Shopify wholesale: B2B is now on every paid plan

Shopify moved its native B2B feature set to every paid plan on 2 April 2026. Company profiles, custom price catalogs, volume discounts, quantity rules, vaulted credit cards and net payment terms now come with Basic at $39 a month, having previously required Shopify Plus at roughly $2,300 to $2,500. If you looked at selling wholesale on Shopify before that date and concluded it was out of reach, the conclusion was correct then and is wrong now.

Most of the wholesale advice still online was written for the old arrangement, which is why it recommends apps for jobs the platform now does itself. This piece sets out what is genuinely included and what remains Plus-only, the one restriction that catches people out, then the narrow set of cases where an app is still the right answer.

What every paid plan now includes

The core of B2B selling is present on Basic, Grow and Advanced. It is more complete than merchants expect. Company profiles let you treat a business as a customer with multiple buyers attached, rather than pretending a wholesale account is one person with a discount code. Custom catalogs let you show different products at different prices to different buyer groups, which is the actual definition of wholesale pricing rather than a workaround for it. Volume discounts and quantity rules handle tiered pricing and minimum quantities at the catalog level. Vaulted credit cards let a repeat buyer reorder without re-entering details, and net payment terms let you invoice on 30 or 60 days, which is how most real wholesale relationships actually settle.

That last one matters more than the list suggests. Payment terms were the single feature that most often forced small merchants either onto Plus or off Shopify entirely, because a wholesale buyer who cannot be invoiced is not a wholesale buyer. Net terms being available on all plans in all regions changes the arithmetic for a lot of brands that had been running wholesale through spreadsheets and manual invoices alongside their retail store.

The catalog restriction that catches people out

The limit that matters is not the number of catalogs you can create, it is how many can be active at once and how they get assigned. On the non-Plus plans you may build more than three catalogs, but only three can be active and assigned at any time, which forces you to consolidate your buyer tiers rather than mirror however many pricing agreements you have accumulated. For most brands that is a healthy constraint, because three tiers covering distributors, stockists and key accounts is usually a cleaner commercial structure than the eleven bespoke price lists that grew organically. For a brand that genuinely needs more, it is the moment Plus starts to make sense.

The subtler restriction is assignment. On Basic, Grow and Advanced, catalogs attach to B2B markets rather than to individual company accounts, so pricing is organised by group instead of per customer. Plus allows a catalog to be assigned directly to a named company. In practice this means that if your model depends on genuinely bespoke pricing for each account, the lower plans will fight you, while if your model is tiered pricing that several customers share, they will not. Working out which of those two you are is the whole decision, and it is worth doing before you shop for anything.

The one real gap: minimum order quantities at checkout

There is a genuine hole and it is worth naming plainly. Quantity rules work at the catalog level, but Shopify does not natively enforce a minimum order quantity at the checkout, so a buyer who assembles a cart below your minimum is not automatically stopped. The workarounds are a quantity-restriction app at roughly $5 to $15 a month, which physically prevents adding fewer than your minimum, or discount-code and cart logic that achieves something similar for nothing but with more edge cases to babysit.

This is one of the few remaining places where a wholesale app earns its fee rather than duplicating the platform, and it is a good illustration of the general test. An app that enforces a rule the platform does not is buying you a capability. An app that displays wholesale prices, which is now native, is renting you something you already own. That is the same rent versus build line that decides most of the app stack.

Do you still need a wholesale app?

Work through it in order rather than by browsing the app store, because the order changes the answer. Start by asking whether your pricing is tiered or bespoke. Tiered pricing shared across several customers is fully native now. Genuinely per-customer pricing needs either direct catalog assignment, which is Plus, or an app that layers it on.

Then ask whether you need a gated registration flow. A form where prospective stockists apply and get approved before seeing wholesale prices is a common requirement and is not native, so that is an app or a custom build. Then ask about minimums at checkout, which is the gap described above. Finally ask whether you need pack sizes, case quantities or per-variant minimums, which is the same category of enforcement.

Four of the eight rows are now handled by the platform, and two of the remaining four are Plus rather than app territory. That leaves a much smaller genuine app requirement than the wholesale app category implies, which is unsurprising given that most of those apps were built to work around a restriction Shopify has since removed.

What this changes commercially

The change is worth thinking about as more than a feature list, because moving B2B onto a $39 plan alters which brands can sensibly open a wholesale channel at all. Previously the maths only worked once wholesale revenue could justify a Plus subscription of roughly $2,300 a month, which meant a brand needed a wholesale business before it could afford the tooling to run one. That is a chicken-and-egg problem that kept a lot of small brands selling to stockists over email and spreadsheets, invoicing manually, reconciling by hand. The floor has now dropped to the price of a Basic plan they were already paying.

The practical consequence is that testing wholesale has become cheap. A brand can open a small B2B channel with three price tiers and net terms, approach a handful of stockists, and find out whether the demand exists before committing to anything. That was not previously an option at this price, and it is the sort of change that shifts what is worth trying rather than merely what is possible.

Worth a caution alongside it. Wholesale is not free money simply because the tooling became affordable. Margins are thinner by design, the buyers are more demanding on lead times and consistency, and a stockist relationship that goes wrong takes inventory with it. The tooling being cheap removes one obstacle; it does not answer whether the channel suits your margins, and that question is unchanged.

Where the real work actually is

The platform question turns out to be the easy half. The harder half is that a wholesale buyer is not a retail buyer wearing a different price, and a storefront built for consumers usually serves them badly. A stockist reordering 40 lines does not want a carousel and a hero video, they want a fast way to find SKUs they already know, quantities they can type rather than click, plus a reorder path from their last invoice. That is a layout problem rather than a pricing one, and it is the part that most wholesale rollouts underinvest in.

It is also the part where a theme-level build pays off, because the native B2B features supply the pricing logic while the shopping experience remains yours to design. Fast SKU search, a bulk order form, sensible defaults on quantity, and an account area that shows past orders as reorderable lists. That work sits in the same territory as our custom sections and dev work, and the argument for building rather than renting it is the one set out in what custom sections cost. Shopify’s own announcement of the change is on their newsroom.

FAQ

Do I need Shopify Plus for wholesale?

No, not since 2 April 2026. Company profiles, up to 3 custom catalogs, volume discounts, quantity rules, vaulted cards and net payment terms are on every paid plan, starting with Basic at $39/mo.

What is still Plus-only for B2B?

Unlimited catalogs, assigning a catalog directly to a named company, partial payments and deposits, expansion stores, and contextual checkout customisation.

How many price tiers can I have?

You can create more than 3 catalogs but only 3 can be active and assigned at once on non-Plus plans. Most brands find 3 tiers is a cleaner structure anyway.

Can Shopify enforce minimum orders?

Not natively at checkout. Quantity rules work at catalog level, but stopping a cart below your minimum needs an app at roughly $5 to $15 a month, or discount-code logic for free.

Can I run wholesale and retail together?

Yes. B2B pricing attaches to company accounts and catalogs, so retail customers see retail prices on the same store without a separate site.

Thinking about opening a wholesale channel and not sure whether your plan covers it? Send us the store and we will tell you honestly what is native, what needs building, and what does not need buying. Free, no obligation, usually a reply within the hour.