Shopify vs Shopify Plus for B2B wholesale. Learn when Plus works, where it falls short, and how to scale operations beyond a portal.
Should we upgrade to Shopify Plus? Your ops team might be drowning in repetitive tasks. Retailers keep sending email orders. Finance is stuck creating manual invoices. Backend operations live in spreadsheets that no one fully trusts. Standard Shopify plans aren't really built for wholesale.
This guide breaks down the real difference between Shopify and Shopify Plus, when Plus works well for B2B, where it falls short, and how other systems can fit into a modern wholesale tech stack. The real question is not whether Shopify Plus is powerful. It is whether your wholesale customers are willing to buy the way your ecommerce system expects them to.
Breakdown of Shopify plans
Shopify offers multiple Shopify plans designed to support different stages of business growth.
Basic Shopify is built for early store owners launching an online store. It covers the fundamentals: product listings, checkout, payments, and access to the Shopify App Store. It works well for low sales volume and simple operations.
Standard Shopify plans add reporting, more staff accounts, and better transaction fees. Many ecommerce brands run wholesale on these lower tier Shopify plans using third party apps, spreadsheets, and manual work.
Shopify Plus is Shopify’s enterprise solutions tier. It is designed for high growth businesses, high volume businesses, and brands with complex operations. Pricing follows a tiered pricing and revenue-based pricing model tied to monthly sales and monthly revenue.
The core difference is advanced features, automation tools, and backend control.
Difference between Shopify and Shopify Plus
Advanced automation and workflow automation
Shopify Plus includes Shopify Flow, one of Shopify’s most important advanced automation tools.
Flow lets you automate routine processes across orders, inventory, customers, and fulfillment. These automated workflows reduce repetitive tasks like tagging orders, flagging high-risk purchases, or routing orders to the right warehouse. For brands processing high sales volume, Flow can save hours every week.
Checkout control and custom development
Plus gives you access to Shopify Functions, which allow custom pricing, discounts, shipping logic, and payment rules at checkout.
This level of checkout control matters for:
Custom pricing by customer type
Bulk purchases
Wholesale discounts
Region-based payment rules
Unlimited staff accounts and store management
Shopify Plus removes staff limits. You get unlimited staff accounts with role-based permissions. For growing teams, agencies, and 3PL partners, this means no shared logins, cleaner audit trails and better store management across multiple channels.
Multiple stores and international growth
Plus supports multiple expansion stores under one organization. Brands expanding into international markets can run localized online stores with different currencies, tax rules, and customer experience. For global expansion, this centralized control is a real advantage.
Lower transaction fees and Shopify Payments
At scale, lower transaction fees become meaningful. Shopify Plus offers better economics with Shopify Payments and lower penalties when using third party payment processors. Savings add up for businesses generating significant monthly revenue.
Higher API limits and backend operations
Shopify Plus increases API limits, which is critical for integrations with ERPs, 3PLs, and automation tools. If you want to streamline backend operations and move data reliably between systems, Plus removes many technical bottlenecks that standard Shopify plans hit quickly.
When Shopify Plus is a great fit for B2B
Shopify Plus works best for B2B when you want the buying experience to look like B2C.
Shopify Plus is strong when:
Wholesale customers are willing to log into a portal
Buyers browse a catalog and place orders like consumers
Pricing is standardized or rule-based
Reorders are frequent and predictable
In these cases, Shopify Plus delivers speed and scale because orders already fit cleanly into a checkout flow.
Examples include:
Brands selling to many independent retailers
Long-tail wholesale accounts
Subscription-like replenishment behavior
For these businesses, Shopify Plus can centralize B2C and B2B under one ecommerce platform with unified commerce reporting and customer behavior insights. Shopify Plus makes it possible to offer self-serve wholesale ordering, customer-specific pricing, net terms, clean checkout pages and unified commerce across online and offline channels via Shopify POS.
If your wholesale strategy depends on adoption of a portal, Plus supports that well.
The B2B reality Shopify Plus does not change
Here is a secret that never shows up in Shopify marketing. Most retailers do not follow your process.
A typical wholesale order does not start at checkout. It starts with a PDF attached to an email, mismatched SKU numbers, outdated pricing and a request to acknowledge the order.
It is the reality of wholesale. If your customers insist on their own workflow, Shopify Plus does not magically convert them into portal users. Even when a portal is adopted, changes happen outside the system and exceptions live in email inboxes and spreadsheets.
In these cases, Shopify Plus becomes one more system rather than the system that runs operations.
