Shopify has been running two separate businesses for years. Consumer-facing stores on one side. Business-to-business selling, wholesale, and custom pricing on the other - locked behind Shopify Plus, which starts at $2,300 a month.
As of April 2, 2026, that wall came down.
Shopify announced that its core B2B (business-to-business) features are now available to merchants on Basic, Grow, and Advanced plans. Plans that start at $29 a month.
That's a big deal if you sell to other businesses, run a wholesale operation, or want to start one.
What Just Got Unlocked
The features that are now available to all plan levels include:
Company profiles. Instead of managing every business buyer as an individual customer, you can create a "company" record that holds all the contacts from a single business account. If a company has five buyers, they all live under one profile.
Custom catalogs with tailored pricing. You can show different product catalogs and different prices to different customers. Your retail customers see standard pricing. Your wholesale accounts see their pricing. The two never cross.
Volume discounts. Set automatic price breaks based on quantity. Buy 10, get 10% off. Buy 50, get 20% off. These rules run automatically without manual quotes or spreadsheets.
Vaulted credit cards. Business buyers can store payment methods for repeat orders. For wholesale customers who order regularly, this removes friction on every transaction.
Payment terms. Net 30, Net 60, custom terms - you can now offer these to business customers without building a workaround or using a separate invoicing tool.
These features previously required Shopify Plus. The threshold to get them just dropped by roughly $2,270 per month.
Who This Actually Matters For
A few types of businesses where this is immediately relevant:
Retail businesses that also do wholesale. If you sell candles, apparel, supplements, or any physical product that other stores might carry, you've always had two options: manage wholesale through spreadsheets and emails, or pay for Shopify Plus. The third option now exists.
Service businesses adding product lines. A salon that also sells product, a gym that sells gear, a studio that sells supplies. Any business adding a B2B component now has the infrastructure to do it properly.
Makers and manufacturers. If you sell direct-to-consumer on Shopify and have dealers, distributors, or retailers buying from you, those relationships can now live inside the same Shopify store with proper pricing separation.
Solopreneurs growing into wholesale. The previous Plus requirement meant wholesale was effectively off the table for most small operators. That's changed.
The Tariff Angle Worth Understanding
One timing note that's worth paying attention to: this rollout is happening in the same week that a 15% tariff is sitting on most imported goods.
For small e-commerce sellers buying inventory overseas and selling direct-to-consumer, that tariff is painful. But B2B and wholesale often changes the margin math differently - larger order sizes, repeat buyers, and predictable volume can offset cost increases better than one-off consumer sales.
If your margin on retail is being squeezed right now, opening up a wholesale or B2B channel might not solve the tariff problem, but it can change how the problem lands.
What It Still Costs You
The B2B features are included at no extra charge on existing plans. But a few things to understand before assuming this is entirely free:
Transaction fees still apply. If you're not using Shopify Payments, third-party transaction fees remain. On the Basic plan, that's 2% on every order. For B2B orders that might run $500 to $5,000 each, that adds up fast.
The more sophisticated B2B features stay in Plus. Custom checkout experiences, B2B API access, and dedicated support remain Shopify Plus territory. For a growing wholesale operation, at some point you'll hit the ceiling of what Basic and Grow plans support.
Your B2B workflow may need adjustment. If you've been doing wholesale through manual quotes, spreadsheets, and separate invoicing tools, the Shopify B2B setup requires rebuilding that process inside the platform. It's worth doing once - but it's not instant.
The Big Picture
E-commerce platforms have been competing aggressively for small merchant loyalty in 2026, and this move by Shopify is a direct play to make switching costs higher for any merchant who might be considering WooCommerce, BigCommerce, or building something custom.
For you as a merchant, the competition between platforms is actually good news. Features that used to be expensive are getting cheaper or free because Shopify needs to be the best value option, not just the most capable one.
If you've ever thought about adding a wholesale channel, the infrastructure is now available at your current plan level. The question isn't whether you can afford the tools. It's whether you have the customers to use them.
Sources: Shopify news release, shopify.com/news/b2b-for-all; Digital Commerce 360 coverage of Shopify B2B expansion, digitalcommerce360.com, April 3, 2026; Shopify Help Center, help.shopify.com.