B2B ecommerce has specific requirements that most consumer-focused platforms handle badly. Company accounts, customer-specific pricing, purchase orders, net payment terms, and multi-user approval workflows — Shopify treats all of these as third-party app problems. Medusa v2 treats them as core architecture. Here’s what that means in practice, what you still need to build, and what a complete B2B implementation costs.
What B2B Ecommerce Actually Requires
Consumer checkout is one buyer, one cart, one payment. B2B is different. A purchasing manager at a manufacturing company might need to submit an order for internal approval before it processes. Their company account might have negotiated pricing that no other customer sees. And the payment terms are Net 30, not a credit card.
The technical requirements stack up:
- Company accounts — one account with multiple users and defined roles (buyer, approver, admin)
- Customer-specific pricing tiers — a different price list per company, not per individual
- Quote requests and purchase orders — a formal flow separate from standard checkout
- Approval workflows — orders requiring sign-off before they hit your fulfillment queue
- Net payment terms — credit-based payment rather than card-at-checkout
- Spending limits and budgets — per user or per department
If a platform can’t handle these natively, you’re stitching together apps, workarounds, or custom code on top of something not designed for it. That’s expensive and fragile.
What Medusa v2 Includes Natively
Medusa v2 (released in late 2024) introduced a proper B2B module. This isn’t a third-party plugin — it’s part of the core commerce engine.
Company Accounts and User Roles
Medusa v2 supports a company entity with multiple contacts attached. Each contact can be assigned a role: buyer, admin, or approver. A buyer can build carts and submit orders; an approver can review and authorize; an admin manages the account itself.
This structure is baked into the data model. You’re not hacking a consumer account system to simulate B2B — the hierarchy is real.
Customer-Specific Price Lists
Medusa has a price list system that predates v2, but v2 extended it significantly. You can create a price list scoped to a specific company — every product in the catalog can have a negotiated price for that account. Price lists can also be time-limited (contract periods) or volume-tiered (order more, pay less).
For a distributor with 200 accounts, each with different negotiated rates, this is the difference between a workable system and a spreadsheet nightmare.
Draft Orders and Quote Flows
Medusa v2 supports draft orders that can be created by a buyer, submitted for approval, and converted to a live order. This is the foundation of a purchase order workflow. The draft lives in the system with a status — pending approval, approved, rejected — and can be configured to require sign-off above a certain order value.
The quote request pattern — where a buyer requests pricing before committing — is adjacent to this and achievable with relatively light custom development on top of the draft order model.
Order Approval Workflows
The approval workflow in Medusa v2 is configurable. You can define who can approve, at what order value approval is required, and what happens when an approval is rejected. This runs server-side through Medusa’s workflow engine, not as a frontend hack.
What Requires Custom Development
Medusa v2 gives you the foundation. It does not give you a finished B2B storefront or a complete ops system. Several capabilities still require custom work.
Net Payment Terms
Medusa doesn’t have a built-in Net 30 / Net 60 payment module. You can add a custom payment provider that records an order without charging immediately and creates a receivable in your system. This requires a custom payment module — typically 20–40 hours of development — and integration with your invoicing or accounting software (QuickBooks, Xero, or a custom ERP).
Customer-Facing Account Portal
The default Medusa Next.js storefront starter has consumer checkout UI. A B2B portal — where a buyer can see their company’s order history, track approvals, manage users, and view invoices — needs to be built. This is a significant front-end effort. A functional B2B account portal typically runs 80–120 hours of front-end development on top of the Medusa backend.
Reorder and Favorites Lists
B2B buyers reorder the same SKUs regularly. A saved order list or “quick order” flow (where a buyer pastes in a list of SKUs and quantities) is a common requirement that doesn’t come out of the box. It’s buildable — usually 15–25 hours — but it’s custom.
ERP and CRM Integration
A B2B system that doesn’t sync to your ERP (for inventory and order management) or CRM (for account management and sales rep assignment) is incomplete. Medusa has a clean event-driven architecture that makes integrations straightforward compared to platforms with less-documented internals, but the integrations themselves take time. Budget 30–60 hours per major integration, depending on the target system’s API quality.
What a B2B Medusa Build Actually Costs
No single number covers every B2B implementation. But we can bracket it.
Minimal viable B2B store — company accounts, price lists, basic approval workflow, standard checkout with card payment, simple account portal: $35,000–$55,000
Mid-tier B2B platform — everything above, plus Net 30 payment terms, custom quote flow, reorder functionality, and one ERP integration: $65,000–$110,000
Full B2B commerce platform — multiple seller price lists, complex approval chains, custom buyer portal with order analytics, multi-warehouse inventory, full ERP + CRM integration: $120,000–$200,000+
These ranges assume a senior Medusa developer at $120–$180/hour, which is the realistic market rate for someone who actually knows the platform. Medusa developers are less common than Shopify developers, so budget for this in your timeline — finding the right team can take 4–8 weeks.
Infrastructure and hosting runs an additional $500–$2,000/month depending on order volume and whether you’re self-hosting or using a managed cloud provider.
Medusa B2B vs. Shopify Plus B2B
Shopify Plus introduced B2B features in 2022 and has continued expanding them. It’s a fair comparison. Shopify Plus B2B now includes company accounts, customer-specific catalogs, draft orders, net payment terms, and basic approval workflows — delivered as a managed SaaS.
The trade-off is cost and control. Shopify Plus starts at $2,300/month ($27,600/year). Add transaction fees at 0.15%–0.30% on all orders, and a $5M B2B GMV business is looking at $27,600–$42,600/year in platform costs before a single customization.
