B2B commerce on Shopify used to be a workaround. Merchants who needed wholesale pricing used password-protected pages, manual draft orders, or third-party apps bolted onto DTC stores. The experience was clunky for buyers and operationally expensive for sellers.
That changed. Shopify's native B2B tools — available on Shopify Plus — are now a first-class commerce platform for wholesale and trade selling. If your business sells to retailers, distributors, or business customers alongside your DTC channel, this guide will walk you through what is now possible and how to structure it.
What Shopify B2B Actually Does
Shopify's B2B feature set includes:
This is a complete wholesale infrastructure. For most B2B use cases below $50M in wholesale revenue, this is sufficient without any additional apps.
Setting Up Shopify B2B
The setup flow is straightforward but has a few critical decisions to get right at the start.
Step 1: Enable B2B in your Shopify admin
B2B is available on Shopify Plus. Navigate to Settings > Wholesale and B2B to enable it. If you are on a lower plan, you will need to upgrade or use a third-party wholesale app.
Step 2: Create your company structure
Each B2B buyer relationship is represented as a company. Companies can have:
When creating a company, assign:
Step 3: Build your price lists
Price lists are the engine of B2B pricing. You can create:
Most merchants start with two or three tiers: wholesale (40–45% off), distributor (50–55% off), and trade/affiliate (20–25% off). You can add more tiers as your buyer mix grows.
Step 4: Invite buyers
Once a company is set up, invite the buyer contacts via email. They will create a login and access your B2B-only storefront. The storefront shows only their negotiated pricing and any products you have made visible to them.
You can control B2B catalog visibility separately from your DTC catalog. Products can be B2B-only, DTC-only, or available to both.
Step 5: Configure the B2B checkout
The B2B checkout has different requirements than DTC. Configure:
Managing B2B Operations Day-to-Day
Once your B2B channel is live, the operational workflow centers on a few repeating tasks.
Reviewing and approving new company applications: If you allow self-registration, set up an approval workflow so you can vet new buyers before granting access and pricing. Use Shopify Flow to tag incoming B2B applications and notify your sales team.
Handling purchase orders: For buyers paying via Net terms, orders arrive with payment due in 15–60 days. Shopify tracks outstanding payment obligations per company and can send payment reminders. Integrate with QuickBooks or Xero for accounts receivable reconciliation.
Managing reorders: B2B buyers reorder predictably. Use Shopify's order history per company to spot reorder cadences and proactively reach out before buyers go elsewhere.
Running promotions: You can create B2B-specific promotions — additional discount codes, seasonal price list adjustments, or limited-time product availability — without affecting your DTC pricing.
Scaling B2B with the Right Tools
For most wholesale operations up to about $10M annually, Shopify's native tools are sufficient. Beyond that threshold, you may want to layer in:
Shopify's B2B API is well-documented and supports custom integrations for most of these needs.
The Hybrid DTC + B2B Strategy
Many Shopify merchants run both channels from a single store. The advantage is operational simplicity — one admin, one inventory system, one fulfillment workflow. The challenge is keeping the two experiences distinct.
Best practices for hybrid operations:
Why B2B Intelligence Matters
One of the underrated advantages of running B2B on Shopify is that you get the same enrichment opportunity on B2B buyers as DTC customers. When a new company places its first order, knowing who they are — is this a boutique with strong social presence, a distributor with a celebrity clientele, a retailer with a high-profile founder — is strategically valuable.
SonarID's order enrichment applies to B2B orders as much as DTC. A retailer who happens to be run by a known influencer or investor is worth knowing about before you ship a commodity wholesale order. The relationship-building opportunity is the same.
The Bottom Line
Shopify B2B in 2026 is a legitimate wholesale platform for most SMB and mid-market brands. The decision to invest in it now versus waiting is straightforward: if you have a wholesale channel that currently lives outside Shopify, migrating it in gives you cleaner operations, better data, and a unified customer view.
Set up the company structure correctly from the start — price lists, payment terms, contact hierarchy — and it scales cleanly as your buyer network grows.