A Practical Guide to Shopify Plus Wholesale Channel [Updated Jan 2026]

Summary

• The Shopify Plus Wholesale Channel was a separate, password-protected storefront for B2B sales that Shopify deprecated on April 30, 2024.
• Shopify replaced it with B2B on Shopify, a set of features integrated into the core Shopify admin for Plus merchants.
• Merchants can run B2B and retail sales from a single blended store or from a separate, dedicated B2B store.
• Key features of B2B on Shopify include company profiles, custom catalogs for pricing and product visibility, net payment terms, and self-serve customer portals.
• Businesses on the old wholesale channel must migrate their customers, price lists, and workflows to B2B on Shopify or to a third-party solution.

The big shift in Shopify B2B

The term "Shopify Plus Wholesale Channel" now points to a legacy feature that no longer exists. Shopify deprecated the Wholesale Channel on April 30, 2024 and replaced it with B2B on Shopify, a set of features built directly into the core admin for Shopify Plus merchants.

For anyone searching for the old channel, here's the current state of things at a glance: it was deprecated on April 30, 2024; the replacement is B2B on Shopify, built into the Shopify Plus admin; merchants can run one blended store for retail and wholesale or a dedicated B2B store; the key features are company profiles, custom catalogs, net payment terms, and self-serve B2B accounts; and existing wholesale customers, price lists, and workflows need to be migrated to B2B on Shopify or another solution.

The old Wholesale Channel was a separate app — a password-protected portal that sat beside the main online store. It handled basic wholesale, but it was disconnected from the primary theme and checkout, and it couldn't use most apps, custom checkout logic, or newer Shopify features. B2B on Shopify replaces that structure with something more practical: wholesale is now part of the same core platform as the direct-to-consumer (DTC) site, worked from the same admin, inventory, and checkout stack — whether as one blended storefront or a dedicated B2B store.

What was the Shopify Plus Wholesale Channel?

For years, the Wholesale Channel was the main way Shopify Plus merchants sold to other businesses. It was a separate, password-protected storefront that worked as an extension of the primary store: wholesale customers logged in to a distinct portal to place orders, separate from DTC customers, though order and customer data lived in the same admin.

It was a reasonable starting point — it allowed basic customer segmentation and different pricing — but it had real limits. The storefront needed its own login, and Shopify formally deprecated it on April 30, 2024, signaling a shift toward a more integrated B2B strategy.

Features of the deprecated channel

The old channel offered a basic B2B toolkit: price lists (the core mechanism for wholesale pricing, applied to products or collections and assigned to customers via tags), customer tags to sort buyers into wholesale groups, and minimum order values. Its main constraints were a non-editable theme (only the logo, accent colors, and top navigation could change), limited customization beyond basic branding, and no third-party app support.

Why it was deprecated

Those limits became more apparent as B2B ecommerce matured. The locked theme prevented a branded buyer experience, the separate login created friction and admin overhead, and the channel couldn't use Shopify Functions or checkout apps as the core platform advanced. The deciding factor was Shopify's strategic choice to build B2B directly into the core platform.

The new standard: B2B on Shopify

B2B on Shopify is a suite of native features built into the core admin for Shopify Plus merchants. Wholesale is no longer an add-on channel; it sits inside the same admin and uses the same building blocks as the DTC site — themes, checkout, and apps. It's available only on Shopify Plus, where most complex wholesale programs run, and it supports two main patterns:

• Blended stores: both B2B and DTC run through a single storefront. A business buyer logs in and sees negotiated pricing, payment terms, and product access; a retail buyer sees standard pricing. One set of integrations, one inventory system. This often fits when branding, product data, and operations are shared across B2B and DTC.
• Dedicated stores: a separate Shopify store just for B2B, managed within the same Shopify Plus organization. This suits cases where the wholesale catalog, content, tax rules, or buying experience differ sharply from DTC. Shopify Plus includes up to nine additional expansion stores at no extra license cost, which makes a dedicated B2B build realistic.

Because B2B on Shopify is part of the core platform, it shares the same infrastructure, checkout, APIs, and app ecosystem as the main store — opening up more room for custom pricing, payment, and approval workflows than the old channel allowed. Here's how the two compare:

Core components of B2B on Shopify

• Companies: instead of treating every B2B buyer as a separate customer record, Shopify provides a company profile that can hold multiple locations and buyers, each location with its own catalog, payment terms, and shipping address.
• Catalogs: catalogs replace the old price-list model, defining product visibility and pricing for specific companies or locations. Pricing can be fixed per SKU, percentage-based, or driven by volume tiers.
• Payment terms: terms like Net 30, Net 60, or custom schedules can be set on a company profile and integrate with the order and invoice flow.
• Self-serve accounts: B2B buyers log into a portal to view orders and invoices, reorder, and manage addresses and payment methods. In blended stores, retail and business buyers share the same account framework but see different pricing based on company assignment.
• Checkout to draft orders: B2B transactions can be routed to drafts for internal review, so a team can adjust terms, shipping, or line items before capturing payment.
• Vaulted credit cards: business buyers can securely store payment methods, speeding up repeat card orders.

