How to set up Shopify for B2B and wholesale?

What’s the difference between B2B and B2C online store?

An online B2C (business to consumer) store is a site that sells to consumers. Anyone who visits the website can make a purchase. An online B2B (business to business) store, on the other hand, offers their products mainly to other businesses.

B2C and B2B online stores also vary in a way they structure their offer. A B2C store has a pretty straightforward pricing strategy. It offers the same discount to all customers or a particular group, while the prices are rarely negotiated.

A B2B store can adjust the price to an incoming client, setting different prices depending on order volume, history or frequency. Negotiations can take place at any time. What’s more, some B2B online stores welcome B2C clients, while others don’t. They can also decide whether to make their prices explicit to visitors or hide them. Some other B2B online stores are closed to the public and one cannot view the offer without getting approved.

Shopify caters to any of the above B2B online store scenarios.

How to configure B2B sales in Shopify?

Shopify has a native set of B2B features, simply called B2B on Shopify. It lives in the same admin you use for your regular store – there’s no separate app or channel to install. Since April 2026, the core B2B features are available on every Shopify plan (Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus), not only on Shopify Plus. What differs between the plans is how far you can personalise pricing and payments. Let’s start with the building blocks.

What happened to the Shopify wholesale channel?

Older guides (including an earlier version of this one) describe the Shopify Plus wholesale channel – a separate, password-protected wholesale store. Shopify retired that channel in 2024 and replaced it with B2B on Shopify, offering a migration tool to merchants who used it. Today, you set up wholesale sales with the B2B features described below.

The building blocks of B2B on Shopify

• Companies and company locations. Your B2B customers are organised as companies. Each company can have several locations (e.g. branches or warehouses), each with its own addresses, buyers, permissions, catalogs and payment terms.
• Catalogs and price lists. A B2B catalog decides which products a B2B customer can see and at what price. You can include or exclude products, set fixed prices or adjust prices by a percentage. If more than one catalog applies to a customer, they see the lowest price.
• Volume pricing and quantity rules. You can set price breaks, so that the price gets lower as the order volume grows, and quantity rules – minimums, maximums and increments per product.
• Payment terms. Instead of paying at checkout, a company can get payment terms: net 7, 15, 30, 45, 60 or 90 days, due on fulfillment, or a fixed date (on individual draft orders). You can set them per company location or for a whole company, and send payment reminders.
• Order review and draft orders. You can choose whether orders from a company location are accepted automatically or submitted for your review first. You can also create draft orders for your clients, with PO numbers and invoices.
• B2B customer accounts. B2B customers sign in with the email address linked to their company location and a one-time code – no password needed. Only logged-in B2B customers see B2B prices, products and account information. Prospective clients can request access through a company account request form.

On top of that, easy reorders, a quick order list and Shopify Flow automations save your clients and your team from doing the same activities all over again.

Which B2B features are available on which Shopify plan?

According to Shopify’s Help Center (as of September 2026):

• All plans (Basic, Grow, Advanced, Plus): all the building blocks above – companies, quantity rules and price breaks, net payment terms, draft orders, reorders and Flow. On Basic, Grow and Advanced you can have up to 3 active B2B catalogs, assigned to customers through B2B markets.
• Advanced and Plus: contextual storefront and checkout customisation through Shopify Markets, e.g. showing different content to B2B and D2C customers in a blended store.
• Shopify Plus only: an unlimited number of catalogs, assigning catalogs directly to individual companies and company locations (true customer-specific price lists), deposit requirements, partial payments and payment requests per fulfillment.

In practice, if you have a handful of price levels (e.g. wholesale, distributor, key account), a non-Plus plan may be enough to get started. If every client has negotiated prices, you need deposits, or you run a large portfolio of products and high sales volumes, choose the enterprise version – Shopify Plus. It has many other benefits for merchants that we wrote about in the previous article, 8 things you need to know about Shopify Plus. Features change from time to time, so check Shopify’s pricing page before you decide.

One store or two? Blended vs B2B-only store

Before you start, decide if you want to serve your B2C and B2B customers in the same online store or open a separate store for business clients.

• A blended store serves both groups. Your product pages stay public (and indexable by Google), but B2B prices, products and payment terms are visible only to logged-in B2B customers, so your wholesale pricing stays out of sight of regular visitors. Such a store can’t be closed to the public, because your D2C customers wouldn’t be able to place orders.
• A dedicated B2B-only store is fully separate. You can restrict access, so that the store and its login page are available only to approved B2B customers. On Shopify Plus, such a store can be one of the expansion stores – Plus includes the main store and up to 9 expansion stores in the monthly fee (one brand per contract). On other plans, a second store means a second subscription.

Short instruction on setting up B2B in Shopify

Here are the steps of launching B2B sales on Shopify.

1. Choose your Shopify plan based on the B2B features you need (see above)
2. Decide between a blended store and a dedicated B2B-only store
3. Integrate your ERP, CRM (we can help you with that; see Shopify Development)
4. Configure payment gateways and shipment
5. Add privacy policy, terms of service and other required documents
6. Add products
7. Create B2B catalogs, set prices, volume pricing and quantity rules
8. Create companies and company locations, assign catalogs and payment terms
9. Place a test order with a test B2B customer, following Shopify instructions
10. Invite customers to log in to your store

As a Shopify Plus merchant, you can ask Shopify specialists for help with your store.

What about discount codes for B2B clients?

In the past, a common workaround for B2B sales on regular Shopify plans was to ask every B2B customer to set up an account and give them a special discount code. It was often assumed to be safe, because Shopify allowed only one discount code per order. That’s no longer true: since 2023 Shopify lets you combine discounts, and a customer can apply up to 5 product or order discount codes (plus 1 shipping code) if the discounts are set to combine.

Now that native B2B features are available on all plans, B2B catalogs are a more reliable way to give business clients their own prices. If you still use discount codes, check the combination settings of each discount.

Launch a B2B online store or wholesale business with WeCanFly

Shopify has a major advantage over its competition – you don’t need coding skills to set up and grow your store. The admin panel is pretty easy to grasp. You can easily add and edit products and integrate any new features into your store. The same goes for B2B sales – companies, catalogs and payment terms are managed in the same admin as the rest of your store. We can help you set up and grow your store. Just reach out to us. We’re here to help.