Shopify Just Made B2B Available on Every Paid Plan

Shopify has made its native B2B feature set, historically a Shopify Plus exclusive, available on every paid plan. No add-on fee, no separate SKU, no upgrade required. Basic, Shopify, and Advanced merchants can now start selling wholesale with the same primitives Plus merchants have been using for three and a half years.

It is the biggest change to Shopify's B2B story since the tools launched. If your brand has been stitching together discount codes, tag-gated pages, spreadsheets, and manual invoices to serve wholesale customers, the workaround era is over.

Why Shopify Made This Change

This was not a quiet product tweak. It was a direct response to what merchants had been asking for loudly, and for years.

B2B was consistently a top feature request in Shopify's merchant research, regardless of plan tier. Merchants on Basic, Shopify, and Advanced were not asking because they were curious. They were asking because they were already selling to other businesses and doing it painfully.

The growth numbers sealed it. Shopify reported 96% GMV growth on its B2B surface last year and 41% growth in the number of merchants actively using B2B features. That momentum was locked behind a Plus paywall. Keeping it there meant telling a huge chunk of merchants that the single most requested feature required a plan upgrade most of them were not ready for.

Shopify's position is straightforward: selling wholesale should not require you to contort the platform or upgrade tiers just to get the basics. Making companies and catalogs native primitives on every paid plan lets merchants start wholesale on the plan they are already on, and grow into Plus only when the workflow complexity genuinely demands it.

What This Actually Fixes

The real story here is not what Shopify added. It is what merchants no longer have to fake.

For years, non-Plus merchants who wanted to sell B2B had exactly two choices: upgrade to Plus (often unjustifiable at their revenue), or hack together a workaround. The workaround pile looked something like this:

• Discount codes pretending to be wholesale pricing. Shared among reps, leaked to consumers, stacked accidentally, expiring at the worst moments.
• Customer tags gating hidden collections with brittle Liquid logic that broke every theme update.
• A second "wholesale.mybrand.com" store, duplicating the product catalog, inventory sync, and brand maintenance in two places.
• Manual invoices and Google Sheets to track per-customer pricing, PO numbers, and net terms.
• Third-party wholesale apps bolted on top of a consumer checkout, creating fragile experiences and tax edge cases.
• Email-based ordering, where a buyer emails a rep, the rep builds a draft order in admin, and nobody has a real self-serve experience.

Every one of those workarounds costs time, breaks at scale, and quietly caps how much wholesale a merchant is actually willing to take on. The point of this change is to remove that tax. Merchants should not have to upgrade to Plus just to get the foundations of B2B, and they should not have to fake those foundations with duct tape to stay on their current plan.

The Two Primitives That Matter: Companies and Catalogs

Ninety percent of native B2B comes down to two concepts:

• Companies are the B2B equivalent of a customer. Instead of selling to a person, you are selling to a business, with one or more buyers attached, a billing address, shipping locations, payment terms, and tax status.
• Catalogs hold wholesale pricing. Think gold, silver, bronze tiers, or per-account custom pricing. You can apply a flat percentage off, set volume breaks, or override individual SKU prices via CSV. Catalogs are assigned to companies (or markets), so a buyer sees their price the moment they log in.

Everything else (PO numbers, net terms, tax exemption, quantity rules, B2B-specific checkout, customer-specific catalogs) layers on top of those two primitives.

What's Now on Non-Plus (and What's Still Plus-Only)

Included on Basic, Shopify, and Advanced:

• Companies as customers (with multiple locations and buyers)
• Catalogs with fixed, percentage, or CSV-based wholesale pricing
• Volume pricing and quantity rules (min, max, multiples)
• Customer-specific pricing and product visibility
• Net payment terms (Net 15, 30, 60, 90)
• PO numbers on checkout
• Tax exemption per company location
• ACH bank transfers and vaulted credit cards
• B2B checkout and B2B notification emails
• Storefront customer.b2b Liquid context for theme-level differentiation
• Company-member invite flow via email

Still reasons to be on Plus: higher API and staff limits, full Shopify Flow for automation-heavy B2B workflows, Plus-only apps, multi-entity expansion packs, Launchpad, stricter SLA, and the deeper customization surfaces that high-volume wholesalers actually hit. Plus remains the ceiling, not the on-ramp.

