Shopify B2B: The 2026 Setup Guide for Selling Wholesale and Retail from One Store

Key Insights

• Shopify B2B is no longer limited to Shopify Plus. Core wholesale features like company accounts, pricing catalogs, volume discounts, and net payment terms are now available on all paid Shopify plans, making B2B far more accessible for growing businesses.
• The right plan depends on the complexity of your wholesale operation. Smaller businesses can run successfully on native B2B features, while larger catalogs, more customers, and advanced workflows eventually justify Shopify Plus or custom development.
• A successful wholesale setup starts with the right foundation. Structuring company accounts, pricing catalogs, payment terms, and access rules correctly from the beginning prevents costly rework as your wholesale channel grows.
• Native Shopify B2B covers the essentials, but not every workflow. Features like approval chains, sales representative tools, ERP integrations, and advanced buyer experiences often require custom solutions as operations become more sophisticated.

Shopify B2B is a set of native wholesale features, including company accounts, custom pricing catalogs, net payment terms, and volume discounts, that let a merchant sell to business buyers from the same store and backend used for direct-to-consumer sales. 

As of April 2026, these features run on every paid Shopify plan rather than being locked to Shopify Plus, which changes who this guide is actually for.

Until this year, “Shopify B2B” and “Shopify Plus” were functionally the same conversation. If a brand wanted company profiles, tiered pricing, or net-30 terms, the answer was always the same: upgrade to the $2,300-a-month tier or bolt on a patchwork of apps. 

That changed on April 2, 2026, when Shopify extended its foundational B2B feature set to Basic, Grow, and Advanced plans at no additional cost. A merchant running $30,000 a month in DTC revenue can now stand up a functioning wholesale channel without touching Plus at all.

This guide covers what native Shopify B2B includes in 2026, where the plan tiers genuinely differ, how the setup sequence works, and the point at which most stores still need custom development to close the gap between what ships natively and what a real wholesale operation requires.

Why The B2B Feature Changed Now

The timing isn’t incidental. Shopify’s announcement cited a global B2B ecommerce market valued at $36 trillion, and merchants already using native Shopify B2B features have seen up to a 33% increase in self-serve orders within six months and up to a 20% to 33% increase in reorder frequency versus DTC-only accounts. 

That gave Shopify a clear incentive to widen the funnel. More merchants running wholesale on native tools means more merchants who eventually outgrow those tools and upgrade to Plus.

What’s Actually Included in Native Shopify B2B

The 2026 foundational feature set, live on Basic, Grow, and Advanced, covers five capabilities:

• Company profiles

Each wholesale buyer gets a dedicated account structure with support for multiple locations and multiple authorized users per company, rather than a single flat customer record.

• Custom pricing catalogs

Up to three active catalogs on non-Plus plans, each carrying its own pricing logic, assigned to specific companies or locations.

• Volume pricing and quantity rules

Tiered discounts and minimum order quantities enforced at checkout, blocking orders below the configured MOQ automatically.

• Net payment terms

Net 15, Net 30, Net 60, and Net 90, assignable per company or location, with automated due-date tracking.

• Vaulted credit cards and B2B checkout

A dedicated checkout for authenticated business buyers running on the same backend as retail, so inventory and Shopify Payments stay unified across both channels.

Where the Plan Tiers Actually Diverge

Three active catalogs is enough for a lot of merchants, and not enough for the rest. A manufacturer running separate pricing for distributors, regional dealers, and direct wholesale accounts hits that ceiling fast. So does anyone needing a self-serve wholesale registration form, since non-Plus plans require manually adding every B2B buyer through the admin. 

There is no bulk order form on lower tiers, and B2B catalogs don’t function inside Shopify POS below Plus.

Shopify Plus removes the catalog cap entirely, adds direct catalog-to-location assignment, unlocks partial payments and deposits, and enables sales-rep permission scoping. Industry data from Plus-focused B2B agencies places the real operational threshold around 500 active wholesale customers. 

Below that line, non-Plus B2B typically holds up fine. Above it, the three-catalog limit and missing rep tools become genuine blockers.

What Shopify B2B Still Doesn’t Do, Even on Plus

A few gaps persist across every tier, including Plus, and are worth knowing before a build starts:

1. No native multi-step order approval workflow. A buyer’s internal sign-off policy has nothing to hook into at checkout.
2. No purpose-built sales rep ordering interface. Reps can create draft orders but get no dedicated deal-tracking or conversation history.
3. No buyer self-service order editing. Quantity changes, address corrections, and PO updates all routes back to the merchant manually.

These three gaps are where custom development or a third-party app typically enters, regardless of plan tier.

Setting Up Shopify B2B: The Actual Sequence

Getting a working wholesale channel live follows a specific order. Skipping ahead to pricing before the account structure is set tends to create rework later.

Decide on a blended store or a separate B2B experience

Most merchants run blended, showing retail pricing to logged-out visitors and wholesale pricing to authenticated companies.

Create company profiles for each wholesale buyer

Every B2B customer becomes a company record with at least one location.

Build the pricing catalog

Assign a catalog per company or location, planning around the three-catalog ceiling from the start on non-Plus plans.

Configure net terms and quantity rules per company

Terms and MOQs are set at the company or location level, so different relationships can coexist without conflict.

Decide how retail pricing stays protected

Merchants wanting pricing hidden entirely from logged-out visitors generally need an access-control layer beyond the native default.

