Top 10 B2B eCommerce Platforms

B2B eCommerce, or more commonly known as wholesale eCommerce, is hailed as the next frontier of eCommerce. And rightly so, experts have estimated the value of the global B2B eCommerce market at $12.2 trillion. That’s more than six times that of the B2C market. B2B eCommerce offers you the ability to reach a whole new subset of customers (businesses), leverage big data and streamline sales processes making your business more efficient and more profitable.

Probably the story of Ecommerce platforms can be considered to begin with the launch of Amazon in 1995 as an ecommerce platform for books. But now in 2020, over a span of 25 years a lot of fantastic B2B ecommerce platforms have risen up in the market, all offering their own unique set of benefits and features. Your business’ specific requirements would dictate the platform best suitable for you. But just listing out B2B platforms doesn’t do justice in presenting a whole B2B eCommerce picture. Every platform has a variety of integrations, extensions, apps, and plugins to offer and it is this modularity or extensibility that makes any platform great. Whether you sell on one channel or several, these apps or a combination of several apps allow you to seamlessly integrate with ecommerce marketplaces, POS systems, shopping carts, and shipping carriers to automate the discrepancies between inventory, sales, shipping, and more. This article lists both B2B platforms as well as apps that can be integrated with them.

Software description

Orderhive’s centralized interface will allow you to manage orders, inventory, warehouse, accounting, payments, CRM and shipping across all your other sales channels eliminating the juggle between different systems. It lends all-in-one enterprise solutions for multi-channel selling and back-end order fulfillment while maintaining a centralized and real-time inventory tracking system.

Orderhive automatically imports products and orders from your choice of ecommerce platform within seconds. Real-time stock updates, order statuses and prices across multiple integrated channels will help you avoid scenarios like overselling and stock-outs. Orderhive will also allow you to automate mundane operational processes such as automated shipping label creations, order fulfilment, auto-tagging and folderization, and many more. Orderhive lets you manage multi-warehousing smartly and efficiently. You can also manage wholesale orders with a private and free B2B portal. With an easy-to-use comprehensive back-end solution in place, you can focus your attention to exploring better selling opportunities and expanding your business like never before.

Integrates with: Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Quickbooks, xero, fedex

Founded in – 2015

Country – Located in the United States

Website – www.orderhive.com

Free Demo – Yes

Best for: Retailers across the globe who are looking to scale-up, streamline and automate inventory and order processes.

Customer Profile: has successfully served 2500+ clients (B2B & B2C) of all sizes and categories across the globe.

Deployment – 

• ✅ – Web-Based, Cloud, SaaS
• ✅ – iPhone / iPad
• ✅ – Android 

Reviews:

G2 – 3.7/5 (20 reviews)

Capterra – 4.4/5 (198 reviews)

Goodfirms -4.03/5 (33 reviews)

Significant features 

• 24*7 customer support
• Activity tracking
• Auditing
• Auto-sync of orders from channels
• Automatic status update
• Backordering / preordering
• Barcode scanning and support
• Bulk shipments
• Buy and print shipping labels
• Cloud-based technology
• Communication management
• Create payments and manage invoices
• Data import & export
• Demand forecasting
• Descriptive sales reports
• Discounted USPS rates
• Filtered views
• Integrate with popular business apps, accounting platforms, and shopping cart platforms
• Inventory control
• Inventory management
• Location tracking
• Multi-channel management
• Multi-store pricing
• Multi-warehousing
• Order fulfillment, processing, tagging
• Product Bundling/Kitting
• Real time analytics
• Real time tracking
• Real-time stock updates
• Returns management
• Shipping calculator
• Status tracking
• Stock management
• Track packages of 300+ shipping providers
• Vend Integration
• Wholesale order management
• Workflow management

Pros:

• Great product with amazing support 
• Indomitable pricing.
• Great customer service. 
• Easy-to use
• Really quick sync time
• Tracking inventory is very easy
• Open to developing certain elements upon request.