Who Should Care Most

• DTC brands fielding wholesale inquiries. If you have been emailing line sheets, manually generating invoices, or running a hidden coupon program, stop. The native tools will save you hours a week and look more professional to buyers.
• Retailers with a side wholesale program. Dealer networks, trade accounts, gift-trade buyers, bulk corporate orders. You can set them up as companies, assign a catalog, and let them self-serve.
• Brands running a separate "wholesale.mybrand.com" store. You may no longer need two stores. A single Shopify storefront with the customer.b2b context and a wholesale catalog handles it, preserving your brand, theme investment, and SEO footprint.

How to Get Started: The Minimum Viable B2B Setup

What we recommend to clients who are brand-new to wholesale on Shopify:

1. Add a wholesale application form. A simple page linked in the footer ("Apply for a wholesale account") captures leads without any backend changes.
2. Create your first Company. Admin, then Customers, then Companies. Add the business, a primary buyer, billing, shipping.
3. Build a catalog. Start with one catalog (for example, "Wholesale 40% off") as a flat percentage discount on your full product list. You can layer in volume breaks and CSV overrides later.
4. Assign the catalog to the company (or to a market, if you want a tier structure).
5. Invite the buyer by email. Shopify sends a branded invite. The buyer logs in and immediately sees their pricing.

That's it. Everything else (net terms, PO numbers, tax exemption, quantity rules, B2B-specific theme tweaks) is optional and layers on when you need it. Start simple. You can always add complexity once the channel is producing revenue.

One underrated detail: in the theme editor, Liquid exposes a customer.b2b boolean. You can rearrange the PDP, hide MSRP, show pack sizes, swap imagery, or surface a reorder block, all conditionally, all inside your existing theme. No second store required.

Where a Purpose-Built Buyer Portal Still Wins

Native B2B is a solid foundation, but serious wholesale buyers expect more than a catalog and a checkout. Once a program scales, the gaps show up fast:

• Bulk order pads and SKU-matrix ordering
• CSV reorder and saved order lists
• Approval workflows (junior buyers submit, purchasing manager approves)
• Admin-delegated sub-accounts with granular permissions
• Richer account dashboards (open invoices, shipment tracking, rep contact)
• Quote requests and negotiated pricing flows

That's exactly the gap our B2B Portal app on the Shopify App Store fills. It installs as an extension on top of native B2B, uses Shopify's new customer accounts as the auth layer, and adds the buyer-side workflows that turn a functional wholesale store into one your reps actually want to send buyers to. You can read more about the portal here, see the architecture in our deep dive on admin-delegated sub-accounts, or explore our full B2B wholesale solutions.

Our Take

This is the right move for the platform. Making companies and catalogs universal primitives means the entire app ecosystem (messaging, loyalty, subscriptions, ERP integrations) can finally rely on B2B constructs existing on any store. That lifts the floor for everyone, merchants and partners alike.

For Plus, nothing really changes. The merchants who need Plus were never buying it for "access to B2B." They were buying it for the workflow headroom that comes with Plus. Now the on-ramp just got a lot less expensive, and the ecosystem around B2B is about to get a lot more interesting. If you have been waiting for the right moment to launch wholesale on Shopify, this is it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Shopify B2B now available on every Shopify plan?

Yes. Shopify's native B2B feature set, including companies, catalogs, wholesale pricing, volume pricing, PO numbers, net payment terms, ACH bank transfers, and vaulted credit cards, is now available on every paid Shopify plan (Basic, Shopify, and Advanced). It is no longer a Shopify Plus exclusive, and there is no add-on fee.

Why did Shopify open B2B to non-Plus plans?

B2B was consistently a top feature request from Shopify merchants regardless of plan tier, and Shopify reported 96% GMV growth on its B2B surface and 41% growth in active B2B merchants in the prior year. Keeping B2B locked to Plus was forcing non-Plus merchants into fragile workarounds like discount codes, tag-gated collections, and duplicate wholesale stores. Opening B2B to every paid plan removes that friction.

What B2B features are still exclusive to Shopify Plus?

Shopify Plus still provides higher API and staff account limits, full Shopify Flow automation for complex B2B workflows, Plus-only apps, multi-entity expansion packs, Launchpad, and stricter SLAs. The core B2B primitives (companies and catalogs) are universal, but automation-heavy and multi-entity wholesale operations typically still graduate to Plus.

How do I get started with Shopify B2B on a non-Plus plan?

In the Shopify admin, go to Customers, then Companies, and create your first company. Build a catalog with your wholesale pricing (flat percentage, volume breaks, or CSV overrides), assign it to the company or to a market, and invite the buyer by email. The buyer logs in and immediately sees their wholesale pricing. That is the minimum viable B2B setup; everything else is optional.