Shopify for B2B: Features, Challenges & Opportunities

Executive Summary

B2B e-commerce is no longer an auxiliary channel for manufacturers, distributors, and wholesalers; it has become their main channel. The world market of B2B commerce is forecasted to grow beyond $36 trillion by 2026, making it more than five times larger than B2C, because buyers today demand self-service online shopping, up-to-date prices, and the ability to make orders without going through sales representatives. According to research from Forrester, 73% of B2B buyers now prefer digital self-service orders to engaging with a sales representative, and the preference has increased yearly, especially since 2020.

With this mind shift, Shopify entered the market with a purpose. From a mere extension to their Wholesale Channel offering, which was initially available only to merchants using the Plus plan, it has now developed into a separate B2B interface integrated into the core of the platform. The outcome is a set of tools that are truly ready for any B2B application, although there are areas in which they might lack capability for certain merchants’ needs.

This document includes information regarding:

• Features: Current B2B features provided by Shopify and their practical implementation
• Challenges: The limitations posed by the platform concerning B2B needs
• Opportunities: Where the biggest commercial potential lies for merchants who put in the effort

Key figures used in this document:

• The average cart abandonment rate in B2B e-commerce is between 62% and 68% (Baymard Institute)
• Merchants using self-service portals see an increase in order frequency of 18%-23%
• Shopify claims that improvements in its infrastructure have led to a 95% faster checkout loading time for merchants with modern extensibility
• These figures highlight the potential gains in terms of operations and income that can be gained through a well-designed B2B solution.

Figure 1: Global B2B E-Commerce Market Size 2021–2026E (USD Trillion). Source: Statista / Grand View Research, B2B E-Commerce Market Report 2024

The B2B E-Commerce Landscape

Offline interactions, sales people, catalogs, telephone orders, and ERP-generated purchase orders have been traditionally used to execute transactions in B2B. However, e-commerce does not imply that B2B consumers seek a retail-type shopping experience. What they are looking for is accountability, accuracy, and efficiency. All three aspects can be immediately translated into requirements a B2B platform should offer – account-based pricing, ability to place orders without sales people, integration with procurement software, and complete information about the status of orders and invoices.

E-commerce portals now represent the most popular way to place orders in B2B compared to direct sales, but the balance varies from industry to industry and even from customer type to customer type. Below is an illustration showing the current state of affairs according to the 2024 survey results.

Figure 2: B2B Sales Channel Distribution, Where Orders Are Placed Today (2024). Source: Forrester Research / Gartner, B2B Commerce Survey 2024

Who Shopify B2B is suited for

Shopify B2B is a good solution for companies that wish to sell directly to trade customers as well as have a direct-to-consumer channel in place, for wholesale distributors dealing in medium SKU levels and moderate-sized buyers, and for businesses that have been managing orders manually or via email, fax, or by telephone without needing a full-blown digital transformation of their processes.

However, it would be less ideal for merchants that have very complicated pricing based on hundreds of unique pricing schemes, for businesses that heavily rely on their ERP systems in order to manage their stock in real-time, and for organisations that wish to handle quote-to-order workflows with multiple approvers. Knowing this limitation before implementing Shopify B2B would save on costly rework.

Shopify B2B: Core Features

Shopify’s B2B functionality is available natively on Shopify Plus, introduced as part of the 2022 Summer Editions launch and updated with each subsequent release. The following covers the current state of the platform’s core capabilities.

Company profiles and buyer accounts

The company object serves as Shopify’s B2B data model. Rather than thinking of the business customer in the same way as the regular customer, using tags on the customer, Shopify models the business buyer as a Company that has contacts and locations. The company profile may be comprised of contacts who play different roles, such as ordering manager, finance contact, viewing-only contact – all of which relate to a specific ship-to location, each with its own price list.

This marks an important step forward from Shopify’s old data modeling scheme, which used customer tags to mimic companies and used Liquid to filter out the right customer profiles within the customer group.

Custom pricelists

Price list is one of the most business-critical requirements when it comes to B2B transactions, and Shopify is able to manage the basics well. The merchant can create an unlimited number of price lists, set them up on either the corporate level or per location, use either a flat fee or percentage adjustment on top of or below the default catalog price, and define quantity discounts for each product variant individually.

It all comes down to formula-driven prices, cost plus pricing, RRP minus pricing, or matrix pricing, depending on what product, customer category, and quantity will determine the price. Not a single one of these methods is available within Shopify without having to resort to either Shopify Functions or third-party apps, which come at additional cost and complexity.

Net payment terms

Support for native net payment terms is provided, namely Net 7, Net 15, Net 30, Net 60, and Net 90, depending on the store location. Payment against orders done through net terms doesn’t have to be made instantly, and the pending balance appears in the buyer’s portal section. Invoices can be marked as paid by the merchants.

Credit limit enforcement and order holds automatically when the buyer reaches the maximum pending balance are not native and require either a third-party solution or an app that uses Shopify functions to validate the checkout process.

