For a lean team serving wholesale accounts, BigCommerce B2B Edition offers a concrete place to start: company accounts, buyer roles, quotes, invoices, and a buyer portal. For a primarily direct-to-consumer business, Shopify is a strong starting choice when its theme store, retail tools, and sales channels cover the operation. Shopify also supports B2B; the boundary is the buying workflow you can deliver on the proposed plan.
The useful question is concrete: can the people you have operate the buying journeys you need, on the plan and implementation you can afford? Start with those journeys before comparing platforms row by row. If the hardest part is the storefront itself rather than the buying workflow, Setka is a third option, covered below.
Write the requirements before choosing a winner
Consider a hypothetical homeware brand selling directly to customers and preparing to accept wholesale orders. It has one person managing the catalog and another handling orders. It wants a branded store, different prices for trade buyers, and a practical path to a second region.
“Supports B2B” will not settle that choice. The team needs to specify whether trade customers require separate accounts, approval, negotiated prices, invoices, or repeat-order tools. A second region might need translated content, a different currency, different delivery rules, or a separate storefront. Those are distinct requirements.
Use this matrix as the first page of the brief you send to a platform or implementation partner:
| Area | Example requirement to demonstrate | What the proposal must name |
|---|---|---|
| Catalog | A product with the options and filtering buyers need | Plan, data setup, and any extension |
| B2B | An approved buyer sees agreed prices and places the intended order | Account model, purchasing steps, and commercial scope |
| Channels | A sale in a second channel produces the expected order and stock change | Connector, system of record, and support owner |
| Regions | A customer sees the right catalog, currency, and delivery choices | Regional configuration, storefront count, and payment conditions |
| Storefront | A collection page can gain a new editorial section | Editing method and who maintains custom work |
| Daily operations | A colleague can find, fulfill, and refund an order | Permissions, training, and escalation path |
Mark each row required at launch, later, or unnecessary. Ask for a demonstration against the launch rows. This prevents a future possibility from dictating today’s implementation.
Distinguish expected commerce from specialist operations. The catalog, cart, checkout, payment setup, shipping rules, and order handling should form a working whole. Negotiated account pricing, an approval hierarchy, a warehouse connector, or several regional storefronts add requirements to demonstrate separately. For each required workflow, record what is native, what needs an app or custom work, and who supports the combination. Native coverage is valuable when it removes coordination your team would otherwise own; the number of included features is not a universal measure of the better store.
Compare storefront paths separately
BigCommerce offers an integrated theme path through Stencil. Page Builder and theme controls support routine visual changes. Deeper customization can involve a theme package and developer tools. A team whose chosen theme already fits can use that path without commissioning a headless store.
Catalyst is a different BigCommerce path: a customizable headless framework with a visual editor. Its official material describes a fit for complex needs and teams with developer resources. The visual editor gives marketers an editing surface; it does not eliminate the implementation and maintenance decisions around a custom frontend. Catalyst’s pricing requires a conversation with BigCommerce.
Shopify’s Online Store uses its theme workflow and requires Basic or above, according to its documentation checked on 28 September 2026. Shopify also supports custom storefronts when the standard online store does not meet a team’s needs. Do not compare a configured Shopify theme with a custom Catalyst project and attribute the entire difference in effort to the platform names.
Ask both proposals the same question: after launch, who handles a change that the editor cannot make? The answer may be an internal developer, an agency, or a supported extension. Put that responsibility in the budget.
Then give each proposal a second-change assignment. For the homeware brand, feature an existing collection with a short materials-and-care guide, correct one product fact, and keep the rest of the range easy to reach. Name who makes the changes and who reviews the path from guide to product to checkout on a phone. Repeating that work through a year of collections belongs in the implementation decision alongside the first build.
Make B2B a buying-journey comparison
BigCommerce B2B Edition documents company accounts, buyer roles, quotes, invoices, and a buyer portal. Its setup documentation describes provisioning work involving the B2B Edition app and BigCommerce support. For the homeware brand, those features address the actual wholesale sequence: a company buys through authorized people, may need a quote, and owes payment against an invoice. BigCommerce doesn’t publish B2B Edition pricing, so its implementation and subscription belong in the proposal rather than being assumed included in the headline platform price.
