Comparison of B2B Wholesale Shopify Apps

Shopify Plus’s native B2B functionality is powerful because it uses a fundamental, built-in feature: pricelists. This allows merchants to set up and manage different prices for products and variants directly within the Shopify admin, which are then applied to specific company accounts.

There are, however, third-party apps that manage to create clever workarounds and achieve similar results without the need to pay the hefty Shopify Plus fee. In this article, we’ll review three apps: B2B Wholesale Hub, BSS B2B & Wholesale Solution, and Sami B2B Wholesale Pricing, and compare them to Shopify Plus B2B.

Is Shopify B2B possible without Shopify Plus’s Pricelists?

Let’s start by explaining how B2B is achieved without the Pricelist functionality.

• Customer Tagging and Discounts

This is the most common and fundamental method used by these apps. They create B2B functionality by using customer tags and Shopify’s discount system. Here’s how it works:

• Customer Tags: When a wholesale customer signs up or is approved, the B2B app automatically adds a specific tag to their customer account (e.g., “wholesale,” “gold-tier,” “net-30”).

• Applying Discounts: When a tagged customer logs in, the apps use this tag to trigger pre-configured discount rules. These rules can be:

  • Percentage-based discounts: “Wholesale” customers get 25% off all products.
  • Tiered pricing/volume discounts: If a customer buys 100 units of a product, they get a 10% discount; if they buy 500, they get 20% off. The apps calculate this as the customer adds items to their cart.
  • Custom pricing: For specific customers or groups, the apps can set a unique, fixed price for an individual product or variant. This is essentially a price list-like function, but it’s handled by the app’s code rather than a native Shopify feature.

• Hiding Prices and Products

A crucial part of B2B is a “gated” store experience. These apps achieve this by:

• Theme Code Injection: The apps insert code into your store’s theme files. This code detects if a customer is logged in and if they have a specific tag.
• Conditional Logic: Based on the customer’s tags, the app’s code can hide the “Add to Cart” button, display a “Login for pricing” message, or even completely hide certain products or collections from view for retail customers. Only customers with the correct tags will see the wholesale prices and the ability to make a purchase.

• Alternative Checkout Processes

Since a core B2B feature is “buy now, pay later”, known as Net Terms, these apps often have a custom solution for the checkout process.

• Draft Orders: When a tagged customer with “Net-30” terms checks out, the app might bypass the standard Shopify checkout and instead create a Draft Order in the Shopify admin. The customer is then sent an invoice for the draft order, which they can pay at a later time.
• Custom Checkout Logic: The app can also add a custom payment method to the checkout page, such as “Pay by Invoice” or “Net 30.” When the customer selects this option, the app creates the necessary order and sets up the payment terms behind the scenes.

While the B2B apps are highly effective, the key difference lies in their underlying architecture. Here’s how their functionality compares to Shopify Plus’s Native B2B:

B2B apps for non-Plus stores are adept at utilizing the tools Shopify provides—customer tags, the discount API, and the ability to inject code into a theme—to replicate the core functionality of a B2B store hosted on a Shopify Plus plan. They create a “virtual” B2B layer on top of a standard Shopify store, while Shopify Plus provides a true native B2B experience with its own dedicated features. Here is a:

Detailed comparison of Shopify B2B apps

All four solutions offer flexibility in managing diverse wholesale operations, enabling businesses to tailor the buying experience for individual customers or groups, enforce specific order requirements, and streamline payment processes, often integrating seamlessly within the Shopify ecosystem. Here are some extra details for each of them:

Shopify B2B Commerce Platform

The Shopify B2B Commerce Platform provides a comprehensive solution for managing both wholesale and direct-to-consumer (DTC) businesses on a single platform. It enables you to create customized wholesale experiences with curated catalogs and tailored pricing, including product publishing and pricing with flexible purchasing rules, percentage-based pricing, and discounts assigned to specific buyers or locations. The platform supports quantity rules, including minimums, maximums, case packs, and increments for products and variants, and helps implement volume pricing for quantity-based price breaks. For payment terms, Shopify B2B Commerce Platform offers flexible payment options, enabling the creation of automated net payment terms and the ability to send invoices for payment. Companies can have unique payment terms assigned to their profiles. Additional features include:

