The CTO had done everything right. His team spent three months evaluating B2B ecommerce platforms. They built comparison matrices, scored features, checked references. They picked a platform that won on paper.
Eighteen months later, he was in our office explaining why the project was six figures over budget and six months behind schedule. The platform handled their catalog fine. It handled their customers fine. What it couldn’t handle was their pricing: 4,200 customer-specific price lists maintained in SAP, calculated in real-time based on contract terms, volume commitments, and cost fluctuations.
The platform’s pricing engine assumed it would own pricing. SAP assumed it would own pricing. Nobody noticed the conflict until implementation, when the integration team discovered they’d need to rebuild the platform’s entire pricing layer.
This happens constantly. And it happens because comparison sites answer the wrong question.
Key Takeaways
| What comparison sites evaluate | What actually determines success |
|---|---|
| Feature lists and pricing tiers | Data ownership philosophy: does the platform or your ERP own the truth? |
| Vendor-supplied pros and cons | Integration ceiling: can it handle your ERP’s specific quirks? |
| “Best for” recommendations | Pricing model fit: can it express your actual pricing logic? |
The question to ask any platform vendor: “Walk me through a project where pricing came from the ERP in real-time and the platform had to defer completely.” If they can’t give specifics (sync frequency, conflict resolution, edge cases), they haven’t done it.
The 70/30 Rule
Here’s something we’ve learned from fifteen years of B2B implementations: the storefront is 30% of the work. Integrations are 70%.
B2C agencies have this inverted. They spend months on the homepage, the product pages, the checkout flow. Then they discover the ERP integration is harder than the entire frontend. And they’re already out of budget.
B2B ecommerce platforms fail at the integration layer, not the storefront layer. Every major platform can display products, handle carts, and process checkouts. The question is whether the platform can talk to your ERP, respect your ERP’s authority, and stay synchronized when things change.
| Where the work actually lives | B2C Project | B2B Project |
|---|---|---|
| Frontend / storefront | 60-70% | 25-35% |
| Integration / middleware | 10-20% | 50-60% |
| Data architecture / sync logic | 10-15% | 15-25% |
If your agency’s proposal allocates budget like a B2C project, they’re going to run out of money when the integration work starts.
Where Platforms Actually Differ
Feature comparisons are useless because every platform has the same features. The differences that matter are architectural: baked into the platform’s DNA and impossible to change without fighting the platform itself.
Data Ownership
Every platform makes an assumption about who owns the truth.
Shopify Plus assumes the platform owns customer and order data. Your ERP syncs downstream: it receives data, it doesn’t dictate it. This works beautifully when your operations are simple enough that Shopify can be the system of record.
Adobe Commerce / Magento assumes the opposite. Your ERP owns the truth. The platform is a presentation layer that queries external systems for pricing, inventory, and customer data. This works when your ERP is genuinely the center of your operations, but it requires building and maintaining that integration infrastructure.
BigCommerce tries to be flexible about ownership. It can own data or defer to external systems. This middle ground works for some businesses and satisfies none completely.
Shopware follows the Magento philosophy (ERP as source of truth) but with a cleaner, more modern architecture. It’s built for complex B2B scenarios where external systems dictate pricing and inventory. The integration layer is more straightforward than Magento’s, but you still need development resources to maintain it.
The problem isn’t that any philosophy is wrong. The problem is that misalignment between your operational reality and the platform’s assumptions creates six-figure custom development projects that never fully resolve.
What this really means: Before evaluating features, determine who owns pricing, inventory, and customer data in your organization. If the answer is “our ERP,” eliminate any platform that insists on owning that data itself.
The Pricing Problem
This is where 80% of B2B platform failures originate.
B2C pricing is simple: a product has a price. Maybe a sale price. Maybe a member price. Three numbers.
B2B pricing is a matrix: customer-specific contracts, volume tiers, negotiated overrides, regional variations, cost-plus calculations, and prices that can’t be determined until the product is configured.
Every platform claims to handle B2B pricing. Here’s what that actually means:
| Pricing Complexity | Can Platform Handle Natively? | What Actually Happens |
|---|---|---|
| Customer tier pricing (Gold/Silver/Bronze) | Yes, all platforms | Works fine |
| Contract-specific price per customer | Some platforms | Breaks above 500 price lists |
| Real-time cost-plus from ERP | No platform | Requires external pricing API |
| Volume breaks with complex rules | Simple rules only | Complex rules need ERP calculation |
| CPQ (configure-price-quote) | No platform | Requires dedicated CPQ system |
We worked with a distributor whose platform handled 80% of their customers perfectly. But the 20% with negotiated contracts, who generated 60% of revenue, couldn’t check out. Their prices required SAP calculation. The platform’s pricing engine couldn’t defer to SAP. They spent eight months building middleware to intercept every price request.
