The Shopify B2B Playbook: Pricing Framework, Apps vs Plus, and Net Terms

For merchants running a wholesale or B2B channel on Shopify, the path to efficient operations can feel like a maze. You face the daily complexity of setting up tiered pricing for different customer groups, the operational headache of managing credit and net terms, and the constant decision paralysis: should you rely on a patchwork of costly apps or make the leap to a full platform upgrade? These aren't just minor hurdles; they are significant challenges in B2B ecommerce Shopify that can stifle growth and consume valuable time.

If you're tired of searching for a single tool and instead want a clear strategy, you've found it. This isn't just another list of apps. This is the Shopify B2B Decision-Maker's Playbook. We’ll guide you through a strategic ‘Crawl, Walk, Run’ framework designed to provide a clear path forward, no matter what your business size or budget. We will validate your pain points and equip you with an actionable framework to move from simple manual workarounds to a fully scaled, enterprise-grade solution for your Shopify B2B pricing needs.

Understanding the Shopify B2B Landscape: Three Paths to Success

One of the most common frustrations for merchants is discovering the platform's limitations, like the fact there is no native tiered pricing in Shopify's standard plans. This isn't an oversight; it's a core part of Shopify's philosophy: provide a lean, powerful core platform that can be extended and customized through a vast app ecosystem. While this offers flexibility, it creates complexity for B2B sellers whose needs are inherently more intricate than typical retail.

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To bridge this gap, we've developed the “Crawl, Walk, Run” framework, which outlines the three primary Shopify B2B pricing solutions available to every merchant.

• Crawl: Manual workarounds using Shopify's built-in tools. Ideal for startups and low-volume B2B.

• Walk: A strategic stack of third-party apps to automate and scale operations. The best fit for most growing businesses.

• Run: The fully integrated, native Shopify Plus B2B suite. The enterprise solution for high-volume, complex operations.

This guide will walk you through each stage, helping you identify the right path for your business and execute it with confidence.

The 'Crawl' Stage: Manual Solutions for Startups & Low-Volume B2B

For businesses just starting their wholesale journey or managing a small number of B2B clients, investing in expensive apps or a platform upgrade isn't always feasible. The 'Crawl' stage is about leveraging Shopify's native tools to build a functional, cost-effective B2B process. While manual, this approach provides a solid foundation to build upon.

The cornerstone of manual B2B order management Shopify is the "Draft Orders" feature. This allows you to create orders on behalf of your customers, applying custom pricing, discounts, and shipping rates that aren't visible on your public-facing store. This directly solves the problem when you can't set customer specific pricing Shopify natively.

Here’s a typical workflow:

Receive a B2B order via email or phone.

1. Navigate to "Orders" > "Drafts" in your Shopify admin.

2. Create a new draft order, add the customer, and select the products.

3. Manually adjust prices or apply a percentage/fixed amount discount to the entire order.

4. Send the invoice directly to the customer's email, where they can click a link to pay for the order with a credit card.

To how to offer net 30 terms on Shopify manually, you simply send the invoice from the draft order and track the payment externally in your accounting software. You can use customer tags like "Net30_Approved" to keep track of who is eligible for these terms.

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While effective for a start, this manual process has clear limitations. It's labor-intensive, prone to errors, and doesn't provide your B2B customers with a self-service online ordering experience. When the time spent creating draft orders starts to hinder your ability to grow, it's time to move to the 'Walk' stage.

The 'Walk' Stage: Scaling with a Strategic Third-Party App Stack

This is the stage where most growing B2B businesses on Shopify live. You've outgrown manual processes, but you're not yet at the scale where the cost of Shopify Plus is justified. The 'Walk' stage is about intelligently selecting a stack of third-party apps to automate pricing, ordering, and payments, creating a seamless experience for your wholesale customers.

The Shopify App Store offers hundreds of tools, creating decision paralysis. The key is not to find one "magic" app, but to build a curated stack that solves your specific problems. The most sought-after solutions fall into two categories: advanced pricing and financial operations. As the growth experts at CXL point out, testing elements like "Volume discounts" and "Bundle configurations" is one of the most overlooked B2B growth levers^[2]. The right apps empower you to do exactly that.

