B2B e-commerce platforms: trade accounts, pricing and ordering

A B2B e-commerce platform lets trade customers log in, see their own prices and product range, order quickly and pay on agreed terms, without a sales rep keying the order. The three platforms UK merchants compare most are Shopify (with its built-in B2B features), Adobe Commerce (with its B2B extension) and BigCommerce (with B2B Edition). All three cover the basics. They differ in how far they go on pricing complexity, quoting, buyer approvals and cost.

For most wholesalers and brands adding a trade channel, we would start with Shopify. Since April 2026 its core B2B features are included on every plan, and Shopify Plus removes the limits. Adobe Commerce is the stronger choice when buying is complicated: negotiated quotes, purchase approval chains, credit limits per company and deep ERP integration. BigCommerce sits between the two.

The platform is the smaller decision. The larger one is where prices, credit limits and customer accounts are mastered, because in B2B that is nearly always your ERP or accounts system, and the website has to agree with it.

The short version

• Trade customers expect four things online: their own prices, fast reordering, payment on account and several buyers under one company.
• Shopify now includes company accounts, payment terms, volume pricing and up to three B2B catalogues on its Basic, Grow and Advanced plans.
• Shopify Plus adds unlimited catalogues, prices assigned to an individual company, deposits and part payments.
• Adobe Commerce B2B is the most complete for quotes, approval rules and company credit, and it needs a paid Adobe Commerce licence.
• BigCommerce B2B Edition is strong on quoting and sales rep tools, and is sold by quote on top of the platform plan.
• If every customer has a unique price for every product, plan the ERP integration before you pick the platform.

What a B2B store has to do

Trade accounts

A trade account is a company, not a person. It has several buyers, often several delivery addresses, and sometimes a rule that junior staff can build an order but a manager must approve it. You also need a way to accept or reject new applicants, so retail shoppers do not see trade prices.

Customer-specific pricing

There are three levels, and it matters which one you have. The simplest is tiers: bronze, silver and gold price lists. Next is a price list per customer. The hardest is contract pricing by customer and product, often with quantity breaks, held in the ERP. Most platforms handle the first well, the second with care, and the third only with integration work.

Quick ordering

Trade buyers know what they want. They reorder last month's order, type in product codes, or fill in a grid of sizes and colours. A consumer product page, one item at a time, wastes their morning. Look for a quick order form, saved lists and one-click reorder.

Credit terms

Paying on account means the order is placed now and the invoice is due in 30 days or whatever you have agreed. The platform needs to record the terms, show what is owed and ideally stop orders when a customer is over their limit. The credit decision itself, and the chasing, still sit with your finance team and accounts system.

Shopify, Adobe Commerce and BigCommerce compared

Shopify

Until this year, Shopify's B2B features needed Shopify Plus. On 2 April 2026 Shopify added company profiles, payment terms, volume pricing and up to three active B2B catalogues to the Basic, Grow and Advanced plans at no extra charge. Plus keeps unlimited catalogues, the ability to assign a catalogue directly to one company or location, deposits and part payments.

That changes the advice for smaller wholesalers. If you have a retail price, a trade price and perhaps a distributor price, three catalogues are enough and you do not need Plus for B2B alone. At the time of writing (October 2026) Shopify lists Advanced at £259 a month on annual billing and Plus from £1,800 a month, so the gap is worth respecting. Our guide to Shopify vs Shopify Plus works through when the upgrade pays.

You can run trade and retail from one store or give trade its own store. One store is simpler to run. A separate store makes sense when the range, content or integrations differ a lot. Where Shopify is thinner is formal quoting and buyer-side approvals, which need an app or a workaround.

Adobe Commerce

Adobe Commerce is the licensed version of Magento, and its B2B extension is the most complete of the three out of the box: company accounts with structure and roles, shared catalogues, negotiable quotes, purchase orders with approval rules, requisition lists, quick order and company credit. Adobe's own documentation is clear that the extension is for Adobe Commerce, so the free Magento Open Source does not include it. On Open Source you would add third-party extensions or build the features.

The price of that depth is cost and complexity. You pay a licence, hosting or Adobe's cloud, and a development team to run it. We think it earns that when B2B is the main business, the catalogue is large, and pricing rules live in an ERP that the site must mirror. See our Adobe Commerce and Magento pages for how we work with both.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce B2B Edition adds company accounts, buyer roles, quoting, shared shopping lists, an invoice portal and a buyer portal whose code is open for developers to change. Sales reps can log in on behalf of a customer and place or amend an order, which suits businesses where reps still take a lot of orders.

BigCommerce renamed its plans in 2026 (Core, Growth, Scale and Performance), and B2B Edition is priced by quote. Ask which plan it requires and what price lists cost before you compare totals. We build on BigCommerce too, and it is a fair middle path when Shopify's quoting is too light and Adobe Commerce is more than you need.

When a B2B platform is the wrong choice

• You have a few dozen trade customers who order by email. A password-protected price list and a good order form may serve them better than a full trade portal.
• Your large customers order by EDI or through their own procurement system. They will not log in to your site, however good it is. Put the money into those connections.
• Your ERP vendor already offers a customer portal. It will be plainer, but it shows live prices, stock and invoices with no integration to build. For reorder-only customers that can be enough.
• Every order is a configured, quoted job. Engineering and made-to-measure businesses often need a quoting tool more than a shop.

Common mistakes

• Rebuilding the price file by hand. If prices live in the ERP, sync them. A second copy maintained in the website goes out of date within a month.
• Launching without the sales team. Reps who fear the portal will keep taking orders by phone. Give them the tools to place orders in it and credit for the sales.
• Hiding everything behind a login. Search engines and new prospects then see nothing. Show the range publicly and keep prices for approved accounts.
• Forgetting VAT and invoicing. Trade buyers expect prices excluding VAT, a proper VAT invoice and their purchase order number on it.
• Treating it as a retail site with a discount code. Trade buyers return when ordering is faster than the phone. Speed is the feature.

How we'd approach it

We start with your price file and customer list, not with a platform demo. We count how many distinct price lists you really have, how many customers are on each, and where credit limits are held. That tells us within a day whether three Shopify catalogues will do, whether you need Plus, or whether the rules call for Adobe Commerce.

Then we map the ERP or accounts integration, because it sets the budget more than the platform does. Our guide to e-commerce integrations explains the options. For the food service supplier Thomas Ridley, whose customers range from local pubs to national contracts, we built account-based pricing and a click and collect service so each customer segment sees its own prices.

From there it is a build on Shopify Plus, Adobe Commerce or BigCommerce, a pilot with a handful of friendly customers, and a rollout with the sales team involved from the first week.

Questions we get asked

Want a second opinion on your own setup? Thirty minutes with a strategist, and you leave with a clear next step.