Shopify B2B & the wholesale channel
BigCommerce approaches wholesale with two built-in pieces — customer groups and price lists — and a B2B layer on top that adds company accounts, a buyer portal, quotes and purchase-order style ordering. The distinctive part is that group-based pricing and catalogue visibility are part of the platform rather than something you add, so a brand can run a credible trade channel without assembling a plugin stack.
For a DTC brand weighing platforms as wholesale becomes serious, that is the interesting question: how much of a trade channel comes out of the box, and where does the extra layer become necessary. Here is how the pieces fit and what each one is actually for.
Customer groups and price lists
A customer group is a label on a set of customers that drives pricing and visibility. Approve a retailer, put them in the wholesale group, and the group's rules apply to them at login.
A price list is the set of prices attached to a group. You can express it proportionally against retail, set fixed prices per product, or build quantity breaks so a unit price improves above a certain volume. That last one is worth noting: quantity-tiered pricing at the product level is native rather than an add-on, and it is exactly what you need when a case of twelve should beat a case of six on unit price.
Groups also control what customers see. You can restrict categories to a group, which is how you hide retail-only bundles from trade buyers and hide trade-only sizes from the public. Combined with a setting that hides prices or the whole catalogue from visitors who are not logged in, this covers the basic requirement that no shopper ever sees a trade price.
For a brand with one or two trade tiers and a straightforward account list, groups plus price lists is a complete wholesale setup on their own. That is a genuinely lower starting point than platforms where trade pricing requires an app or a plan change.
What the B2B layer adds
Groups handle pricing. They do not handle the fact that a wholesale customer is a business with several people and several addresses. The B2B layer exists for that.
It introduces company accounts with multiple users under them, each with a role — someone who can place orders, someone who can only build them, someone who approves. It adds a buyer portal where a logged-in buyer can see their order history, reorder a previous order in one action, manage their addresses and users, and track invoices.
On top of that sit the sales-side features: quotes, where a buyer requests pricing and you respond with a versioned quote that can expire and convert straight to an order; shopping lists, which are how a shop owner builds next month's order over several visits; purchase-order payment, so an approved account can check out against terms rather than a card; and invoice management, including partial payments.
The reorder function is the one that quietly earns its keep. A stockist who can repeat their last order in two clicks reorders more often than one who has to rebuild a basket, and reorder rhythm is the number that decides whether a wholesale channel compounds. Why that metric matters more than door count is covered in wholesale strategy for a small brand.
Multi-storefront and the second-site question
BigCommerce supports several storefronts from one account, sharing a product catalogue and inventory while presenting different themes, domains, currencies and customer groups.
That is one answer to the old problem of wanting a trade site that looks and reads differently from the consumer one — different navigation, no lifestyle content, a line sheet layout, case packs visible — without duplicating products or splitting inventory. It is a real advantage over maintaining two separate stores.
It is also a decision worth making slowly. A separate trade storefront is a second thing to design, maintain and keep current. Most brands with a straightforward range are better served by gating a section of the main store, and should only split when the trade buying experience genuinely needs a different structure. The version of this argument on another platform is in Shopify wholesale.
Where it fits against the alternatives
Three practical distinctions, without turning this into a scorecard.
Against a plugin-assembled WordPress store, the difference is who owns the moving parts. Native groups and price lists do not break when something updates, and hosting a logged-in trade area is the platform's problem rather than yours. You give up the near-unlimited rule customisation that a configurable plugin stack offers. That trade is laid out from the other side in WooCommerce B2B.
Against a hosted competitor's enterprise B2B, the shapes are similar — companies, catalogues by group, terms, portals — and the meaningful differences are usually the plan tier at which trade pricing becomes available, the app ecosystem around it, and how your theme work translates. Compare on what your specific account structure needs rather than on feature counts.
Against staying manual, remember that any of these is only worth configuring once the manual version hurts. Ten accounts emailing orders is a fine wholesale business, and the hours you would spend on a portal are better spent finding account eleven.
Getting the setup right
If you are building this, a few decisions upfront prevent rework.
Decide the tier architecture first: how many groups exist and what each is for. Boutique, distributor and export is a common set of three. Resist a group per account, because every group is a price list to maintain.
Set quantity rules to match your real case packs at the same time as prices, so buyers cannot order five of a six-pack. Keep a separate trade shipping method quoted against actual freight, not your retail parcel rates.
Handle tax exemption per account properly rather than by editing orders. Collecting a resale certificate at approval and recording it against the account is a five-minute habit that saves reconciliation later.
And keep inventory honest. If retail and wholesale draw from one pool, a large purchase order can empty the shelf your own store is selling from. Either hold trade stock at its own location or keep a buffer you never sell down. The rest of the operational list a buyer expects is in the wholesale readiness checklist.
The part the platform cannot do
Every capability above assumes a buyer who already wants to order from you. None of it finds a retailer, tells you which stores stock your category, or gets a line sheet in front of the right person.
That remains the actual constraint on a young wholesale channel. Pasting a product link into WholesalePilot gives a preview of the retailers and distributors that stock comparable products, which is the input a store platform has no way to produce.
The sensible order is to win the first accounts manually, learn what your buyers actually need from an ordering experience, and then configure groups, price lists and a portal against real behaviour rather than a guess. A trade portal built before the first stockist is a design exercise; one built after ten is a tool.
Questions about BigCommerce for wholesale
Do you need the B2B layer, or are customer groups enough? Groups and price lists are enough for straightforward trade pricing. The extra layer is for company accounts with several users, quotes, purchase-order payment and a buyer portal.
Can retail and wholesale run from one storefront? Yes. Group-based pricing and category restrictions handle it, with the option of a separate storefront later if the trade experience needs to differ substantially.
How are quantity breaks handled? Through price lists, which support volume-based unit pricing per product — useful when you want a larger case to earn a better price.
Can a trade buyer pay on terms? Yes, with a purchase-order payment method available to approved accounts, and invoices tracked in the portal.
Is migrating worth it purely for wholesale features? Rarely on its own. Migration costs traffic, time and risk. Weigh it as part of a wider platform decision, not as a fix for a pricing rule.