By
Austin Coker
Reading time: 12 min
Last updated: November 11, 2026. We review this page monthly while Shopify keeps shipping B2B changes.
Yes, you can now sell wholesale on Shopify without Shopify Plus. On April 2, 2026, Shopify extended its native B2B features to the Basic, Grow and Advanced plans at no extra cost (Shopify newsroom, April 2, 2026; Shopify Changelog, April 2, 2026). Before that, company accounts, B2B catalogs and payment terms were Plus features, and Plus starts at $2,300 USD a month on Shopify’s pricing page.
“Every plan” needs one correction, though. Shopify’s own Help Center says B2B isn’t available on the Starter or Retail plans (Shopify Help Center: Shopify B2B). And the non-Plus version has limits: three active catalog assignments, no catalogs assigned directly to a single company, and no deposits or partial payments.
For most wholesale brands and small manufacturers, that’s still a big change. You can run wholesale accounts, tiered pricing, minimum order quantities and net terms from the same admin as your retail store, without a wholesale app or a second platform. This guide covers what you get on each plan, what stays Plus-only, who still needs Plus, and how to set B2B up so wholesale buyers can actually find you.
Shopify published the announcement on April 2, 2026, under the headline “Shopify brings native B2B features to millions more merchants.” It says the company is “extending its foundational B2B features to merchants on Basic, Grow, and Advanced plans, at no extra cost,” and that merchants on non-Plus plans can access company profiles, up to three custom catalogs with tailored pricing, volume discounts and quantity rules, vaulted credit cards and payment terms (Shopify newsroom).
The changelog entry from the same day adds the specifics: up to 3 active B2B catalogs assigned via Markets, ACH payments for US merchants, and a list of what remains exclusive to Plus. The announcement said the features were “rolling out across all plans,” so some stores saw them later than others.
Shopify gave two reasons. B2B “has consistently been one of the most requested capabilities from non-Plus merchants,” and wholesale buyers were already asking smaller brands to buy from them. Shopify VP of Product Samir Pradhan put it this way: “If B2B and DTC are part of the same business, the software should work that way too.”
Shopify has kept shipping B2B updates since. The Shopify Changelog lists a June 2026 Flow action that automatically charges vaulted payment methods based on fulfillment, due dates or invoicing, and a June 2026 change that turns B2B discounts on by default for new B2B stores and for eligible existing ones.
Four plans include B2B. The features differ by plan. This table summarizes Shopify’s own B2B features by plan page as of November 11, 2026:
Starter and Retail don’t appear because B2B isn’t available on them. If you sell in person on Retail and want wholesale, you need one of the plans above.
Plus still has four things the other plans don’t, and they’re the ones larger wholesalers lean on most.
Non-Plus plans get up to 3 active catalog assignments across active B2B markets. The limit counts assignments, not catalogs. Assigning the same catalog to two B2B markets uses two of your three (Shopify Help Center: catalogs and pricing in B2B). Setting a catalog to Draft frees its slot.
On Plus, you can attach a catalog to a single company or company location. That’s how you give one distributor its negotiated contract pricing without creating a market for it. On Basic, Grow and Advanced, catalogs reach buyers only through B2B markets, so pricing is per group of buyers, not per account.
Deposit requirements, partial payments and payment requests per fulfillment are Plus-only. If you make to order, or ship big orders in several drops and bill as each one leaves, that matters.
Shopify’s Help Center notes that abandoned checkouts are turned off by default for B2B and aren’t available on plans other than Plus (Shopify Help Center: checkout, orders and draft orders in B2B). It’s a smaller gap, but it does affect recovery emails for wholesale carts.
Here’s what the foundational features do in day-to-day wholesale.
Each wholesale customer becomes a company in your admin. A company can have several locations, each with its own shipping address, payment terms, tax exemptions and catalog access. Buyers are contacts attached to a location, and you can limit a contact to ordering only or give them location admin rights.
A catalog controls which products a B2B group sees and at what price. You can include or exclude products, apply a percentage adjustment, or set fixed prices. Retail shoppers never see these prices, because B2B customers have to sign in first. Shopify requires the newer customer accounts for B2B, not legacy accounts (Shopify Help Center: sign-in and customer accounts in B2B).
Quantity rules set minimums, maximums and increments per product. If a product ships in cases of 12, you can require multiples of 12. Volume pricing adds price breaks at quantity thresholds in the same order. Both are on every B2B plan.
You can set terms such as net 30 on a company location, send payment reminders, and let buyers pay by vaulted card (with Shopify Payments) or ACH in the US. Draft orders let your team build an order for a buyer, review orders buyers submit, and send invoices.
Buyers can reorder past orders, add PO numbers, and use a quick order list in the Trade theme to enter SKUs and quantities in bulk. Shopify says merchants using B2B see up to a 33% increase in self-serve orders within six months and up to a 20% increase in reorder frequency (Shopify newsroom). Those are Shopify’s own figures across its merchants, not an independent study.
Shopify Flow works with B2B objects on every B2B plan. You can tag new companies, alert a rep when a large order lands, or route account requests for approval without an extra app.
For many brands, yes. A common wholesale setup has three price tiers: a retailer or stockist price, a distributor price, and maybe one for key accounts or a single export market. That fits inside three assignments.
You’ll hit the limit if you do any of these:
A quick test: list every distinct price list you send to wholesale customers today. If it’s three or fewer, and none of them belongs to just one customer, the non-Plus plans probably cover your pricing.
