Shopify B2B went from a workaround to a real feature set. If you are on Plus and selling wholesale, it is now the default answer rather than the compromise. Here is what it does and where you still need to build.
What native B2B gives you
Company accounts. A company record with multiple buyers attached, each with their own login and permissions. The structure most wholesale actually has, which the old single-login approach never handled.
Multiple locations per company. Different ship-to addresses, different price lists, different payment terms per location.
Catalogues and price lists. Per-company pricing, percentage or fixed, with product-level overrides. You can show a company only the products they are allowed to buy.
Payment terms. Net 30, net 60, due on fulfilment. Invoices generated and tracked natively, which was the biggest gap in the old setup.
Quantity rules. Minimums, maximums, increments — case quantities rather than units.
B2B-only checkout. Purchase order numbers, no payment required at checkout for terms customers.
The setup decisions that matter
One store or two. A single store with B2B enabled keeps one product catalogue, one inventory pool and one theme to maintain. Two stores give you complete separation of branding and navigation at double the maintenance.
For most brands one store is right. Two makes sense when the wholesale experience needs to be genuinely different — a different catalogue structure, a different language, a different brand.
Customer-specific pricing granularity. Start with tiers rather than per-company lists. A dozen price lists is manageable; two hundred becomes an administrative job nobody wants.
Who approves accounts. Native B2B has no application and approval workflow. You are building that or handling it manually.
There is no self-serve application flow. A prospective wholesale buyer cannot sign up and be approved automatically — someone creates the company record. For a brand onboarding two accounts a week that is fine. At twenty a week it is a problem you need to solve.
What is still missing
| Gap | What people do |
|---|---|
| Account application and approval | Custom form plus manual setup, or an app |
| Quotes and negotiated pricing | Draft orders, or a custom quote flow |
| Sales rep ordering on behalf | Staff accounts, or custom portal |
| Complex credit limit enforcement | ERP integration |
| Reorder from history, fast | Custom build — the native version is thin |
| Deep ERP sync | Middleware, always a project |
The reorder experience is the one worth building. Wholesale buyers order the same things repeatedly, and a fast reorder-from-last-order path is the difference between a portal they use and one they ignore in favour of emailing your rep.
The honest cost picture
Native B2B requires Shopify Plus — currently around 2,300 US dollars a month on an annual commitment. Below roughly a million in wholesale revenue that is hard to justify on B2B alone, though Plus usually pays for itself on other grounds by then.
Implementation on top: a straightforward single-store B2B setup is a few weeks. Add ERP sync, custom approval and a built reorder flow and you are into a quarter.
Talk it through
Tell us your wholesale volume and whether you run an ERP.
Those two answers decide whether this is a configuration job or a build, and the difference is substantial.
Ask usA real read within one business day — not a sales call.
About the author
Manpreet Singh
Founder of Proscube. Leads the studio's Shopify, headless and CRO engineering, and works directly with founders rather than through account managers.
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