Wholesale Pricing on Shopify Without Plus: B2B Options for Standard Plans

Plenty of Shopify merchants start getting wholesale inquiries long before their revenue justifies Shopify Plus. A boutique gets asked by three local shops for trade pricing, or a skincare brand lands its first spa accounts. The question is how to offer wholesale pricing on Shopify without Plus, without turning order handling into a spreadsheet nightmare.

There are several workable approaches, from simple manual processes to custom-built features. This guide compares them honestly, including where each one breaks down, so you can pick the right setup for the size of your wholesale business today.

Wholesale Pricing on Shopify: Check What Your Plan Includes First

Shopify's most complete native B2B toolkit (company profiles, B2B catalogs with custom price lists, payment terms, quantity rules, and a dedicated B2B checkout experience) has historically been a Shopify Plus feature. Shopify has been extending some B2B capabilities to non-Plus plans over time, so the exact line keeps moving.

Before choosing any approach below, check Shopify's current plan comparison page and B2B help documentation to see what your specific plan includes at the time you read this. If native B2B features are now available on your plan in a form that fits you, they are usually the cleanest option, because they are built into checkout and the admin rather than layered on top.

What follows assumes you need to fill gaps that your plan's native tools don't cover.

Option 1: Draft Orders for a Handful of Accounts

If you have fewer than about 10 to 15 wholesale customers who order a few times a month, you may not need any app at all.

How it works

1. The wholesale buyer emails or calls with their order.
2. Your team creates a draft order in the Shopify admin, applying a custom price or discount per line item.
3. You send the invoice from Shopify. The buyer pays by card through a checkout link, or you mark it as paid later if they pay by bank transfer.

Draft orders use your real inventory, generate normal orders for fulfillment and reporting, and allow you to add custom line items, shipping charges and notes.

Where it falls short

• Every order involves manual work from your team
• Buyers can't browse and order themselves at 11pm
• Pricing lives in someone's head or a spreadsheet, which leads to mistakes
• It does not scale once order volume grows

Draft orders are a fine starting point and remain useful even after you adopt a more automated setup, especially for large one-off orders or special quotes.

Option 2: Wholesale Pricing on Shopify With an App

The most common approach for standard plans is a wholesale app from the Shopify App Store. Well-known options include Wholesale Gorilla, Wholesale Club, SparkLayer and B2B/Wholesale Solution apps from various developers. Features and pricing change often, so compare current listings, but most fall into a similar pattern.

Typical features

• Customer-tag based pricing: customers tagged "wholesale" (or "tier-2") see different prices when logged in
• Tiered or volume pricing: price breaks at 12, 48 or 100 units
• Minimum order quantities or values: per product or per order
• Wholesale registration forms: buyers apply, you approve and tag them
• Quick order forms: a table view where buyers enter quantities for many SKUs at once
• Hiding products or prices from retail visitors

How the pricing is actually applied

This matters more than most merchants realize. Apps generally use one of a few methods:

• Discount-based: the app creates or applies automatic discounts or discount codes to reach the wholesale price at checkout. This is common and relatively robust, but can clash with your other promotions.
• Draft order checkout: the app converts the cart into a draft order with custom prices and sends the buyer to that checkout. This keeps prices exact, but the checkout flow can feel different and may affect analytics.
• Shopify Functions-based discounts: newer apps use Shopify's discount functions to adjust prices in checkout more cleanly. Availability of some function types depends on your plan, so confirm with the app.
• Duplicate variants or products: older approaches create hidden wholesale variants. This bloats your catalog and complicates inventory, and we generally advise against it.

Ask any app vendor exactly which method they use and how it interacts with discount codes, subscription apps and your POS.

Costs and trade-offs

App pricing typically ranges from around $20 to $300+ per month depending on features and order volume. Check the current listing, as tiers change. The main trade-offs are:

• Your wholesale and retail customers share one storefront, so you need to be careful with messaging, shipping rules and marketing emails
• Price display tweaks may require theme code edits, which the app may or may not handle well with your theme
• Stacking multiple apps (wholesale, subscriptions, bundles, upsells) all trying to manipulate prices is a common source of bugs

For many stores with up to a few hundred wholesale accounts, this option works well.

Option 3: A Separate Wholesale Store

Some merchants run a second Shopify store dedicated to wholesale, often on a subdomain like wholesale.yourbrand.com.

Advantages

• Completely different experience: password-protected storefront, case-pack products, wholesale prices as the regular prices, no retail promotions
• Simpler pricing logic: prices are just prices, with no apps needed to override them
• Separate shipping and payment settings: freight rates, different minimums, no retail free shipping threshold
• Cleaner reporting: wholesale and retail revenue are naturally separated

Disadvantages

• Two subscriptions and potentially duplicate app costs
• Inventory sync: if both stores sell from the same stock, you need an inventory sync app or integration to prevent overselling
• Duplicated product management: new products, photos and descriptions must be maintained in both, unless you automate it
• Only one price level per store without apps, so multiple wholesale tiers still need a pricing app

A separate store makes sense when wholesale behaves very differently from retail: different pack sizes, a different catalog, different shipping, or a sales team that manages accounts. It is overkill for a few dozen small buyers ordering the same products your retail customers buy.

