B2B on Shopify nearly doubled in fiscal year 2025. Since early 2026, core B2B features are no longer exclusive to expensive Plus contracts — they're now available on standard plans as well. That fundamentally changes the calculus for manufacturers, brands, and wholesalers. Here's what's driving the growth, what Shopify actually brings to B2B, and who stands to benefit from making the move now.
The number that's making the B2B market take notice
Some growth figures can be written off as outliers. Others signal a genuine market shift. B2B volume on Shopify grew 96 percent in fiscal year 2025, and another 80 percent in Q1 2026. You don't double in a year because a handful of merchants are experimenting. It happens because a significant number of companies are all reaching the same conclusion: B2B sales need a digital channel, and it no longer has to be built from scratch.
The context matters here. For a long time, B2B on Shopify was a Plus-only offering — reserved for the most expensive tier. In Q1 2026, Shopify opened core B2B features to standard plans as well. That removes the biggest barrier to entry. A manufacturer no longer needs an enterprise contract to give their trade customers a self-service ordering portal. This opening is likely to accelerate growth further, because it brings in the mid-market companies that have been watching from the sidelines.
Why B2B companies are switching in the first place
To understand where these numbers come from, you have to look at the day-to-day reality of traditional B2B sales. Orders arrive by email and phone. Inside sales staff enter them manually. Price lists live in spreadsheets, stock availability only exists in the ERP, and the product catalog is a PDF from last year. That works — as long as customers don't know any better.
But customers have known better for a while now. The buyer at a specialist retailer orders from Zalando and Amazon in her personal life. She expects to be able to check prices, availability, and delivery times on her own, at ten in the evening, without calling anyone — at work too. If your competitor offers that access and you don't, it won't decide any single order. Over time, it decides the relationship.
The second driver is internal. Sales time is expensive. Every hour a sales team spends manually entering orders is an hour not spent selling. Companies that digitize their B2B channel rarely do it out of enthusiasm for technology. They do it because the math — manual processing costs versus lost availability — eventually becomes too obvious to ignore.
What Shopify actually brings to B2B
Shopify has systematically built out its B2B capabilities over the past few years — as native platform features, not a collection of third-party plugins. Company accounts reflect the reality that multiple people place orders on the customer's side, each with their own roles and permissions. Customer-specific catalogs and price lists ensure every trade buyer sees their negotiated terms, not list prices. Payment terms and invoice-based purchasing are standard in B2B and are covered accordingly. And tiered pricing and minimum order quantities handle the everyday realities of wholesale.
There's another characteristic that often gets underestimated in B2B: Shopify runs the platform. Updates, security, scaling, and uptime are the vendor's responsibility. For a trading company whose IT team is already stretched thin, that's not a minor detail. It's often the difference between a project that actually launches and one that's been on the roadmap for two years.
That said, it's worth being honest about the limitations. Highly complex configuration logic, deep ERP integration requirements, or industry-specific custom processes can push the platform to its limits. That's exactly why every B2B project should start with an honest assessment: which of your processes are standard, which are genuinely unique, and what does that uniqueness cost? Not every quirk that's grown up over the years deserves to be rebuilt into the new system. Some deserve to be retired.
D2C brands discover wholesale
A second group is driving B2B growth on Shopify, and they're coming from the opposite direction. Direct-to-consumer brands that built their business on Shopify are now discovering wholesale as a second channel. The brand runs in its own shop, but the next growth step means specialist retailers, concept stores, or international distributors.
In the past, that step meant a second system: a B2C shop here, a wholesale solution there, two product data sets, double the maintenance. On Shopify, both run from a single installation — one product catalog, one backend, different experiences and pricing for each customer group. For a brand with a small team, that's the decisive difference, because a second infrastructure wouldn't just be expensive — it simply wouldn't be manageable with the headcount available.
This approach has a strategic side effect worth noting. The brand retains data ownership across both channels. It can see what end consumers are buying and what trade customers are ordering, all in the same system. That combined view is the foundation for assortment decisions that previously came down to gut feel.
