Shopify Wholesale: How We Run B2B Pricing Next to Retail in One Store

A wholesale buyer and a retail shopper can look at the same product page on the same Shopify store and see two different prices, two different minimums, and two different ways to pay. Neither of them sees the other’s version.

That’s how we run Shopify wholesale on our own stores: one storefront, two rulebooks. No second store to keep in sync, no spreadsheet of trade prices emailed as a PDF.

In April 2026, Shopify made that setup available well beyond Plus. Here’s how it works, where the limits sit, and how we decide between native B2B and a wholesale app.

What changed in April 2026: Shopify B2B on every paid plan

On April 2, 2026, Shopify announced that its native B2B features would come to the Basic, Grow and Advanced plans. Until then, the good version of Shopify B2B was a Plus feature, and everyone else used apps or customer tags.

Here’s the split, from Shopify’s B2B features by plan page:

Takeaway: if your wholesale pricing fits into three tiers, you no longer need Plus to run it natively.

The five decisions behind every Shopify B2B setup

Before you click anything in admin, answer these on paper. They map one-to-one to Shopify’s B2B features.

1. Who sees what? (catalogs)

A catalog decides which products a buyer can see and buy. Retail might see everything; wholesale might see only bulk packs, or exclude consumer gift sets.

2. What do they pay? (price lists)

Each catalog carries a price list: a percentage adjustment on retail (say, 30% off across the board) or fixed prices per variant. Percentage is easier to maintain. Fixed is more precise. Most stores start with a percentage and fix a handful of variants by hand.

3. How much must they buy? (quantity rules)

Minimums, maximums and increments per product. Tiles sold in boxes of 10. Paint with a 5-can minimum. Rings in packs of 12. Quantity price breaks add “buy 50, pay less per unit” on top.

4. How do they pay? (payment terms)

Net 30, net 60, or on fulfillment, with vaulted cards and payment reminders. This is the feature that makes B2B feel like B2B. A retail checkout with a discount code isn’t wholesale; paying in 30 days is.

5. What about tax? (location-level settings)

Tax IDs and exemptions live on each company location, and the exemption is recorded on the order. For EU sellers, that’s how VAT-registered business buyers in another member state get the right treatment. Confirm the rules with your accountant, then set them once per location.

Takeaway: catalogs, price lists, quantity rules, payment terms and tax. If you can fill in those five for each buyer type, the admin setup is an afternoon.

Blended store vs separate wholesale store

A blended store serves retail and B2B from one storefront. B2B buyers log in and see their catalog, prices and terms. Everyone else sees retail.

We default to blended. The second store usually solves a problem you don’t have while creating one you do: keeping two catalogs identical forever.

Lab note

We run both patterns on our own stores. Zubra Colors, our EU limewash and lime plaster brand, sells retail and runs a B2B wholesale layer on the same store: custom pricing, tax exemption and order limits for trade buyers, across 14 languages and 5 markets. Piercing69 goes the other way: it’s wholesale-first, shipping titanium and steel body jewellery from Poland across the EU, with 1,089 products and about 3,600 variants in 11 languages. Same platform, same Horizon theme, very different buyers.

Takeaway: start blended. Split only when wholesale needs its own brand, not just its own prices.

How to set up Shopify wholesale in one afternoon

Once the five decisions are made, the admin work is short. For a blended store on a non-Plus plan:

1. Create companies for your trade buyers, with a location per ship-to address, and add each buyer’s contact.
2. Set tax details on each location: VAT or tax ID and any exemption.
3. Create up to three catalogs (for example Trade, Distributor, Key account) with a price list each, as a percentage off retail or fixed prices.
4. Add quantity rules and price breaks to the products that need them.
5. Set payment terms per location: on order, on fulfillment, or net days.
6. Place a test order as a B2B buyer on a phone, from login to checkout, before inviting anyone real.

Shopify wholesale buyers then sign in with the same passwordless customer accounts as retail shoppers and see their own prices automatically.

Takeaway: the setup is quick. The five decisions before it are where the real work is.

Where native Shopify B2B still falls short

Native B2B covers the core. It doesn’t cover everything, and pretending otherwise is how stores end up with a half-built wholesale portal.

The three-catalog ceiling. Outside Plus, you get three active catalogs across all your B2B markets, and you can’t assign a catalog to one specific company. That’s fine for “Trade”, “Distributor” and “Key account” tiers. It’s not fine if every big customer negotiated their own price list.

No deposits or partial payments outside Plus. If you take 30% upfront on large custom orders, you’ll need Plus or a workaround.

Onboarding flows. How a new trade buyer applies, gets approved and becomes a company in Shopify is still something you design: a form, an approval step, a Flow automation. This is the most common reason stores add a wholesale app.

Theme work. B2B buyers need things retail shoppers don’t: visible quantity rules, price-break tables, a quick order list that’s easy to use on a phone at a job site. Shopify provides the building blocks. Making them feel right is theme work.

Here’s the rule we use, and it’s the one worth screenshotting: if your wholesale prices fit on a single index card, use native B2B. If they need a spreadsheet per customer, budget for Plus or an app.

Takeaway: native first, then fill specific gaps. Don’t install a wholesale app to get features Shopify now includes.

Shopify wholesale app or native B2B?

We don’t recommend a specific wholesale app here. Pricing changes often, and the right one depends on which gap you’re filling. Pick by the one row in this table you can’t get natively. If that row is “customer-specific price lists” and you’re growing, read Is Shopify Plus worth it? before paying for an app that does the same thing.

Takeaway: every wholesale app should be justified by a missing native feature you can name.

Wholesale across languages, markets and accounting

B2B rarely stays local. On Zubra Colors, trade buyers arrive in any of 14 languages; on Piercing69, in any of 11. Shopify handles B2B inside Markets, and on Advanced and Plus you get contextual checkout and storefront customization per market. Our multi-language store guide covers the Markets side.

Then there’s the money. B2B orders on net terms behave differently in your books from card payments that settle in days. If you use Xero, see our Shopify Xero integration guide for how to keep invoices and payouts reconciling.

Takeaway: plan B2B together with Markets and accounting, not as a pricing switch you flip at the end.

Set it up once, then make it convert

The most expensive B2B setup isn’t the one with the wrong app. It’s the one where trade buyers log in, can’t find their price breaks, and email their order instead. Native Shopify B2B gets the rules right; the storefront still has to make ordering fast.

That’s the part we fix. Our Grow services cover the buyer journey on real phones, from login to reorder, with before-and-after numbers. Want to know first whether your wholesale setup fits native B2B or needs Plus? Run the free Store Scan and we’ll tell you which column of that table you’re in.