A B2B ecommerce website, for a wholesaler your size: what it has to have, what it costs, how long it takes

Search for "B2B ecommerce website" and you'll get two kinds of pages: galleries of Grainger and Amazon Business, and vendor pages for platforms that cost more per month than a small distributor spends on software in a year. Neither answers the question a wholesaler is actually asking, which is: what does mine need to have, what will it cost, and how long until my customers can order on it?

We've spent years building these for manufacturers, importers, distributors and wholesalers. Here's the plain answer.

What makes a website "B2B" — it's not the password

A lot of wholesalers have a "B2B website" that is a consumer store with a login. The customer gets in, sees the same catalog and the same price as everyone else, and emails you afterwards for "my price." That's not a B2B website. That's a brochure with a door.

A B2B ecommerce website is built around one fact: your customers are businesses, and every one of them has a different deal with you. Different prices, different minimums, different terms, often a different rep. The website's job is to know all of that so the customer can order without asking — and so your team stops retyping orders into the ERP.

The 12 things it needs to have

We've grouped them by who they're for. If a platform you're evaluating can't do the first group, stop there.

For the customer (so they order alone)

1. Their own price list. When a retailer logs in, the price they see is the one you agreed with them — not a public price with a discount code. If you have five price tiers, you need five price lists and a way to assign each account to one.
2. Minimum order, minimum per product, sell in multiples. US$ 500 to check out. Cases of 12. A minimum of 6 per SKU on apparel. Enforced in the cart, so the order you receive is one you can ship.
3. Terms, not just cards. The option to order on net 30 or net 60, with a visible account balance. If the balance is over the limit, the order waits for your approval instead of failing.
4. Reorder from history. The retailer who buys the same 40 products every two weeks does it in one click. This is the single feature that moves the most orders off the phone.
5. Their documents. Invoices, packing slips, order status, in a customer portal. Every document they can download is a call you don't get.
6. A fast way to order many lines. A distributor's order isn't three products; it's sixty. A grid where the customer types quantities down a list beats a product page with an "add to cart" button sixty times.

For your team (so nothing gets retyped)

7. Reps with portfolios. Each rep sees their accounts, places orders on their behalf from a phone, and gets commission on what those accounts buy — including the orders the customer placed alone. The rep stays in the picture; the retyping goes away.
8. Your ERP connected. Prices and stock flow out of your system; orders flow back in. If there's no connector for your ERP, you need an open API so one can be built — and you need to know who builds it and what it costs.
9. Customer approval. A new business asks for an account; you approve it, assign the price list and the rep, and only then do they see prices. Your wholesale prices never show up in a Google search.

For the business (so it's worth having)

10. A public catalog with private prices. Google can index your products — this is how new retailers find you — while prices stay hidden until login. Most consumer-store workarounds can't do this; they hide the whole catalog or show all the prices.
11. Your domain, your brand. orders.yourcompany.com, your logo, your colors. A B2B site on a vendor's subdomain tells your customer who really runs it.
12. Payments that fit a business. Cards for the accounts that pay that way, terms for the ones that don't, and US sales tax calculated where it applies.

That's the list. Notice what's not on it: a blog, a loyalty program, abandoned-cart emails, a one-page checkout. Those are consumer-commerce features, and they're where consumer platforms spend their energy. For a wholesaler, they're nice. The twelve above are the business.

What a B2B ecommerce website costs

Here's what the platforms that publish prices charge, from their own pricing pages as of October 2026. The entry price is in the second column; the third column is the one to read, because it tells you how the bill behaves when you grow.

Platform	Entry price (published)	What makes it grow
BigCommerce	US$ 39 / 105 / 399 per month; Performance from US$ 1,499/mo billed annually	GMV caps per plan; 0.9–2.0% on sales above the cap unless you use their payment providers
Shopify Plus	Shown to us in EUR: from €2,100/mo on a 3-year term	Term length and "complexity"; B2B on standard Shopify plans is capped at 3 catalogs
B2B Wave	€320/mo	10 users and 20 price lists included; more is "contact us"
Orderspace	US$ 65–185/mo	Number of sales reps per tier
SparkLayer (on Shopify)	Free to US$ 299/mo, Enterprise from US$ 499	Monthly order caps (5 / 50 / 100 / 150) plus a Shopify plan
OrderEase	From US$ 500/mo + setup fee	Order volume, order sources, systems connected
RepSpark, NuORDER, MarketTime	Not published	—
VentasxMayor	US$ 99.00/mo, flat	Nothing. No commissions, no per-user fees, no order caps, no contract

Each figure is from that vendor's pricing page, read October 14, 2026.

Two things to budget that aren't on any pricing page:

• The catalog. Clean product data — codes, units, images, which list applies to whom — is where the time goes on every platform. Ask what the vendor does with your catalog during setup. At VentasxMayor we migrate it as part of the implementation, which is included.
• The ERP connector. On most platforms it's quoted separately. Ask before you sign, not after.

How long it takes

On enterprise platforms, a B2B website is a project: months, an integration partner, a go-live date that moves. On wholesale ordering platforms, the software is ready in days — the time goes into your side: the catalog, the customer list, the price lists, the reps.

Here's how it goes with us, so you can compare: you send the catalog and the brand; we set up the store on your domain with your price lists, connect payments and deliver it with a step-by-step start guide. The store is live in days; the plan only starts at launch. If you have an ERP, the connection is scoped separately and doesn't hold up the launch.

Say you're a hardware importer with 1,200 SKUs, three price tiers and two reps. The work is: a clean product file (one afternoon if your data is in order, a week if it isn't), the list of accounts with their tier and rep (an hour from your spreadsheet), and the day you tell your customers the link. That's the project.

The mistakes we see

Launching with the whole catalog and no customers. A B2B site with no orders on it is a cost. Launch with the ten accounts that already order the most and ask them to use it for the next order. They'll find what's missing faster than any test plan.

Hiding the catalog from Google. Wholesalers do this to hide prices, and lose the new retailers searching for exactly what they sell. Hide the prices, not the products.

Leaving the reps out. A B2B site that bypasses the rep gets sabotaged by the rep. Give them their portfolio, their orders and their commission on the site, and they'll bring their accounts to it.

Choosing the plan you might need. Buy for the business you have, on terms that let you leave if it doesn't work. A month-to-month plan is a feature.

Frequently asked questions

Next step

A B2B website, ready to sell in days

VentasxMayor builds your B2B store with your catalog, your price lists and your brand, on your domain. Implementation included; the plan starts at launch, at US$ 99.00 a month, flat. See how it works.

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