Draft orders and quoting

Quote by Draft Orders is the main method used on the Shopify B2B platform for quoting purposes. The seller or salesperson creates the draft order with customized prices and sends it to the buyer. This process suits simple quoting cases only. When a buyer has to send a quotation request, where there is no specified price, when several drafts need to be made, and when quotations should expire, get copied, and have some contract details, then the current method cannot do much.

Self-serve buyer portal

The B2B buyer portal gives order history, order again capability, information on open invoices and payments, catalog view for each company, and contact list handling at the site level. For businesses transitioning from representation-only, this represents a game-changer when it comes to efficiency. According to Baymard Institute, B2B buyers who don’t get what they want promptly or encounter friction when trying to place their orders give up and don’t come back. This tool eliminates the most prevalent friction areas without the use of representation.

B2B feature availability by plan

The table below maps Shopify B2B features against plan availability and the degree to which third-party apps or custom development are needed to reach full functionality.

Figure 3: Reported Business Impact of Shopify B2B Feature Adoption. Source: Shopify Commerce Trends Report 2024 / Merchant case study aggregation

Key Challenges

The need to appreciate the constraints of Shopify B2B is a necessary aspect of planning, not an indictment of the system itself. Underestimating the sophistication of your pricing structure, ERP integrations, or customer process requirements can result in costly adjustments during implementation. Below are the common issues you’ll encounter.

Figure 4: Top Challenges Cited by B2B Merchants on Shopify (% of respondents). Source: Shopify B2B Merchant Survey 2024 / BigCommerce B2B Benchmark Report

Complex pricing architectures

The use of standard price lists handles the bulk of the cases for B2B pricing needs. Price lists fail to be useful when there is the need for formulaic pricing, per-customer exceptions to line items that are not covered under any price list, or matrix pricing in which prices are determined based on the combination of product, customer classification, and order size. There are several options to consider, including Shopify Functions, third-party apps like Wholesale Gorilla or Pricelist Manager, and middleware pricing engines feeding the prices back into Shopify periodically.

ERP and back-office integration

In the case of an existing ERP, Shopify acts as the ordering front end and not as the system of record. The real-time synchronization of inventory information is technically possible, but maintaining this on a large scale is challenging due to Shopify’s limited number of requests per minute for its APIs. The order write-back will need to go through some kind of transformation process, as Shopify orders cannot be directly mapped to purchase orders in an ERP.

Approval workflows and purchase order management

Many B2B shoppers will have internal authorization policies in place that need to be met before a purchase order can be initiated. This can involve a requisition initiated by a procurement manager who must get it approved by a finance controller before initiating a purchase order. There is no functionality for this type of process on Shopify natively. Third-party apps can help fill this gap, but integration challenges and buyer experience pain points will need to be considered. Lack of native support is a problem for enterprise B2B buyers who have procurement processes.

Quote-to-order workflows

The current Shopify quote process is based on a merchant sending a draft quote to the buyer, who then pays for the order. While this may work in many cases, it does not cover scenarios where buyers initiate quotes or manage multiple versions of quotes or expiring quotes. It cannot be integrated into third-party CPQ applications either.

Shopify Plus cost threshold

All meaningful Shopify B2B features are gated behind Shopify Plus, which starts at $2,300 per month or a revenue-share model. For merchants below approximately $50,000-$100,000 per month in B2B GMV, the cost-benefit case requires careful analysis. This limits Shopify B2B’s accessibility for smaller wholesale operations and means the platform’s B2B capability is structurally priced for mid-market and enterprise merchants.

Opportunities

The distance between Shopify B2B’s current capability gaps and what merchants need is less than would be implied by those capability gaps. The reality is that most B2B merchants have simpler pricing models and workflows than they realize. The opportunity lies in executing strategically, using the platform’s strengths in order to design for buyer adoption from day one.

Unified commerce: B2B and DTC on one platform

One of the strongest points Shopify makes with respect to their B2B offering is the ability to sell into your wholesale channel and retail channels directly through the same platform, sharing product, stock levels, fulfillment rules, and reporting across channels. By having all this managed through one platform with a single catalogue, a brand is saving itself from SKU management, overselling on different channels, cross-channel reporting, and only needing one tech stack. There is a legitimate efficiency improvement to be gained here that is not available with a native B2B platform like Magento B2B.

Self-serve reordering as a retention driver

Buyers who have access to reorder without a representative tend to reorder more often. As observed in merchant case studies analyzed for the Shopify Commerce Trends Report 2024, average growth in reordering rate ranges from 18 to 23 percent after implementing self-serve portals, along with decreased cost of customer service per order due to shifting buyers’ routine inquiries from phones to the system. According to McKinsey’s research on digital channels for B2B companies, organizations providing their customers with outstanding digital experiences double their revenue compared to those who lack good online offerings.

Shopify Functions for custom business logic

With Shopify Functions, developers can build custom logic that runs on Shopify’s servers instead of requiring additional external servers. Using this tool, B2B merchants can implement custom pricing and discount rules, checkout validation (such as order quantity and SKU restriction per buyer type), custom shipping rate calculation according to the company’s agreements, and filter out payment methods for buyers purchasing on credit terms. The developer experience has gotten much better since Shopify Functions was first introduced to the market. For B2B merchants with an engineering team, Functions offer the best option to meet their needs.

