The smarter B2B platform — without the SaaS tax
A fully featured wholesale B2B solution built on Joomla! — with unlimited price groups, unlimited XML & CSV import/export, and no per-transaction fees. See exactly how it compares to Shopify B2B and WooCommerce.
Why pay £24,000+/year when
you don't have to?
Shopify B2B locks you into Shopify Plus — their enterprise tier — before you can access a single wholesale feature. WooCommerce piles on paid plugins that add up fast. Here's what running a B2B platform actually costs on each.
Switching from Shopify Plus to a Joomla B2B platform built by Webal costs just £2,499 in year one (£1,500 build + £999 wholesale hosting & maintenance) — compared to £27,000+ on Shopify Plus. That's a saving of £24,500 or more in year one alone, with no ongoing SaaS subscription, no plugin renewal stack, and no per-transaction tax on every order you receive.
Side by side — every key feature
Not just price — see which platform actually delivers the B2B features a real wholesale business needs.
| Feature | Shopify B2B Plus plan required |
WooCommerce B2B Plugins required |
Joomla B2B (Webal) All included |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unlimited price groups / lists | △ Limited tiers on Plus | △ Plugin required (£299/yr) | ✓ Unlimited — included |
| Customer-specific pricing | △ Plus only | △ Plugin dependent | ✓ Per customer, per group |
| XML & CSV import — no file size cap | ✗ 15MB limit, no XML | ✗ Server PHP memory limit | ✓ Unlimited file size |
| XML & CSV export — no file size cap | ✗ Basic CSV only | △ Plugin required | ✓ XML & CSV, unlimited |
| Minimum order quantities (MOQ) | △ App required | △ Plugin required | ✓ Built-in |
| Trade account portals (login-gated pricing) | △ Plus only | △ Plugin required | ✓ Native, no plugins |
| Per-transaction fees | ✗ Up to 0.25% | ✓ None | ✓ None — ever |
| Multiple tax rates & zones | ✓ Included | △ Plugin required | ✓ Built-in |
| Multiple currencies | △ App required | △ Plugin required | ✓ Built-in |
| Multiple languages | △ App required | △ Plugin required (£99+/yr) | ✓ Joomla multilingual native |
| Coupon & cart discounts | ✓ Included | ✓ Included | ✓ Built-in |
| Reward points / loyalty | ✗ App required (paid) | △ Plugin required | ✓ Built-in |
| PDF invoices & delivery notes | ✗ App required (paid) | △ Plugin required (£79/yr) | ✓ Built-in |
| Joomla! access level control | ✗ Not applicable | ✗ Not applicable | ✓ Native CMS integration |
| Catalogue mode (browse without buying) | ✗ Not available | △ Plugin required | ✓ Built-in |
| ERP / accounting integration | △ API — dev work needed | △ Plugin / API — dev needed | ✓ XML/CSV + API ready |
| Ownership of your platform | ✗ SaaS lock-in | ✓ You own it | ✓ You own it completely |
△ = feature available with additional cost or effort | Pricing data correct as of March 2026. Shopify Plus pricing based on published starting rates. WooCommerce plugin costs based on published annual licence fees.
Per-Customer Pricing
Give each trade account their own negotiated price — not just a percentage off, but individual line-item pricing across your entire catalogue.
Trade Tier Pricing
Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum — create as many tiers as your wholesale model requires, each with its own discount matrix and order rules.
Quantity-Break Pricing
Buy 10, pay £X. Buy 100, pay £Y. Set unlimited quantity breakpoints per product per price group — the foundation of real wholesale pricing.
Sector-Based Pricing
Retail customers, trade accounts, distributors, and resellers — each sector gets its own price group. Switch any customer between groups in seconds.
Hidden Pricing (Logged In Only)
Use Joomla's access control to hide prices from guests entirely — trade buyers must log in to see their negotiated rates.
Time-Limited Price Groups
Run promotional price windows for specific trade tiers — time-bound discounts that revert automatically, no manual intervention.
No file size limits. No compromises.
Large product catalogues kill Shopify imports and choke WooCommerce's PHP memory limits. Joomla handles them natively — no cap, no workarounds, no broken imports at 50,000 SKUs.
Why this matters for wholesale
Wholesale catalogues are large. A mid-size distributor commonly holds 10,000–100,000 active SKUs. Shopify's import tool caps files at 15MB and has no XML support at all. WooCommerce's popular import plugins are throttled by your server's PHP memory allocation — typically 256MB–512MB — meaning a 50,000-SKU XML file fails silently or times out. Joomla's import runs server-side with no artificial ceiling, making it the only sensible choice for catalogues of real wholesale scale.
Bulk Product Import (XML)
Import full product data, descriptions, images, attributes, specifications, and pricing from supplier XML feeds — at any file size.
Bulk Product Import (CSV)
Paste or upload spreadsheet-style CSVs directly — map columns to product fields, validate before commit, and roll back if needed.
Export to XML
Export your full catalogue to structured XML — feed Google Shopping, send to third-party marketplaces, or push to your ERP system.
Export to CSV
Pull your product data, order history, or customer records into CSV for accounting, analysis, or bulk editing in your preferred tool.
Live Supplier Sync
Schedule recurring imports from your supplier's XML or CSV feed — stock levels, pricing, and new product additions stay current automatically.
Order Export for ERP
Export orders in XML or CSV to feed directly into Sage, Xero, QuickBooks, or your warehouse management system — zero manual re-entry.
Everything a wholesale business actually needs
Not a patched-together retail store with a B2B plugin bolted on — a genuine wholesale platform, every feature built for the way trade actually works.
Infrastructure built for wholesale scale
Your B2B platform runs on dedicated wholesale hosting — not shared budget servers. Serious compute resources, PCI DSS compliance, and 4-hourly backups as standard.
Wholesale Hosting
Dedicated server resources, PCI DSS compliance, and premium infrastructure — billed month to month with no annual commitment.
+VAT per month
Wholesale Hosting
Exactly the same power and compliance as monthly, billed annually — saving you the equivalent of more than three months.
+VAT per year
A wholesale B2B platform with tens of thousands of SKUs, live pricing by customer group, and simultaneous trade logins cannot run reliably on shared budget hosting. Dedicated resources and PCI DSS compliance are not optional for a platform taking trade payments at scale. This is the infrastructure your business actually needs.
Move off Shopify Plus.
Build something you own.
Talk to Webal about a Joomla B2B wholesale platform — built for your catalogue, your pricing model, and your budget. No SaaS subscription. No plugin stack. No transaction tax on every order.