Choosing between Shopify and Magento for a B2B store is a five-to-ten year decision, not a shopping comparison. Pick the wrong one and you're either paying for power you'll never use, or rebuilding in eighteen months when the platform hits a wall.
This is an honest look at both, written for UK trade suppliers, wholesalers, manufacturers, and brands selling B2B and B2C side by side.
The short version: Magento (Adobe Commerce) wins on raw B2B depth, native quotes, approval workflows, and customer-specific catalogues at scale. Shopify Plus wins on speed, simpler running costs, and hybrid B2B/B2C. For most UK mid-market brands, the deciding factor isn't cost, the two are closer than people expect. It's how complex your B2B workflows actually are.
Shopify vs Magento for B2B: at a glance
Before the detail, here's the headline comparison. Figures are converted to pounds and reflect current 2026 UK pricing.
| Factor | Shopify Plus | Magento (Adobe Commerce) |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Speed to market, hybrid B2B/B2C | Deep customisation, enterprise B2B |
| Typical build time | 8–16 weeks | 16–32 weeks |
| Platform cost (from) | ~£1,800/month (3-yr term) | ~£17,000–£100,000+/year licence |
| Hosting | Fully managed, included | Self-managed or Adobe Cloud |
| B2B features | Native channel + apps | Deep native B2B suite |
| Customisation | Framework-limited (but generous) | Effectively unlimited (open source) |
| Maintenance burden | Handled by Shopify | Your team / agency patches & upgrades |
| Best fit revenue | £1m–£15m+ online | £5m–£25m+ with complex needs |
Shopify Plus base is £1,800/month on a three-year UK term; above roughly £630k/month in sales it moves to a variable platform fee (0.35% of sales on a three-year term, capped at roughly £31k/month). Adobe Commerce licensing is quote-based and tied to your gross merchandise value, so treat these as planning benchmarks, not quotes.
The core difference: managed vs open source
Everything else flows from this one distinction.
Shopify Plus is fully managed. Shopify hosts it, secures it, scales it, and updates it. You build your store and your B2B logic inside Shopify's framework, and you don't think about servers, patches, or PCI compliance again. That's a genuine operational saving, especially for brands without a dedicated technical team.
Magento (Adobe Commerce) gives you the keys to everything. It's open-source at its core, so there's almost nothing you can't change. That power is real, but you (or your agency) own the hosting, the security patching, the version upgrades, and the performance tuning. It's a platform that rewards investment and punishes neglect. Adobe is softening this line too: Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service, its newer SaaS edition, hands infrastructure and updates back to Adobe, at a higher licence cost and with less code-level freedom.
Shopify trades some flexibility for far less overhead. Magento trades higher running effort for near-total control. Neither is "better", they're built for different teams.
B2B features: where Magento pulls ahead
This is the part of the comparison that actually decides most projects. The deeper your B2B workflows, the more the gap matters.
One recent change worth knowing: since April 2026, Shopify's core B2B features, company accounts, up to three customer-specific price catalogues, quantity rules, volume pricing, and net payment terms, are available on all Shopify plans, not just Plus. Plus still adds unlimited catalogues, a dedicated B2B storefront, and checkout extensibility, but entry-level B2B on Shopify no longer requires a Plus licence.
| B2B capability | Shopify Plus | Magento (Adobe Commerce) |
|---|---|---|
| Company accounts | Yes, with basic roles | Full hierarchies, unlimited levels |
| Customer-specific pricing | Price lists (good, fairly simple) | Shared catalogues, many tiers |
| Quote & negotiation | Draft orders / third-party apps | Native multi-round quoting |
| Purchase approvals | Limited; apps required | Native, rule-based routing |
| Net payment terms | Native (net 30/60 etc.) | Native, with credit limits |
| Requisition lists | Quick-order lists native; full lists need apps | Native |
| Min/max order quantities | Native (quantity rules) | Native, per product & group |
| Multi-buyer accounts | Basic support | Native, granular permissions |
If your B2B operation needs the bottom half of that table, native quoting, approval chains, requisition lists, deep catalogue segmentation, Magento is genuinely more capable out of the box. Shopify Plus closes many of those gaps through its app ecosystem, and for a lot of UK brands the app-based approach is perfectly adequate. Whether it's adequate for you depends entirely on volume and complexity.
One Magento caveat: those B2B features live in Adobe Commerce, the paid, licensed tier, not free Magento Open Source. The licence (from roughly £17,000–£20,000/year and rising with revenue) is what changes the cost picture, so factor it in early.
When Magento is the right call
Complex quoting and negotiation. A buyer wants 500 units of something they normally take in 50s, and the price needs negotiating before the order lands. Magento handles that natively: request, custom quote, accept, convert to order. No email thread, no manual entry. For a distributor fielding hundreds of quotes a month, that workflow is the difference between scalable and chaotic.
Multi-buyer company accounts with real hierarchy. A dealer account with a purchasing manager who approves, several buyers with their own credit limits, and a bookkeeper who can only view invoices. Magento's company structure models that properly. Shopify Plus supports multiple contacts per company, but the permission granularity isn't as deep.
