Customer-specific pricing, approvals, payment on invoice, ERP integration: what defines a B2B store, which platforms are out there, what building and running one costs, and how a project runs in six phases.
A B2B store is an ordering portal for business customers, not a B2C store with net prices. Customer-specific pricing, approval workflows, budgets, quick order, and payment on invoice are part of the basic setup, and almost every one of these features depends on the ERP integration.
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer when choosing a platform. Shopware (Community Edition free, Evolve with B2B Components from €2,400 per month), Shopify Plus (from €2,100 per month on a three-year term), OroCommerce, Sana Commerce, Adobe Commerce, and SAP Commerce Cloud cover different scales. The enterprise platforms only list prices on request.
Realistic first-year budgets: €40,000 to €75,000 for an ordering portal based on the Shopware Community Edition, €150,000 to €250,000 for a B2B store with Evolve, a custom ERP integration, and approval workflows, and from €300,000 for enterprise platforms. Go-live takes 3 to 9 months, up to 18 months for enterprise platforms, and the build starts with pricing logic and ERP data, not with choosing a platform.
Before founding solution25, we built our own online store and grew it to more than 500 orders per day. Since 2017, we’ve been delivering store projects on Shopware, Shopify, and WooCommerce, including B2B stores for wholesalers and manufacturers with ERP and inventory management integrations.
As long as business customers order by phone, email, or fax, your inside sales team keys in orders that a B2B store could capture on its own. This article is for CEOs and sales directors at wholesalers and manufacturers who are building a B2B store, and for ecommerce managers at mid-sized companies who want to replace an existing dealer portal.
After reading it, you’ll be able to decide which features your B2B store needs at launch, which platform and which Shopware plan fit, and what budget and timeline to expect. License prices come from the official pricing pages, budgets from our projects. All prices as of October 2026, excluding VAT.
A B2B store (also called a B2B online store or B2B webshop) sells to businesses: the wholesaler to specialty retailers, the manufacturer to processors, the supplier to companies with recurring needs. The buyer doesn’t order for themselves but on behalf of their company, with negotiated terms, budget limits, and approval rules.
B2B ecommerce is growing faster than the industry’s overall revenue: according to the B2B Market Monitor 2026 from ECC KÖLN, manufacturers and wholesalers in Germany generated €549 billion through online stores and marketplaces in 2025, 7.9% more than the previous year. That’s 13.3% of their total revenue, with about a quarter of it going through marketplaces and the rest through their own stores.
For 2026, ECC KÖLN expects €587 billion. 67% of the decision-makers surveyed expect more revenue to shift from traditional sales channels to ecommerce over the next twelve months.
| Feature | B2C store | B2B store |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | One price for everyone, gross | Customer-specific, net, tiered pricing, framework agreements |
| Buyer | One person decides and pays | Multiple people: buyer, approver, accounting |
| Cart | Few line items, often spontaneous | Dozens of line items, reorders, SKUs |
| Payment | PayPal, card, pay by invoice through a provider | Invoice with payment terms, direct debit, credit limit from the ERP |
| Registration | Open, guest checkout possible | Approval after review, company details, VAT ID |
| Leading system | The store | The ERP (prices, inventory, terms) |
| Legal (Germany) | Right of withdrawal, PAngV, BFSG | No right of withdrawal, net prices allowed, terms and conditions under HGB |
A B2B online store is therefore less a marketing channel than a self-service portal, available around the clock, for processes that used to run by phone, fax, or email.
These features appear in almost every requirements document we see for B2B projects. What matters is less whether a platform offers them and more how well they work with the data from the ERP.
In B2B, there’s rarely one price for everyone. Customer A gets 12% off a product group, customer B has a framework agreement with fixed prices, customer C has tiered pricing from 50 units. This logic lives in the ERP and has to appear in the store exactly the same way, net and with correct tax treatment for deliveries to other EU countries.
According to the B2B Market Monitor 2026, 60% of the companies surveyed see customer-specific pricing as an effective way to prevent cannibalization between sales channels. We describe how to set up these rules in Shopware in Pricing rules in Shopware, and for individual price lists per customer, there’s also our plugin Quotes Customer Specific Pricing.
A company account has multiple users with different permissions. The buyer adds items to the cart, the department head approves orders from €2,000, and accounting sees invoices and open items. Without this structure, five employees end up sharing one login, and nobody knows who ordered what.