The limitations of Shopify Plus for wholesale-heavy operations
Shopify Plus is designed to take orders that already fit into a clean checkout flow. Wholesale orders rarely do. Even on Plus, teams struggle with:
PO intake and validation
Parsing email POs
Matching SKUs and pricing
Handling substitutions and backorders
Exception management
Split shipments
Partial fulfillment
Retailer-specific rules
Compliance requirements
Backend operations and finance
Invoicing with supporting documents
Tracking accounts receivable
Resolving chargebacks and deductions
Reconciling data across systems
These are daily realities for wholesale-heavy brands. No amount of checkout control fixes a broken backend process.
Choosing based on customer behavior, not features
This is the decision framework most buyers actually need.
Shopify Plus should be the center when:
Most orders come through a portal
Customers accept your process
Wholesale behaves like B2C
The portal drives order velocity
Shopify Plus should not be the center when:
Most orders arrive via email
Retailers dictate the workflow
Exceptions are constant
Backend operations live in spreadsheets
In the second scenario, Shopify Plus may still exist. But it should not be the system of action.
Where B2B Operating Systems fit
Wholesale-heavy teams eventually need a system that treats orders like workflows, not just transactions. This is where B2B operating systems come in. Buddy is one example of this category, designed specifically for the reality of wholesale operations.
Option 1: Shopify Plus + Buddy on top
Shopify Plus runs the online store
Buddy sits on top as the workflow automation layer
Buddy handles PO intake, validation, and order orchestration
ERP and 3PLs remain systems of record
Buddy becomes the system of action
This works well when Shopify Plus still adds value for certain customers and channels.
Option 2: Buddy replaces Shopify Plus for B2B
In many wholesale-heavy businesses:
The portal is not the buying motion
Product moves through email, not checkout
Process matters more than presentation
In these cases, Buddy can replace Shopify Plus for B2B entirely. Orders enter through Buddy. Workflow automation manages rules and exceptions. Shopify can be used for DTC (direct-to-consumer) orders.
The priority is not customer experience at checkout. It is operational efficiency from order-to-cash.
Shopify Plus vs other commerce platforms
Shopify Plus often competes with platforms like:
Salesforce Commerce Cloud (Agentforce Commerce)
Magento Enterprise (Adobe Commerce)
Compared to these, Shopify Plus:
Requires less custom development
Runs on Shopify’s servers with unlimited bandwidth
Scales faster for high growth businesses
Offers better economics for many ecommerce brands
But none of these platforms solve email POs, exception handling, or wholesale AR by themselves.
That is not what omnichannel ecommerce platforms are built to do.
Shopify Plus pricing explained
Shopify Plus pricing typically starts around a flat monthly fee and shifts to a revenue-based pricing model as sales volume increases.
Costs include:
Monthly subscription
Platform fees tied to monthly sales
Transaction fees
App costs from the Shopify App Store
Custom development and agency support
At higher monthly revenue, Plus can be a cost effective solution due to lower transaction fees and operational leverage. But pricing alone should not drive the decision. Workflow fit should.
When upgrading to Shopify Plus makes sense
You should seriously evaluate Shopify Plus if:
Monthly sales are consistently high
Flash sales and marketing campaigns stress infrastructure
You need advanced automation tools
You operate multiple stores or regions
You want unified commerce across channels
Wholesale buyers will use a portal
You should pause if:
Wholesale customers send email POs
Backend operations are spreadsheet-driven
The main pain is ops, not checkout
Finance is buried in reconciliation work
If most of your wholesale revenue comes from small buyers who happily reorder through a portal, Shopify Plus may be all you need. If your growth is constrained by process rather than presentation, you should evaluate systems built to manage wholesale workflows, not just storefronts.
Final Takeaway
Shopify Plus is a powerful ecommerce platform. It delivers advanced features, automation tools, and scalability that standard Shopify plans cannot. But Shopify Plus does not fix wholesale operations by itself.
Most B2B customers do not care how elegant your portal is. It is about choosing a system and process that reliably moves product. Shopify Plus can be part of that system. The best teams decide based on customer behavior, not feature lists.
FAQ
What is the difference between Shopify Basic and Plus?
Basic Shopify is designed for small store owners with simple needs. Shopify Plus adds advanced automation, custom pricing, checkout control, unlimited staff accounts, and enterprise features for high volume businesses.
What is Shopify Plus for?
Shopify Plus is built for ecommerce brands with high sales volume, complex operations, international growth and advanced automation needs.
How much is Shopify Plus monthly?
Pricing varies based on monthly revenue and contract terms. It typically starts with a flat fee and shifts to a revenue-based pricing model.
What are the limitations of Shopify Plus?
Shopify Plus does not solve email PO intake, exception management, or wholesale AR workflows on its own.
Should I upgrade to Shopify Plus?
Upgrade if your bottleneck is scale, automation, and infrastructure. Reconsider if your bottleneck is wholesale process and backend operations.
