You can sell Shopify wholesale without Plus — and save $2,250/month doing it. Shopify's B2B features generated 96% more GMV in 2025 than the year before. The wholesale ecommerce market hit $697 billion. And if you've looked into adding wholesale to your Shopify store, you've probably hit the same wall every other small merchant hits: the native B2B tools require Shopify Plus at $2,300/month. For a store doing $20K-$40K/month, that's not a growth investment — it's a non-starter.

But Plus isn't the only path to wholesale anymore. A combination of apps, native Shopify features, and workflow hacks now lets merchants on Basic and Standard plans offer wholesale pricing, minimum order quantities, and tiered discounts for $20-50/month. The setup takes an afternoon, not a platform migration.

What Shopify Plus B2B Actually Gives You (And What You Can Skip)

Shopify Plus B2B includes company profiles, custom catalogs per customer, net payment terms, and quantity price breaks — all built into the admin. It's polished. It's also overkill for 80% of merchants who just want to offer bulk pricing to a handful of wholesale accounts.

If your wholesale operation looks like this, you don't need Plus:

Fewer than 50 wholesale customers
3-5 pricing tiers based on quantity
No need for net-30/net-60 payment terms built into checkout
Wholesale orders represent less than 40% of total revenue

That describes most merchants exploring wholesale for the first time. You need tiered pricing and a way to separate wholesale buyers from retail customers. You don't need an enterprise platform to do it.

How to Set Up Shopify Wholesale Without Plus Using Quantity Discounts

The core of any wholesale setup is price breaks: buy 10, get 15% off. Buy 50, get 30% off. On Shopify Plus, this is a native catalog feature. On Basic or Standard, you build it with quantity discount apps.

The setup is straightforward:

Choose your tiers. Most wholesale merchants start with three: a small case pack (6-12 units at 15% off), a medium order (24-48 units at 25% off), and a full case or pallet (100+ units at 35% off). Base your margins on COGS, not retail price. Wholesale only works if you're profitable at the discounted rate.
Apply tiers at the product level. Not every product needs wholesale pricing. Start with your top 10 sellers by volume. These are the SKUs wholesale buyers actually want.
Display the price breaks visually. A table showing "Buy 12: $8.50 each / Buy 48: $7.25 each / Buy 100+: $6.00 each" converts better than hiding the discount until checkout. Customers need to see the incentive before they commit to a larger quantity. EasySell displays quantity discount tiers directly on the product page, so buyers see the price drop as they increase quantity — no separate wholesale catalog needed.

This approach works because most first-time wholesale buyers aren't placing purchase orders through a portal. They're adding products to a cart, just like retail customers — they just want better pricing for ordering more. If you're also looking to increase AOV on your retail side, our guide to post-purchase upsell strategies covers the tactics that pair well with quantity discounts.

Create a Password-Protected Wholesale Collection

You need a way to separate wholesale from retail. The simplest method: a password-protected page that links to a wholesale-only collection.

How to set it up:

Create a new collection called "Wholesale" in your Shopify admin. Add your wholesale-eligible products.
Create a new page (Online Store → Pages) with the wholesale collection link and any ordering instructions.
Use Shopify's built-in page password feature or a Locksmith-style app ($12/month) to gate access. Share the password only with approved wholesale customers.
Remove the wholesale collection from your navigation so retail shoppers don't stumble into it.

This isn't as elegant as Plus's company profiles with custom catalogs, but it accomplishes the same thing: wholesale buyers see wholesale prices. Retail buyers see retail prices. Total cost: $0-12/month.

Use Draft Orders for Your Largest Wholesale Accounts

For your biggest buyers — the ones ordering $2,000+ at a time — skip the storefront entirely. Use Shopify's draft order system instead.

Draft orders are available on every Shopify plan, including Basic. Here's why they work for wholesale:

Custom pricing per line item. You can manually set the price for each product. No app needed. Want to give one account 40% off because they commit to monthly orders? Set it directly in the draft order.
Custom shipping rates. Wholesale shipping is negotiated, not calculated. Draft orders let you set a flat shipping fee or mark it as free.
Payment flexibility. Send the invoice via email. The buyer pays through a checkout link when ready. You can even mark orders as paid outside Shopify if payment comes via wire transfer or check.

