Why B2B brands migrate to Shopify.

The replatform case in cited numbers: market growth, Shopify's B2B momentum, named merchants, what it costs, and the risks that belong in the plan.

Replatforming is a bet, and B2B brands are making it in one direction. This page lays out the case to migrate to Shopify as a wholesale business, with every number sourced: how the B2B ecommerce market is growing, what Shopify's own earnings say about B2B momentum, which named merchants have moved, what the pricing models look like side by side, and the honest costs and gaps a migration team should plan for before signing anything.

What is driving B2B brands to migrate to Shopify?

The market moved first. US B2B ecommerce sales reached $2.641 trillion in 2024, up 16% from $2.276 trillion in 2023, according to Digital Commerce 360. That put ecommerce at roughly 16% of all US manufacturing and distribution sales. Forrester's forecast points the same way: US B2B ecommerce reaching $3 trillion by 2027 on a 10.7% five-year CAGR.

Buyer behavior moved with it. McKinsey's 2024 B2B Pulse ranked ecommerce the single most effective B2B sales channel for the fourth consecutive year. Among the 71% of B2B companies that offer ecommerce, it accounts for 34% of revenue. Gartner's buyer surveys sharpen the point: 61% of B2B buyers preferred a rep-free buying experience in the survey reported in June 2025, and the follow-up survey reported in March 2026 found 67%.

One counterweight belongs in any honest version of this story. Gartner also notes that purely self-service digital purchases correlate with higher purchase regret, and it predicts that by 2030, 75% of B2B buyers will prefer sales experiences that prioritize human interaction over AI. The practical read: buyers want self-serve ordering for routine purchases and a capable rep in the loop for complex ones. A migration target has to support both modes, which is why rep tooling shows up later on this page.

How fast is Shopify's B2B business actually growing?

These are Shopify's company-reported results, relayed by trade press coverage of its earnings releases:

• Full year 2025: revenue $11.56 billion, up 30% year over year; GMV $378.4 billion, up 29%.
• Q4 2025: revenue $3.67 billion (+31%); GMV $123.8 billion (+31%), Shopify's first quarter above $100 billion in GMV.
• B2B GMV grew 96% for full-year 2025 and 84% in Q4 2025, making B2B Shopify's fastest-growing segment by a wide margin.
• Q1 2026: revenue $3.17 billion (+34.3%); GMV $100.74 billion (+35%), the second straight $100 billion quarter; B2B GMV up 80% year over year.

Read those growth rates carefully. B2B GMV is growing 80 to 96% against a small base, and Shopify does not disclose the absolute B2B dollar figure. The claim these numbers support is momentum, not scale: B2B is Shopify's fastest-growing segment, sustained across multiple reported quarters. On its Q4 2025 earnings call, Shopify also cited the signing of Sonepar, an international electrical products distributor, as a large wholesale customer, as reported by Digital Commerce 360. No independent Sonepar announcement confirms it, so treat that one as Shopify's statement.

Which named B2B merchants run on Shopify?

Two named enterprise cases, both published by Shopify itself, so read the metrics as marketing claims rather than audited outcomes:

• Carrier (HVAC): Shopify's enterprise blog states Carrier cut time-to-market to roughly 30 days per site, versus up to 12 months on its previous platform, and roughly $10,000 per site versus up to $2 million previously, using Shopify's composable stack.
• Dermalogica (professional skincare wholesale): Shopify reports that Dermalogica's B2B portal serves more than 100,000 skin therapists, and that after moving wholesale to Shopify the average gap between purchases fell from 47 days to 11, conversion climbed from 74% to 92%, and 75% of buyers rate the experience 4 out of 5 or higher.

On analyst standing: Shopify was named a Leader in The Forrester Wave: Commerce Solutions For B2B, Q2 2024, and a Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce, its third consecutive year. For balance: in the 2025 Paradigm B2B Combine, a B2B-specialist evaluation, the published medal announcements went to BigCommerce, commercetools, Shopware, and Unilog, with no Shopify medals announced. Lean on the Forrester and Gartner placements; do not assume Shopify sweeps every B2B scorecard.

