For years, running wholesale on Shopify meant bolting a third-party wholesale app onto a store built for consumers, or running an entirely separate password-protected store. Shopify B2B, now a mature part of the platform, changed that. A merchant can run wholesale and retail from one store with native company accounts, wholesale pricing, and invoice terms. The question most merchants actually have is more specific: what exactly do these features do, and do I need Shopify Plus to use them?
This guide answers that feature by feature. It is the reference to read before scoping a wholesale build, so you know what Shopify gives you out of the box, what the Plus requirement is, and which of your requirements will need custom work beyond the native capabilities.
01. What Shopify B2B Is
Shopify B2B is the native set of wholesale features built into Shopify, available on the Shopify Plus tier. It is not a separate product or a bolt-on app. It is functionality woven into the core platform that lets a store serve business buyers with the pricing, terms, and account structures that wholesale requires, alongside or instead of consumer retail.
The defining idea is that B2B selling is fundamentally different from consumer selling. A consumer is one person who pays immediately at a fixed price. A business buyer is an organization with negotiated pricing, multiple people who can order, payment on terms, and minimum order requirements. Shopify B2B models all of that natively. The features below are the building blocks of that model.
For the broader business case for selling wholesale on Shopify, see the Shopify B2B guide for Canadian manufacturers and wholesalers and our B2B commerce services. This post focuses on the features themselves.
02. Company Accounts
Company accounts are the foundation of Shopify B2B. Instead of selling to an individual customer, you sell to a Company, and the company is the structure everything else hangs from.
A company account has three levels. The Company is the business itself. Locations are the different addresses or branches that company orders for, each able to have its own shipping details and assigned pricing. Contacts are the individual people at the company who place orders, each with their own login and permission level. This means a single wholesale customer can have a head office and three regional branches, with five different buyers across them, all ordering against the same negotiated pricing and terms, with each order correctly attributed.
What company accounts give you
- A business-level relationship rather than scattered individual customers
- Multiple buyers per company, each with their own login
- Multiple locations with their own addresses and pricing
- Permission levels controlling who can order and who can manage the account
- Order history and pricing tied to the company, not one person
This structure is why a real wholesale operation cannot run well on standard consumer accounts. A buyer who leaves the company should not take the account with them; a new buyer should inherit the company pricing automatically. Company accounts handle this correctly.
03. Catalogs and Customer-Specific Products
Catalogs control what a company can see and buy. In Shopify B2B, a catalog combines a set of products with a price list, and catalogs are assigned to companies. This lets you show different products to different buyers.
The practical applications are significant. You can restrict certain products to certain accounts, for example showing a premium or exclusive line only to qualifying wholesale partners. You can hide retail-only products from wholesale buyers and wholesale-only formats (like case packs) from retail. You can give a key account a custom catalog with negotiated products and pricing that no other buyer sees. The catalog is the mechanism that makes each company's storefront experience specific to their relationship with you.
Combined with company accounts, catalogs mean that when a buyer logs in, they see their products at their prices, not a generic catalog. This is a core part of what makes Shopify B2B feel like a real wholesale portal rather than a retail store with a discount applied.
04. Price Lists and Wholesale Pricing
Price lists are how Shopify B2B handles wholesale and contract pricing. A price list defines the prices a company pays, and it is assigned to that company through its catalog. This is the feature that replaces the discount-code and customer-tag workarounds that wholesale on standard Shopify relied on.
| Pricing Method | How It Works | Typical Use |
|---|---|---|
| Percentage off retail | A set percentage discount across products or collections | Standard wholesale tier (e.g. 40% off MSRP) |
| Fixed per-product price | A specific price set on individual products | Negotiated contract pricing for key accounts |
| Volume pricing | Lower per-unit price at higher order quantities | Rewarding larger orders with quantity breaks |
| Multiple price lists | Different companies assigned different price lists | Tiered wholesale (gold, silver, distributor levels) |
Critically, wholesale pricing is only visible to authenticated company accounts with that price list assigned. A retail shopper, or anyone not logged into an authorized B2B account, never sees the wholesale prices. This keeps retail and wholesale pricing properly separated while both run on the same store and the same products.