Medusa has no licensing fee. Your infrastructure costs $500–$2,000/month. The custom development is a one-time cost, and you own the result. At $5M GMV, Medusa pays for itself within 18–24 months compared to Plus.
The honest caveat: Shopify Plus B2B is significantly faster to launch. If you need a functional B2B store in 6 weeks, Shopify Plus can do that. Medusa cannot. You’re trading time-to-market for long-term cost and flexibility.
For our detailed cost comparison between Medusa and Shopify Plus, see our Medusa.js vs Shopify Plus breakdown — the numbers include transaction fee modeling at different GMV levels.
Is Medusa B2B Right for Your Business?
The honest answer depends on your order volume, customization requirements, and technical runway.
Medusa B2B makes sense if:
- Your annual GMV is above $2M (or projected to be within 18 months)
- You need custom pricing or workflow logic that a standard SaaS platform can’t accommodate
- You have or can hire technical resources to manage infrastructure
- You’re building something that needs to differentiate — not just check boxes
Medusa B2B is probably not the right choice if:
- You need to launch in under 3 months
- Your B2B requirements are simple (company accounts + price lists, nothing more)
- You have no technical resources in-house
For simpler B2B requirements, a custom WooCommerce store with the right plugin stack can handle company accounts, tiered pricing, and basic approval flows at a lower build cost. Our WooCommerce development work covers this for businesses in the $500K–$2M GMV range.
How Long Does a B2B Medusa Build Take?
Timeline is often the harder constraint than budget. The build cost is a one-time number; a 9-month launch timeline is a competitive decision.
A minimal B2B Medusa store — company accounts, price lists, basic approval workflow, standard storefront — takes 12–18 weeks from kickoff to launch. This assumes a small, senior team working full-time on the project, clear requirements agreed upfront, and no significant scope changes.
A mid-tier build with custom quoting, Net 30 terms, and an ERP integration runs 5–7 months. A full B2B platform with multiple price tiers, complex approval chains, and deep systems integration is a 9–14 month project.
These timelines assume you’ve found a development team with actual Medusa experience. Medusa developers are less common than Shopify or WooCommerce developers. A team that knows React and Node.js but has never touched Medusa will spend 4–6 weeks getting up to speed before they’re productive. Factor that into your timeline calculation.
The fastest path to a working B2B Medusa store is a fixed-scope initial build that gets the core workflow live — company accounts, price lists, and checkout — then iterates toward the more complex features (quoting, ERP sync, advanced approval logic) in subsequent phases. Trying to build everything at once reliably produces delays and budget overruns.
B2B Medusa Build: What the Development Process Looks Like
Understanding what you’re actually buying helps set expectations.
A B2B Medusa project typically breaks into four phases:
Phase 1 — Architecture and setup (weeks 1–3): Medusa v2 installation, database design, hosting infrastructure configuration, CI/CD pipeline, and the data model extensions for company accounts and price lists. No visible product yet.
Phase 2 — Core B2B backend (weeks 4–8): Company account API, user roles, price list assignment, draft order API, approval workflow logic. This is the foundational server-side work that everything else depends on.
Phase 3 — Storefront and buyer portal (weeks 9–14): The Next.js storefront with B2B-specific checkout flow, company account dashboard, order history, pending approval queue. This is the work your buyers will see.
Phase 4 — Integrations and QA (weeks 15–18): ERP or CRM integration, payment term setup, end-to-end testing of the full purchase order lifecycle, load testing, staging deployment, and launch.
Each phase has clear deliverables. A good development team will show you working software at the end of every phase — not just reports about progress.
FAQ
Does Medusa v2 support purchase orders natively? Medusa v2 supports draft orders with configurable approval workflows, which form the foundation of a purchase order system. A complete PO flow with document generation and formal approval tracking requires some custom development on top — typically 20–35 additional hours. The infrastructure is there; the last-mile configuration is not out-of-the-box.
Can Medusa handle tiered pricing per customer? Yes. Medusa’s price list system supports company-scoped pricing with volume tiers. A company account can have its own price list with different rates per SKU, and those rates can vary by quantity ordered. This is native functionality, not a plugin.
What’s the minimum budget for a Medusa B2B build? A minimal viable B2B Medusa build — company accounts, price lists, basic approval flow, standard storefront — starts around $35,000–$55,000. This assumes a senior developer and 3–4 months of build time. More complex requirements scale from there.
How does Medusa B2B handle multiple shipping addresses per company? Medusa’s company entity supports multiple addresses out of the box. A company account can have a headquarters billing address and multiple ship-to locations. Buyers can select from the saved addresses at checkout. Managing which users can add or edit addresses is handled through the role system.
Does Medusa support sales rep assignment and B2B account management? Not natively. Medusa’s B2B module is buyer-facing. Sales rep assignment, commission tracking, and rep-specific dashboards are custom development. This is typically integrated with a CRM rather than built directly in Medusa — the platform records the order, the CRM handles the sales relationship.
Can you migrate an existing Shopify Plus B2B store to Medusa? Yes. Medusa has a data import system for products, customers, and orders. A Shopify-to-Medusa migration for a B2B store typically runs 40–80 hours for data migration plus the full build cost for the new B2B features. Budget a minimum of 3 months for a migration of any complexity.
What infrastructure does a Medusa B2B platform require? A production Medusa deployment needs a Node.js server, a PostgreSQL database, a Redis instance (for workflows and queues), and file storage (S3 or equivalent). A typical setup runs on AWS, GCP, or Railway. Monthly infrastructure costs start around $500 for lower-volume operations and scale with traffic and order volume.
If you’re evaluating a B2B ecommerce build and want a straight answer on what it costs and how long it takes, see our fixed-price packages or review our custom WooCommerce store options for lower-volume B2B requirements.