Shopify B2B on Every Plan: What Small Brands Should Do First

Shopify B2B Is Now on Every Plan — Here's What Small Brands Should Do First

If you've ever turned down a wholesale inquiry because setting up B2B on Shopify meant upgrading to Plus at $2,300 a month, that barrier just disappeared.

On April 2, 2026, Shopify opened its native B2B features to every paid plan — Basic, Grow, and Advanced. No apps. No workarounds. No Plus subscription. You can now manage wholesale and DTC customers from the same admin, starting at $39/month.

This isn't a watered-down version either. The core B2B toolkit that drove 96% GMV growth on Shopify's B2B surface last year is now yours. Here's exactly what you get, what's still Plus-only, and how to set it up without overcomplicating things.

What You Actually Get on Basic, Grow, and Advanced

Let's cut through the marketing and talk specifics. Here's what Shopify just unlocked for non-Plus merchants:

Company profiles — Create dedicated profiles for your wholesale buyers. Each company can have multiple buyers with their own logins, and multiple shipping addresses. This is the foundation of everything else.

Up to 3 custom catalogs — Build separate price lists for different buyer tiers. You might have a standard wholesale catalog at 40% off retail, a VIP catalog for your biggest accounts at 50% off, and a sample catalog with minimum quantities. Three catalogs is more than enough for most small brands starting out.

Volume discounts and quantity rules — Set minimum order quantities, case-pack requirements, and tiered pricing that rewards larger orders. If you sell candles and your wholesale minimum is 24 units, you can enforce that natively now.

Payment terms — Offer Net 15, Net 30, Net 60, or Net 90 to qualified buyers. This is a massive unlock. Previously, you needed Plus or a third-party app to offer payment terms. Now your wholesale buyers can place orders and pay later, just like they expect from any professional B2B supplier.

Vaulted credit cards — Buyers can save their payment methods for faster reordering.

ACH payments (US only) — Lower-cost bank transfers for wholesale orders, which means better margins for both sides.

Dedicated B2B checkout — Your wholesale buyers get a streamlined checkout flow separate from your DTC customers. No confusion, no coupon code hacks, no "email us for wholesale pricing" friction. If you've been using cart abandonment recovery tactics on the DTC side, B2B checkout handles that workflow separately so nothing interferes.

What's Still Plus-Only (And Whether You Should Care)

Four features remain locked behind Plus:

Unlimited catalogs — You're capped at 3 on non-Plus plans. If you need customer-specific pricing for dozens of accounts, that's a Plus feature. But honestly, if you have that many wholesale accounts, you're probably generating enough revenue to justify Plus anyway.

Direct catalog assignment to companies — On non-Plus, catalogs are assigned via Markets rather than directly to individual companies. It's a slightly different workflow but achieves the same result for most use cases.

Partial payments and deposits — Can't collect 50% upfront and 50% on delivery without Plus. If your wholesale orders are large enough to need deposits, consider whether the Plus upgrade makes financial sense at that point.

The bottom line: if you have fewer than 20 wholesale accounts and don't need custom pricing per individual buyer, the non-Plus B2B features cover everything you need. Check Shopify's changelog for the full technical breakdown.

How to Set Up B2B on Your Store (The Simple Way)

Here's the no-fluff setup path that I'd recommend for a small brand adding wholesale for the first time:

Step 1: Enable B2B in your Shopify admin. Go to Settings → B2B and turn it on. This activates company profiles and the B2B checkout.

Step 2: Create your first company profile. Add your wholesale buyer's company name, assign a primary contact (they'll get a login), and set their shipping addresses.

Step 3: Build one wholesale catalog. Start with a single catalog. Set your wholesale discount — most small brands do 40-50% off retail. Add quantity rules if you have minimums. Make sure your product pages are optimized first — wholesale buyers evaluate your brand through the same pages.

Step 4: Set payment terms. Net 30 is standard for new wholesale relationships. You can adjust per company later.

Step 5: Test the buyer experience. Log in as your test buyer and place an order. Make sure the pricing, minimums, and checkout all work before you invite real accounts.

That's it. You can be live with wholesale in under an hour. Don't overthink it — you can always add a second or third catalog later as your wholesale business grows.

Why This Matters More Than You Think

Here's what excites me about this update from a small brand perspective: it removes the chicken-and-egg problem.

Before, small brands couldn't justify $2,300/month for Plus when they only had a handful of wholesale inquiries. But they couldn't grow wholesale without proper B2B tools. So those inquiries went unanswered, or got handled through clunky manual processes — emailing price lists, creating draft orders by hand, chasing payments via invoice.

Now you can say yes to that first wholesale inquiry with a professional setup that takes an hour to configure. The retailer or boutique gets a proper B2B buying experience. You get automated payment terms and order management. And if wholesale takes off, you scale up — more catalogs, more companies, eventually Plus if the numbers justify it.

Pair this with a solid customer retention strategy and a loyalty program on the DTC side, and you've got two revenue engines running from the same Shopify store.

Merchants using Shopify's B2B features have seen up to a 33% increase in self-serve orders within six months and a 20% boost in reorder frequency. Those numbers compound fast.

The Move to Make This Week

If you've been fielding wholesale inquiries and handling them manually — or worse, turning them away — set up B2B this week. Here's your priority list:

1. Enable B2B in Settings

2. Create your first company profile for your most reliable wholesale buyer

3. Build a single catalog with your wholesale pricing

4. Set Net 30 payment terms

5. Send your buyer their login and let them place their first order

You don't need 10 catalogs or complex tiered pricing to start. You need one wholesale buyer placing orders through your store instead of through email chains and spreadsheets.

The tools are free. The setup takes an hour. And with AI shopping agents now recommending products based on fit rather than ad spend, having both a DTC and wholesale channel makes your brand more discoverable across every buying surface.

The only question is whether you'll use them before your competitors do.