B2B webshop: what actually sets it apart from B2C

Most B2B companies we meet already have "a webshop" on a slide. When we look, it is a catalogue with a cart, and the real price lives in a spreadsheet. The customer signs in and still sees the wrong number. The salesperson sends a quote by email. Finance keys the order. The store was decoration.

That is why the question is not "Shopify or custom" as a religion. The question is which rules must be true when a buyer hits purchase. If the rules are list price plus shipping, you are closer to B2C than you think. If the rules are price per customer, minimum order, credit and an approver in another department, you have a different product.

We also see the inverse: teams that order a full B2B suite because they heard the word punchout, while their real pain is that account customers cannot see backorders. Then you build the heavy thing first and leave the daily work on the table. A B2B webshop that does not remove a concrete, repeated task is a project — not a channel.

This is the frame we use before anyone picks a platform. It sits deliberately close to our guide on customer portals, because the two products are often confused. The difference is direction: the store is the purchase. The portal is life after the purchase. Many B2B setups need both. Almost none need to pretend they are the same.

In B2C the guest is unknown until payment goes through. In B2B the organisation is often known before the catalogue makes sense. Price, assortment and shipping rules can depend on who is signed in. If you show list price to everyone and "fix it in the ERP afterwards", you do not have a B2B webshop. You have a showroom with extra work.

The order is not the same object either. A B2C order is typically paid, small and finished. A B2B order can be a quote that needs approval, a framework agreement being drawn down, or a cart that has to land in the customer's own procurement system. Checkout is not a card form. Checkout is the process that makes the order true in your back office.

Roles beat person-login. A buyer fills the cart. A manager approves. A bookkeeper fetches the invoice. If your store only knows "a user with an email", you will invent organisations in support. That is the kind of debt that feels invisible on an MVP slide and very visible when the first mid-size customer gets two departments.

Finally, self-service in B2B is often worth more than the purchase itself. Seeing a backorder, downloading certificates, reordering last month's lines — that is what takes the phone away. A store without that layer becomes a place you buy the first time and a place you call the second time. Then you have paid for a channel that does not replace the channel you hated.

Customer-specific price is not a theme in the Shopify admin. It is the core. If two customers must not see each other's net price, you need organisations, price lists and a place that price is true — typically the ERP or a price engine, not a field someone edits in the dead of night. When the price is wrong in the store, the customer does not call support. The customer loses trust in the channel.

Quotes are the next step many teams force in too early. A quote is a locked price for a period, often with lines that do not exist as SKUs, and often with a salesperson in the loop. If 80 percent of your orders are already list lines you can show to the right customer, build that. If 80 percent are negotiated packages, a store that cannot carry quotes is a side track — and you should be honest about that before you buy a platform.

Net terms, credit limits and minimum order are not "checkout options". They are decisions about who may place an order that is not prepaid. A B2C platform that only knows cards and instalments will either block your account customers or let everyone buy on invoice. Neither is acceptable once finance has an opinion.

We recommend writing those three rules down before you pick a stack: how the price is found, when a quote is required, and who may order without paying now. If you cannot, you are not ready to implement. You are ready to map how you sell today — and that is the work that actually decides the cost of the project, not which theme you like.

B2C login is "my order and my addresses". B2B login is "my company, my agreements, my colleagues". If you only create users, you end up sharing passwords across purchasing. If you create organisations without roles, the intern can see prices you promised to keep internal, or approve over the credit limit.

This is also where the customer portal and the webshop overlap. The same identity layer can carry both: purchase in one surface, backorders and documents in the other. What goes wrong is building two logins because two vendors each sold "B2B". One organisation, one set of roles, two jobs.

SSO and an IdP arrive when the customer is large enough to require them — not because they sit on an enterprise checklist. For most mid-size Danish customers, an email invite and an admin at the customer who can add colleagues is the right v1. Add more when a concrete contract says otherwise.

Data isolation is not negotiable. A user must not be able to guess their way to another company's orders by changing an id in the URL. That sounds basic, and it is exactly what gets forgotten when a B2C shop gets "a B2B login" bolted on. If you build it yourselves, RLS and org-scope are part of the product. If you buy, ask how they isolate — not whether they have a B2B badge.

If the action you want digital is "put these SKUs in a cart at the price we agreed", you have a webshop. If the action is "see my orders, fetch documents, approve a delivery", you have a portal. If it is both, build identity and the org model once, and let the two surfaces share it. That is cheaper than two products that do not know each other.

Shopify is enough when your B2B looks like commerce: catalogue, price lists, organisations, and you can accept their model for customers and checkout. It is the wrong answer when every order is a project, when the price only exists as a quote in email, or when you need deep roles their B2B layer cannot carry without workarounds you will come to hate.

Custom — typically Next.js in front of your data — is right when the buying flow is your business, not a theme. A configurator, spare parts per serial number, or a store that is in practice an ordering surface on top of an existing customer-portal login. It is more expensive to own. It is cheaper than forcing a foreign checkout to lie.

We have written separately about when you need a customer portal at all, and about when Shopify is enough as a commerce platform. This piece is the middle question: when you say "B2B webshop", do you mean purchase, after-purchase — or a hope that one login solves both? Answer that before you sign a contract.