05. Quantity Rules and Volume Pricing
Wholesale buying follows different quantity rules than retail, and Shopify B2B enforces them natively. Three controls matter here.
Minimum order quantities
Set a minimum number of units a buyer must order for a product. Wholesale often does not make sense below a threshold, and minimums enforce that without manual policing. A buyer cannot check out with fewer than the required units.
Order increments
Require orders in specific multiples, such as cases of 12 or pallets of 48. The buyer orders in the increments you ship in, which prevents the operational friction of breaking cases for odd quantities.
Volume pricing breaks
Offer lower per-unit pricing as order quantity rises. Buying 100 units costs less per unit than buying 10. This is built into the price list and displays to the buyer as they adjust quantity, encouraging larger orders.
These rules do more than enforce policy. They encode your actual fulfilment and commercial logic into the storefront so buyers self-serve correctly, which is the entire point of moving wholesale off manual order-taking. For the full picture of that self-serve transition, see the wholesale self-serve portal guide.
06. Payment Terms and B2B Checkout
The B2B checkout is where Shopify B2B most clearly diverges from consumer commerce. A wholesale buyer does not expect to enter a credit card for a large recurring order; they expect to buy on terms and be invoiced. Shopify B2B supports this natively.
B2B checkout capabilities
- Net payment terms (net 15, net 30, net 60) assigned per company
- Checkout that displays the company's assigned wholesale pricing
- Purchase order number capture at checkout
- Pay-now options alongside terms, where you choose to offer them
- Tax-exempt handling for qualifying business accounts
- Shipping logic appropriate to the company location
Net terms in particular are a feature you cannot reasonably replicate with workarounds on standard Shopify. The ability to let an approved company check out on net 30 and be invoiced, with the terms tracked against the account, is a core wholesale requirement and one of the clearest reasons a serious wholesale operation needs native Shopify B2B rather than a consumer store with apps layered on.
07. What Requires Shopify Plus
This is the question most merchants come to this topic with. The honest answer: the full native Shopify B2B feature set requires Shopify Plus, which runs approximately $2,300 CAD per month. Company accounts, price lists, native payment terms, customer-specific catalogs, and the B2B checkout are Plus features.
Native B2B (Shopify Plus)
- Company accounts with locations and contacts
- Price lists and customer-specific pricing
- Native net payment terms
- Customer-specific catalogs
- Dedicated B2B checkout
- Quantity rules and volume pricing
Workarounds (standard Shopify)
- Third-party wholesale apps
- Separate password-protected wholesale store
- Customer tags with discount logic
- Draft orders for manual wholesale processing
- Limited, not unified with retail
- No native net terms or company structure
The workarounds on standard Shopify can serve a merchant with light, simple wholesale. But they are genuinely workarounds: disconnected from the retail side, lacking the company account structure, and unable to offer native net terms. For a merchant whose wholesale is a real and growing part of the business, the native feature set on Plus is the appropriate platform, and the cost is usually justified by the operational efficiency it unlocks. For the full comparison, see Shopify Plus support and when the upgrade is worth it.
08. Where Native Features Stop
Native Shopify B2B is strong, but it is not unlimited. Knowing where the native features stop is what prevents a mid-project surprise when you discover a requirement Shopify does not handle out of the box. These are the common gaps that need apps, custom development, or integration.
Quote-to-order and negotiation workflows
If your sales process involves buyers requesting quotes, negotiating, and converting quotes to orders, the native B2B features do not fully cover this. Quote workflows typically need an app or custom development.
Deep ERP integration
Native B2B does not sync with your ERP on its own. Real-time inventory, pricing, and order flow between Shopify and an ERP requires integration work, which for most manufacturers and distributors is essential rather than optional.
Credit limits and accounting enforcement
Enforcing a company's credit limit, tied to balances in your accounting system, is beyond native B2B and needs integration with the system that holds the credit data.