Why do B2B brands replatform to Shopify?

Six drivers recur across the research, with different levels of evidence behind each:

What does Shopify cost compared to legacy B2B platforms?

The structural difference is the pricing model, not just the sticker price. Shopify Plus is a flat subscription: $2,500 USD per month on a 1-year term or $2,300 USD per month on a 3-year term, with a variable platform fee possible for higher-volume businesses. Salesforce's published pricing for B2B Commerce is GMV-based: 1% of GMV for Growth and 2% for Advanced. As illustrative math, a B2B brand doing $50 million online would pay $500,000 to $1 million per year in Salesforce license fees at those published rates, versus roughly $30,000 per year for the Shopify Plus subscription before apps.

On total cost of ownership, the widely quoted number is from a Shopify-commissioned study fielded in late 2023 and early 2024 across 250 North American enterprises: Shopify's TCO averaged 33% better than BigCommerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Adobe Commerce, and WooCommerce, with implementation costs 16 to 88% higher on the alternatives. It is vendor-commissioned, the surveying firm is unnamed, and the raw data is not public, so cite it as Shopify's study, not as independent research.

What are the honest risks of a B2B migration to Shopify?

Shopify's native B2B foundation is real: companies with locations and contacts, catalogs with price lists and volume pricing, net terms from Net 7 to Net 90, vaulted cards, a dedicated B2B checkout, and draft orders. The full native feature set and the constraints ledger are documented in our knowledge base. A migration plan needs the documented limits in front of it:

• Accelerated checkouts (Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Amazon Pay) do not work in B2B checkout.
• B2B does not support purchase options such as subscriptions, pre-orders, or try before you buy.
• B2B orders cap at 500 line items; draft orders cap at 200.
• Non-Plus plans are limited to 3 active catalogs across all B2B markets; unlimited catalogs and direct catalog-to-company assignment require Plus.
• Discounts are off by default for B2B checkout and require a support request to enable.
• B2B works only with new customer accounts, not legacy accounts; buyers log in with a one-time code.
• The blended-versus-dedicated store decision is hard to reverse: Shopify warns that switching later means redoing most setup work, including companies, catalogs, and store customizations.

Then there are the workflow gaps. Shopify's B2B documentation describes no native quoting, no buyer-side approval workflow, no batch invoice payment, no rep login-as-customer, and no built-in ERP or CRM connectors; the docs route integration work to APIs, Flow, and third-party apps. If your current platform handles these, the migration plan must name what replaces them:

How do you migrate a B2B operation to Shopify?

Generic migration guides cover products, customers, and themes. A wholesale migration carries six more data classes, and each needs an owner before kickoff:

1. Store type first. Decide blended (one store for B2B and DTC) or dedicated (a separate B2B store) before anything else, because Shopify documents the choice as hard to change later.
2. Company structure. Map your account hierarchies to Shopify's Company, CompanyLocation, and CompanyContact model. Existing DTC customers and their order history can be migrated into B2B companies.
3. Contract pricing. Rebuild price books as catalogs: price lists plus publications, checking the 3-catalog cap if you are not on Plus.
4. Net terms and open AR. Assign payment terms per company location (Net 7 through Net 90); plan separately for open invoice balances, which have no documented native migration path.
5. Open quotes and rep assignments. Neither has a native home; decide which app carries them before cutover, not after.
6. ERP re-integration. Shopify's docs point ERP work at the Admin API, Flow, and apps, so the connector is part of the migration scope, not an afterthought.

Where does B2B Supercharge fit?

B2B Supercharge is built on Shopify's native B2B foundation and closes the workflow gaps above as switchable modules: Account Tools (teams, roles, approvals, order search and reporting), Buying Tools (quotes, fast reorder, saved carts, CSV upload, a live pricing API), Payments (batch-pay invoices, AR), Sales Rep Toolkit (login as customer, cart building, territory scoping, audit trail), and ERP & CRM Integrations (two-way sync with Dynamics 365, NetSuite, Sage, HubSpot, and Salesforce). It installs as an app, the base platform is free, and each module switches on independently, so the migration does not grow a second project.

Frequently asked questions