How it compares in practice

The main day-to-day differences from the legacy channel are a unified admin (no separate channel app; wholesale settings live alongside online-store settings), theme and branding control (B2B buyers use the same theme layer as retail), access to apps, APIs, and Functions (discount apps, shipping logic, custom pricing, and ERP/CRM integrations all work with wholesale orders), shared customer accounts in blended stores (one login can shop as consumer and business buyer), and flexible checkout customization (PO numbers, terms acknowledgments, or B2B-only shipping methods, added the same way as on the retail checkout).

The B2B market shifted

According to Digital Commerce 360, online sales across B2B ecommerce sites, login portals, and marketplaces rose 17.8% to $1.63 trillion in 2021, and growth has continued since. B2B buyers increasingly expect a digital ordering experience closer to what they use as consumers. That shift is the backdrop for the move from the legacy Wholesale Channel to B2B on Shopify: the older model could support basic online ordering, but it didn't match how buyers now research products, check stock, place orders, and manage accounts from any device.

Setting up B2B operations

Moving to B2B on Shopify means configuring the store for wholesale and shifting from manual processes toward a self-service model. The first decision is blended versus dedicated. A blended storefront manages B2B and DTC from one online store — a single point of ERP/CRM integration, shared data, and one admin, with buyers logging in to see wholesale pricing while other shoppers see retail offerings. A dedicated B2B store gives wholesale a fully separate presence, which fits when the B2B brand, catalog, or experience needs to be distinctly different; Shopify Plus plans include multiple stores, making this viable without extra platform cost. The right choice depends on how distinct the operations are and the long-term plan for brand and efficiency. Either way, inventory is typically unified, which simplifies tracking across channels.

Custom pricing, order limits, and payments

A major advantage of B2B on Shopify is granular control over pricing and ordering:

• Custom catalogs: catalogs curate specific products and pricing for different buyer types — for example, one catalog for top distributors with the deepest discounts and another for smaller retailers. Fragrance brand WHO IS ELIJAH, for instance, has reported using custom catalogs and price matrices to support strong international wholesale growth.
• Fixed prices: set wholesale prices that override the DTC price for consistent B2B margins.
• Percentage discounts: apply a percentage across a catalog or collections to manage pricing tiers.
• Volume pricing tiers: offer additional discounts by quantity — say 10% at 50 units and 20% at 100 — to encourage larger orders.
• Quantity rules (MOQs): set minimum, maximum, and increment rules to control order sizes for specific products or customer groups.
• Payment terms: assign terms like Net 30/60/90 to a company profile. Combined with invoicing and vaulted cards, this streamlines payment, and PO numbers can be enabled at checkout for tracking — important because many B2B buyers consider choosing their own invoicing schedule a priority.

Migrating from the Wholesale Channel

Migrating to B2B on Shopify takes planning. Shopify provides migration tools to transfer wholesale data; from an external platform, price lists can be imported directly in the admin, apps like Matrixify handle customer data, and REST APIs cover order history. The typical steps: export current wholesale customer lists to build company profiles and associate buyers; recreate price lists as catalogs (an opportunity to refine pricing with the more granular controls); communicate the change to customers, including the new login process (often a one-time email code) and how to access their accounts; and test the new workflow with dummy orders to verify pricing, payment terms, and the end-to-end experience before going live.

Trends shaping B2B ecommerce

The shift to B2B on Shopify reflects broader trends. Modern B2B buyers expect a consumer-like experience — clear interfaces, personalization, and self-service — and large orders increasingly close through self-service online. Automation tools like Shopify Flow can tag new wholesale customers for pricing tiers or flag large orders for review. A few patterns stand out:

• Self-service portals: Gartner has found that when B2B buyers self-steer their purchase, 65% complete what they consider a high-quality deal, compared with 24% when buying through sales reps.
• Many touchpoints: McKinsey's 2024 B2B Pulse reports decision-makers use about 10 touchpoints on average and split roughly evenly across in-person, remote, and self-service — a unified B2B/DTC storefront helps support that mix.
• AI in procurement: Forrester's 2024 buyers'-journey research found a large majority of procurement teams now use generative AI somewhere in the buying process; Shopify's API access lets merchants integrate AI-powered tools even though its core B2B features don't provide them directly.
• Personalization and omnichannel: custom catalogs, company profiles, and a unified platform let merchants tailor products, pricing, and terms while keeping a consistent experience across channels.

Next steps

The move from the original Wholesale Channel to B2B on Shopify turns a separate, isolated app into a deeply integrated suite that uses the full Shopify ecosystem — giving merchants more control over branding, pricing, payment terms, and the overall buyer experience from one unified admin. Whether through a blended or dedicated storefront, the payoff is a more efficient, self-service wholesale operation. First Pier is an ecommerce agency in Portland, Maine that builds and optimizes Shopify Plus storefronts, including B2B and wholesale. For help, get in touch.