How to Set Up B2B on Shopify Without Plus
Every guide about B2B on Shopify eventually tells you to upgrade to Plus. The native B2B features are Plus-only. Company profiles, custom catalogs, payment terms. All locked behind $2,300/month.
But plenty of merchants run successful wholesale operations on Basic, Shopify, or Advanced plans. They just do it differently. With the right combination of built-in Shopify features and focused apps, you can set up a B2B channel that works. You might even find you never need Plus.
TL;DR: You can run a B2B channel on Shopify Basic, Shopify, or Advanced using customer tags, a pricing app ($15-30/month), and a registration app. The total cost is $50-100/month in apps versus $2,300/month for Plus. Upgrade when you have 50+ active wholesale accounts or need native payment terms.
What You're Working With
On non-Plus plans, Shopify treats every buyer as a regular customer. There are no company profiles, no catalog assignments, no native payment terms. Your B2B customers shop the same store, see the same prices, and check out the same way as everyone else.
This is the constraint you're designing around. Everything you build needs to use the tools that are available: customer tags, discount codes, draft orders, and third-party apps.
The good news is that Shopify's core commerce features are solid on every plan. Product management, inventory, shipping, checkout. That infrastructure doesn't change between Basic and Plus. What changes is the B2B layer on top.
Step 1: Separate Your B2B Customers
The foundation of B2B on non-Plus is customer tagging. When you approve a wholesale customer, you tag them. "wholesale", "b2b", "tier-1", whatever makes sense for your business. Every app and automation you set up downstream will key off these tags.
You can tag customers manually in the Shopify admin. For a handful of wholesale accounts, this works fine. But if you're processing more than a few applications per week, you want this automated.
A registration app handles this. The customer fills out an application form with their business details. You review it and approve or reject. On approval, the app creates the Shopify customer with the right tags automatically. No manual data entry, no forgotten tags, no inconsistencies.
This is the one step you shouldn't skip or hack together. Getting customers into your system correctly, with the right tags and data, makes everything else easier. Getting it wrong creates problems that compound over time.
Step 2: Set Up Wholesale Pricing
Without Plus catalogs, you have several options for giving B2B customers different prices.
Customer-tag-based pricing apps. Apps like Wholesale Pricing Discount and MGroup Dynamic Price let you create pricing rules tied to customer tags. Tag a customer "wholesale" and they automatically see wholesale prices when logged in. You can set percentage discounts, fixed prices per product, or tiered pricing based on quantity. These apps typically start at $15-30/month.
Discount codes. The simplest approach. Create a discount code that gives wholesale customers a flat percentage off. Share it with approved B2B customers. It works, but it's clunky. Customers can share the code, forget to apply it, or apply it to products you didn't intend. Fine for testing, not great long-term.
Draft orders. Your sales team creates orders manually with custom pricing. The customer gets an invoice to pay. This works well for high-touch, low-volume B2B where every order involves a conversation anyway. It doesn't scale if customers need to reorder independently.
Separate store. Some merchants run a second Shopify store exclusively for wholesale. Wholesale customers get access to this store with pre-set wholesale prices. It works, but you're managing two stores, two inventories, two sets of products. The operational overhead adds up fast.
For most merchants, a pricing app is the right balance. Set it once, tie it to tags, and wholesale customers see their prices automatically when logged in.
Step 3: Handle the Registration Process
This is where many non-Plus B2B setups fall apart. You need a way for potential wholesale customers to apply, and you need a way to vet them.
Putting a "Contact us for wholesale pricing" message on your site and handling everything over email is common. It's also a bottleneck. Emails get buried, follow-ups get missed, and there's no structured way to collect the business information you need.
A registration form solves this. The customer fills out a structured application (company name, tax ID, business type, documents if needed). You review it in a dashboard. Approve or reject with one click. On approval, the customer is created with the right tags, gets an activation email, and can start ordering at wholesale prices. For a comparison of the available registration apps, see Best Shopify Apps for B2B Customer Registration in 2026.
The key things to look for in a registration app on non-Plus: customer tag assignment on approval, custom fields for the information you need, email notifications to both you and the applicant, and ideally file uploads for business documents like trade licenses.