Before you set anything up, decide whether wholesale lives in your existing retail store or in a separate one. Shopify calls these blended and dedicated stores, and warns that switching later means redoing most of your setup, including companies, catalogs and storefront customizations (Shopify Help Center: choosing a store type).
A blended store suits you when you sell much the same products to retail and wholesale buyers, share inventory, and have the same team running both. A dedicated store suits you when wholesale has a different catalog, a different brand presentation, or its own team. A dedicated store is a second Shopify subscription, so price that in.
Upgrade to Plus when one of these is true:
Shopify says moving between plans doesn’t require replatforming, so starting on Basic, Grow or Advanced and upgrading later is a reasonable path.
Two groups benefit most.
DTC brands getting wholesale requests. If stockists email asking for a line sheet, you no longer need a password-protected page, a PDF order form or a separate wholesale app. You can give approved buyers their own prices and minimums in the store you already run. Shopify’s announcement describes exactly that path for DAX Eyewear, which started selling wholesale after a trade show.
Small manufacturers moving off phone and email orders. Shopify’s example is Snyder Performance Engineering, whose B2B orders used to need a phone call or email each time. After moving to Shopify B2B, Shopify reports the company cut back-office time by 25% and saw a 40% increase in average customer spend. Those are case figures from one merchant, published by Shopify.
What doesn’t change is the hard part: finding new wholesale accounts. The features handle ordering once a buyer is approved. They don’t put you in front of a purchasing manager who has never heard of you.
Check that you’re on Basic, Grow or Advanced. Sales staff permissions need Grow or higher, and contextual checkout and storefront through Markets need Advanced.
Make the store-type decision first, because it’s expensive to reverse.
B2B requires the newer customer accounts. Buyers sign in with their email and a one-time code, with no password to manage.
Create up to three catalogs for your price tiers, set fixed prices or percentage adjustments, and add quantity rules and volume breaks.
Group buyers into B2B markets and assign one catalog per market. Count your assignments as you go, since the same catalog in two markets uses two slots.
Add each wholesale customer as a company with locations, payment terms, tax exemptions and contacts. You can migrate existing customers and their order history into a company.
Let new buyers request access with a company account request form built with Shopify Forms, so applications land in your admin.
Use Flow for approvals, tagging and order alerts, and decide which orders should go to draft for review before they’re confirmed.
We help wholesale brands and manufacturers rank in Google and get named in AI answers for the searches buyers use before they ask for a price list.
Shopify B2B solves ordering for buyers who already have an account. Search is how new ones find you, and gated B2B creates a specific problem there.
Your wholesale prices, MOQs and terms sit behind a sign-in, so Google and AI crawlers only see your retail storefront. To a search engine, your store looks like a DTC brand. A purchasing manager searching for a “private label manufacturer” or a “wholesale distributor” for your category won’t see anything that says you sell wholesale unless you publish it in the open.
Fix that with public pages built for wholesale intent:
That’s the work our B2B wholesale SEO agency service is built around. For manufacturers, see our manufacturing search marketing page and GEO for manufacturing. For distributors, see GEO for wholesale distribution. If your retail side runs on Shopify, our Shopify SEO services and GEO for Shopify cover the storefront that both buyer types see.
Native B2B lowers the cost of saying yes to wholesale. It doesn’t create demand. If wholesale is part of your growth plan, measure it the way you’d measure retail: which searches bring trade buyers to the site, how many apply, and how many become reordering accounts.
At 95 Projects, we help ecommerce brands and manufacturers turn search into wholesale and retail revenue across Google and AI search. If you want to see which wholesale searches you show up for today, and which ones send buyers to a competitor, book a call with our team.
Austin Coker is the CEO and founder of 95 Projects. He has worked in SEO since 2020, when he built and sold an ecommerce brand that grew mainly through search. He founded 95 Projects in 2022 to help SaaS, ecommerce, and B2B service companies show up wherever their buyers search, from Google to ChatGPT and AI Overviews.
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On every plan except Starter and Retail. Since April 2, 2026, Basic, Grow and Advanced include Shopify’s foundational B2B features at no extra cost, and Plus includes the full set. Shopify’s Help Center confirms B2B isn’t available on Starter or Retail.
Not for most core wholesale features. Basic, Grow and Advanced include companies, up to 3 active catalog assignments, quantity rules, volume pricing, net terms, vaulted cards and ACH in the US. You need Plus for unlimited catalogs, per-company catalogs, deposits and partial payments.
Up to 3 active catalog assignments across active B2B markets. The limit counts assignments, so one catalog assigned to two markets uses two. Setting a catalog to Draft or removing it from a market frees a slot.
Only by giving that customer its own B2B market and catalog, which uses one of your three assignments. Assigning a catalog directly to a company or company location is a Plus-only feature.
No. Shopify’s April 2, 2026 announcement and changelog both say the features come at no additional cost. Your normal plan fees and payment processing rates still apply.
No. You can run B2B and DTC in one blended store or use a dedicated B2B store. Shopify warns that switching store types later means redoing most of the setup, so decide before you build catalogs and companies.
No. B2B customers must sign in to see B2B pricing, so search engines see your retail storefront. If you want wholesale buyers to find you, publish public pages that describe your wholesale offer, minimums, terms and how to apply.
