There’s a conversation that keeps happening in enterprise B2B and it goes something like this: ‘We looked at Shopify, but it couldn't do what we needed.’ That conversation is worth taking seriously. Not because Shopify is the wrong answer, but because the question of which platform is right for a complex B2B business is one that deserves more rigour than it usually gets.

The B2B gap is real

Shopify Plus includes a native B2B offering featuring company profiles, custom catalogues, net payment terms, and buyer-specific pricing. For straightforward B2B setups, it works well. But enterprise B2B commerce is rarely straightforward.

Consider what complex B2B businesses actually require. A single customer account might need pricing drawn from hundreds of separate price lists, sourced directly from their ERP. Their sales team may need to log in, masquerade as customers, and build quotes that sync back to finance systems in real time. Buyers want to view offline orders placed by phone or rep, not just web orders. Bundle logic needs to reflect conditional product rules. Invoice and net terms management needs to talk to finance systems, not just the checkout.

Shopify's native B2B features do not cover all of this out of the box. That isn’t a criticism; rather, it’s a reality that needs to be planned for.

Closing the B2B gap through Shopify Plus

The first is Shopify Plus, augmented with the right ecosystem. Tools like SparkLayer sit as a B2B overlay on top of Shopify, handling complex pricing, quoting, sales agent workflows, and account management that Shopify does not support natively. Middleware platforms connect Shopify to ERPs, PIMs, and order management systems cleanly. Shopify Functions and Checkout Extensibility allow deeply customised purchasing logic without breaking platform stability. For many businesses, this combination is the right call, particularly where there is an existing Shopify investment, a strong DTC channel running alongside B2B, or a preference for the Shopify ecosystem's breadth of apps and integrations.

Closing the B2B gap through Peracto

The second is a purpose-built enterprise platform. We build and maintain Peracto, a bespoke eCommerce platform designed specifically for the kind of complex B2B and enterprise retail requirements that stretch Shopify's native capability. Peracto handles complex workflows, large data sets, deep ERP integrations and fully custom B2B buying journeys without needing a layer of third party apps to do it.

How to calculate the total cost of your B2B platform

Here is where the conversation gets interesting for finance and operations stakeholders.

Shopify Plus carries transaction fees. At enterprise volumes, say £10 to £30 million or more in annual online revenue, those fees accumulate to a meaningful number over time. Peracto has a higher initial build cost than a Shopify Plus project. But because it carries no transaction fees, the total cost of ownership over a three to five-year horizon frequently works out lower.

This is a calculation worth doing before a platform decision is made, not after. A business that signs a five-year managed service agreement on Shopify Plus without modelling the transaction fee cost against a bespoke alternative may be paying more than they need to.

Neither platform wins on every metric. Shopify Plus offers speed to market, a vast app ecosystem, and a strong DTC capability that many enterprise businesses also need. Peracto offers architectural flexibility, no transaction fees, and a build that is designed around the client's requirements rather than a platform's constraints. The right answer depends on the business, and making that call confidently requires understanding both options clearly.

Key questions to ask before choosing a B2B platform

The businesses that struggle most are the ones that discover a platform's limitations mid-project. They have signed off on a Statement of Work, committed to a go-live date, and briefed their team on the change. Then someone in IT raises a question about their ERP pricing integration, and the answer is more complicated than expected. Scope grows, timelines slip, and confidence drops.

Before any enterprise B2B business commits to a platform, the right questions need to be asked and answered properly:

How is pricing determined? In the platform, in the ERP, or both?
Do buyers need access to offline order history?
Is there a sales agent or account management workflow that needs to carry through online?
What does the invoicing and net terms process look like, and which system owns it?
What is the realistic online revenue over the next three to five years, and what does the transaction fee model look like at that volume?

These questions do not have to become blockers. But they need to be asked before the architecture is decided.

How to choose the right platform for your B2B transformation

When we work with an enterprise B2B client on a platform decision, we run a structured discovery phase that goes well beyond a standard audit. We map the B2B buying journey end to end, identify where native platform capability is sufficient and where it is not, and model the total cost of ownership across the options that make sense for that business.

Sometimes the answer is Shopify Plus with the right integrations. Sometimes it’s Peracto. Occasionally, it’s a hybrid. But it is always based on the client's actual requirements and commercial reality, not a default recommendation.

Work with Velstar

If you’re in the process of evaluating platforms for your B2B transformation and want an expert opinion, get in touch with Velstar. Complete our online form to speak with our team.

Choosing the Right B2B eCommerce Platform