Option 4: Custom Wholesale Features

When apps don't fit, a custom build can fill specific gaps. We usually recommend this only for particular pieces rather than rebuilding the whole wholesale system.

Examples of custom builds we see make sense

• A quick order page designed around how your buyers actually order, such as reordering from past orders or ordering by SKU code
• Account-specific catalogs where certain buyers only see products they're approved to sell
• Price display rules built into your theme so tiered prices, case quantities and MSRP all appear correctly
• An approval workflow that creates the customer, sets tags and sends a welcome email with terms
• Integration with your ERP or accounting system so wholesale pricing is managed in one place

Our Shopify custom features work often combines a well-chosen app for the core pricing logic with custom theme and workflow pieces around it. That hybrid approach usually costs less and is easier to maintain than a fully custom pricing engine.

Custom wholesale work typically ranges from $2,000 to $8,000 for targeted features, and $10,000 to $30,000+ for a more complete portal with integrations. The range is wide because it depends heavily on how many pricing rules, systems and account types are involved.

Handling Net Terms Without Plus

Net terms (letting buyers pay 30 or 60 days after the order) are one of the most requested wholesale features and one of the trickier ones on standard plans.

Practical approaches

• Manual payment method: set up a manual payment method such as "Invoice / Net 30" in your payment settings. Restrict who can use it through a wholesale app or theme logic, since manual payment methods are otherwise available to everyone at checkout. Then mark orders as paid when payment arrives.
• Draft orders with payment due later: create the order as a draft, complete it with payment pending, and track the due date. Shopify has added payment terms options to draft orders in recent years; check your admin for what's available on your plan.
• Third-party B2B payment providers: some services pay you upfront and handle the credit risk and collection from the buyer, for a fee. Research current providers carefully and read their terms.
• Your accounting system: many merchants handle invoices and reminders in QuickBooks or Xero, synced with Shopify.

Whatever you choose, decide your credit policy first: who qualifies, what limit they get, and what happens with late payments. Software doesn't solve that decision for you.

Minimum Order Quantities and Case Packs

Minimums protect your margins on small wholesale orders. Common patterns:

• Minimum order value: for example, $250 for the first order and $150 for reorders
• Minimum quantity per product: at least 6 units per SKU
• Case pack increments: quantities in multiples of 6 or 12

Most wholesale apps support some of these. Enforcement matters: a message saying "minimum 6" is weaker than a quantity selector that only allows multiples of 6 plus a checkout-level check. Without checkout enforcement, buyers can sometimes bypass cart rules. Ask your app vendor or developer how the rule is enforced, not just displayed.

For case packs, a simpler route is often to create a "case of 12" product or variant for wholesale, priced accordingly, with inventory tracked appropriately. This works best in a separate wholesale store, since it can confuse retail shoppers.

Keeping Operations Sane

Whatever setup you choose, a few operational habits prevent headaches:

• Tag wholesale orders automatically so your team can filter and fulfill them separately. Shopify Flow, which is available on non-Plus plans at the time of writing, can handle this.
• Keep wholesale out of retail marketing unless you intend to email them, by segmenting customers by tag in your email platform.
• Document pricing rules in one place so staff don't guess.
• Review tax settings: wholesale buyers may be tax-exempt resellers. Shopify lets you mark customers as tax-exempt; collect and store resale certificates as required in your jurisdiction.
• Check shipping rates: retail free-shipping thresholds may not make sense for bulk orders.

When to Move to Shopify Plus B2B

The workarounds above can carry a wholesale business a long way, but there are signals that it's time to look at Plus:

• You manage multiple buyers per company with different permissions and locations
• You need many price lists by customer, region or contract
• Your team spends significant time on manual order entry and invoicing
• You need payment terms, vaulted cards and quantity rules handled natively at checkout
• App conflicts between wholesale pricing and other features keep causing errors
• Wholesale revenue is significant enough that the plan cost is a small fraction of it

Plus B2B lets you run blended retail and wholesale on one store with company accounts and catalogs built into Shopify. If you're weighing that step, our Shopify Plus team can help you estimate whether it pays off for your volume.

FAQ

Can I show wholesale prices only to logged-in wholesale customers?

Yes. Most wholesale apps use customer tags so that tagged, logged-in customers see wholesale prices while everyone else sees retail. Test carefully across product, collection and search pages, since price display often needs theme adjustments to be consistent.

Is a separate wholesale store better than an app?

It depends on how different wholesale is from retail. If buyers purchase the same products in similar quantities, an app on your main store is usually simpler. If they buy case packs, need different shipping and see a restricted catalog, a separate store can be cleaner despite the extra cost.

Can I offer net 30 terms without Shopify Plus?

Yes, through manual payment methods, draft orders with payment pending, or third-party B2B payment services. The main work is restricting who can use terms and tracking payments, which usually needs an app or custom logic.

How much does it cost to set up wholesale on a standard Shopify plan?

A basic app setup can cost as little as the monthly app fee plus a few hours of configuration. Adding theme customization typically runs $1,000 to $4,000, and custom workflows or integrations range higher depending on complexity.

If you'd like help choosing the right wholesale setup for your store, book a free 1-hour strategy call through our contact page.