To help you choose, here is a decision matrix comparing some of the best Shopify apps for wholesale pricing:

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Solving Tiered Pricing & Bulk Discounts with Apps

The most fundamental B2B need is offering volume-based discounts. A good app not only calculates the correct price but also displays potential savings clearly on the product page, encouraging customers to increase their order size.

This is where you solve the tiered pricing Shopify challenge. Apps in this category allow you to create rules that automatically apply discounts without needing codes. For example, you can set up a pricing grid that is visible to logged-in wholesale customers:

• Buy 1-9 units: $10.00 each

• Buy 10-24 units: $9.00 each

• Buy 25+ units: $8.00 each

This is the key to how you automate volume discounts for Shopify wholesale. The app handles the logic, adjusting the price in the cart as the customer changes the quantity. A proper Shopify tiered pricing setup guide within the app's documentation will walk you through creating these rules for specific products, collections, or entire customer groups. The result is a professional, self-service buying experience that boosts your average order value.

Managing Net Terms & Credit Limits with Integrated Solutions

Offering net terms Shopify is a standard practice in B2B but a major operational challenge on standard Shopify plans. The 'Walk' stage provides two paths to solve this.

First, many all-in-one B2B apps (like Wholesale Helper) offer a basic "Pay by Invoice" or "Net Terms" payment option. When a tagged wholesale customer selects this, the order is created with a "Pending" payment status. You are then responsible for sending the invoice and tracking payment in your accounting software. This semi-automates the ordering process but still requires manual work for collections.

Second, for a more robust solution, you can use a dedicated Shopify net terms integration like Resolve. These services act as a B2B "Buy Now, Pay Later" solution. They handle the credit application and approval process for your customers. When an approved customer checks out, Resolve pays you, the merchant, upfront and handles collecting the payment from the customer based on the agreed-upon terms. This is the ultimate solution for Shopify B2B credit limit management in the 'Walk' stage, as it eliminates credit risk and solves cash flow challenges.

The 'Run' Stage: Unleashing Enterprise Power with Shopify Plus B2B

When your B2B operations become a significant part of your revenue, and you're managing hundreds of wholesale accounts with complex pricing needs, you've reached the 'Run' stage. Here, the conversation shifts from a patchwork of apps to a single, powerful, integrated solution: the native B2B features of Shopify Plus.

While the upgrade to Shopify Plus (starting at $2,300/month) is a significant investment, it solves the core B2B challenges at the platform level, offering superior stability, speed, and a seamless user experience. This is the ultimate solution for a large B2B ecommerce Shopify business.

Key Shopify wholesale features exclusive to Plus include:

• Company Profiles: This is the foundation. You can create company accounts with multiple associated buyer contacts, each with their own permissions. You can then assign specific payment terms and catalogs to the entire company.

• B2B Catalogs & Price Lists: This is the native answer to customer-specific pricing. You can create an unlimited number of price lists with fixed prices or percentage-based adjustments for every product and variant. Then, you assign these catalogs to company profiles, ensuring buyers see their correct pricing automatically upon login. This is how to set up tiered pricing on Shopify B2B without any apps.

• Automated Payment Terms: You can assign specific net terms (e.g., Net 30, Net 60) directly to a company profile. When a buyer from that company checks out, their terms are automatically available as a payment option. The order's due date is tracked within Shopify. For a full walkthrough, see the Official Guide to B2B Payment Terms.

• Self-Service Customer Portal: B2B buyers get an enhanced account portal where they can view their company's order history, manage buyer permissions, and select their assigned payment terms at checkout.

For a complete list of capabilities, you can review Shopify's Official B2B Feature Overview. Furthermore, Shopify Plus unlocks powerful automation tools like Shopify Flow, allowing you to create custom workflows like "If a new B2B order is placed with Net 30 terms, add a tag and send a notification to the accounting team." This level of integration and automation is what defines the 'Run' stage for Shopify Plus for wholesale business.

Troubleshooting Common B2B Pricing & Checkout Issues

Whether you're using manual methods, apps, or Shopify Plus, things can go wrong. A customer seeing the wrong price or a failing checkout can mean lost revenue and a damaged relationship. Here is a diagnostic guide for the most common Shopify wholesale discount issues.

Problem: Wholesale discount is not applying in the cart.

