Shopify B2B: How Wholesale Selling Works on Shopify

Shopify B2B changed in 2026. For years, the honest answer to whether Shopify could handle wholesale natively was that you needed Shopify Plus. On 2 April 2026, Shopify began rolling out its foundational B2B features to the Basic, Grow and Advanced plans at no extra cost, so company accounts, wholesale price lists, quantity rules, volume pricing and payment terms no longer require an upgrade.

That changes the question. It is no longer whether Shopify can do wholesale, but which B2B features your wholesale model actually needs. For some merchants a standard plan is now enough; for others, customer specific price lists, deposits or partial payments make Shopify Plus easy to justify. This guide explains the difference, how the features work and how to run wholesale and retail from one Shopify store, checked against Shopify's Help Center on 1 October 2026.

Key Takeaways

• Shopify B2B now runs on Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus. Shopify extended its foundational B2B features to the standard plans on 2 April 2026, at no extra cost.
• Every plan includes companies, company locations, quantity rules, volume price breaks, net payment terms, vaulted cards, draft order invoices, PO numbers, easy reorders and Shopify Flow automations.
• Basic, Grow and Advanced allow up to three active B2B catalogues across all B2B markets. Plus allows unlimited catalogues and can assign one directly to a single company or company location.
• Deposits, partial payments and payment requests per fulfilment remain Plus only, while Advanced adds contextual storefront and checkout through Shopify Markets.
• Wholesale and retail can share one store: buyers linked to a company location see trade pricing and terms when they sign in, while everyone else shops at retail.
• A trade portal we built for a fizzy drinks client cut the time spent keying trade orders from 5 hours a week to 30 minutes a month.

Quick Answer

Yes, Shopify supports B2B and wholesale selling natively, and since April 2026 it is no longer limited to Shopify Plus. Basic, Grow and Advanced include company accounts, up to three active B2B catalogues, quantity rules, volume pricing, net payment terms, saved cards and reordering. Shopify Plus adds unlimited catalogues, catalogues for individual companies, deposits and partial payments. You can run wholesale and retail from one store, with signed in trade buyers seeing the products, prices and terms set for their company.

Table of Contents

• Can Shopify Be Used for B2B?
• Which B2B Features Come With Each Plan?
• How Do Company Accounts, Catalogues and Price Lists Work?
• Can B2B Customers Pay on Account?
• Can You Sell Wholesale and Retail From One Store?
• Is Shopify Plus Worth It for B2B?
• How Do You Move Wholesale From Another Platform?
• Why Matters Perspective
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Final Thoughts
• Related Articles

Can Shopify Be Used for B2B?

Yes. Shopify B2B is a set of native features for selling business to business from your Shopify admin and online store, either from one blended store that serves wholesale and retail customers or from a dedicated B2B store. It is built into the core platform rather than bolted on, so the tools you already use for retail, such as Shopify Flow, Markets and Shopify Payments, work for wholesale too.

The big change came on 2 April 2026, when Shopify extended its foundational B2B features to merchants on Basic, Grow and Advanced at no extra cost. Before then, native company accounts and payment terms were Plus only, which is why many older wholesale guides still say you need to upgrade; they are now out of date. Shopify says merchants using B2B see up to a 33% increase in self serve orders within six months and up to a 20% increase in reorder frequency.

On a standard plan you can now create wholesale companies, give their buyers access, set trade prices and minimum quantities, offer volume breaks, grant payment terms and let buyers reorder from their account. The limits show when you need many different price lists, pricing unique to individual customers, deposits, partial payments or a trade storefront that looks different from retail.

Which B2B Features Come With Each Plan?

Shopify's B2B feature table makes the split clear: most features are on every plan, and the differences come down to catalogues, advanced payments and contextual experiences.

Two conditions are easy to miss. To use B2B catalogues on Basic, Grow or Advanced, your store must be on the new Shopify Markets experience. And the limit is three active catalogues across all your B2B markets, not three per customer: assign all three to one market and you have used the whole allowance, so you would have to remove or draft one before adding catalogues to another market.

Plus removes that limit and adds direct company catalogues, which assign pricing to a single company or company location rather than to a whole market. For a wholesale business where most large accounts negotiate their own prices, that distinction matters more than order volume.

How Do Company Accounts, Catalogues and Price Lists Work?

Shopify B2B is built on three ideas: companies, company locations and catalogues. A company is the wholesale business buying from you, such as Smith and Sons Retail Ltd. Each company can have several company locations, such as branches in London, Manchester and Birmingham, and each location can carry its own tax ID and exemptions, shipping and billing addresses, pricing, payment terms and contacts, so one wholesaler with three branches does not need three separate customer records.