Cons:

• It’s also not the cheapest in the market- but you get what you pay for – a million features, more can be built if you need them.
• It is a massive software so, naturally there’s a learning curve to this software.

Software description

Shopify Plus is a dedicated B2B eCommerce platform offering from Shopify that has become one of the most successful and popular platforms on the market, offering state-of-the-art service for delivering exceptional user experience. With a proven track record in delivering the best in B2B sales, customer experience, and exceptional features, Shopify Plus now powers almost a million online stores! With Shopify Plus, businesses can manage multi-channel sales (B2B and B2C) from the same platform. 

The extensible nature of Shopify Plus basically means that you can tap into any feature you desire. Certain extensible features of this platform include ERP and CRM integrations, a wide variety (100+) of payment providers, order quantity tracking, and conversion optimization and personalization capabilities. Leading brands such as Adidas, Motorola, Tesla, Lindt, Heinz, and more already rely on Shopify Plus for B2B selling.

Founded in – 2014

Where – Shopify Plus is available worldwide and supports all international currencies and languages.

Customer profile – Nestle, Leese, Pepsi, and Bombas and over 7,000 other B2B eCommerce brands.

Best for – Shopify is the most easy-to-use eCommerce platform for both small and large B2B businesses. However, if your business demands an intensive website capable of handling a large number of wholesale products, you might consider Shopify Plus.

Significant features 

• Capability of launching multiple websites from the same back-end
• Build a multilingual website
• SSL certificate built-in
• 24/7 store performance
• Dedicated storefronts
• Powerful platform capable of handling up to 8000 orders a minute
• 20 sales channels available from your dashboard
• Sell to everyone, everywhere, and across multi-channels
• Manage everything through a single dashboard
• Thousands of integrable apps
• Advanced custom pricing
• One step checkout options
• Flexible shipping rates and free shipping
• Grow audiences with content marketing, built-in blogs and SEO tools

Pros

• Affordable pricing
• Easy to use platform
• Huge collections of apps
• Beautiful storefront themes
• 100 different variants of a single product can be created
• Product data can be imported/exported from CSV file or third-party apps
• Automates product collections to deal with large product ranges
• Multiple shipping rates

Cons

• Not suitable for extensive growth on account of limited functionality
• Most integrable apps are paid
• Fees required in extended SEO features
• Phone services support is available only in the UK, US, New Zealand, and Australia
• Instant loading webpages or AMP framework is only available upon installing a paid app

Software description

Magento Commerce is a premium version of Magento Open-source offering you more functionality, including advanced marketing features, customer reward programs, and targeted promotions. It is one of the best ecommerce solutions around, and one of the reasons for that is the seamlessness and scalability of this platform that can be adapted to work for virtually any kind of business. The great thing about Magento is that it is easy to install, has an excellent total cost of ownership value, offers plenty of features and has negligible maintenance.

Don’t just take our word for it, Magento has the awards to prove its impact (best B2B platform by the Forrester Wave). It offers countless integrations and has a large extension library making it an incredible for ecommerce functionality and shopping experience.

Founded in – 2008

Where: Available worldwide

Customer profile: 260,000 merchants use Magento B2B Commerce, including Ford, 3M, Nestle and Procter & Gamble.

Best for – Wholesale businesses with a large volume of sales can outgrow with Magento Commerce. If you have a low budget, best consider other options.

