Wholesale pricing on Shopify without Plus

Shopify has a proper B2B system — company accounts, per-customer catalogs, volume pricing, payment terms, the lot. It used to be part of Shopify Plus. Since 2 April 2026 it is on every paid plan. If a stockist has just asked you for trade pricing, this page is about what you can actually do today — starting with the thing you may already have and not know about.

First, be honest about which problem you have

“Wholesale pricing” usually means one of two quite different things, and the right answer depends entirely on which.

Problem A: different prices for different customers. Trade buyers see £6, the public sees £10, and the public must never see £6. This is customer-group pricing, and it genuinely needs B2B or a dedicated wholesale app. There is no honest workaround — but since April 2026 native B2B is no longer a Plus upsell, so this is probably a setup job rather than a purchase.

Problem B: lower prices for larger quantities. Anyone buying 24 gets a better per-unit price, and you do not mind who they are. This is a quantity break, it works on every Shopify plan, and it covers more real-world wholesale than people expect — because in practice the thing that separates a trade buyer from a retail one is usually that they buy a case.

What native Shopify B2B gives you

On every paid plan, as of 2 April 2026: company accounts with multiple buyers and locations, catalogs with their own pricing, quantity rules and quantity price breaks, net payment terms, ACH and vaulted cards. It is the real thing and nothing bolted on matches it.

Below Plus you are capped at 3 active catalogs, which attach through Markets rather than directly to a company. Deposits, partial payments and unlimited catalogs stay on Plus. If your wholesale business is three stockists and a spreadsheet, none of those limits will bind — and that is precisely the situation most stores asking this are in.

The cost is no longer money, but it is not zero. Switching B2B on disables accelerated checkout — Shop Pay, Apple Pay and the rest — along with subscriptions, local delivery and pickup points. Shopify B2B vs wholesale pricing has the full plan-by-plan table and what each limit means in practice.

How far quantity breaks actually get you

A quantity break sets the per-unit price by volume: 1 at £10, 12 at £7.50 each, 48 at £6 each. A trade buyer ordering a case gets trade pricing without an account, an approval step, or a second storefront.

What that covers well: case-quantity trade pricing, minimum order incentives, the stockist who orders monthly and does not want to phone you, and — the underrated one — letting retail customers who want a case have onewithout you inventing a separate SKU for it.

What it does not cover: hiding trade prices from the public, per-customer price lists, net-30 terms, tax-exempt handling, or approval workflows for new accounts. If you need those, you need B2B or a wholesale app, and a quantity-break app is not a step toward them.

🔴 Where TierUp stops

We make a quantity-break app, so this is the part you should read most carefully. TierUp has no customer-group pricing. There is no “trade customers only” setting, no customer tags, no hidden price list. It is not on a roadmap we can point at.

The practical consequence: every tier you set is visible to every shopper. If you configure 48 units at £6, a retail customer who buys 48 units pays £6 a unit, and the ladder showing that is on the public product page.

For a lot of merchants that is fine or even desirable. If it is not — if trade pricing must be invisible to the public — then TierUp is the wrong tool and we would rather say so here than have you find out after installing. Look at native Shopify B2B first — it is on your plan now, whatever that plan is — and at a dedicated wholesale app only if B2B does not fit.

Making quantity breaks work for trade

If Problem B is your problem, a few things separate a setup that works from one that annoys everybody.

Set the break at the case, not at a round number. If you ship in twelves, the break belongs at 12 and 48. A break at 10 means every trade order is a broken case for your picker.

Put the deepest tier where trade actually buys. Your top rung should be a quantity a stockist recognises as their normal order, so the page reads as a trade price list to the people who need one and as a bulk discount to everyone else.

Check the margin at the top rung, not the bottom. The deepest tier is the one that will be ordered most often by the customers who order most often. That is the opposite of how retail discounts behave and it catches people out.

Decide stacking deliberately. A trade price that also accepts the retail newsletter code is a margin leak that reconciles at the end of the month.

A reasonable sequence

Start with quantity breaks, because they cost little and answer Problem B immediately. Watch what your trade buyers actually ask for over the next few months. If the requests are consistently about quantity, you are done. If they are consistently about account-specific pricing, terms and invoicing, you have outgrown the workaround — and the next step is switching on the B2B features already sitting in your admin, not a Plus conversation.