Buyers are then linked to the locations they order for. A buyer with access to more than one location chooses which one they are buying for when they sign in, and the products, prices, payment terms and checkout follow that choice. Location level permissions decide whether each buyer can only place orders or can also manage the location.

Shopify's version of a wholesale price list is a B2B catalogue. A catalogue controls which products a buyer can see and what they pay, using an overall percentage adjustment, fixed prices for individual products, quantity rules and volume pricing. If your trade customers get 30% off retail, a £100 product shows at £70; if one product costs more to make, you can fix it at £75 instead, and the fixed price overrides the percentage.

Quantity rules set a minimum, a maximum and an increment for each variant, so a product packed in cases of 10 can only be bought in 10, 20 or 30. Rules apply per variant, which means a buyer cannot mix 5 blue and 5 grey to reach a minimum of 10, and if you set minimums, your theme should show them on the product page.

Volume pricing lowers the unit price as quantities rise, with up to 10 price breaks per product. Once a product has volume pricing its price becomes fixed, so the catalogue's overall percentage no longer applies to it, and each break quantity must sit above the minimum and be a multiple of the increment. A simple ladder looks like this:

Can B2B Customers Pay on Account?

Yes. Payment terms set how long a company has to pay, and you can set them for a company, for a single company location, for several companies at once from the Companies page, or on individual draft orders. The options are no terms (pay now, the default), Net 7, 15, 30, 45, 60 or 90 days counted from the day the order is placed, due on fulfilment once every item has shipped, and, on draft orders only, a fixed date.

Buyers can pay early from their customer account with Pay now, and unpaid orders show as Overdue once the term runs out. Payments are not captured automatically at the due date, though: if a buyer has saved a card, you still need to charge it from your Shopify admin. Shopify Flow's payment reminder action, available on every plan, can help chase the rest.

With Shopify Payments, an authorised buyer can save a card to the company location, so other buyers at that location can reuse it on future orders. For orders that still arrive by email, phone or through a sales rep, draft orders let you build the order for the company, apply its pricing and terms, add a PO number and send an invoice, so you do not have to push every buyer to self service on day one.

Deposits are where Plus comes in. Requiring, say, 20% up front with the balance on terms, taking several partial payments or requesting payment as each part of an order ships are all Plus only. If your trade model depends on deposits, that alone may decide the plan.

Can You Sell Wholesale and Retail From One Store?

Yes. Shopify calls this a blended store, and for most brands it beats running a separate wholesale site, because you keep one catalogue, one stock pool, one admin and one set of integrations. A dedicated B2B store suits businesses whose trade experience needs to be completely separate.

Shopify decides who is wholesale at sign in. B2B buyers must use Shopify's newer customer accounts, signing in with their email and a one time code. If the customer is linked to a company location, they get the B2B experience, with trade products and prices, company details, order history, saved payment methods, tracking and reorders; if not, they shop as a normal retail customer.

You can keep trade only products away from retail shoppers by publishing them to a B2B catalogue and leaving them out of your retail catalogues, so consumers see the single pack while trade buyers see the case of 24. Hiding whole pages or content blocks is harder and can need theme changes, Liquid development or an access control app. Theme editor customisation by customer type is Plus only, while Advanced and Plus can tailor the storefront and checkout by market; if all you need is different products, prices and quantity rules, a standard plan may be enough.

Is Shopify Plus Worth It for B2B?

Not automatically. When native B2B was Plus only, needing it was reason enough to upgrade; now you need a Plus specific requirement. A standard plan can be enough when your trade customers fit into three or fewer pricing groups, such as UK Trade Standard, UK Trade Premium and EU Wholesale, net terms cover your credit needs, quantity rules and volume breaks cover your order rules, and you do not take deposits or partial payments.

Plus earns its place when you need more than three catalogues, prices for individual companies or locations, deposits, partial payments, payment requests per fulfilment, a trade storefront that looks different from retail, or Plus features beyond B2B. If you supply 150 trade accounts and the larger ones negotiate their own prices, squeezing them into three market catalogues will become awkward quickly.

Advanced can be a middle ground: it keeps the three catalogue limit but adds contextual storefront and checkout through Markets. There is no revenue figure at which you must move to Plus, and a small wholesaler with complicated customer pricing may need it sooner than a large one with a single trade price list. Ask which Plus only feature removes a problem worth more than the upgrade costs, compare the numbers with our Shopify Plus guide, and note that Shopify says moving between plans needs no replatforming.