The limitation is obvious: this doesn't scale past 20-30 orders per week without eating your time. But for merchants testing wholesale or managing a small roster of B2B accounts, it's free and requires zero apps.

How Do You Enforce Minimum Order Quantities Without Custom Code?

Shopify doesn't natively support minimum order quantities (MOQs) at checkout, but you can enforce them with apps ($5-15/month) or discount code logic (free). Wholesale without minimums isn't wholesale — it's just a discount. You need MOQs so your bulk pricing actually makes financial sense.

You have two options:

Option 1: App-based enforcement. Quantity restriction apps let you set a minimum (e.g., "minimum 12 units") per product or per variant. The customer physically can't add fewer than 12 to the cart. This is clean, automatic, and costs $5-15/month.

Option 2: Discount code logic. Create a wholesale discount code that only applies when the cart total exceeds a threshold (e.g., $500 minimum). Shopify's native discount system supports minimum purchase requirements. The customer can add any quantity, but the wholesale pricing only kicks in above the minimum. Free, but less polished.

Option 1 is better for product-level MOQs (12-unit case packs). Option 2 is better for order-level minimums ($500 minimum per wholesale order). Some merchants use both.

Handle Wholesale Tax and Shipping Separately

Two operational details that trip up first-time wholesale sellers:

Tax exemptions. Many wholesale buyers have resale certificates and expect tax-free purchases. On Shopify, you handle this per-customer: go to Customers, select the wholesale account, and check "Tax exempt." This is a native feature on all plans. If they're buying for resale, they shouldn't be charged sales tax — and you shouldn't be the one eating that cost.

Shipping rates. Retail shipping calculations don't work for wholesale. A 48-unit order shipped at retail rates will show an absurd shipping fee and kill the sale. Create a separate shipping profile for wholesale products with flat rates based on your actual negotiated carrier costs. Shopify's shipping profiles (Settings → Shipping and delivery) support this natively. Set wholesale products to a "Wholesale shipping" profile with flat rates: $15 for orders under 50 units, free shipping above 50. For more on optimizing shipping costs across your entire store, see our guide to reducing Shopify shipping costs.

The $50/Month Wholesale Stack That Replaces Shopify Plus B2B

Here's the complete setup, with costs:

Quantity discount tiers: $15-30/month (app-based, displayed on product pages)
Wholesale collection access control: $0-12/month (password page or locksmith app)
Minimum order enforcement: $5-15/month (quantity restriction app)
Draft orders for key accounts: $0 (built into Shopify)
Tax exemption per customer: $0 (built into Shopify)
Flat-rate wholesale shipping: $0 (built into Shopify)

Total: $20-57/month vs. $2,300/month for Shopify Plus. You're giving up company profiles, custom catalogs, and net payment terms. You're keeping tiered pricing, minimum quantities, and separated wholesale/retail experiences.

When You Actually DO Need Shopify Plus for B2B

This setup has limits. You should consider upgrading to Plus when:

You have 50+ wholesale accounts requesting different pricing. Managing this manually or through discount codes becomes a full-time job.
You need net payment terms (net-30, net-60) built into checkout. Apps can approximate this, but Plus handles it natively with payment reminders and tracking.
Wholesale exceeds 40% of revenue. At that point, the operational friction of workarounds costs more than the Plus subscription.
Your wholesale buyers expect a self-service portal. Plus's B2B company profiles let buyers manage their own orders, view order history, and reorder — without emailing you.

For everyone else — the merchant who just landed their first wholesale inquiry, the DTC brand testing bulk pricing, the store owner who wants to offer case pack discounts — the app-based approach works. Start with quantity discount tiers and a password-protected collection. Add draft orders for your top accounts. The entire setup takes 2-3 hours and costs under $50/month. You can always migrate to Plus later if wholesale grows into a significant channel. The mistake isn't starting small — it's not starting at all because you thought you needed a $2,300/month plan to sell in bulk.

Ready to add wholesale pricing to your store? Install EasySell to set up quantity discount tiers, minimum order quantities, and volume pricing — all visible on the product page so wholesale buyers convert faster.