Do you still need
Plus for B2B?

As of April 2, 2026, native B2B is available on every Shopify plan. Basic, Grow, and Advanced all include company profiles, up to 3 custom catalogs, volume pricing, payment terms, vaulted cards, and B2B checkout. For most brands adding a wholesale channel, that is the whole toolkit, and the Basic, Grow, and Advanced plan pricing decides what you pay for it. B2B is no longer a reason to be on Plus unless you need more than three catalogs, deposits and partial payments, or direct catalog assignment at scale. The next two questions tell you which side of that line you are on.

I have built wholesale channels from the operator seat at WIN Brands Group, and I have advised brands through the Plus decision many times. So let me do the useful thing and give you a framework, not a verdict. The honest answer for most brands changed in April. What follows is how to tell if it changed for you.

B2B left the Plus
walled garden.
That is the news.

The structural change is simple: B2B used to be a Plus-only feature set, and now it is a core feature set available on every plan. The thing that made Plus the default answer for wholesale is gone. A brand on Basic or Advanced can now stand up a real B2B operation without paying the enterprise premium for the privilege.

This does not mean Plus lost its B2B value entirely. It means the floor moved up. The most common B2B needs are now table stakes on any plan, and Plus has been pushed to compete on the higher end of complexity rather than on access to the feature at all.

It is worth pausing on why this is a bigger deal than a feature note suggests. For a long stretch, the cleanest path to wholesale on Shopify ran through a wholesale app or a Plus upgrade, and both carried cost and friction that kept smaller brands out of B2B entirely. Plenty of brands that should have been selling to stockists simply did not, because the tooling sat behind a paywall they had not crossed yet. Moving native B2B down to every plan does not just save those brands money. It removes the reason they were skipping a profitable channel in the first place.

This matters more if you look at it from the app ecosystem angle. Wholesale apps on the Shopify App Store were a meaningful category precisely because the native tooling was Plus-gated. Some of those apps built genuinely sophisticated products. Others were proxies for native functionality that Shopify simply had not democratized yet. With native B2B now on every plan, that second category becomes a harder sell, and the first has to compete on capabilities that genuinely extend beyond what Shopify ships. If you are trying to understand what non-Plus B2B can and cannot do, the feature breakdown by plan is the place to start.

The non-Plus B2B
kit covers most
brands cleanly.

Look at what is now included on the lower plans and ask honestly whether it covers your wholesale needs. Company profiles let you manage business buyers as distinct from retail customers, with their own contact records, addresses, and permissions. Up to 3 custom catalogs let you show different products and pricing to different buyer groups. Volume and quantity pricing handle the tiered discounts wholesale runs on. Payment terms and vaulted cards handle net terms and stored payment. B2B checkout gives buyers the purchasing flow they expect.

For a brand running a handful of stockists, a few pricing tiers, and standard net-30 terms, that list is the whole job. You do not need anything Plus adds on top of it. The hard part of B2B for most growing brands was never the edge cases. It was getting these fundamentals in place, and they are now in place on plans you may already be paying for.

The three-catalog cap is the line most people will bump into, so be honest about what a catalog actually maps to in your business. A catalog is a distinct set of products and prices shown to a defined buyer group. If you sell the same range to everyone at one wholesale price tier, that is one catalog. If you have a domestic tier, an international tier, and a key-account tier, that is three, and you are at the edge. Most brands adding wholesale for the first time need one or two. The cap only bites once you are running genuinely segmented pricing across many buyer types, and if you are there, you are probably at the scale where Plus pays for itself on other grounds anyway.

One thing that does not change across plans: Shopify's B2B checkout handles the purchase flow, but the order management and fulfillment side is the same stack you already run for DTC. If your 3PL and inventory management workflow is already dialed in, adding a B2B order stream does not require a new system. It requires a catalog, a company profile, and terms. That is a low-friction start.

Full feature breakdown
by plan tier.

The table below maps the key B2B capabilities across plans. Read it as a decision tool, not a feature checklist. The goal is to identify which column your operation actually needs, not which column has more checkmarks.

Read that table the right way. Most rows are now green across both columns. The Plus column only earns its price on catalogs beyond three, deposits, direct assignment, and the deep checkout extensibility that comes with the full Plus upgrade. Everything else is the same.

Plus still wins at
catalog scale and
real complexity.

Plus did not get hollowed out. It got refocused. Where it still clearly leads on B2B is at the high end of catalog count and operational complexity. Unlimited catalogs versus the 3-catalog cap. Direct catalog assignment for finer control over who sees what. Deposits and partial payments for more sophisticated payment arrangements. More company locations. And the deeper checkout customization that comes with Shopify Functions and full extensibility.

If you run a distribution operation with dozens of regional buyer groups, each needing its own product assortment and pricing structure, the 3-catalog ceiling is a real constraint. If you take large purchase orders from enterprise retailers and collect a deposit up front to confirm the order before you commit inventory, you need Plus. If you run hundreds of company locations for a national restaurant or retail chain, you are in Plus territory.

The through-line is scale, not complexity for its own sake. The capabilities that stay Plus-only are the ones that matter at volume. Most growing brands are not there yet, and the April change was not designed to hurt Plus. It was designed to let brands start B2B without a gating mechanism that previously delayed the channel entirely.

How B2B actually
runs day to day
on the lower plans.

The feature list answers what you get. This section answers what it is actually like to run it. Because the gap between "native B2B included" and "our wholesale channel is operational and profitable" is where most brands either execute cleanly or create headaches they blame on the plan tier.