The honest questions to answer before you start
Before launching a B2B project on Shopify, there are three questions you should answer clearly. The first concerns your pricing logic. How many individual price lists do you actually have, and where do they live today? If the answer is that every customer has historically negotiated special terms that only the account manager knows, that's not a Shopify problem. It's a cleanup task that needs to happen before the project starts — and one that's worth doing regardless.
The second question is about your ERP. Stock levels, prices, and orders need to flow between the shop and your inventory management system, otherwise you're only digitizing the surface. Shopify provides the interfaces for this, but the integration is project work and needs to be factored in from the start. This lesson applies across platforms, by the way. We covered it in detail in our article on B2B commerce with Shopware, and it's just as relevant for Shopify.
The third question is about your customers. How many of your top accounts would actually place orders themselves if they could? Ask them. The answers are usually more emphatic than your sales team expects — and they'll give you a ready-made pilot group to start with.
What a realistic rollout looks like
The mistake we see most often is designing the full build-out on paper before anything goes live: all customers, all price lists, all edge cases, one big launch. It takes too long, costs too much, and frequently gets stuck on the last twenty percent of exceptions.
A better approach starts with one customer group that will feel the benefit immediately. High-frequency buyers with recurring order patterns are ideal. The channel goes live for this group — with real pricing and a connected ERP. Then you measure for three months. How many orders are flowing through the shop? How much manual entry time is the inside sales team saving? What do the buyers say? Those numbers make the case for further rollout on their own. This pattern — pilot first, then measure, then scale — runs through every successful digitization project, and it applies here just as much.
The same order, two different worlds: an afternoon in inside sales
Let's make this concrete with a scenario that plays out, in one form or another, at many companies. A specialist retailer needs to restock — thirty line items, roughly the same order they place every six weeks. In the old world, they photograph their list and send it by email. Someone in inside sales opens the photo, looks up each item number in the ERP, checks availability, enters the positions, and calls twice because one number isn't legible and one item has been discontinued. The order confirmation goes out the next morning. Combined time on both sides: a good two hours, spread across a day and a half.
In the new world, the same buyer logs into their company account. Their last order is there as a template. They adjust three quantities, immediately see that one item has been discontinued and which replacement is available, see their negotiated prices, and submit the order. It flows directly into the ERP. Time required: ten minutes, no follow-up calls, no data entry errors. Inside sales has nothing to do with the transaction.
This scenario is intentionally straightforward, and of course there are more complex cases. But the core observation is accurate: the majority of B2B order volume consists of recurring routine orders — and those are exactly the orders best suited to a self-service channel.
The objection from inside the business: what happens to the sales team?
The strongest resistance to B2B commerce rarely comes from customers. It comes from the internal sales team, and it deserves an honest answer rather than reassurance. The concern is straightforward: if customers order themselves, what do they need us for?
The answer lies in the distinction between placing an order and making a sale. A routine order that gets typed in today isn't selling. It's administration. No salesperson has ever won a customer by entering thirty item numbers without mistakes. Selling happens elsewhere: introducing a new product line the customer hasn't seen yet, negotiating the annual agreement, solving a problem, asking why a good customer has been ordering less for the past two months. A sales team that's no longer doing data entry finally has time for all of that. And the new channel actually gives them the signals they need — because whoever can see the order data will spot changes in customer behavior before any gut feeling would. Companies that actively manage this shift in role, bringing the sales team along rather than springing it on them, encounter far less friction during the rollout.
What this means for your decision
The 96 percent isn't a guarantee that B2B commerce will work for you. It's a signal that the tools are mature and that your competitors are picking them up right now. Opening B2B features to standard plans has significantly lowered the cost of entry. What remains is the project work: clarifying your pricing logic, connecting your ERP, starting with the right customer group.
As a Shopify partner, we support exactly this journey — from plan selection through architecture to integration with your inventory management system. You can find our starting point on our Shopify page. For a look at how commerce is shifting again through AI-driven channels, read our article on agentic commerce and instant checkout. All our analysis is available in our Shopify Insights.