Big catalogues, many pricing tiers. Tens of thousands of SKUs and dozens of customer pricing groups, national accounts, regional dealers, occasional buyers all seeing different prices and even different products. Magento's shared catalogues do this as a core feature. Replicating it at scale on Shopify means heavier custom work.
Approval workflows for regulated buyers. Public sector, healthcare, utilities, and education buyers often need orders above a threshold signed off before they're confirmed. That's native in Adobe Commerce and a substantial custom build on Shopify.
That kind of catalogue-and-pricing complexity is exactly where we tend to land on Magento. Our Decorating Centre Online build delivered a 23% increase in B2B customers; the Gypsum Tools drylining superstore came to us for a Magento build, SEO migration, and ongoing support; and a B2B catering supplier running 100,000+ parts with a custom ERP integration needed Magento's depth and headroom rather than a framework's guardrails.
When Shopify Plus is the smarter choice
Hybrid B2B/B2C from one platform. A brand selling direct to consumers and wholesale to stockists is Shopify Plus's sweet spot. Trade price lists, company accounts, and draft orders for wholesale sit alongside a best-in-class consumer storefront and checkout. One platform, one team, far fewer moving parts.
Speed to launch. A comparable B2B build ships in roughly 8–16 weeks on Shopify Plus versus 16–32 on Magento. If you're under commercial pressure to get live, that's months of trading you don't lose.
Lower operational overhead. No patch management, no server administration, no major-version upgrade projects. For brands without a deep internal technical bench, Shopify quietly removing that workload is worth real money every month.
A mature B2B app ecosystem. Where Shopify's native B2B tools stop, a well-chosen app usually picks up, at a fraction of the cost of equivalent custom Magento development. If your requirements map cleanly to what those apps do, Shopify Plus plus the right stack is a strong, cost-effective answer.
We see this pattern constantly: a B2B business that outgrew Magento's overhead rather than its features. We migrated Mellcrest, a B2B hotel supplies retailer, from Magento to Shopify and built a custom Patchworks integration keeping Shopify and their Intact IQ ERP in perfect sync, customers, orders, and pricing flowing automatically with no manual intervention. Lower running costs, simpler admin, a platform built to grow. We've made the same move for The Green Reaper and migrated drinks brand Plenish onto Shopify Plus ahead of schedule.
What it actually costs: the 5-year picture
Cost is where the myths live. People assume Magento is "enterprise and expensive" and Shopify is "cheap and cheerful." Over five years, for a mid-size UK B2B brand (roughly £5m–£15m of B2B revenue), the totals are closer than that.
| Cost component (5 years) | Shopify Plus | Magento (Adobe Commerce) |
|---|---|---|
| Initial build | £25,000–£60,000 | £40,000–£80,000 |
| Platform / licence | £120,000–£200,000 | £75,000–£150,000 |
| Hosting | Included | £24,000–£60,000 |
| Ongoing development | £20,000–£50,000 | £30,000–£60,000 |
| 5-year estimate | £165,000–£310,000 | £169,000–£350,000 |
Planning benchmarks for a £5m–£15m B2B brand, not quotes. Shopify's platform cost rises with revenue; Magento's hosting and maintenance carry the technical overhead. Adobe Commerce licensing is quote-based and GMV-tiered.
The ranges overlap almost entirely. Shopify Plus tends to cost more in platform fees over time but less in technical maintenance; Magento is the reverse. The honest takeaway: at this scale, cost shouldn't be the deciding variable. Your feature requirements should be. If Shopify Plus does what you need, it's the simpler operational choice. If you need Magento's depth, the premium is justified, but don't pay it for features you'll never switch on.
Thinking about switching platforms?
Plenty of UK B2B brands started on WooCommerce or standard Shopify and are now deciding whether to move up to Magento or Shopify Plus. Before committing either way, get clear on four things:
- The specific B2B features your current platform can't handle, not general frustration, but named gaps
- The realistic build cost to solve those gaps on the new platform
- Whether a Shopify Plus upgrade with the right apps would solve the same problems for less
- Your internal capacity to run the platform you're choosing, Magento especially needs ongoing technical ownership
Migration is a significant commitment, and the cost of switching often exceeds the cost of choosing correctly the first time. It should be driven by clear requirements, not by a feeling that one platform is more "serious" than the other.
How we actually make the call
We build on both, and on BigCommerce, so our recommendation isn't a house style dressed up as advice. The decision usually comes down to a few honest questions:
- How complex is your B2B logic, really? Native quoting, approval chains, and tens of pricing tiers point to Magento. Trade pricing, company accounts, and draft orders point to Shopify Plus
- Do you sell B2C as well? A strong hybrid story usually favours Shopify Plus
- What's your technical capacity? No dedicated team? Shopify's managed model removes a real burden
- How fast do you need to launch? A tight deadline favours Shopify; a longer runway opens up Magento
We've delivered award-winning B2B builds on Magento, like Love & Lilah, an eCommerce Site of the Year-winning B2B wedding marketplace, and stood up Club Peroni, a Magento-powered B2B membership system for Peroni. We've also migrated B2B brands the other way, onto Shopify, when the overhead stopped being worth it. The right answer is the one that fits your business, not ours.