Additional
Read

• Shopify in 2026: A Technical & Business Breakdown of What’s Changing for Modern Ecommerce Brands
• Beyond Shopify: How the Platform Fits into the Broader Composable Ecosystem

International B2B expansion via Shopify Markets

The international expansion tools provided by Shopify Markets could be applied by B2B businesses when selling their goods cross-border. Local pricing in the buyer account in different regions, duties and taxes calculations on the order level, and catalog restrictions depending on the region, and limiting availability of certain products in specific geographical areas can all be enabled without using any storefronts or ERPs separately. Worldpay from FIS indicates that by 2024, digital wallets will comprise almost half of the total e-commerce transactions made online globally, with BNPL growing significantly in the B2B segment. Therefore, the ability to use flexible payment methods depending on the region has become an essential component of B2B e-commerce platforms.

Workflow automation via Shopify Flow

Shopify Flow, offered by Plus plans, allows for automation of workflows without any coding, which opens opportunities for B2B businesses. Creating a new buyer account can result in the automatic addition of this client to the price list, orders that exceed a certain amount will receive special flags, and a purchase made by a buyer under net terms will automatically result in internal alerts. Additionally, campaign launch can be automated once a defined period of inactivity has occurred.

Platform Comparison

The table below positions Shopify B2B against the most commonly evaluated alternatives. Ratings combine out-of-the-box capability, implementation complexity, and total cost of ownership based on practitioner assessments and G2 user review aggregation (2024).

Source: Platform documentation, G2 user reviews, and practitioner assessments (2024). ★★★★★ = strongest in category.

Quantitative Benchmarks

The table below is a curated set of benchmarks drawn from primary research, platform documentation, and payment provider analysis. These figures are intended to anchor planning conversations in real data rather than estimates.

Strategic Recommendations

The following recommendations are based on common implementation practices and the most frequent failure scenarios of Shopify B2B implementations.

For merchants already on Shopify running DTC

Migrate to Shopify Plus once B2B sales justify it. A rule of thumb is that, for each $50,000-$100,000 of monthly GMV generated through B2B sales, the labor savings from less salesperson time spent handling orders, more efficient order processing, and reduced customer support costs will cover the cost of the Shopify platform. Implementing company accounts and a basic pricing matrix is enough to validate the business model before complicating it further with additional prices or automations. Have the pricing logic audited prior to implementing the project. If the project requires formula-based pricing right off the bat, plan for Shopify Functions or an alternative from day one.

For businesses evaluating Shopify as a new B2B platform

In case ERP integration is crucial and ERP used is SAP or Oracle, always allocate budget for an integration middleware from the start. It is not a Shopify-related restriction but applies to any commerce platform out there. Consider the possibility of using a separate CPQ system as an add-on that would be installed above Shopify checkout if quoting is too complicated. For example, Salesforce CPQ software can handle quotes and send finalized orders to Shopify for further processing. Assess the capabilities of existing applications before considering building anything custom. Most of the gaps in Shopify B2B functionality can be covered by third-party solutions quickly and more cost-effectively.

For all B2B merchants regardless of platform

Assume self-service portal implementation as a strategic KPI. Calculate how many repeat orders are done via portal and connect these numbers with frequency and CLV of customers. It is only through this metric that ROI of implementing B2B commerce portals can be estimated properly. Focus on the buyer training, the number one cause of failure when introducing self-service portal is poor buyer training, not the platform itself. Plan your analytics stack ahead of time, especially when speaking about buyer segmentation, company-based reports, and order attribution.

Conclusion

Shopify B2B is a legitimate platform for various wholesale and distribution scenarios, especially those involving merchants looking to either set up or scale an integrated DTC and B2B sales channel on one tech stack. There are real limitations in its quoting processes, approval management, and ERP integration capabilities, which need app and/or custom solutions. The good news is that there is enough documentation available about these challenges, making them solvable issues rather than deal-breakers, and they should be taken into account when planning an implementation.

This space is huge, the buyer preference for digital commerce is growing rapidly, and Shopify is actively expanding its capabilities in B2B e-commerce with every new version of its platform. For a suitable merchant, it provides a quicker, more flexible approach to creating modern B2B buying experiences than most enterprise platforms, and it achieves this without the need for yet another tech stack for the merchant’s existing DTC channel.

Planning a B2B commerce migration? Let’s build a Shopify experience your buyers actually want to use.

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Pooja Upadhyay

Director Of People Operations & Client Relations

SOURCE URLs:

https://shopify.dev/docs/apps/b2b

https://www.shopify.com/editions/summer2022

https://www.shopify.com/research/commerce-trends

https://www.forrester.com

https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/digital-commerce

https://baymard.com/lists/cart-abandonment-rate

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1385975/b2b-e-commerce-market-size-worldwide

https://www.g2.com/categories/e-commerce-platforms