Shopify B2B is available on Basic, Grow, Advanced, and Shopify Plus. Most foundational capabilities are available across plans, but catalog assignment, payment controls, and contextual storefront options vary materially by tier.
For merchants evaluating wholesale, the relevant question is no longer simply whether they have Plus. It is whether three market-assigned catalogs are sufficient, whether customer-level catalog assignment is required, and whether the operation needs deposits, partial payments, or advanced contextual experiences. Shopify documents the current differences in its official B2B plan comparison.
This isn't for most stores – and that's the point.
Custom apps, headless storefronts and complex theme work make sense when off-the-shelf hits a ceiling and the revenue justifies the spend. If that's you, we can scope it.
Published starting point: From $5,000 · Typical delivery window: 4–24 weeks
Start a custom build quoteWhat Changed, Specifically
Shopify's April 2 announcement extended five foundational B2B capabilities to merchants on its Basic, Grow, and Advanced plans:
- Company profiles – create separate accounts for wholesale buyers, with their own contact information, saved payment methods, and order history
- Custom catalogs – create up to three pricing tiers with different price lists for different wholesale relationships
- Volume discounts & quantity rules – set bulk pricing automatically, without manual draft orders
- Vaulted credit cards – allow B2B buyers to save their payment details for faster reordering
- Payment terms – offer net-30 or net-60 invoicing arrangements directly at checkout
For merchants currently managing any of this through spreadsheets, email threads, manually edited draft orders, or third-party apps held together with discount codes, the practical value of these tools arriving natively in the admin is significant. It is a single source of truth, integrated with your inventory, your Shopify Flow automations, and your Shopify Payments processing.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Consider a small ceramics brand that sells direct-to-consumer on Shopify and has been getting inquiries from boutique retailers who want to buy wholesale. Before Shopify expanded B2B availability, the options were more limited: upgrade to Plus, build workarounds with apps, or manage wholesale orders entirely outside Shopify. Now they can set up a company profile for each retail account, assign them to a custom catalog with negotiated pricing, and let them reorder on their own through a B2B-specific checkout experience – all without leaving the admin they already know.
B2B Adoption Data from Shopify
- 4.1×increase in reorder frequency compared to DTC orders
- 33%increase in self-serve orders within six months of adoption
- 20%increase in reorder frequency within six months
These are not marginal improvements. Wholesale buyers, when given a clean digital ordering experience, behave like loyal, predictable revenue.
The Limits of the Free Expansion
This is where honest reporting matters more than the press release. The B2B expansion for non-Plus plans is real and valuable, but it is not a full replacement for what Shopify Plus offers, and the limitations are worth understanding before you decide whether they affect you.
The three-catalog limit is the most significant constraint. On Plus, merchants can create unlimited catalogs and assign them directly to individual company accounts, so a hundred wholesale buyers can each have their own negotiated price list. On Basic, Grow, and Advanced, catalogs are assigned through Shopify Markets – meaning price lists are tied to market segments, not to individual buyers. If you have more than three distinct pricing tiers, the native tools will not cover your needs without workarounds.
Partial payments and deposits are not included. If your B2B workflow involves deposit invoicing – 50 percent upfront, 50 percent on shipping, for example – that remains a Plus feature. ACH payments, while included in the expansion, are US-only. And direct catalog assignment to individual company locations stays on Plus.
The practical takeaway is this: if you are running a relatively simple wholesale program – the same price list for all accounts, or a small number of clearly defined tiers – the non-Plus B2B features will serve you well. If you have 50 or more wholesale accounts each expecting custom pricing, or if your B2B operation requires deposit invoicing, Plus remains the right tool.
When to Upgrade vs. When to Stay
The decision framework is not complicated, but it is worth being explicit about it. You can likely run a solid wholesale operation on your current plan if your wholesale buyers are few enough that three pricing tiers cover them, if you do not need deposit invoicing, and if the operational efficiency gains from having B2B and DTC in one admin outweigh the complexity you have been managing elsewhere.
Upgrading to Plus makes sense when wholesale becomes a primary revenue channel – generally when it exceeds 40 percent of total sales – or when you have enough accounts that account-level pricing becomes necessary to maintain relationships. Plus also makes sense when your B2B buyers expect a self-service portal with full order history and reordering capability, since the native B2B experience on Plus is more complete than what non-Plus plans support.
Case Study: Snyder Performance Engineering
An automotive parts manufacturer that moved its wholesale operation to Shopify B2B saw a 25% reduction in back-office time and a 40% increase in average customer spend. The mechanism was simple – wholesale customers could browse and order autonomously instead of calling or emailing. When buyers can serve themselves, they order more and they order more often.
What to Do This Week
If you have wholesale buyers who are currently ordering through workarounds – manual draft orders, separate apps, email invoicing – the April 2 expansion gives you a reason to move them onto a native solution now.
Start by going to your Shopify admin and navigating to the B2B section. Set up company profiles for your top five wholesale accounts. Create a catalog with their pricing. Give them access to the B2B checkout experience. See how it compares to your current workflow. The onboarding is lighter than it looks from the outside, and the operational improvement tends to be immediate.
For merchants who have not yet pursued wholesale but have been receiving inbound interest from retailers or bulk buyers, this is the moment to take it seriously. The global B2B ecommerce market is valued at $36 trillion. The platform barrier that was previously $2,300 per month is now zero. The infrastructure is in your admin. What remains is the decision to use it.
This isn't for most stores. If it's right for yours, let's scope it properly.
We build custom apps, headless storefronts, and complex theme architectures for stores doing $500K+/yr where off-the-shelf solutions hit a ceiling. We'll give you a scope and number – not a pitch deck.
Published starting point: From $5,000 · Typical delivery window: 4–24 weeks
Start a custom build quoteFinal scope and price are confirmed after technical discovery.