Quick Summary
Are you planning to build a B2B ecommerce store? According to a recent study, the global B2B eCommerce market will reach around $36 trillion by 2026, growing at about 14.5% CAGR. It can be a good idea to choose the best wholesale eCommerce platform for creating your store.
Wholesale eCommerce is changing the way businesses buy and sell products in bulk. Gone are the days when companies relied on traditional methods for managing orders. Nowadays, organizations are managing pricing, sales, orders, and customer relationships through online platforms.
Wholesalers also face growing pressure to develop efficient digital experiences that make buying and delivery easier for consumers, especially for B2B and B2C clients. Wholesale eCommerce platforms connect manufacturers and suppliers with retailers and other businesses, ensuring smooth, efficient transactions.
Unlike B2C eCommerce websites, B2B online stores tend to be a bit more reserved. You would want pre-registered clients to access your products or services. If your business caters to dealers or resellers, it is advisable to look for a password-protected feature for your website. The website users should be required to register before using your website.
Imagine a customer visiting your website could not find the products he is looking for. What would he do? He would leave the website and go to your competitors’ website and make a purchase from there. You need a good product search feature on your website so that even first-time visitors can find the products they’re looking for without a fuss. Your B2B wholesale website should feature a smart search bar and advanced filters to provide a smooth, intuitive experience.
Offering detailed product descriptions with high-quality images to help customers make better-informed buying decisions. Include all the details, such as product dimensions, ingredients, materials, and certifications, to educate customers. Choose the best wholesale eCommerce platform that offers a well-populated product catalog with detailed information and clear, high-quality images highlighting each product’s main features.
Most cloud-based eCommerce platforms have an in-built order management system (OMS). Suppliers and wholesalers can automate all the internal processes using modern OMS. This helps to reduce human errors and boost customer satisfaction.
You can choose the best wholesale eCommerce platform that provides a transparent delivery process for B2B business owners.
Most wholesale eCommerce stores allow buyers to enter a purchase order (PO) processing number at checkout and receive an invoice instead of paying immediately. The system should allow partial payments for massive orders. The balance amount can be paid upon delivery. Multiple payment gateways should be offered so that users can select their preferred method.
There is a myth that B2B buyers and wholesalers work only on desktops. With the modernization in every industry, even wholesalers use their smartphones to access your wholesale eCommerce platform. Make it easy for buyers to access all the features of your website or app offline using a Progressive Web App (PWA). You can also add FaceID login or fingerprint access so that users can log in to their accounts without typing complex passwords.
By automating manual processes and improving inventory management, a wholesale eCommerce platform can help B2B companies achieve cost efficiency. Businesses can reduce the overhead costs and increase profit margins through optimized, high-volume order processing. You can integrate the website with ERP systems to offer real-time visibility into inventory levels, ultimately resulting in improved efficiency.
Modern B2B buyers want a low-friction, easy buying experience, much the same as they would get in B2C eCommerce. They demand convenience, speed, and self-service capabilities.
Advanced functionality, such as custom pricing and quoting, bulk ordering, faster checkout, and easy reordering, is provided by wholesale eCommerce platforms. It helps to increase customer satisfaction. Detailed product information and real-time inventory levels enable customers to make informed purchasing decisions, thereby strengthening business relationships.
Wholesale eCommerce platforms provide relevant data and valuable insights. Real-time information about customer behavior, sales trends, or inventory levels is made available to the company to support proper decision-making.
Therefore, with this data-driven approach, you can better optimize your product offerings and plan inventory and targeted marketing strategies more efficiently. Being able to analyze and act on this data is what keeps the business competitive and responsive to the market.
As wholesale eCommerce automates manual processes and reduces inventory errors, it improves business productivity. Business owners can reduce human error by 90% and prevent costly mistakes by using the best wholesale eCommerce platform.
By integrating wholesale platforms with existing systems (ERP, CRM, etc.), one can ensure real-time inventory visibility and increase customer satisfaction. Buyers can view and track their order status.
After understanding the benefits of wholesale eCommerce platforms, let’s dive into the top eCommerce platforms for B2B businesses.
| Platform | Best For | Pricing | Key Strength |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify Plus | Fast-growing B2B brands | $2000+/month | Dedicated B2B tools |
| WooCommerce | WordPress users | Plugin-based | Flexibility |
| Adobe Commerce | Large enterprises | Custom | Advanced B2B features |
| BigCommerce | Scalable businesses | $39+/month | Built-in B2B features |
| NetSuite SuiteCommerce | ERP-centric businesses | Custom | Unified business management |
| PrestaShop | Budget-conscious businesses | Free + add-ons | Open-source customization |
Shopify Plus is one of the most popular eCommerce platforms, offering advanced features and functionality for building B2B stores.
