Shopify Plus B2B: How to Sell Wholesale and DTC From One Store

David Lopes

TL;DR

  • As of 2026 you no longer need Shopify Plus to sell wholesale. Core B2B (companies, pricing and quantity rules, ACH for U.S. merchants, vaulted cards, net terms, plus up to 3 catalogs via Shopify Markets) ships on every paid plan. Plus now earns its price on scale and customization (unlimited or per-company catalogs, advanced payments, custom checkout, Shopify Functions, expansion stores, higher API limits), not on B2B access itself.
  • The real trap isn't the plan tier, it's measurement. Running wholesale and DTC from one store dumps net-60 no-ad-cost orders into the same GMV line as ad-driven retail, so blended ROAS, CAC, and margin all inflate, and native B2B reporting can't split B2B vs DTC contribution margin without a spreadsheet.
  • That gap is where Polar fits. Synthesizer Custom Metrics separate booked vs collected and B2B vs DTC revenue under one governed definition, Views toggle a DTC-only picture in a click, Polar Pixel and Causal Lift keep wholesale volume from being miscredited to ads, and LifetimeID stitches one buyer identity across DTC, POS, and wholesale.

Shopify Plus B2B used to be a simple gate. If you wanted to sell wholesale on Shopify, you paid for Plus. For years that was the honest answer. As of 2026, that is mostly no longer true. Shopify shipped native B2B to every paid plan, so companies, pricing and quantity rules within catalogs, ACH (U.S.), vaulted cards, and net terms are now standard features you do not have to upgrade for, with B2B catalogs assigned through Shopify Markets (up to 3) on non-Plus plans.

This guide is opinionated and written operator to operator. By the end you will know exactly which plan you actually need, which B2B features are now standard versus still Plus-only, and how to run wholesale and DTC from one store without your numbers turning to mush. We will also name where Shopify B2B still frustrates real merchants, because pretending it is perfect helps no one.

Shopify Plus B2B in 2026: the short answer

Shopify B2B now ships on every paid plan. You do not need Shopify Plus to start selling wholesale. Core B2B (companies, pricing and quantity rules within catalogs, ACH for U.S. merchants, vaulted credit cards, and net terms managed through draft orders) is standard on Basic, Grow, and Advanced, with B2B catalogs assigned through Shopify Markets (up to 3). Customer-specific catalogs assigned directly to a company or location, unlimited catalogs, and advanced payments (deposits and partial payments) remain Plus-only.

So when does Shopify Plus B2B still matter? Plus earns its price at scale, not at entry. It adds checkout extensibility, Shopify Functions for custom B2B pricing logic, higher API limits, multiple expansion stores, unlimited and customer-specific catalogs, advanced payment options, cleaner ways to run B2B and DTC together, and dedicated support. If you sell high GMV, need a custom buyer checkout, run several storefronts, or need per-company pricing beyond three catalogs, Plus is still the right call.

If you do not, you can launch wholesale today on a lower tier and pay nothing extra for the core B2B feature set itself. The full plan-by-plan matrix sits in the next section.

The real decision has shifted. The question used to be "does B2B force me onto Plus." Now it is "do I need Plus for reasons beyond core B2B, and can I trust my numbers once wholesale and DTC share one store." That second half is where most operators get burned, and where almost no guide on this topic helps you.

External references worth bookmarking: Shopify's own announcement at shopify.com/news/b2b-for-all, the B2B hub at help.shopify.com, and the Plus B2B overview at shopify.com/plus/solutions/b2b-ecommerce.

What "Shopify B2B" actually includes

Shopify B2B is the native set of wholesale features built into the platform. It replaced the legacy wholesale channel, which ran as a separate password-protected storefront. The new model lives inside your main store, so your wholesale buyers log in and shop a tailored version of the same catalog.

Here is what that breaks down into.

Companies, locations, and B2B customers

Shopify B2B organizes wholesale buyers as companies, not individual shoppers. A company can hold multiple locations, each with its own shipping addresses, tax settings, payment terms, and assigned buyers. One buyer can place orders on behalf of a location, and you control who sees what.

This matters because wholesale rarely maps to one person with one card. It maps to an account with a buyer, an AP contact, and a few ship-to addresses. The company model finally reflects that out of the box, on every paid plan.

Catalogs, price lists, and quantity rules

Catalogs segment pricing and product access. A catalog carries its pricing (fixed wholesale prices or percentage adjustments off retail) plus quantity rules (order minimums, maximums, and case-pack increments).

This is the engine of wholesale. One buyer sees net-30 pricing with a 12-unit minimum. Another sees a different tier entirely. The retail shopper sees none of it.