• For companies with multiple buyers and locations, it manages purchasing permissions and includes company profiles.
• Sales rep enablement to place orders and access information for assigned accounts.
• Workflow automations with Shopify Flow for B2B tasks, such as assigning terms and sending invoices.
• Quick bulk-ordering tools, easy reordering, and vaulted credit cards.
• B2B checkout with PayPal payments, custom discounts, and the ability to capture PO numbers.
• Offers B2B-optimized themes (e.g., Trade) and headless storefronts using Shopify APIs.
• Simplifies workflows and quotes with checkout to draft orders.
• Provides account request forms via Shopify Forms.

B2B Wholesale Hub (by Orbit):

B2B Wholesale Hub by Orbit is specifically designed to facilitate wholesale and B2B pricing within a single Shopify store, alongside B2C operations. This app enables merchants to offer percentage discounts to specific customer groups or set custom prices down to the variant level. It includes volume discounts/quantity breaks for tiered pricing, offering lower rates for higher quantities. Essential wholesale features, such as net payment terms, are included, simplifying B2B transactions. The app also supports order minimum discount conditions and order minimums.

• Tagged customer accounts for wholesale pricing.
• Product locks, extra fees, and free shipping options.
• Custom prices and product visibility control.
• Manual order entry and multi-currency support.
• Pricing import and order limits.
• Auto-email responses and email notifications.
• Advanced analytics are available.

BSS B2B & Wholesale Solution (by BSS Commerce B2B)

The BSS B2B & Wholesale Solution by BSS Commerce B2B is a highly-rated app that supports extensive B2B functionalities. It offers a wholesale B2B pricing solution with custom, tiered, and bulk pricing options. For more granular control, the app allows for custom price lists per customer in its higher plans. In terms of quantity, it offers features for wholesale B2B quantity breaks, including minimum quantities, minimum orders, and order limits, as well as quantity increment options. Crucially, it enables checkout with net terms, streamlining payment processes for wholesale clients.

• Wholesale B2B registration form (multi-step) for wholesalers only.
• Automated tax exempt, VAT exempt, EU taxes.
• Check out with net term, manual order, draft orders, and price list.
• Supports multi-currency and discount codes.
• Features like Form Conditional Logic, Price per Variant, Custom Price List per Customer, and Import/Export Pricing Rules are available in higher plans.
• Shipping Rate and Extra Fee options.
• Public APIs for automation and configuration of pricing, customer, and order rules.

Sami B2B Wholesale Pricing (by samita.io)

Sami B2B Wholesale Pricing by samita.io offers a comprehensive solution for customizing and managing wholesale pricing. It provides a B2B pricing solution for custom pricing and bulk pricing, allowing discounts to be applied across the entire store, specific products, or variants. The app supports various discount types, including tiered pricing, volume discounts, flat discounts, dynamic pricing, and wholesale pricing. For quantity control, it features B2B Quantity breaks and MOQ (Minimum Order Quantity), as well as support for order minimums and order limits. Furthermore, Sami B2B Wholesale Pricing facilitates B2B checkout with Net term and offers various payment term options.

• Wholesale registration form to attract wholesale customers.
• Quick order form to encourage product purchases.
• Offers tiered pricing, volume discounts, flat discounts, and dynamic pricing.
• Supports order minimums, order limits, and import/export of order management data.
• Automations for managing discounts.
• Extra fee and payment term options.

Manage your B2B store with the Mixtable Spreadsheet Editor

Mixtable is an online spreadsheet editor app connected to your Shopify store. With Mixtable, you have:

• Excel-like spreadsheet interface to bulk edit Shopify data;
• Real-time 1-click sync with Shopify. No need for manual CSV import/export;
• Access to creating or updating products (titles, SEO fields, images, channels, etc.) for both your B2C and B2B stores via a spreadsheet;
• Powerful price editing: copy/paste, % or fixed adjustments, formulas, international pricing, dynamic pricing;
• Inventory management across multiple locations;
• Full metafield editing directly in the sheet;
• Bulk tag add/remove to manage your B2B settings.