The Evolution of Shopify B2B

Editor’s note: The original version of this article was published in August 2022. It was updated in April 2025 to reflect changes and improvements to Shopify’s B2B functionality.

Shopify has undergone significant growth in the past few years, expanding and adapting its functionality to suit wholesale businesses. At Swanky, we’ve worked with a number of brands to sell B2B on Shopify and have seen first-hand how this platform is evolving to support online wholesale.

In this article, we’ll share some of the historic limitations for B2B retailers on Shopify, what the current state-of-play is and what the future might hold.

Historic Shopify B2B limitations

Shopify is the largest out-of-the-box ecommerce platform in the world (discounting WordPress WooCommerce, which we consider to be a cart plug-in rather than a full platform). According to BuiltWith, it supports sellers around the world with over six million live sites.¹

Known predominantly as a direct to consumer (DTC) ecommerce platform, Shopify has a mission to “make commerce better for everyone”.

Over the years, Shopify has solved problems for retailers around the globe: making the ecommerce admin easy to use, creating a payment provider in Shopify Payments (2013), lending to entrepreneurs via Shopify Capital (2016), and improving retailers’ fulfilment capabilities with the introduction of the Shopify Fulfilment Network (2019).

And while the focus has been largely on its online capabilities, Shopify has made notable improvements to its Point of Sale system – Shopify POS. One of the clear benefits of Shopify POS is that it uses the same customer and inventory records as the online sales channel – allowing retailers to sell more from consolidated inventory and to build an understanding of consumers’ behaviours on and offline (often referred to as a “single customer view”).

Beyond improvements to the DTC online platform and offline POS, Shopify has historically had some limitations that have made it tricky for B2B brands to leverage the platform to sell in the same ways they “always have”.

Namely, Shopify historically hasn’t supported separate price catalogues per organisation or organisational location – a common way of doing business on existing B2B platforms.

Whilst Shopify Plus retailers have had access to the wholesale sales channel (Plus exclusive since 2017), which has enabled basic price customisation via tags and pre-set lists at a user level, this required a lot of manual management.

It also limited your ability to leverage other Shopify native functionality and wasn’t aesthetically pleasing. What’s more, it required a separate storefront to be created, which wholesale users couldn’t access via a regular storefront.

Another limitation was that wholesale channel stores weren’t indexable, meaning they didn’t rank organically in Google or Bing – limiting their ability to attract new wholesale customers.

At Swanky, we’ve been able to counter some of these B2B limitations for our clients with custom development and bespoke app solutions. We enjoy creating innovative solutions that go beyond what Shopify offers “out-of-the-box”, and have executed this for brands such as Saddleback, Natural Instinct and Brio Water.

2022: A turning point for B2B on Shopify

The June 2022 Editions announcement marked a significant and long-awaited digital upgrade for B2B functionality on Shopify. Recognising the rapid rise of online B2B commerce, Shopify overhauled its B2B offering and committed to investing in B2B capabilities with all the hallmark benefits of its market-leading DTC offering.

B2B on Shopify has continued to evolve since then, with consistent developments announced with each iteration of Editions.

Today: A leading B2B ecommerce platform

In 2024, Shopify was named a Leader in the Forrester Wave™: Commerce Solutions for B2B Vendor Assessment. Shopify’s strength of innovation and rapid delivery of features were named as core reasons for its position as a leader in this area.

Today, Shopify Plus users can enjoy wholesale features built specifically for B2B brands, directly in the core of the platform. This means that retailers can manage their entire ecommerce business in one place.

On top of this, they have access to the powerful customisation tools that make Shopify Plus a unique and leading ecommerce platform. And, this single-store setup means that B2B sites are indexable via Google and Bing.

Here are the key highlights of the B2B functionality available on Shopify:

• Company profiles: Provide each B2B customer with distinct contact permissions, payment terms, deposit amounts, catalogues, and tax exemptions – making for a tailored buying experience. For more complex buyers, assign multiple contacts and locations to a single profile with different permission levels. Additionally, checkout permissions can be set per company, for example, all orders are created as drafts.
• Catalogues: Set fixed price and percentage-off price lists for all your products and assign these to company profiles without the need for tags or third-party apps. You can also incorporate quantity price breaks to apply tiered discounts at a per product level, so as a shopper buys more, their discount increases. Catalogues are assigned to a company location, with the capability to assign multiple catalogues per location and adjust your strategy for these accordingly.
• Net payment terms: Automatically assign payment terms to orders in the admin. Your customers will be able to check out with the payment terms you’ve made available to them and can keep track of any upcoming payments in their account.
• Powerful customisation functionality: Leverage the same level of customisation you have for your DTC customers. Retailers have access to custom store themes, discounts, shipping rates, notifications, Functions (formerly Scripts), and more, just as is available for DTC stores. Note that shipping profiles can be hidden or made visible for logged in customers if you wish to only show some options to logged in B2B users.
• B2B checkout: Customise and automate the checkout experience at the customer level with net payment terms, payment methods, shipping rules and wholesale discounts, creating a streamlined and personal experience for wholesale buyers. Requiring customers to log in can also be implemented here, ensuring B2B pricing is always managed correctly.
• Self-serve customer portal: Buyers can manage their account, select the company location they’re buying for, edit buyer information, complete self-serve returns, and view and filter order history – freeing up your customer support team. Not only does this benefit your team, we talk in our guide to improving B2B customer experience how self-service is a necessity for today’s B2B buyer.
• B2B analytics: Apply new B2B-specific filters to reports, giving a clear view of your wholesale business.

Revolutionising B2B commerce

This improved and evolving B2B functionality, which combines essential wholesale features with the power of Shopify’s DTC solution, has the potential to revolutionise B2B selling. Integrating existing architecture is also possible with Patchworks, meaning Shopify’s B2B functionality is accessible to retailers regardless of business infrastructure, whether that’s an ERP, invoicing tool or tax management software.

In particular, there is huge value for offline, sales agent-led B2B businesses, whose sales models revolve around Business Development Managers (BDMs) or sales staff, with large percentages of repeat orders.

Shopify B2B offers an accessible way to move online. The platform can handle order management, freeing up BDMs to focus on accelerating business growth. As a result of taking B2B business online, you could:

• reduce the risk of human error (keying in the wrong amount, account, price, or delivery address etc.), which can often damage client relationships;
• reduce headcount requirement whilst servicing the same revenue;
• enable BDMs to proactively seek out new clients or upsell additional products when orders are submitted;
• leverage Google Analytics and other data platforms, and gain a richer understanding of buyers (through data that wouldn’t otherwise be captured through interpersonal sales);
• address a broader market (instead of only focusing on large accounts), being able to profitably service smaller accounts thanks to the reduction in cost-to-serve that tech-driven efficiency brings; and
• incorporate lifecycle marketing into your B2B business leveraging DTC marketing platforms and processes

Additionally, once familiar with Shopify’s interface, there’s plenty of potential for B2B brands to start experimenting with selling DTC.

A B2B ecommerce agency

Whether you’re a B2B retailer looking to make the move to online sales, or an established B2B ecommerce brand wanting to scale your online presence, we have the expertise and experience to help here at Swanky.

We have a thorough understanding of B2B ecommerce and all of its complexities, and leverage this to create best-in-class B2B Shopify stores.

To learn how we could support your B2B growth on Shopify, talk to us today.

For reference:

[1] https://trends.builtwith.com/