Medusa.js vs Shopify Plus for B2B Commerce: A Technical Comparison

B2B commerce has needs that consumer storefronts handle poorly: company accounts with several buyers, customer-specific pricing, negotiated quotes, credit terms, and tiered distributor hierarchies. Shopify launched native B2B on Plus in 2022 and has extended it since. Medusa.js, the MIT-licensed headless commerce framework, gives you the building blocks and an official B2B starter, with no platform fee on your sales.

What does B2B commerce actually require?

It helps to be specific first. A consumer storefront handles one buyer, one cart, one checkout. B2B adds layers most platforms treat as an afterthought.

Company accounts. A business buyer is not one person. You need an account with several buyers, roles (approver or purchaser) and spending limits per user.

Customer-specific pricing. Wholesale pricing is rarely a flat percentage off. It means negotiated price lists per customer, volume tiers, contract prices fixed for a period, and item-level exceptions.

Quote-to-order. Many B2B orders start as a request for quote. The buyer sends a cart as a quote, a sales rep adjusts lines and prices, the buyer accepts, and it becomes an order.

Credit terms. Net 30, net 60, purchase-order references and invoice on fulfilment are standard. Card checkout is the exception, not the rule.

Dealer and distributor portals. In India especially, FMCG, industrial and pharma brands sell through tiers: company to C&F agent to distributor to retailer. Each tier needs a portal showing only its products and prices.

Shopify Plus and Medusa.js both address these, in very different ways.

What is included in Shopify's B2B?

Shopify launched native B2B on Plus in 2022, replacing the earlier Wholesale channel. Its help centre now lists B2B on the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus plans (checked 12 October 2026), with Plus-only extras. The features include:

• Company accounts with locations, billing and shipping addresses, and several contacts per company.
• Catalogs (price lists) per company location, with fixed prices, percentage adjustments and volume pricing. Plans below Plus get up to three active B2B catalogs; Plus gets unlimited catalogs and direct company assignment.
• Net payment terms set per company location. Deposits, partial payments and payment requests per fulfilment are Plus-only.
• Orders submitted for review: a company location can be set so buyers submit orders as drafts for the merchant to approve. On Plus, rules can send orders to review automatically.
• Blended B2B and D2C on one store, with different experiences for each buyer type.

Shopify also has a large app ecosystem for B2B: quote, price-list and wholesale-ordering apps. The admin is familiar, a sales team learns it quickly, and hosting, security and the CDN are managed for you.

What do you build yourself on Medusa.js?

Medusa.js (v2) is a Node.js and TypeScript headless commerce framework. Headless means there is no built-in storefront: you bring your own frontend (Next.js, a mobile app, whatever fits). The backend is a set of modules (cart, product, order, customer, payment, fulfilment) that you compose and extend.

For B2B, Medusa gives you the primitives, and an official starting point:

• Customer groups and price lists are core features, so you can create as many pricing tiers as you need, with any logic.
• Medusa's B2B starter adds company accounts, spending limits per employee, quotes that buyer and merchant negotiate, company approvals before checkout, and merchant approvals before fulfilment.
• Custom modules let you add your own entities, for example a quote with its own states (draft, submitted, negotiated, accepted, converted to order).
• Custom API routes (say /quotes or /credit-limits) sit alongside the core without forking it.
• Several storefronts can run from one Medusa backend, on different domains, each with its own sales channel.

Because you own the code, the B2B logic lives in your repository, under version control, deployed on your infrastructure, and connected to your ERP by direct API calls.

We build commerce on Medusa.js, including sync with ERPNext for stock, prices and orders.

How do the B2B features compare, head to head?

Shopify Plus wins on speed and out-of-the-box coverage for standard B2B. Medusa.js wins on depth, ownership, and a cost that doesn't follow GMV.

How do the cost structures compare?

This is where the comparison shifts most for a growing B2B business.

Shopify Plus charges a platform fee on a one- or three-year term, which at higher volume becomes a percentage of monthly revenue; current figures are on Shopify's pricing page. That comes before app subscriptions, gateway fees and the agency that configures the store, and it rises as your GMV rises.

Medusa.js has no platform fee and no revenue share. Your costs are:

1. Hosting: a production Medusa backend on a cloud provider (Railway, Render, AWS, GCP and others), sized to your traffic.
2. The build: B2B features, the storefront and integrations are a real engineering project. Its length depends on how far your flows go beyond the B2B starter and how many systems it connects to.
3. Maintenance: a part-time developer or an outside team on a retainer.

The difference is what the cost is tied to. On Shopify Plus the platform cost is linked to GMV, so it grows as you sell more. On Medusa.js you pay for the build and the hosting, and neither is a share of revenue. Which is lower for you depends on your GMV, how custom your B2B flows are, and how many paid Shopify apps you would need to match what you build in Medusa.

How much frontend flexibility does each give you?

Storefront architecture is an underrated B2B point. Shopify gives you Liquid themes, or Hydrogen, its React framework, for a headless build. Either way you work within Shopify's platform.

Medusa.js is an API backend only. Your storefront is a separate application (a Next.js app, a React Native mobile app, an internal portal, or all three on the same API). For B2B that matters:

• A manufacturer can run a D2C Shopify store for consumers and a Medusa.js dealer portal for distributors, each built for its buyers.
• Or it can consolidate on Medusa.js and serve both from one API, with pricing and catalogue rules by buyer type.
• A distributor portal can be a PWA with offline order capture for field sales reps, which is hard to build inside a Liquid theme.

Where the buyer experience is part of what you sell, owning the frontend is a real difference.

Developer experience and ecosystem maturity

Shopify has by far the larger developer ecosystem: many agencies and freelancers, and an app store with something for nearly every vertical. If your B2B needs are close to standard, you can probably buy what you need.

Medusa.js has a smaller, active community (over 36,000 GitHub stars, October 2026), strong TypeScript support, and a module system that makes packages shareable. Version 2, released in late 2024, improved module isolation and developer ergonomics.

The real gap is vertical apps. Shopify has B2B apps for apparel, food service, industrial supply and many more; Medusa doesn't. If an existing Shopify app covers your B2B needs, price it before you commit to a custom Medusa build.

When should you choose Shopify Plus?

Shopify Plus makes sense when:

• You need to launch quickly and your B2B needs are close to standard.
• You have no in-house engineers and don't want to depend on a development team.
• Your GMV is modest and the platform fee is a manageable line.
• Your B2B flows are mostly catalogue, price list and net terms, without custom approval chains.
• You want managed, secure, CDN-served infrastructure with no operations work.

When should you choose Medusa.js?

Medusa.js makes sense when:

• Your B2B needs are custom enough that Shopify Plus would need significant app spend or custom work anyway.
• You need quote-to-order, approval chains, or multi-tier distributor portals with scoped catalogues.
• Your GMV is growing toward the point where Shopify Plus's revenue-based fee becomes material.
• You want full ownership of customer data, order history and pricing logic, on your own infrastructure.
• You are integrating with an ERP (especially ERPNext or Frappe) and want a direct, maintainable API link rather than webhook chains.
• Your frontend needs are complex: mobile apps, offline rep portals, or commerce inside an existing business application.

Talk to us if you are at this point. MithTech is a team of Frappe specialists in Bengaluru who build mainly on Frappe and Medusa, including B2B commerce connected to ERPNext.

Frequently asked questions