How Do You Move Wholesale From Another Platform?

Moving wholesale is harder than moving a consumer catalogue, because the rules matter as much as the records. Map the structure before importing anything: which contacts belong to which business, whether each business has one location or several, which buyers order for which branch, and whether terms differ by location. That maps directly onto Shopify's company, company location and customer model.

If your trade customers already exist as ordinary Shopify customers, Shopify has a built in tool to move them, with their order history, into companies, up to 250 customers at a time. From another platform, Shopify documents manual setup, Matrixify for bulk company imports, its Company API for custom migrations and CSV imports for catalogues. Keep order history, external account IDs and ERP references rather than flattening them to make the import quicker.

Then translate the rules, not just the discounts. A spreadsheet that says Customer A gets 25% off hides real questions: does it apply to every product, are some products fixed price, is there a minimum, are the terms Net 30 at one branch and Net 60 at another, and are some products off limits? Answer those before you build, and see our Shopify migration agency page if you are moving from Magento, WooCommerce or a bespoke system.

Why Matters Perspective

The best argument for native B2B is the time it gives back. When we built a trade portal for a fizzy drinks client, the time spent keying trade orders fell from 5 hours a week to 30 minutes a month: from roughly 22 hours a month to half an hour, or more than 250 hours a year back for the team. Trade buyers ordered for themselves, at their own prices and in their own case sizes, instead of emailing orders for someone to retype.

The 2026 changes make that kind of result far more accessible, because a straightforward wholesale business no longer has to justify Shopify Plus before testing whether trade customers will order online. We start by documenting how many trade customers there are, how many pricing structures exist, whether customers negotiate individually, payment terms, case quantities, trade only products, whether retail and wholesale should share a storefront, and what has to connect to accounting, ERP or fulfilment. Only then do we choose the plan.

The biggest mistake is rebuilding an old wholesale process simply because that is how the old system worked; a platform move is the moment to drop spreadsheets, manual approvals and pricing exceptions that no longer earn their keep. Why Matters has been a Shopify Partner since 2018 and is a Shopify Select partner with Verified Skills across development and marketing, and our Shopify development projects carry a three month guarantee. Our aim is the simplest B2B setup that supports your commercial rules, not putting every wholesaler on Plus.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Shopify support B2B?

Yes. Shopify B2B is available on Basic, Grow, Advanced and Shopify Plus, with companies, B2B catalogues, quantity rules, volume pricing, net payment terms, vaulted cards and self serve ordering on every plan.

Do I need Shopify Plus for B2B?

No. Since April 2026, Basic, Grow and Advanced include Shopify's core B2B features. Plus is worth it if you need more than three B2B catalogues, prices for individual companies, deposits or partial payments.

Can I sell wholesale and retail in one store?

Yes. In a blended store, buyers linked to a company location see trade products, prices and terms when they sign in, while everyone else shops at retail prices from the same catalogue and stock.

Can B2B customers pay on account?

Yes. Shopify supports Net 7, 15, 30, 45, 60 and 90 terms counted from the order date, payment due on fulfilment, and fixed dates on draft orders. Deposits and partial payments need Shopify Plus.

How do price lists work on Shopify?

Shopify uses B2B catalogues as price lists. A catalogue sets which products a buyer sees and applies a percentage adjustment, fixed prices, quantity rules or volume breaks; standard plans allow three active B2B catalogues and Plus allows unlimited.

Can I hide products from retail customers?

Yes. Publish trade only products to a B2B catalogue and leave them out of your retail catalogues. Hiding whole pages or content can need theme work, Liquid development or an access control app.

How long does a Shopify B2B setup take?

It depends on the number of companies, price structures, products, integrations and data to migrate. Setting up a few trade customers on an existing store is a small job, while migrating hundreds of accounts with negotiated prices and ERP links needs careful planning.

Final Thoughts

Shopify B2B is no longer another word for Shopify Plus, and that is the most important change for anyone weighing up wholesale on Shopify. Basic, Grow and Advanced now cover what a straightforward wholesale operation needs, from company accounts and trade catalogues to quantity rules, volume pricing, payment terms, saved cards and reordering. Plus becomes compelling when you need many price lists, prices for individual companies, deposits, partial payments or a trade storefront of its own.

Map your wholesale rules first, then choose the plan, not the other way round. If the same products go to retail and trade customers, consider whether one blended store could replace the two systems your team maintains today, and read Why Shopify Plus if your rules point to an upgrade.

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