Here is the catch most guides miss. Pricing and quantity rules are standard on every paid plan, but how catalogs get assigned is where the plan tier bites. On Basic, Grow, and Advanced you get up to 3 B2B catalogs, assigned through Shopify Markets (your store must be on new Shopify Markets to use them). Assigning catalogs directly to a specific company or location for customer-level pricing, and creating unlimited catalogs, are Plus-only. So if your wholesale program needs more than three pricing groups or true per-company pricing, that is a genuine reason to be on Plus.

Payment terms, net terms, ACH, and draft orders

Shopify B2B supports payment terms so you can defer receivables the way wholesale actually works. You set net terms (net 15, net 30, net 60) per company, accept ACH bank transfers (U.S. merchants only) and vaulted credit cards, and issue invoices. Where a buyer needs a manual quote, you build a draft order, apply the right terms, and send it for payment. Advanced payment options (deposit requirements, partial payments, and payment requests per fulfillment) are Plus-only.

Net terms defer receivables, which is normal for wholesale and brutal for measurement. A net-60 order books revenue today but collects cash two months out. Hold that thought, because it is the core of the measurement problem later.

With Polar: Booked-versus-collected is exactly the kind of split native reporting cannot hold. In Polar's Synthesizer you define a Custom Metric for booked B2B revenue and another for cash-collected on terms, each governed by a single definition that everyone reads the same way. The Shopify connector pulls draft orders and payment terms natively, so your net-15, net-30, and net-60 cohorts stay separated without a spreadsheet.

For the full feature breakdown by plan, see help.shopify.com's B2B manual.

Shopify Plus B2B vs non-Plus B2B: what you actually get on each plan

This is the section most competing guides get wrong, because most were written before "B2B for all" shipped. Here is a current matrix, verified against Shopify's official "B2B features by plan" documentation.

Shopify Plus B2B vs non-Plus B2B by plan

B2B capability Basic / Grow / Advanced Plus
Companies, locations, and B2B customers Yes Yes
Pricing and quantity rules within catalogs Yes Yes
B2B catalogs Up to 3Assigned via Shopify Markets Unlimited
Customer-specific catalogsDirect company/location assignment No Yes
Net terms, ACH (U.S.), vaulted cards, draft orders Yes Yes
Advanced paymentsDeposits, partial payments, payment per fulfillment No Yes
Contextual B2B checkout and storefrontVia Shopify Markets Advanced only Yes
Checkout extensibilityCustom B2B checkout Plus only Yes
Shopify Functions for custom B2B pricing logic Limited Yes
Higher API rate limits Standard Higher
Expansion storesDedicated wholesale store No Yes
Dedicated launch and merchant support No Yes
Verdict Core wholesale runs on any paid plan Scale, custom checkout, unlimited catalogs, advanced payments

ACH bank transfers are available to U.S.-based merchants only. Non-US stores still get net terms and vaulted credit cards, but not ACH.

Verdict: core wholesale runs on any paid plan. Plus is for customer-specific and unlimited catalogs, advanced payments, custom checkout, custom pricing logic, multi-store, and scale.

The plainspoken read: most brands starting wholesale do not need Plus for B2B. You genuinely need Plus when you run high GMV, when you need per-company pricing or more than three catalogs, when you need a custom B2B checkout or Shopify Functions to encode pricing logic the standard catalog system cannot express, when you want deposits or partial payments, when you want a separate expansion store for wholesale, or when you have outgrown standard API limits because of heavy automation.

If you contrast Shopify with other platforms, keep it inside the ecommerce ecosystem and keep it short. Yes, BigCommerce and Adobe Commerce have B2B offerings. For a brand already living on Shopify, the native B2B set plus the app ecosystem is almost always the path of least resistance, and migrating off Shopify to get wholesale features you now get for free would be a strange trade.

Selling wholesale and DTC from one store

Most brands do not run pure wholesale. They run wholesale alongside DTC, on one Shopify store, sharing one catalog system and one inventory pool. That is the realistic setup, and Shopify B2B is built for it: two pricing logics, two buyer behaviors, one backend.

Operationally it works. The problem is measurement.

When a wholesale net-60 order and a paid-acquisition DTC order land in the same GMV line, your blended math quietly breaks. Your ROAS looks inflated because wholesale revenue with zero ad spend gets averaged into the same pool as ad-driven DTC. Your CAC looks better than it is. Your margin looks healthier than it is, because wholesale carries different unit economics than retail. We call this the omnichannel-CAC trap: blended numbers over-credit paid acquisition the moment a no-ad-cost channel like wholesale shares the same revenue line.

Consider the pattern we see often. A home-goods brand running net-60 wholesale alongside paid-social DTC found its blended ROAS overstated by double digits, simply because wholesale orders sat inside the same revenue total as ad-driven retail. Nothing was wrong with the ads. The number was wrong.

With Polar: This is precisely the omnichannel-CAC trap, and Polar Pixel is built to defuse it. The Pixel is first-party and click-based only (no view-through inflation), so paid conversions carry the same definition across Meta, Google, and TikTok and never absorb credit for no-ad-cost wholesale orders. Pair it with Causal Lift, Polar's GeoLift-based incrementality test, to confirm what your ads actually drove rather than what a blended average implies.