Significant features 

• Reliable cloud-based performance
• Extensive B2B functionality
• Quickly add products to content pages
• Custom pricing and catalog
• Excellent shopping experience
• Robust merchandising features
• Easy backend system integration
• Support for corporate accounts
• Omnichannel selling features
• Effortless reporting and analytics
• Quotes and negotiations available
• Amazing order processing and inventory management.
• Listing management
• Fulfillment management

Pros

• Fast loading
• Intuitive and easy to navigate end-user interface
• Professional themes and designs
• Flexible customization
• Several extensions with extended functionality
• Provide more functionalities for modern eCommerce growth
• Multi-store and multi-warehouse functionality
• Great forums and a huge community of users and developers for support and guidance
• Easy to handle data

Cons

• Limited B2B sales features
• Magento Commerce is a bit on the expensive end
• Product support is quite pricey
• Finding highly qualified Magento developers is hard

Software description

PayPal is a comprehensive eCommerce software solution designed to serve the payment processing needs of your business and that of your customers. Over 305 million people choose PayPal to power their online payments around the world and across many platforms and marketplaces. Whether you’re just getting started or already a thriving enterprise Paypal’s two-sided network would empower your business to reach newer markets, new channels, new high-value customers and hence drive higher sales. You can receive and send payments anywhere in the world by integrating Paypal with your own website, marketplaces, and also social media handles. It also offers an all-in-one business account for online payments and 24/7 Fraud Protection.

Details

Founded in – 1998

Country – Located in the United States

Free Demo – No

Deployment – 

• ✅ – Web-Based, Cloud, SaaS
• ✅ – iPhone / iPad
• ✅ – Android 

Significant features 

• Payment Options
• Reporting/Analytics
• Billing & Invoicing
• Data Security
• Debit/Credit Card Processing
• In-Person Payments
• Mobile Payments
• Multiple Payment Gateways
• PCI Compliance
• Payment Fraud Prevention
• Payment Processing
• Payment Processing Services Integration
• Recurring Billing
• Billing Portal
• Customizable Invoices
• Mobile Payments
• Multi-Currency
• Online Invoicing
• Recurring/Subscription Billing
• Intrusion Detection System
• Mobile Commerce

Pros

• User friendly and easy to use. 
• Records transactions letting you easily review your transactions
• Safely Encrypted
• Its Mobile application is intuitive and super easy to use. 
• Sending money to a friend or a family member is free
• Discounts and Rebates for loyal customers

Cons

• Charges when receiving money
• PayPal can freeze accounts without warning
• Some banks require an additional transaction fee 
• A desirable and common target for Phishing and Scams

Software description

Whether you’re a SME or a larger company, you must take note of the Big Commerce platform. It is an incredible tool for eCommerce in the B2B landscape and is deemed as the world’s leading cloud eCommerce platform. BigCommerce is popular among sellers who want an integration-friendly solution. You can access your audience for ERP support, PCI DSS support, thus protecting the crucial customer information from malicious attacks.

It offers support for those who want to access beautiful websites, with social media integrations and other integrations such as ShipperHQ, BrightPearl, etc. Other particularly compelling features of BigCommerce include access to quote builders, quick re-ordering, enabling merchants to create custom shipping rates for B2B buyers, and sync data across their CRM, ERP, OMS, and other platforms.

Details

Founded in – 2019

Where: Available worldwide

Customer profile: The B2B offering is relatively new, so customer numbers aren’t available yet. However, over 60,000 brands use BigCommerce for their B2C eCommerce.

Best for – Both small and large B2B wholesale businesses can leverage the power of BigCommerce. It offers features and integrations for all-level projects. That being said, BigCommerce is best for large or fast-growing businesses.

Significant features 

• Easily edit site pages without coding required
• Mobile optimization
• Build responsive and beautiful storefront
• SEO-friendly URL and out-of-the-box metadata
• Easy subscriptions and re-orders
• Per-unit cost
• Discounted and custom prices
• Automatically applied volume discounts
• Quote builder options
• B2B specific payment services
• Backend ERP system and CRM integrations
• Sell across channels
• Segment customer groups
• Automated emails avoid abandoned carts
• Advanced shipping options

Pros

• Good for SEO
• Easy and responsive design
• Blaze speed and rock-solid security
• Easy to add unlimited product variants
• No transaction fees
• Scalable for different business types

Cons

• Tough pricing
• Not powerful enough for content editing
• Current plan is automatically updated if the sales exceed the limit
• Higher costs when switching to self-hosted setup

Software description

WooCommerce is the best B2B eCommerce platform for WordPress-based websites. This customizable, user-friendly, open-source ecommerce environment currently powers about 42% of the online stores in the digital landscape. 