A buyer who orders 80 line items every week doesn’t browse through categories. They enter the SKU and quantity, upload a CSV file, or open a saved order list. One-click reordering from the order history is part of it too.
All of these features have one thing in common: the data doesn’t live in the store, but in the ERP or inventory management system. A B2B store without an integration is a form with product images, and your inside sales team keeps keying in orders.
A setup we’ve implemented in this form several times: the ERP (for example Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, SAP Business One, weclapp, or Xentral) remains the leading system for customers, prices, and inventory. Shopware handles the catalog, customer account, cart, and checkout. In between, a connector or middleware syncs prices hourly, inventory every 5 to 15 minutes, and orders immediately.
For large product ranges, a PIM system manages the product data. Our overview of ERP and CRM integrations for Shopware shows which systems we connect.
Settle one fundamental question early: are prices queried live from the ERP or replicated into the store? Live prices are always exact but make the store dependent on ERP availability. Replicated price lists with hourly updates are enough for most wholesalers.
This overview lists the official list prices where the vendors publish them. For all platforms, the actual price depends on revenue, number of users, or individual factors.
| Platform | License (as of October 2026) | Standard B2B features | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shopware 6 | Community Edition €0, Rise from €600 per month, Evolve from €2,400 per month, Beyond custom | B2B Components from Evolve: quotes, employees and roles, approvals, quick order, order lists, budgets, organizational units; customer-specific pricing in Beyond | Mid-market, hybrid B2B and B2C, custom processes, hosting in Germany |
| Shopify Plus | From €2,250 per month on a one-year term, €2,100 on a three-year term (Shopify); basic B2B features also in Basic, Grow, and Advanced (maximum 3 catalogs) | Company profiles with locations, catalogs with customer pricing, quantity rules, tiered pricing, payment terms, quick order list | Brands focused on B2C with a simpler B2B arm, international stores |
| OroCommerce | Community Edition free (open source), Enterprise Edition based on GMV, hosting, and admin users, on request | Company accounts with roles, multiple price lists, requests for quote, approvals, shopping lists, built-in CRM | Wholesalers and manufacturers with complex price lists, pure B2B |
| Sana Commerce Cloud | Essential, Pro, and Advanced packages, prices on request | Runs directly on the ERP (SAP, Microsoft Dynamics), real-time inventory and documents, quote to order from Pro, account hierarchies from Advanced | Companies whose processes are fully mapped in SAP or Dynamics |
| Adobe Commerce | On request; B2B extension for Adobe Commerce, not part of Magento Open Source | Company accounts with hierarchies, shared catalogs with customer pricing, negotiable quotes, requisition lists, purchase approvals | Enterprise with its own development team, international multi-site setups |
| SAP Commerce Cloud | On request | Organizational units, cost centers, budgets, purchase limits, approval workflows, SAP ERP integration | Large enterprises with an SAP landscape and multiple country subsidiaries |
Shopware is the platform we use most often in the mid-market for B2B projects with custom processes. The Community Edition is license-free up to €1M in gross merchandise volume per year. According to Shopware’s pricing page, the B2B Components are included from Evolve, while customer-specific pricing and inventory across multiple locations only come with Beyond. We’ve broken down the total costs in Shopware pricing.
According to the Shopify documentation, company profiles, payment terms, quantity rules, and tiered pricing are already available in Basic, Grow, and Advanced, with a maximum of 3 active catalogs. Catalogs assigned directly to a company, deposits, and partial payments are reserved for Shopify Plus, which according to Shopify costs from €2,250 per month on a one-year term and €2,100 on a three-year term.
For brands that already sell on Shopify and are building a manageable dealer arm, that’s a short path. With complex pricing logic and deep ERP processes, you hit the limits faster, as our comparison Shopify or Shopware shows.
OroCommerce was built for B2B from the start: company accounts with roles, multiple price lists, requests for quote, approvals, and a built-in CRM are part of the core. According to Oro, the Community Edition is free and open source, while the Enterprise Edition is priced based on GMV, hosting, and admin users. The partner market in German-speaking countries is small.
Sana Commerce runs directly on the ERP, without its own product database and without middleware: prices, inventory, and documents come in real time from SAP or Microsoft Dynamics. According to Sana, the three packages are only available on request, and punchout is a paid add-on module. The price for a consistent data foundation is dependency: every store feature is only as flexible as the ERP behind it.
