A wholesale plan decision starts with the orders your business needs to handle. A higher subscription is useful when it supports a requirement you actually have. A lower one is useful only if the business can still sell, fulfil and reconcile those orders correctly.
Shopify's current documentation lists B2B on Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus, excluding Starter and Retail. That does not make the plans interchangeable. Use the current B2B feature comparison alongside your own account and contract before making a decision.
The plan differences to check first
- Catalogue assignments: Basic, Grow and Advanced allow three active assignments across active B2B markets. Assigning one catalogue to two markets uses two assignments. Plus removes that limit and supports direct company or company-location assignments.
- Payment workflows: net terms are available across those four plans. Deposit requirements, partial payments and payment requests per fulfilment are Plus features.
- Contextual experiences: Shopify Markets checkout and storefront customisation are available on Advanced and Plus.
- Regional availability: ACH is listed as United States only. An Australian wholesale business should not assume a feature exists for its payment setup because it appears in a general feature list.
These are eligibility checks, not a recommendation to upgrade or downgrade. The number of companies alone does not determine the plan you need. Write down how catalogues, markets, buyer locations and payment requirements interact.
Build a wholesale requirements sheet
Use a recent, representative order as a starting point. Remove customer information before sharing examples outside your business.
- Describe the buyer: which company location orders, who can approve it and which products and prices that buyer should see.
- Map the order: minimum quantities, purchase-order reference, agreed payment terms, shipping rules and the information fulfilment needs.
- List exceptions: a different price for one account, an overseas buyer, an out-of-stock line, a deposit or a split shipment. Check each against the actual plan and installed integrations.
- Name the record of truth: decide whether Shopify, an ERP or another system owns product, inventory and pricing data. Identify who resolves a mismatch.
- Set acceptance checks: the buyer sees the correct catalogue, the order reaches the right operational system and the team can reconcile payment. Agree these before implementation.
For example, two price tiers across two B2B markets can use more than two active catalogue assignments. Count the assignments in the proposed setup rather than assuming the number of tiers is the limit.
Compare real costs before changing plans
Start with your current Shopify agreement and invoices. Record currency, taxes, billing term, any variable charges and the features your team uses. Then obtain the proposed plan terms and quotes for any replacement apps or work.
Keep three figures separate: confirmed recurring cash costs, one-off implementation costs and staff time that might change. Time saved is not automatically a cash saving. A cheaper subscription can still require a costly integration change; an expensive plan can still contain capabilities you do not need.
Do not multiply a public headline price into a savings claim. A useful comparison includes the contract, transition effort, app dependencies, operational risk and the cost of ongoing ownership. Project pricing needs a scoped proposal rather than an industry estimate presented as a Sonder quote.
Connect the decision to the buying journey
A buyer must be able to find the right product and place the right order after the plan is chosen. The 12 Boards consolidation record documents collection mapping, landing pages and redirects. It is a concrete example of catalogue and journey work, not evidence of a B2B implementation or a measured sales gain.
Use Shopify Plus planning for a requirements-led platform discussion, or Shopify design and development when the wider store needs work. Neither a plan change nor a rebuild guarantees more sales.
Agree what happens after launch
Give pricing, catalogue and integration checks an owner. Specify what is monitored, how frequently it is reviewed, what access is available and what happens when a problem is found. A check cannot detect a system it cannot see.
Ongoing Shopify support and Snowball work follow agreed priorities, monthly scope, capacity, timing and approval boundaries. ERP work, custom monitoring and broader marketing require explicit scope. There is no promise that every overnight problem is automatically detected or repaired.
Sources and review
Reviewed 2 November 2026. Confirm current eligibility and payment availability in your own store before changing a plan.