Multi-level approval hierarchies
If orders at a buyer's company must route through multiple approvers before submission, that approval logic generally requires custom development beyond the standard contact permission levels.
Advanced reorder and subscription logic
Sophisticated reordering, standing orders, or wholesale subscription models go beyond native capabilities and need apps or custom work.
The most common of these by far is ERP integration. Native Shopify B2B gives manufacturers and distributors an excellent storefront and ordering layer, but it has to connect to the back office to be a complete operation. That integration work is covered in the Shopify ERP integration guide. The practical approach is to use native B2B for everything it does well and add custom development only where your specific requirements genuinely exceed it.
09. Frequently Asked Questions
What are the main Shopify B2B features?
Company accounts (buyers organized as companies with multiple locations and contacts), customer-specific catalogs, price lists for wholesale and contract pricing, quantity rules and volume pricing, native payment terms (net 15/30/60), and a dedicated B2B checkout that respects company pricing and terms. These are part of Shopify B2B on Shopify Plus and let a merchant run wholesale natively without third-party apps.
Do you need Shopify Plus for B2B features?
The full native Shopify B2B feature set requires Shopify Plus (approximately $2,300 CAD per month). On standard Shopify, basic wholesale is possible through workarounds like wholesale apps, separate stores, customer tags, or draft orders, but these lack the company account structure, native pricing control, net terms, and unified checkout that Shopify B2B provides.
What are Shopify company accounts?
Company accounts are the core structure of Shopify B2B. A Company can have multiple Locations (ship-to addresses or branches) and multiple Contacts (individual buyers with their own logins). The company carries the wholesale pricing, payment terms, catalog, and order history, mirroring how B2B relationships actually work: you sell to a business, not one person.
How does Shopify B2B pricing work?
Through price lists assigned to company accounts. A price list defines wholesale or contract pricing (percentage off retail, fixed per-product prices, or volume breaks). Each company sees their assigned pricing when logged in. Retail customers never see wholesale pricing because it is only visible to authenticated B2B accounts with that price list assigned.
Does Shopify B2B support net payment terms?
Yes. Net terms (net 15, net 30, net 60) are a native Shopify B2B feature. A company account can check out on terms rather than paying immediately, assigned per company, with balances tracked. This is one of the features that cannot be reasonably replicated with workarounds on standard Shopify.
Can Shopify run B2B and B2C on the same store?
Yes. Shopify B2B runs alongside B2C on one store. Retail customers see standard pricing and check out normally; B2B company accounts log in to see wholesale pricing, terms, and their catalog. The same products, inventory, and admin serve both channels, presenting the appropriate experience based on whether the customer is an authenticated B2B account or a retail shopper.
What can Shopify B2B not do natively?
Native B2B handles accounts, pricing, terms, quantity rules, catalogs, and checkout well, but some requirements need custom work: complex quote-to-order workflows, deep ERP integration, credit limit enforcement tied to accounting, multi-level approval hierarchies, advanced reorder and subscription logic, and custom portal experiences. These are filled through Shopify's APIs, custom apps, or ERP integration.
Is Shopify B2B good for manufacturers and distributors?
Yes, particularly for those wanting to give wholesale buyers a self-serve ordering experience instead of phone, email, or spreadsheet orders. Company accounts handle the B2B relationship model, price lists handle tiered and contract pricing, and net terms match wholesale expectations. The main consideration is ERP integration to keep inventory, pricing, and orders in sync with the back office.
Related Resources
The business case for selling wholesale on Shopify
Moving wholesale off manual order-taking
Connecting native B2B features to your back office
When native B2B features are enough and when to add SparkLayer
The case for unified commerce across both channels
Scoping a Shopify B2B build?
AtlanticWorks is a certified Shopify Partner that builds wholesale operations on Shopify B2B for Canadian manufacturers, distributors, and brands. We configure the native features (company accounts, price lists, terms, catalogs) and build the custom work and ERP integration where your requirements go beyond them. You own everything we build. The free assessment maps exactly what your wholesale operation needs and what it will take.
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