With its B2B extension, Adobe Commerce brings company accounts with hierarchies, shared catalogs, negotiable quotes, requisition lists, and purchase approvals. Adobe doesn’t list prices. SAP Commerce Cloud is aimed at large enterprises with an SAP landscape: organizational units, cost centers, budgets, and approval workflows are standard. Both require an in-house development team or a large integration partner.
Many merchants underestimate how much B2B is possible without a license. Shopware 6 ships with the building blocks for a closed dealer store in its core:
That lets you build an ordering portal for existing customers with no license costs, as long as gross merchandise volume stays under €1M per year. What’s missing are company accounts with multiple users, approvals, budgets, and quote management.
Shopware delivers exactly these features with the B2B Components, which are included in Evolve and Beyond and installed via the Shopware Commercial extension. According to the Shopware documentation, the components require different versions:
Activation happens per customer or per customer group via the registration form. We describe what setup looks like in practice in Shopware B2B Components.
On its pricing page, Shopware lists customer-specific pricing under Beyond. If you need it with Evolve or the Community Edition, you combine advanced pricing with the Rule Builder or use a plugin for customer price lists. According to the documentation, Shopware is no longer developing the older B2B Suite, and it will no longer be supported from Shopware 6.8.
Our take: Up to about €1M in B2B revenue and without approval workflows, the Community Edition with extensions is enough, because Shopware ships customer groups, tiered pricing, and invoice payment by rule in its core. As soon as company accounts with multiple users, approvals, or quotes are needed, we recommend Evolve, because these features then come from one data model and are developed further with every release.
The vape brands VaporBeast, VaporFi, and South Beach Smoke ran on separate Magento 2 stores, with B2B features like customer groups, price tiers, and wholesale orders. According to the project report, we merged the three stores into one Shopware 6 environment, with more than 300,000 orders and 100,000 customers, including passwords, carts, and subscription data.
For business customers, we added customer-specific pricing, credit limits, requests for quote, and orders on invoice. The integration platform iPaaS.com syncs inventory, orders, and customer data. After the move, customers could log in without a password reset, and historical orders are available in the new system.
The transferable lesson is the order: first capture every B2B feature your customers use today, then choose the platform and extensions. Login, carts, and order history belong in the required scope, because business customers order out of routine.
The price question can only be answered with the project scope. The following ranges come from our projects over the last few years, and the license prices are the official entry prices. Payment fees aren’t included.
| Item | Ordering portal (Community Edition) | B2B store (Evolve) | Enterprise (Beyond, Adobe, SAP) |
|---|---|---|---|
| One-time implementation, including ERP integration, design, and migration | €30,000 to €55,000 | €90,000 to €170,000 | From €250,000 |
| Of which ERP integration | €5,000 to €20,000 (connector) | €20,000 to €40,000 (custom) | €40,000 and more, often multiple systems |
| License per year | €0 | From €28,800 | Custom |
| Hosting per year | €1,800 (€150 per month) | €7,200 (€600 per month) | From €20,000 (cluster, SLA) |
| Extensions per year | €1,800 (€150 per month) | €4,800 (€400 per month) | Custom |
| Maintenance and further development per year | €7,200 to €12,000 | €24,000 to €42,000 | From €60,000 |
| First year total | €40,000 to €75,000 | €150,000 to €250,000 | From €300,000 |
| Time to go-live | 3 to 5 months | 6 to 9 months | 9 to 18 months |
Even in B2B, the license is rarely the biggest line item. What makes a project expensive is the number of pricing logics, the number of connected systems, custom approval workflows, and above all poor data quality in the ERP.
This is offset by a measurable benefit. Sample calculation: your inside sales team enters 300 orders per week from emails and faxes, 6 minutes each, so 30 hours per week. If the store takes over 60% of that, you save around 900 hours per year.
Figure: Pricing logic, integrations, and approvals drive the budget more than the license, so first match your project to one of the three scenarios. License prices: shopware.com/de/preise; implementation and operations: solution25 experience, as of October 2026
The most common mistake when building a B2B store is the order of steps: first the platform is bought, then the requirements are gathered. This process has proven itself in our projects:
An ordering portal based on the Community Edition goes through these phases in 3 to 5 months, a B2B store with Evolve and a custom integration in 6 to 9 months.
