2C store depends on, and choose accordingly — before you build.

First Pier is a Shopify and ecommerce growth agency in Portland, Maine. We plan and build Shopify wholesale and B2B implementations for merchants running retail and wholesale side by side. If you are weighing the blended-versus-separate question, scoping a wholesale build, or untangling product data before a migration, get in touch.