Step 4: Minimum Order Requirements
B2B orders typically have minimums. $200 minimum order, 12-unit minimum per SKU, whatever your margins require.
Shopify doesn't enforce order minimums natively on any plan. But several apps add this. You can set minimum order values, minimum quantities per product or per variant, and restrict checkout if the minimums aren't met. These usually cost $10-20/month.
If your minimums are simple (one flat minimum order value for all wholesale customers), you can enforce this with a Shopify Script on Plus, but on non-Plus you need an app.
Step 5: Payment and Terms
Net terms are a Plus-native feature. On lower plans, you have workarounds.
Draft orders with "payment pending." Create the order, mark it as unfulfilled, send the invoice. The customer pays when they pay. You track it manually. Works for a small number of accounts where you know the buyers personally.
Invoice apps. Apps like Sufio or Order Printer generate professional invoices with payment terms printed on them. The customer still pays through Shopify's checkout (or bank transfer), but the invoicing creates a paper trail.
Bank transfer as payment method. Add a manual payment method in Shopify for bank transfers. Wholesale customers select it at checkout and pay via bank transfer. You manually mark the order as paid when the money arrives. This is common in EU B2B where bank transfers are standard.
Third-party net terms providers. Services like Resolve offer net terms as a service. They pay you upfront and collect from the buyer later. This removes credit risk but adds cost (typically 2-3% per transaction).
None of these are as clean as Plus's native payment terms. But they work. Pick the one that matches your volume and your buyers' expectations.
Step 6: The B2B Customer Experience
On Plus, B2B customers get a distinct experience: company account, custom catalog, self-serve reordering. On non-Plus, the experience is closer to a VIP D2C customer. They log in, see adjusted prices (via your pricing app), and shop the regular store.
You can improve this. Create a dedicated "Wholesale" page with information about your B2B program, order minimums, and how-to guides. Use navigation to highlight wholesale-relevant products. Set up automated email flows for B2B customers with ordering reminders and new product announcements.
It's not the same as a dedicated B2B portal, but it works. Especially for merchants whose B2B channel is 10-30% of revenue, not the primary business.
When to Actually Upgrade to Plus
The non-Plus approach works well up to a point. Here are the signals that it's time to consider upgrading. For a detailed comparison of what native B2B offers versus third-party apps, see Shopify Native B2B vs Third-Party Apps.
You have more than 50 active wholesale accounts. Managing B2B through customer tags and pricing apps gets unwieldy at scale. Plus company profiles with proper catalog assignment are materially better.
Your B2B revenue exceeds your app costs by 10x. If you're paying $100/month in wholesale apps and B2B generates $50k/month, the $2,300 Plus price starts to look reasonable for the operational efficiency.
You need proper payment terms. If your buyers require net 30/60 with professional statements and the draft-order workaround is costing you hours per week, native payment terms justify the upgrade.
You're running multiple stores for DTC and wholesale. If you maintain a separate wholesale store, consolidating to one Plus store with both channels eliminates double-work on products, inventory, and fulfillment.
Your B2B customers need self-serve company management. If buyers need to add their own locations, manage their own users, or set up multiple shipping addresses, that's Plus territory.
If none of these apply, you're probably fine where you are. Don't upgrade because a blog post told you to. Upgrade when the cost of not upgrading exceeds $2,300/month in either lost time or lost revenue.
The Practical Stack
For a merchant on Shopify Basic or Advanced who wants to add a B2B channel, here's the minimum viable stack.
A registration app for customer onboarding. A pricing app for tag-based wholesale pricing. A minimum order app if you need it. An invoicing app if your buyers need formal invoices.
Total cost: roughly $50-100/month in apps. Compared to $2,300/month for Plus, that's a significant difference, especially when you're testing whether B2B is viable for your business at all.
Start lean. Prove the channel works. Upgrade when the numbers say you should.
B2B Onboard works on all Shopify plans, not just Plus. Custom registration forms, automatic customer tagging on approval, VAT validation, and file uploads for business documents. Your wholesale registration process, without the Plus price tag. Try it free.
Peer Jakobsen is the founder of Mentilead. He builds Shopify B2B apps from Denmark with a focus on clean architecture and EU compliance.