Shopify Plus B2B Edition launched in 2023 to fix one of Shopify’s longest-standing weaknesses: it was a brilliant DTC platform that fell apart the moment a wholesale buyer hit your store. Companies, catalogs, price lists, NET terms, all things Plus B2B Edition got most of the way to.
The trouble is that “most of the way” in B2B costs you real money. If you’re a $5M wholesale operation paying $2,000/mo for Plus, $99/mo for B2B Ninja, $79/mo for Wholesale Club, $129/mo for ShipperHQ, and a $20K agency retainer to wire the quote-to-order flow, you’re not on Shopify Plus. You’re on Shopify Plus + 6 other vendors with one bill that says Shopify on it.
Here are five honest alternatives, including the one Shopify partners won’t recommend.
1. Stay on Shopify Plus and consolidate apps
The most pragmatic option: keep Plus, drop the apps you don’t actually use, and accept that 70% of your wholesale workflow will run on best-effort. This works if wholesale is a side door for you, under 30% of GMV, fewer than ~50 active buyer accounts, no real RFQ flow.
Best for: DTC-first brands with light wholesale tail.
Limit: Per-buyer pricing, NET terms, MOQ enforcement, and PO workflows are still patchwork.
2. BigCommerce B2B Edition
BigCommerce B2B Edition is genuinely solid for hybrid DTC+B2B operations where DTC is the bigger half. Buyer accounts, tier pricing, and quote-to-order are core features rather than apps. The app ecosystem is smaller than Shopify’s, but for B2B that’s often a feature: less to maintain.
Best for: Hybrid operations, mid-market.
Limit: Multi-brand still means multiple stores. EDI / Punchout require third parties. See the full comparison →
3. Faire (the marketplace path)
Faire isn’t a platform, it’s a marketplace. You list products; Faire drives traffic from buyers who don’t know you yet. The cost is real: 25% commission on a buyer’s first order, 15% thereafter. Faire owns the buyer relationship.
That math works as a discovery channel for new buyers. It does not work as your home base for buyers who already know you. Most successful wholesale brands run Faire and a real platform side by side, and migrate buyers to direct as soon as the relationship is established.
Best for: New brands needing buyer discovery.
Limit: Commission compounds; you don’t own the buyer. See the full comparison →
4. NetSuite SuiteCommerce (the enterprise path)
SuiteCommerce is the answer if you’re already on NetSuite as your ERP and want a single-vendor stack. The price tag is real: $50K–$500K implementations, 6–12 month rollouts, certified-partner-only changes. You will not configure SuiteCommerce in your browser, every change is a partner ticket.
Best for: Enterprise operations already on NetSuite ERP.
Limit: Implementation cost and timeline. Rigid configuration model. See the full comparison →
5. Mercantyl (the B2B-first path)
The option Shopify partners won’t recommend, because it’s not built on Shopify. Mercantyl is a B2B-first wholesale platform, buyer accounts, tier pricing, NET terms, RFQ workflows, MOQ enforcement, multi-brand catalogs, EDI/Punchout, all native, no apps required, self-serve from your browser.
The trade-off is the new-vendor friction: you’re moving off the Shopify ecosystem (themes, partner agencies, app developers). For wholesale-primary operators, that’s not a loss, Shopify’s ecosystem is built for DTC. For DTC-primary operators with a wholesale tail, it’s a real cost.
Best for: Wholesale-primary operators (50%+ of GMV is B2B), multi-brand operations, anyone tired of stacking B2B apps on a DTC platform.
Limit: Newer vendor; smaller theme/partner ecosystem. See the full Mercantyl-vs-Plus comparison →
How to decide
Run two numbers. (1) What percent of your GMV is wholesale right now, and where will it be in 24 months? (2) What are you paying in apps + agency + per-store fees on top of your platform subscription?
If wholesale is <30% of GMV and you’re paying <$500/mo in app overhead, stay on Plus. If wholesale is your business and you’re paying $1K+/mo in apps to make a DTC platform behave, the math changes. Mercantyl exists because we hit that math personally.
Pick the platform that matches what your business is, not what it used to be.