Avoid assuming that Shopify wholesale capability begins only at Plus. The Shopify pricing table captured on 15 August 2026 listed up to three B2B catalogs on Basic, Grow, and Advanced, and unlimited catalogs on Plus. That is a dated plan detail, not evidence that every B2B workflow is identical across those plans.
Give each vendor the same task: approve a trade buyer, show their agreed assortment and prices, place the order under the required payment terms, and let a colleague handle it. Confirm every step on the proposed plan. A catalog allowance alone does not answer questions about buyer permissions, invoices, or integrations.
For the hypothetical homeware team, a wholesale requirement that fails this demonstration should outweigh an attractive theme. If wholesale is only an idea for next year, keep it out of the launch-critical score.
Separate channels and regions from the homepage
BigCommerce’s pricing and feature table, checked on 28 September 2026, describes channel connections, multi-currency support, inventory locations, and paid additional storefronts. Shopify’s pricing page describes online and in-person selling, multichannel capabilities, and plan differences for regional operations.
BigCommerce explicitly sells additional storefronts on its self-service plans, with plan-specific charges and caps. That gives a brand planning separate regional stores a defined commercial path. Shopify’s regional tools may answer a different need: tailoring one store to its markets. The first decision is whether the second region needs another storefront at all.
Follow one order through the proposed setup. Identify where stock changes, which system owns fulfillment status, and who fixes a failed connection. Then repeat with a return or cancellation. This reveals more about the work your team will inherit than a count of available integrations.
If you need several branded storefronts, obtain a quote for the actual arrangement. Do not treat a localized view of one store, an additional storefront, and a separate business account as interchangeable.
Compare the cost triggers as well as the starting bill
Use the current vendor quotes to fill in four cost categories: subscription, payment-related charges, implementation, and ongoing services. Include the specific apps, connectors, storefronts, and support your requirements need. Keep annual commitments separate from month-to-month prices.
BigCommerce’s pricing page, checked on 28 September 2026, uses Core, Growth, Scale, and Performance. Core and Growth can automatically move to higher plans when trailing sales exceed their thresholds; Scale has a monthly GMV allowance and an overage charge. That means keeping the same staff and storefront does not necessarily keep the subscription unchanged. BigCommerce defines the relevant GMV as gross order value minus 10%, so use its calculation rather than substituting your net revenue. It also distinguishes listed Embedded Payment Providers from Open Payment Providers. Orders through a listed embedded provider have no additional BigCommerce order fee; open-provider orders can incur a separate BigCommerce fee. Payment processing remains separate. “No transaction fees” is therefore too broad for this comparison.
Shopify’s pricing page distinguishes payment processing from third-party payment-provider transaction fees, with terms depending on the plan and payment setup. A card-rate example from another market is not your quote.
For the homeware scenario, ask for the cost at the expected launch volume and at a plausible next stage. Include the second storefront or wholesale implementation only in the scenario that needs it.
Where Setka changes the decision
Setka is our product. We recommend it when the problem that brought you here is storefront work: you know how the collection should be sold, but each change turns into theme configuration, code, or an agency brief. The homeware team’s guide has a commercial job: help a shopper understand the materials, choose a suitable product, and find the facts needed to buy it. The merchant should be able to direct that experience without taking over its implementation.
You supply the brief and catalog; Setka generates the storefront inside its commerce platform. You describe changes, edit exact copy, preview, and publish. You remain responsible for the products, direction, and acceptance of the result, while avoiding a merchant-maintained theme codebase.
That argument is about storefront implementation. It does not replace the wholesale account workflow in the example above. Setka doesn’t have customer accounts yet, so it can’t run this wholesale workflow today. If you need them, tell us at [email protected]: requests go straight to the people building Setka. Specialist operational requirements should decide the shortlist before a design demonstration does.
Make the choice around the job you need done
If the wholesale buying journey is essential at launch, start with BigCommerce B2B Edition and a scoped commercial proposal; compare Shopify against the same account, pricing, and payment steps. If the business is mainly direct-to-consumer and Shopify already covers the channels you need, there is little reason to commission a more elaborate storefront solely to prepare for possible future complexity.
If storefront implementation is the work you want the platform to take over, start in Setka. Bring a representative collection and describe the change that has been hardest to make in your current store. Each Setka store uses one currency and customer accounts aren’t available yet, so if wholesale accounts or a second currency are launch requirements, tell us first.