Key Features:
Pricing: Shopify Plus for wholesale (B2B) ecommerce typically starts around $2,300–$2,500 USD per month for a 1–3 year contract, offering native B2B tools without third-party apps.
G2 rating: 4.4/5
WooCommerce is widely regarded as one of the best open-source eCommerce platforms today. It’s a great choice for B2B wholesale businesses. It provides an exhaustive set of features that wholesalers need to meet their unique needs, including custom pricing, tiered discounts, seamless order management, and customer experience personalization.
Key Features:
Pricing: While WooCommerce is an open-source platform, you need to add the B2B plugin to enable wholesale operations. It starts from $14.92/month.
G2 rating: 4.4/5
Magento is also a popular choice for B2B businesses because of its flexibility and functionality in facilitating wholesale business. Drag-and-drop intuitive tools, with no coding skills required, allow you to design an engaging, user-friendly website and keep you focused on the core business.
Key Features:
Pricing: Magento offers both open source and SaaS eCommerce. It is free and open source, but you may have to cover other costs related to hosting, plugins, and development. For the SaaS version, you can request a custom quote.
G2 rating: 4.5/5
BigCommerce is built with the B2B wholesaler in mind. It empowers you to craft a custom online storefront that integrates easily with your current systems.
Key Features:
Pricing: BigCommerce offers Standard ($39/month), Plus ($105/month), Pro ($399/month), and Enterprise plans with pricing based on a customer’s requirements.
G2 rating: 4.2/5
NetSuite SuiteCommerce offers robust flexibility for B2B wholesalers. The intuitive online storefront puts products front and center, while inventory management and efficient order processing keep operations running smoothly on the back end. SuiteCommerce also supports bulk ordering and custom pricing for niche brands.
Key Features:
Pricing: SuiteCommerce’s pricing is determined by the number of modules and users, so you need to request a price quote.
G2 rating: 4.1/5
PrestaShop is a powerful platform for industrial B2B wholesalers to digitize operations and create a great experience for buyers. It offers custom price lists for customer segments, tiered discounts, and other features.
Key Features:
Pricing: PrestaShop is an open-source platform, so the source code is free to use. However, you might need to spend on B2B plugins, hosting, and other things.
G2 rating: 4.3/5
Before choosing the best wholesale eCommerce platform, you should ask yourself:
Factors to consider before selecting a wholesale eCommerce platform:
You may have a budget in mind before picking the right wholesale B2B eCommerce platform. Make sure you select a platform that fits your budget and has no hidden charges. Also, ensure it has features that can scale as and when your business grows. Focus on long-term business goals while choosing a B2B eCommerce wholesale platform for your website.
The days of monolithic systems are gone. Today, an eCommerce platform must integrate seamlessly with other software systems to deliver a frictionless buying experience. To achieve this level of connectivity, many businesses partner with a specialized B2B eCommerce development agency to bridge the gap between their storefront, ERP, and CRM systems.
Make sure the eCommerce site you go with has flexible APIs for ease of integration with your existing business systems, like ERP, CRM, PIM, etc.
Choosing a wholesale B2B eCommerce platform with strong SEO capabilities is crucial in today’s competitive landscape. Your ideal platform should offer eCommerce SEO features. Some SEO-friendly features to look for are customizable URLs, metadata control, and others.
Effective eCommerce catalog browsing and search features are a major consideration when searching for the best wholesale eCommerce platform. You need to add organized navigation menus for easy product discovery, easy sorting options, simple and accurate product descriptions, and advanced analytics. It ultimately helps to deliver a great user experience.
B2B businesses should reduce friction in payments. B2B wholesale payments are not as straightforward as B2C or retail payments. It is not feasible to make the payments via credit card or PayPal. It can be a good idea to conduct research among the targeted users and demographics to determine what type of payment options would be advisable. Prioritize platforms that are PCI DSS-compliant and offer fraud-prevention tools such as encryption, tokenization, and 3D Secure to handle high-value transactions securely.
It is essential to select the best wholesale eCommerce partner that matches your business goals and operational complexity. If you are confused about which one to choose when developing your first online store, you can conduct online research and compare the ecommerce wholesale platforms.
With an eCommerce site for your business, you will find a number of benefits. Some of the major advantages are creating an online presence for your products, gaining real-time customer data and quality information, automating your business for smoother operations, improving the customer experience, increasing your sales volume, and others.
Customers love personalized experiences. For this, automate your entire store so that they won’t require any assistance during transactions, and for convenience. Also, a welcome note for them as they enter your store, and a message to thank them for their patronage.
To serve customers effectively, your wholesale online store should add key features to avoid a completely stand-alone experience. Such features may include search filters, catalogs, and options for payment methods. You may also segment your customers for pricing and product search, and even discounts and promotions.
The time required to launch an eCommerce website depends on several factors, such as the required features, customization needs, and the complexity of the project. You can send us your requirements to get a timeline for your next project.