Designed for merchants of all sizes, WooCommerce offers an extensive plugin library and themes to explore. It also provides specific hosting and maintenance services to make launching and managing your online store very easy. There is a range of performance optimization tools built-in, designed to help you rank higher and earn more sales. Particularly notable features of B2B WooCommerce plugin are the ability to hide prices and/or products from non-members and provide discounts by customer group.

Details

Where: Available worldwide

How much: WooCommerce is free. Additional plugins may have their own costs.

Customer profile: WooCommerce has some major clients like Weber, Ghostbed, and AeroPRess, etc. and it powers 26% of all eCommerce sites

Best for – Wholesale businesses of all sizes can leverage this platform. WooCommerce gives users essential features like inventory management, tax calculation, shipping costs, and payment options. 

Significant features 

• Countless checkout options
• Huge community for support
• Incredible range of extensions and ad-ons
• Fantastic for open-source flexibility
• Wholesale-friendly
• Confidential information protection
• SEO friendly design
• High level of scalability
• Easy-to-use applications
• Works perfectly with WordPress
• Integrates with a range of existing tools

Pros

• Free and open source
• Full control of content and store
• Thousands of customizable themes
• Extensive range of plugins
• Flexible configuration enabling you to sell any kind of products
• Large community support
• Optimal cybersecurity

Cons

• No multi-lingual functionality
• Difficult for non-tech savvy people to build a robust site
• Many paid extensions
• WooCommerce doesn’t meet the WordPress updates well
• Hard to implement multi-currency

Software description

OpenCart is an open-source and completely free to use platform, making it a popular alternative to Shopify Plus. The company offers features like Powerful SEO tools, built-in store management, product management, promo codes, and endless extensions and themes.

OpenCart has facilitated B2B ecommerce by offering a new extension called “OpenCart B2B marketplace”. This multi-channel marketplace allows businesses to access marketplaces like Alibaba, for wholesale trading. OpenCart also allows users to update and import multiple products to your site in a single go, create customer groups and assign unique permissions to each selection of clients.

Details

Where: It is available to sellers world-wide

How much: Free to use, with zero monthly fees. Extensions and themes may include fees.

Customer profile: OpenCart users include the British Red Cross, FX creation, Volvo,  Ace, and 342,000 other eCommerce brands.

Significant features 

• Endless extensions and themes
• Powerful store management tools
• Built-in SEO
• Open source coding
• Access to wholesale marketplaces
• Custom dashboard for managing B2B orders
• ser group creation
• Email templates
• Group upload and export
• Transaction status tracking
• Individual shipping modes for different customers
• Questions and answers
• Excellent free support

Pros

• The platform is free used by thousands stores worldwide
• Plenty of extensions and third-party modules
• Highly customizable
• Well suited in cases where clients want a very specific design with very specific shopping cart functionalities.
• Very flexible to work with a wide variety of payment processors and gateways.

Cons

• Sometimes hard to customize
• Limited marketing features
• Lacks SEO functionalities
• Difficult to grasp for the non-tech savvy people, making the use of technical documentation necessary.
• OpenCart’s support and documentation are not the easiest in the industry.
• Wholesale functionalities are not yet as fine-tuned

Software description

Handshake Rep is the leading B2B sales order management platform for manufacturers, distributors and wholesalers. Handshake provides mobile apps for field sales and B2B eCommerce solutions to brands. Handshake Rep’s technology enables sales reps to write orders fast, with all customer info and history on hand. This enables your business to offer a modern sales experience, speed up order fulfillment times, sell more products using customer data, and eliminate human error from the sales process. Handshake Rep is seamlessly integrated with the Handshake Direct B2B eCommerce website and mobile app provides 24/7 convenience of online ordering to your customers.