Potential Causes & Solutions (App-Based):

• Customer Not Tagged: The most common issue. Verify the customer account has the correct tag (e.g., "wholesale") that your app uses to trigger the discount.

• App Configuration: Double-check the rules within your pricing app. Is the discount active? Is it correctly applied to the specific product or collection?

• App Conflict: Are you running multiple discount apps? They can often conflict. Try temporarily disabling other discount or promotion apps to see if that resolves the issue.

Problem: B2B customers are experiencing Shopify wholesale checkout problems.

Potential Causes & Solutions:

• Theme Conflict: Your theme's code, especially if it has a custom AJAX or "drawer" style cart, may conflict with how your pricing app tries to update the cart. Contact the app developer; they often have compatibility fixes for popular themes.

• Payment Gateway Issues: Ensure your payment gateway is properly configured for all customer regions. Sometimes, specific fraud filters can block large B2B orders.

• Shipping Rate Errors: If a valid shipping rate isn't available for the customer's address and cart contents, they won't be able to complete the checkout. Check your shipping zones and rates.

Problem: My Shopify net terms not working.

Potential Causes & Solutions (Shopify Plus):

• Terms Not Assigned: Verify that the Company Profile the customer belongs to has the correct Payment Terms assigned in the B2B admin.

• Customer Not Associated: Ensure the specific customer logging in is correctly associated with the main Company Profile.

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Frequently Asked Questions

1. Do I need Shopify Plus to sell B2B?

No, you don't need Shopify Plus to start selling B2B. You can begin with manual methods like Draft Orders on any Shopify plan ('Crawl' stage) or use third-party wholesale pricing apps to add B2B functionality ('Walk' stage). Shopify Plus ('Run' stage) offers a more powerful, integrated native B2B feature set that is ideal for businesses at scale, but it is not a requirement to get started.

2. What is the best Shopify app for wholesale pricing?

The 'best' app depends on your specific needs. Popular and highly rated options include Wholesale Helper for a great all-around feature set, Bold Custom Pricing for complex rules and customer groups, and Wholesale Gorilla for robust B2B functionalities. We recommend evaluating them based on our 'Decision Matrix' in the article to see which best fits your budget and feature requirements.

3. How can I set different prices for different B2B customers on Shopify?

There are three main ways: 1) On Shopify Plus, you can use the native 'Catalogs' feature to assign specific price lists to different customer company profiles. 2) On any plan, you can use third-party apps that allow you to create pricing groups based on customer tags (e.g., Gold, Silver, Bronze). 3) A manual workaround involves creating unique discount codes for different customer groups, but this is less scalable.

4. How do I offer Net 30 or Net 60 payment terms on Shopify?

To offer Net terms, you can use the native 'Payment Terms' feature within Shopify Plus B2B, which automates the process. On standard Shopify plans, you can either manage it manually by creating a Draft Order and sending an invoice, or use a third-party app that enables a 'Pay by Invoice' option at checkout and helps you track payments.

5. How do I set up tiered pricing or bulk discounts on Shopify?

While standard Shopify plans don't have a native feature for this, the most common solution is to use a third-party app from the Shopify App Store. These apps allow you to create rules like 'Buy 10+, get 10% off' that apply automatically in the cart. If you are on Shopify Plus, you can set up volume-based price breaks directly within your B2B catalogs.

Conclusion

Navigating the world of B2B ecommerce Shopify doesn't have to be a source of frustration. By understanding the 'Crawl, Walk, Run' framework, you can move beyond simply reacting to problems and start making proactive, strategic decisions. Whether you're a startup leveraging manual draft orders, a growing business building a smart app stack, or an enterprise harnessing the power of the native Shopify wholesale features on Plus, there is a clear path to success.

You are now equipped with a decision-making playbook, not just a list of tools. You have the knowledge to assess your current business stage, identify the right Shopify B2B pricing solutions, and implement them effectively. This framework empowers you to build a scalable, profitable B2B channel that serves your customers and your bottom line.

Ready to build your B2B solution? Whether you're crawling, walking, or running, our Shopify experts can help you design and implement the perfect technology stack for your business. Contact Kensium today for a strategic consultation.

Disclaimer: This post contains recommendations for third-party applications. While we vet our recommendations, users should perform their own due diligence. Some links may be affiliates.