Wholesale Handler
Native B2B now runs on every paid Shopify plan
Shopify moved the core B2B feature set off Plus on 2 April 2026. Company profiles, payment terms, volume pricing, ACH payments in the US and vaulted cards all landed on Basic, Grow and Advanced at no extra cost, alongside quantity rules, price breaks, purchase order numbers, easy reorders and the Trade theme.
Anything written before April that says wholesale on Shopify starts at Plus is out of date, including a good deal of what still ranks for the question. Zoey pricing covers a platform sold on being the B2B tier Shopify used to withhold, and what it charges now that April has passed.
Three catalogues through Markets is not per-customer pricing
A B2B catalogue carries both the product scope and the prices, and on Basic, Grow and Advanced a store gets three active ones across all of its B2B markets. Assignment goes through Shopify Markets rather than to the buyer, so a catalogue applies to a market and everyone inside it. Assigning a catalogue straight to a company or a company location, which is what customer-level pricing actually means, stayed on Plus.
Three shared tiers covers a producer who sells at one trade rate, one distributor rate and one buying-group rate. It stops at the fourth. A producer who negotiated per account, which is the ordinary case for anyone selling to independent shops and restaurants, is back to Plus, a third-party app or custom development. How to charge different prices to different wholesale customers sets out what per-account rates look like when each customer carries their own list.
B2B checkout rules out subscriptions and local delivery
Two of Shopify's documented B2B incompatibilities are the two mechanics a small delivering producer runs on.
- Subscriptions are not a supported purchase option in B2B. There is no native repeating order, so a weekly standing order comes from a third-party subscription app, most of which were built for consumer boxes and have to be checked against company accounts, price lists and net terms before they are any use.
- Local delivery is incompatible with B2B checkout. It is available only on draft orders the merchant creates in the admin. Pickup points and pickup in store are unsupported as well, the latter openable only by contacting Shopify Support.
A producer with a van and a Tuesday round is therefore outside native B2B checkout on Shopify's own account of it.
The wholesale stack is three charges, not one
Once the three-catalogue ceiling or the missing standing order bites, the bill has three lines rather than one.
- The Shopify plan. Basic is the floor, and the list price steps up sharply at each tier.
- The wholesale app. A layer such as SparkLayer is an add-on and not a standalone product, so it is always a charge on top of a Shopify plan. Its tiers meter on monthly B2B order count, not on revenue, so a round of thirty accounts ordering weekly is roughly 120 B2B orders a month and lands high in the range whatever the basket size. The app tier can cost more than the Shopify plan beneath it.
- The card rate on anything paid by card. A percentage plus a flat fee per transaction, with the flat fee hitting small orders hardest. Net terms and ACH do mean a Shopify B2B order need not carry a card rate at all, which is a fairer picture than the usual comparison paints, but a card-paid order does.
Flat-fee wholesale ordering software sets out what one fee has to cover to beat a metered stack, and Shopify alternative for wholesale coffee roasters costs the three lines against a roaster whose cafe accounts all order the same week.
Delivery days, cutoffs and a make-list have no native equivalent
The second half of the argument is not money. A retail platform models an anonymous shopper who browses, checks out and pays. Wholesale models a known account on a schedule, and the schedule is the product.
Wholesale Handler holds those as first-class objects rather than bolt-ons.
- Every delivery day carries its own cutoff, set as a lead time before that day, so a Monday delivery can close on the Friday while a Thursday delivery stays open until the night before. A date that is closed says which rule closed it, one of non-delivery day, holiday, cutoff passed or not open yet, with the merchant's own message alongside.
- Standing orders repeat on a chosen weekday, weekly or every two, three or four weeks. Each delivery's order is created at that day's cutoff rather than in advance, and every line is re-priced and re-checked at that moment, so a product that is out of season is dropped and the customer emailed rather than silently ordered. Either party can start one, either can pause it or skip a single delivery, and a delivery under the minimum spend stops rather than places.
- Every order for a date collapses into one make-list, totalled by product with the number of orders behind each total, with a printable sheet carrying a tick box per line. Packing slips print for one order or a whole selection, with no prices on them.
- Per-customer delivery days, minimum spend and delivery charge sit on an order profile that customers are assigned to, so different commercial terms need no duplicate products or price lists.
Shopify alternative for fresh produce wholesalers covers the version of this where prices move daily, and Shopify alternative for wholesale bakeries covers the overnight bake against a morning cutoff.
Wholesale Handler is a flat fee with nothing metered
A flat monthly price, and that is the whole bill. No per-user charge, no per-order charge, no commission, and no tier that holds a feature back - the plans differ only in how many customers you trade with, up to 50. Up to 3 customers it is free, with no card.
What it buys is the customer-facing portal and the back office behind it, which is per-customer price lists, standing orders, order cutoffs, minimum order values, per-customer delivery days, packing slips, processed orders collated into a draft invoice per customer, production schedules, bulk import and a CSV export of invoice lines. The wholesale customer portal covers what a trade customer sees once they sign in.
Sticker price alone will not always favour it. A producer with three rate tiers and no repeating orders can run native B2B on Shopify Basic for less. The flat fee wins where the stack would otherwise grow a second and third line.
Selling direct and wholesale from one catalogue is Shopify's ground
If the same business already sells to the public on Shopify, native B2B puts trade and retail behind one catalogue, one admin, one inventory count and one checkout. That is a real saving in duplicated product entry and in stock that does not reconcile, and it comes with the parts nobody else has, which is point of sale, marketing tools, multi-channel selling and an app ecosystem thousands deep.
Wholesale Handler does not offer that. It is a trade portal, so a producer selling both ways keeps a consumer shop somewhere else.
What Wholesale Handler does not do
- No card processing anywhere in the product. Orders are invoiced and paid outside it, which is why no percentage is taken, but a merchant who wants trade buyers paying by card at checkout will not get it here.
- No consumer checkout. A merchant's public page lists products, delivery areas and location, and that is all it does.
- Packing slips carry no delivery address or phone. They name the customer, the delivery date and the lines. The address is held on the order but is not yet printed.
- No driver run sheet. Routes, zones and stops are outside the product.
