Wholesale Without Plus: Shopify Opens B2B Features to All Plan Users in April 2026

Key Highlights

In this article, we explore what Shopify's April 2026 B2B update actually means for merchants who aren't on Shopify Plus, and whether the free tier is enough for your business or just a starting point.

• Shopify made native B2B features free on Basic, Grow, and Advanced plans starting April 2, 2026, ending the requirement to upgrade to Shopify Plus just to sell wholesale

• The free tier includes company profiles, up to 3 active B2B catalogs, volume pricing, quantity rules, Net 30/60/90 payment terms, and vaulted credit cards, all inside the standard Shopify admin

• The 3-catalog limit is shared across your entire store, not per market or customer type, making it the practical ceiling most growing wholesale operations hit first

• Shopify Plus still holds unlimited catalogs, catalog-to-location assignment, partial payments and deposits, and checkout customization via Shopify Functions, starting at $2,300–$2,500/month

• Merchants using native Shopify B2B report up to 4.1x higher reorder frequency and up to 33% more self-serve orders within six months of adoption

So, Do You Still Need Shopify Plus for B2B?

Ask five Shopify merchants whether wholesale still requires Plus and you'll probably get five different answers, most of them out of date. For years there was one honest answer: pay for Plus, or piece something together with three or four apps that never quite talked to each other. On April 2, 2026, that stopped being true. Company profiles, tiered pricing, catalogs, net terms, all of it now sits inside your Shopify admin, whether you're on Basic, Grow, or Advanced.

The question worth asking four months later isn't whether the feature exists. It's whether what you get for free actually covers how your business sells wholesale, or whether you'll hit a wall a few months in. That's what this is really about.

What You Actually Get for Free

• Company profiles for wholesale buyers, so pricing, order history, and payment terms follow the account instead of one contact

• Up to three active B2B catalogs, each with its own products and pricing

• Volume pricing and quantity rules, so you can price by case pack or set a minimum order size

• Net 30, 60, or 90 payment terms

• Vaulted credit cards for buyers who order often

• ACH payments for US-based stores

None of this requires a third-party app or a second login for your team. It lives in the same admin you already use to run your retail store, which sounds small until you remember how many merchants have been running wholesale pricing through a spreadsheet and a password-protected page.

“Merchants are telling us wholesale buyers are already asking to purchase their products. But too often, B2B tools have lived outside the systems they use to run their business.”

Samir Pradhan, VP of Product, Shopify

Where It Starts to Get Complicated

Here's the part most coverage skips past. Your first wholesale account is easy, one catalog, one price list, done. Your second one probably fits too, a separate catalog for a different type of buyer. It's the third and fourth account where things get interesting, because Basic, Grow, and Advanced share one pool of three active catalogs across your entire store. Not three per market, not three per customer type. Three, total.

If you already sell to distributors, retailers, and one big account with its own negotiated rate, you've used the full allowance before you've even thought about growing. When that happens, you've got three realistic paths: fold the new customer into an existing catalog and absorb the pricing compromise, add a wholesale pricing app to layer on more flexibility without paying for Plus, or upgrade. None of these is wrong. It depends entirely on how many real pricing tiers your business needs, not how many you'd like to have someday.

For a closer look at structuring this as you scale, our guide on building a B2B ecommerce platform walks through the same tradeoffs in more depth.

Free Plan vs. Shopify Plus: The Real Breakdown

What This Looks Like for Merchants Who've Already Switched

Shopify's own numbers give a decent sense of scale:

• Up to 4.1x higher reorder frequency compared to standard DTC orders

• Up to 33% more self-serve orders within six months of adopting native B2B

• 25% less time spent on back-office order handling, reported by Snyder Performance Engineering after moving off phone-and-email ordering

• 40% increase in average customer spend, also from Snyder, once buyers could see accurate pricing and order on their own

DAX Eyewear's story is a little messier and probably more familiar. Their wholesale pricing lived in a system disconnected from checkout, so buyers would sometimes see retail prices instead of their negotiated rate. Some of them just stopped ordering rather than sort it out over email. Once pricing and ordering moved into one place, that problem went away on its own. Neither of these is a dramatic before-and-after story. They're the same problem wearing different clothes: wholesale breaks down when pricing, ordering, and fulfillment don't live in the same system.