Setting up company profiles

Company profiles are the backbone. You create a company record, attach contacts with purchasing permissions, add their billing and shipping addresses, and assign them a catalog. That setup takes minutes per account if you have your buyer information organized. The discipline is keeping those profiles current, because a stale profile means a buyer sees wrong pricing or cannot check out at all. Build the habit of syncing profile updates when you update your buyer terms.

How catalogs actually work

A catalog is not just a price list. It is a defined view of your product range with its own pricing logic. You can restrict which products appear, set fixed prices, apply percentage discounts off retail, or configure volume tiers. When you assign a catalog to a company, every buyer in that company sees that version of your store. The limit is three distinct catalogs on non-Plus plans. In practice: one catalog for standard wholesale accounts, one for key accounts with better margin, one for international. That covers most mid-market B2B operations cleanly.

Payment terms and order flow

Net terms work by extending a due date on the invoice rather than requiring payment at checkout. The buyer places the order, sees the payment due date in their order confirmation, and you collect via stored card or bank transfer when the term comes due. Vaulted cards let you store the buyer's card and charge it automatically. This is standard net-30 operation, and it works on every plan now.

The gap shows up with deposits. If you take a large furniture or apparel order and want to collect 50% upfront to lock in inventory before you produce or allocate, that flow requires Plus. Non-Plus plans do not support partial payment collection at checkout. For most B2B categories this is not relevant. For made-to-order or custom-production SKUs, it is a real limitation.

The B2B vs. DTC inventory question

Running B2B and DTC off the same Shopify store raises the inventory allocation question fast. Wholesale orders can be large and infrequent. DTC orders are small and continuous. If your inventory is thin, you will oversell one channel or artificially restrict the other. This is less a B2B-feature-tier problem and more a fulfillment-ops problem, and it shows up regardless of plan. Getting your inventory management workflow right before you open wholesale is the single most important operational step that most brands skip. The B2B features work. Running out of stock because you did not plan for wholesale demand does not.

Count your catalogs.
Then count your
real complexity.

The decision comes down to two questions, and you can answer both in an afternoon. First, how many distinct catalogs does your B2B actually need? Three or fewer, and the catalog cap is not a constraint for you. Second, do you need the complexity Plus adds: deposits, partial payments, direct catalog assignment, many company locations? If not, you have your answer.

The mistake to avoid is upgrading to Plus for B2B on reflex, the way brands did for years, when the feature you wanted is now sitting on your current plan. The opposite mistake is real too: clinging to a lower plan when your catalog count and complexity genuinely demand Plus, and bolting on apps to fake what the enterprise tier does natively. Both cost money. The framework just tells you which way the line falls. For the deeper version of this call beyond B2B, read when to move to Shopify Plus.

There is a third path that applies specifically to brands just starting wholesale. If you have been sitting on the decision because the Plus price felt like a prerequisite, use the April change as your starting gun. Stand up B2B on your current plan. Run 90 days of real wholesale orders. Look at what the channel actually produces in contribution margin and whether any of the Plus-only features would genuinely change the operation. Then make the upgrade call with data, not assumptions. That is the order of operations I'd run with every brand I advise through this.

If B2B was your
Plus reason, re-run
the math now.

If you are on Plus today and B2B was a meaningful part of why, this is the moment to check whether the rest of your Plus usage still justifies the price. Maybe it does. Checkout customization, Shopify Functions, scale, dedicated support: those are real Plus reasons. But if B2B was carrying the case, the April change just removed it, and you owe yourself an honest review.

And if you have been holding off on adding a wholesale channel because Plus felt like too big a leap, that barrier is gone. You can launch B2B on the plan you are on, prove the channel, and only consider Plus when catalog count or complexity actually forces the question. That is a far healthier order of operations, and it is exactly the under-used revenue I keep pointing brands toward. Section 08 covers who buys and how to price it.

One more thing worth naming: B2B and Shopify Collective are not the same thing, but they often come up together in the same conversation. Collective is the peer-to-peer product-sharing network that lets brands sell each other's SKUs. Native B2B is the traditional wholesale channel where you sell your own products at wholesale prices to business buyers. They serve different distribution goals, and both are now accessible below Plus. Know which one you are actually building before you start.

On the plan question: as of April 2026, B2B is no longer a reason to be on Plus for most brands. Run the two questions, count your catalogs and your real complexity, and let the answer pick the plan; if you want the fee math done for you, find the right Shopify plan for your numbers first. If you skipped ahead, go back to how B2B runs day to day on the lower plans. Section 08, next, makes sure you are not leaving wholesale money behind (who buys, and how to price it), and if you are still weighing the upgrade, read when moving to Plus is actually the right call.

Who buys wholesale,
and how should you
price it?

The mistake most DTC brands make with a wholesale channel is opening it because they can. The infrastructure is now on every plan, so what decides it is whether your product, margins and positioning give a wholesale buyer a reason to order. For most DTC brands, three buyer segments are worth pursuing.

Corporate gifting is the most overlooked entry point. You do not need a retail buyer relationship, only the HR or procurement lead at a handful of companies where your DTC customers already work. Once an account is set up, it reorders at company milestones with little upkeep.

Three terms decide whether the channel makes money. Minimum order quantity: too low (under 6 to 12 units in most categories) and you take orders that cost as much to service as a DTC order without the margin dollars; too high and you lose the boutiques that would carry you. Price protection: write MSRP and minimum advertised price terms into the buyer agreement before the first order, or a wholesale account can undercut your own store and your Amazon listing with your margin. Payment terms: most wholesale buyers expect Net 30 at minimum, which is a working-capital decision as much as a pricing one; how Shopify's native net terms work covers the setup. For the margin side, the wholesale versus DTC margin math shows why a wholesale unit with no acquisition cost can out-earn a paid DTC order.

Common questions
on the B2B
plan change.

Questions I keep
getting asked.