Blended, Separated, or Locked? Picking the Right Model

There’s no universally correct structure. A blended store works when retail and wholesale catalogs overlap heavily, a coffee roaster selling bags to home brewers and cases to cafes is the standard example.

 A locked wholesale area suits merchants with a smaller number of approved accounts who don’t need a fully separate buying experience. 

A fully separated B2B store makes sense when wholesale buyers need different navigation entirely, ordering by case rather than unit, dedicated reorder dashboards, on a theme built around bulk purchasing rather than product discovery.

Where Native Shopify B2B Hits Its Ceiling

The pattern across most wholesale operations is consistent. Native Shopify B2B handles pricing, terms, and account structure well. It doesn’t handle approval chains, rep-facing order tools, or buyer self-service editing, and it caps catalogs hard on non-Plus plans. 

For a store running under roughly 40 wholesale accounts with straightforward tiered pricing, none of that matters yet. For a distributor-heavy operation with an ERP that needs price lists synced automatically, native Shopify B2B is the foundation, not the finished system.

Merchants with these requirements typically end up commissioning custom Shopify app development to fill the specific gaps, whether that’s an approval workflow layered onto checkout, a rep-facing ordering interface, or an ERP sync that keeps pricing consistent across NetSuite, Zoho, or a proprietary system without manual re-entry. 

Getting the native setup right first is still the correct starting point. Building custom on top of a poorly structured catalog just moves the rework downstream.

A merchant evaluating Shopify B2B today isn’t choosing between “wholesale” and “no wholesale” the way they were eighteen months ago. 

The choice is narrower: whether the native, no-extra-cost feature set covers the current operation, and if not, which specific gap justifies custom work now versus later.

Do You Need Plus, Native B2B, or Custom Dev?

A fast way to self-assess

• if the catalog needs exceed three tiers or the account count is closing in on 500, Plus is the real conversation. 
• If the catalog is simple but approvals, rep tools, or ERP sync are missing, custom development on the current plan solves it without a platform change. 
• If the account count is under roughly 40 and pricing is straightforward, native B2B on the existing plan is already enough, and the right move is to build it correctly rather than reach for more infrastructure than the business needs yet.

Shopify B2B in 2026 removes the platform-cost barrier that used to gate wholesale entirely behind Plus. It doesn’t remove the need to structure company accounts, catalogs, and terms correctly before scaling, and it doesn’t close the gaps around approvals, rep tools, and ERP sync that show up once a wholesale channel gets real volume. 

The merchants who get the most out of the native rollout are the ones who treat it as a real system to architect properly, not a checkbox to enable and walk away from.

For merchants building or restructuring a Shopify B2B setup, Shop Ninjas’ Shopify development team handles both the native configuration and the custom layer on top of it, whether that’s catalog architecture, an approval workflow, or connecting Shopify to an existing ERP.

Pro Tip💡

Don’t build your wholesale catalog structure around today’s buyer count. If you’re at 15 wholesale accounts now but expect regional distributor tiers within a year, structure your company and location hierarchy for that future state from day one. Restructuring catalog assignments after 40+ live accounts are already attached to the wrong structure is a meaningfully bigger job than planning for it upfront.

FAQ

Is Shopify B2B free or does it require Shopify Plus?

Shopify B2B’s foundational features, including company profiles, up to three pricing catalogs, volume pricing, and net payment terms, are available on Basic, Grow, and Advanced plans at no additional cost as of April 2026. Shopify Plus remains necessary for unlimited catalogs, sales rep permission scoping, partial payments, and operations running above roughly 500 active wholesale accounts. Most merchants no longer need to evaluate Plus purely to access basic wholesale functionality.

How does Shopify B2B pricing work for different customers?

Shopify B2B pricing works through catalogs, which are product lists carrying a specific pricing structure assigned to individual companies or locations. Every authenticated buyer under an assigned company sees only their catalog’s pricing at login, with no manual overrides needed at checkout. Non-Plus plans support up to three active catalogs, while Shopify Plus removes that limit entirely.

Can you run both retail and wholesale from the same Shopify store?

Yes, running blended retail and wholesale from a single Shopify store is the standard native setup. Retail visitors see standard pricing, and authenticated B2B buyers see their assigned catalog pricing, both drawing from the same product catalog, inventory, and order management system. Merchants wanting a distinct buying experience for wholesale can alternatively run a locked or fully separate B2B storefront while keeping inventory synced.

What are the limitations of Shopify B2B without Plus?

Non-Plus Shopify B2B caps merchants at three active pricing catalogs, requires manually adding every wholesale buyer through the admin, lacks a bulk order form, and doesn’t support B2B catalogs inside Shopify POS. Order approval workflows, a dedicated sales rep ordering interface, and buyer self-service order editing are absent on every plan, including Plus, and typically require custom development or a third-party app to address.

How long does it take to set up Shopify B2B for a new wholesale channel?

Setting up Shopify B2B typically takes two to four weeks for a straightforward operation with 20 to 50 wholesale accounts and standard tiered pricing, covering company profile creation, catalog assignment, and terms configuration. The timeline extends significantly for larger buyer bases or complex pricing exceptions, since the bottleneck is usually data reconciliation, cleaning up duplicate company records and inconsistent pricing history, rather than the platform configuration itself.