Running Retail and Wholesale Side by Side

A lot of stores selling wholesale aren't purely online. A boutique might serve walk-in customers by day and ship bulk orders to regional retailers by evening. Native B2B doesn't automatically connect those two worlds, since online catalogs and in-store sales still need to draw from the same inventory in real time, which is where Shopify POS integration closes that gap, so an order placed online and a sale rung up in person pull from the same stock count instead of two that quietly drift apart.

If you're weighing how far to take this, turning Shopify into a full B2B marketplace covers what that looks like once retail and wholesale are both running through one system.

If You're Still on Another Platform

For merchants running wholesale somewhere that never had a real B2B layer, this changes the math on switching. It used to be a fair objection that moving to Shopify still meant Plus pricing on top of a migration project. That objection mostly disappears now that the core toolkit ships free on every plan, which shifts the real decision to how clean the data transfer and SEO handoff turn out to be.

Setting This Up Without Overbuilding It

• Start with one catalog for your main wholesale tier and let real orders run through it before adding complexity.

• Set quantity rules that match how you actually fulfill, whether that's case packs, minimum order values, or both.

• Turn on net terms only for accounts you already trust, and vault cards for buyers who order often enough to benefit.

• Map out whether a fourth tier is coming within the next two quarters, so the catalog limit is a planning decision rather than a surprise.

• If you're already past three tiers, decide now between a pricing app and Plus. Don't wait until a customer is stuck at checkout to figure it out.

• If you're already unsure whether one catalog or a pricing app fits your case, that's usually a five-minute conversation, not a guessing game.

Common Questions

Do I still need Shopify Plus to sell wholesale in 2026?

Not for the basics. Company profiles, three catalogs, volume pricing, quantity rules, net terms, and vaulted cards are all native on Basic, Grow, and Advanced now. Plus is only necessary once you outgrow the catalog limit or need deposits, partial payments, or custom checkout logic.

How many B2B catalogs do I actually get on a standard plan?

Three active catalogs, shared across your entire store rather than per market or per customer type. Assigning all three to one market uses the full allowance.

What happens once I need a fourth pricing tier?

You'll either combine that customer into an existing catalog, bring in a wholesale pricing app to extend flexibility, or move to Plus. Which one makes sense depends on how much pricing precision that account actually needs.

Does Shopify charge extra to use B2B features on standard plans?

No. Native B2B tools are included at no additional cost on Basic, Grow, and Advanced, beyond your normal payment processing rates.

Can I move to Plus later without rebuilding my store?

Yes. Shopify has built the path between plans to be seamless, so upgrading doesn't mean replatforming or losing your existing setup.

Is native B2B enough if I also sell through a physical counter?

It handles the online side well, but it won't automatically sync with in-person sales on its own. That's where POS integration comes in, so both channels pull from the same inventory.

Ready to Set Up Shopify B2B the Right Way?

Amwhiz's Shopify team can map your catalog structure and close the gaps native B2B doesn't cover, so your wholesale channel launches right the first time. From catalog and pricing rule setup to POS and CRM tie-ins, we handle the technical build so you're not piecing it together app by app.

Talk to Our Shopify Team →

The Bottom Line

• Shopify made company profiles, catalogs, volume pricing, payment terms, and vaulted cards free on every paid plan starting April 2, 2026

• The catch is a shared limit of three active catalogs, plus no deposits, partial payments, or location-based catalog assignment outside Plus

• For a business running one to three pricing tiers, the free tier genuinely covers it

• Past that, or if your orders need deposits, it's worth mapping your catalog structure and integration needs before you launch, not after a buyer hits a wall