Details

Founded in – 2011

Country – Located in the United States

Website – www.handshake.com

Free Demo – Yes

Deployment – 

• ✅ – Web-Based, Cloud, SaaS
• ✅ – iPhone / iPad
• ✅ – Android 

Significant features 

• Communication Tools
• Inventory Control
• Mobile Access
• Payment Options
• Promotions Management
• Reordering
• Reporting/Analytics
• Back Order Management
• Customer Database
• Inventory Management

Pros

• Ability to increase average order size, decrease order processing overhead and speed up fulfillment times.
• Intuitive interface.
• Advanced sync technology allows for quick switching between online and offline environments

Cons

• Customer service is below par.
• Handshake’s billing is quite inflexible about subscription and payment.

Software description

Apart from the big names like WooCommerce and Magento, SuiteCommerce is one of the most effective B2B ecommerce platforms. Part of the Oracle NetSuite family, SuiteCommerce has been recognized by Forrester as a leading B2B eCommerce platform for mid-size organizations. It is modern, cloud-based, scalable, and even affordable.

It provides everything you need to automate crucial operations, reduce business costs, suite of tools to streamline purchasing, billing, and even increase the visibility of your site. Merchants can manage multi-channel selling (B2B and B2C) from the same cloud-based eCommerce platform. It’s suitable for businesses selling in online stores as well as brick and mortar stores. Physical store owners can connect data with an eCommerce website with a POS system to manage marketing, orders, sales, customer service, and manage inventory more effectively.

Details

Founded in – 2015

Where: While most popular among U.S. merchants, SuiteCommerce is available across more than 140 countries

Customer profile: SuiteCommerce users include Lovesac, The Noerr Programs and 3000 other brands.

Best for – Not recommended for new or for users with little or no technical knowledge. SuiteCommerce standard is a good choice for B2B wholesales looking for a simple yet functional eCommerce solution. While wholesale businesses with a high transaction volume and complicated product catalog would find SuiteCommerce Advanced is more suitable for their needs.

Significant features 

• Excellent pricing
• Extensible software that grows with you
• Click not code customization strategies
• Leverage product content across all channels
• Access to multiple payment and checkout options
• Easy-to-use, powerful, and feature-rich commerce marketing
• Excellent integrations with CRM and ERP technology
• Data synchronization of multiple channels
• Back-office accounting and self-service portals for partners
• Fragmented data development and automated processes
• Implementations with leading B2B tools
• Support for selling around the world
• Provide various services: consulting, development, implementation, etc

Pros

• Configuration and customizaton to suit business needs is fairly easy
• Highly personalized and branded shopping experience
• A stable and safe platform
• Accurate and in-depth data report

Cons

• Accurate but function-limited report
• Lacks adequate automation and integration scalability for large businesses
• Time-consuming currency update

Software description

PrestaShop is an open-source eCommerce platform that helps you to create a store that’s totally customized to suit you. It allows you to create your B2B store from scratch as quickly and easily as possible, with huge amount of customization options with dozens of professional themes, and 50+ payment solutions. There are various modules and integrated customer service tools that allow you to update your B2B performance, hide prices for certain visitors, customer registration and membership options, and quick install features too.

Details

Founded in – 2008

Where: PrestaShop merchants can sell worldwide.

Customer profile: 300,000 global customers, with a majority of customers based in Spain, France, and the U.S.

Best for – PrestaShop is suitable for SMEs. 

Significant features 

• Custom checkout
• Dozens of customizable themes
• Excellent inventory management
• Customer relationship tracking
• Reports and analytics
• Unique VAT and Tax features
• Price hiding options
• Membership and registration
• Social media and marketing tools
• Global selling
• Multiple currency choices
• More than 50 checkout options
• Demonstration PrestaShop
• Easy back-end performance

Pros

• Easy to install
• Budget-friendly
• User-friendly
• Easy and multiple customizations
• Support different secure payment options

Cons

• Limited scalability
• Unprofessional design