This is the unclaimed ground, and it is where Polar Analytics fits. Polar unifies wholesale and DTC orders into one P&L and then lets you split them cleanly. With Custom Metrics and Custom Dimensions you separate B2B revenue from DTC revenue and define B2B contribution margin once, properly, instead of rebuilding it in a spreadsheet every month. Polar's Views let you toggle a "DTC only, no wholesale" perspective across every report in one click, so the blended picture and the channel-pure picture both stay honest.

LifetimeID keeps buyer identity straight across channels by stitching one persistent customer identity from first-party pixel data plus hard purchase signals like email, customer ID, and order ID across DTC, POS, and wholesale. And Causal Lift, Polar's GeoLift-based incrementality testing, makes sure net-terms wholesale volume does not get miscredited to paid ads. Because here is the rule that matters: a KPI is a definition, not a number. Define "B2B contribution margin" once, in Polar, and stop arguing about it.

For the deeper mechanics, see our guide on blended DTC and wholesale CAC.

Where Shopify B2B still frustrates operators (the honest part)

Shopify B2B is good. It is not flawless, and the merchant communities are full of real complaints worth taking seriously before you commit.

The most common pain points: the B2B and DTC theme experience involves compromises, because one storefront has to serve two very different buyers, and the wholesale UX can feel bolted on. Catalog management gets heavy at scale, especially when you have hundreds of company-specific price lists to maintain (and on non-Plus plans you are capped at three catalogs to begin with). Buyer login and account friction is a recurring gripe, since wholesale buyers expect a smooth portal and sometimes hit dead ends. Native B2B analytics are thin.

With Polar: Thin native analytics is the gap Polar was built to fill for brands in the $10M to $100M+ GMV range. The Synthesizer ships 400+ pre-built commerce metrics, so B2B-versus-DTC views, contribution margin, and cohort reporting are ready out of the box instead of stitched together by hand. With 40+ connectors including native Shopify, you are live in 24 hours with a refresh every 15 minutes, and every seat is included for a small percentage of impacted GMV.

To be plain about it: where you need a polished self-serve B2B portal, deep catalog automation, or custom checkout flows, you will reach for an app or for Plus. That is a fair assessment, not a knock.

The reporting gap is the one we feel most. Native Shopify B2B reporting cannot answer "what was our B2B versus DTC contribution margin last month" without you exporting to a spreadsheet. That delay is the Question Latency Tax: every day finance waits for a blended B2B and DTC answer is a day decisions get made on stale or guessed numbers.

Polar closes that gap. Ask Polar and the Polar MCP let you ask "what was B2B versus DTC contribution margin last month" in plain language and get a cited answer in seconds, reasoned against a governed semantic layer rather than guessed from raw tables. For teams that want raw access, every Polar customer gets a dedicated Snowflake instance they can query directly. As one of our ecommerce analytics leads puts it: "Shopify made wholesale easy to sell. It did not make wholesale easy to measure. That gap is the whole job."

Pricing: what Shopify Plus B2B really costs

Shopify Plus uses committed, variable pricing that scales with your GMV and business needs, negotiated rather than listed. That is the cost worth weighing. The core B2B feature set itself now costs nothing extra on Basic, Grow, or Advanced.

So reframe the math. The cost question is no longer "B2B forces me onto Plus, so what does Plus cost." It is "do I need Plus for reasons beyond core B2B." If you need custom checkout, Shopify Functions, expansion stores, higher API limits, per-company or unlimited catalogs, advanced payments, or dedicated support, Plus pricing is justified. If you just need to sell wholesale within three catalogs, you are paying your existing plan price and nothing more.

Decide on Plus because of scale and customization, not because someone told you wholesale requires it. That advice is now out of date.

How to decide (a 4-question test)

Run your situation through four questions. This is the Plus-for-B2B test.

  1. Do you need per-company pricing, more than three catalogs, a custom B2B checkout, or Shopify Functions to encode pricing logic the standard catalog system cannot express?
  2. Do you run B2B and DTC at a scale where one store's UX compromises actually cost you orders, or do you need advanced payments like deposits and partial payments?
  3. Do you need higher API limits or a separate expansion store for wholesale?
  4. Can you currently separate B2B versus DTC contribution margin without a spreadsheet war?

If the answer to the first three is mostly no, you do not need Plus for B2B. If the answer to the fourth is no, your problem was never the plan tier. It is the measurement layer.

Before you commit to a plan for B2B and DTC, get your measurement layer right first. Book a 20-minute Polar walkthrough and see your wholesale and DTC numbers split into one clean P&L, live, on your own data. Twenty minutes now saves a quarter of spreadsheet reconciliation later.

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