Your tools are the ERP, the order and customer lists in the Shopware admin, and web analytics, for example Google Analytics 4 in Shopware 6. Measure weekly for the first three months, then monthly.
You should make adjustments if the online share stagnates for two months in a row, customers start calling again to ask about prices or delivery times, or inside sales reworks online orders by hand. That usually points to missing features or gaps in the integration.
Under German law, a pure B2B online store has significantly fewer obligations than a B2C store, but only if consumers are effectively excluded. This section isn’t a substitute for legal advice.
If consumers aren’t consistently excluded, all B2C obligations apply, and violations can trigger cease and desist letters.
Three prerequisites should be met before the project starts: an ERP with well-maintained customer, pricing, and inventory data, a responsible person on your side, and a sales team that backs the store. The limits of a B2B store rarely lie in the ecommerce platform, but in the integration: what the ERP doesn’t deliver cleanly, the store can’t display.
The pricing logic is complex, customers order the same products every week, and the ERP is the heart of the business. Shopware Evolve or OroCommerce fit here, and Sana too if processes are fully mapped in SAP or Dynamics. What matters is quick order, tiered pricing, payment on invoice, and a stable ERP integration, not the design.
One system has to serve both worlds: the B2C store with campaigns and gross prices and the dealer store with terms and approvals. Shopware solves this with separate sales channels on one installation. If the brand already runs on Shopify, Shopify Plus is the shorter path, as long as the dealer processes stay manageable.
Quotes, individual price lists, and orders on behalf of the customer are front and center. That points to Shopware with quote management and Sales Agent, and for customer-specific price lists, to Beyond or a plugin. Field sales must see the same terms in the store as the customer.
A B2B store is an online store where businesses order from businesses, such as specialty retailers from a wholesaler or companies from a manufacturer. Unlike a B2C store, it features customer-specific net prices, multiple people per company account, approval workflows, and payment on invoice with payment terms. Prices and inventory usually come from the ERP system.
In the German-speaking market, the main ones are Shopware (Evolve and Beyond with B2B Components), Shopify Plus, OroCommerce, Sana Commerce, Adobe Commerce, and SAP Commerce Cloud. In addition, there are Intershop, Spryker, and commercetools for enterprise projects, as well as plentymarkets and JTL for smaller merchants.
First clarify requirements and data quality, then choose the platform and integration, then design registration, approval, and the quote process. After that come implementation, a pilot with 10 to 20 customers, and a rollout in waves. Expect 3 to 5 months for an ordering portal and 6 to 9 months for a B2B store with a custom ERP integration.
An ordering portal based on the Shopware Community Edition costs €40,000 to €75,000 in the first year, and a B2B store with Evolve, a custom ERP integration, and approval workflows €150,000 to €250,000. Enterprise platforms like Adobe Commerce or SAP Commerce Cloud start at around €300,000. The license usually accounts for only 10 to 20% of that.
Under German law, yes, if consumers are effectively excluded, because the Price Indication Ordinance only applies to consumers. That requires a notice on every page, a confirmation at checkout, and required fields like company name or VAT ID. If a consumer can still place an order, you risk cease and desist letters.
Not necessarily. Customer groups with net prices, registration with approval, tiered pricing, and payment on invoice via the Rule Builder are already available in the Community Edition. Evolve becomes necessary as soon as you need company accounts with multiple users, purchase approvals, budgets, or quote management.
Planning a B2B store or want to replace your existing dealer portal? Get in touch and we’ll review your pricing logic, ERP, and processes and tell you which platform and plan fit, with an effort estimate you can plan around.
Already running a B2B store? Our free store audit shows where your customers drop off in the ordering process, which features are missing, and what an optimization or a switch would deliver.
Besar Bilalli is co-founder and Co-CEO of solution25, the Shopware agency based in Bremen. Before founding the agency in 2017, he and Besnik Bilalli built their own online store with no startup capital and grew it to more than 500 orders per day. Since then, he has supported merchants with Shopware projects, from choosing a platform to ongoing operations. He’s happy to answer questions about this article personally: Get in touch.
Responsible for content and updates: Besar Bilalli. Last updated: October 2026. Next content review: January 2027.