That’s not a platform bug. That’s a predictable outcome when pricing complexity exceeds the platform’s model. It should have been caught in evaluation.
The Platform Reality Check
Stop comparing features. Start comparing failure points.
Shopify Plus
It works when: Your B2B operations are genuinely simple. Tiered pricing you can express in the admin panel. Standard products without configuration. An ERP that can accept being a downstream sync target rather than the source of truth.
It breaks when: You need real-time ERP pricing. You have customer hierarchies where child accounts inherit and override parent pricing. Your products require CPQ. Your inventory allocation rules can’t be expressed in Shopify’s model.
The honest truth: Shopify is the fastest path to a working B2B storefront. It’s also the hardest to escape when complexity outgrows it. The lock-in isn’t contractual. It’s architectural. You’ve built your operations around Shopify’s assumptions, and unwinding that is a replatforming project.
Adobe Commerce / Magento
It works when: Integration complexity requires complete control. Your ERP owns pricing and inventory, and the platform must defer. You have developers (internal or agency) who can maintain a complex codebase indefinitely.
It breaks when: You don’t have ongoing development resources. Your team expects changes without development cycles. Your TCO budget assumes licensing cost is the main expense.
The honest truth: Magento doesn’t say no. It will let you build anything. That flexibility is both its strength and its trap. We’ve inherited Magento projects that were so customized they couldn’t be upgraded, patched, or maintained by anyone except the original developer.
BigCommerce B2B Edition
It works when: You want SaaS simplicity with more B2B capability than Shopify. Your integration needs are moderate. Standard ERPs, standard data models. You can live with some constraints in exchange for lower maintenance.
It breaks when: You need deep checkout customization. Your ERP integration requires bidirectional real-time sync. You need the platform to bend to your processes rather than bending your processes to the platform.
The honest truth: BigCommerce occupies middle ground. More capable than Shopify for B2B, less flexible than Magento. It works when your requirements land exactly in its sweet spot. It frustrates when you’re at the edges.
Shopware
It works when: You need European market compliance (GDPR, EU tax rules) built in. You want open-source flexibility without Magento’s legacy complexity. Your team can work with a modern PHP stack. You need strong B2B features (customer-specific pricing, sales rep portals, quote management) without enterprise licensing costs.
It breaks when: You need a massive US-based agency ecosystem. Your team expects Shopify-level simplicity. You’re locked into a US-centric ERP with no European integration experience.
The honest truth: Shopware is the platform most US companies haven’t heard of but should consider. It’s mature, well-architected, and handles B2B complexity natively. The trade-off is a smaller North American partner ecosystem. If you’re selling into Europe or need serious B2B capability without Adobe Commerce pricing, Shopware belongs on your shortlist.
Salesforce B2B Commerce
It works when: You’re already a Salesforce shop. Your CRM owns customer relationships and you want commerce to extend that ownership. You have Salesforce developers who understand the platform’s paradigm.
It breaks when: You’re not already in Salesforce. You expect ecommerce-platform simplicity. Your integration strategy doesn’t position Salesforce as the hub.
The honest truth: This isn’t really an ecommerce platform. It’s commerce functionality built on the Salesforce platform. For Salesforce-native organizations, it can be powerful. For everyone else, you’re buying an ecosystem to get a feature.
If you’ve read this far, you probably have a sense of which platforms might work and which ones definitely won’t. The remaining question is how to validate that intuition before committing.
The Selection Process That Actually Works
Forget scoring matrices. The real process is elimination.
Step 1: Map your integration requirements. Where does the source of truth live for pricing, inventory, customers, and orders? Which integrations are non-negotiable? This single exercise eliminates half your options.
Step 2: Document your pricing edge cases. Not average customers. Your most complex customers. The ones with negotiated contracts, custom terms, volume commitments. If the platform can’t handle them, it can’t handle your business, regardless of how well it handles the simple cases.
Step 3: Calculate honest TCO. License cost is often the smallest component. Add implementation, integration, customization, and five years of maintenance. SaaS platforms with higher monthly fees often deliver lower TCO than open-source with “free” licensing but substantial development requirements.
Step 4: Build a proof of concept. Before final selection, validate that your critical integration actually works. Not on paper. In code. Connect the platform to your actual ERP with your actual data. A few weeks of validation is cheaper than discovering problems six months into implementation.
The Decision
B2B platform selection isn’t about finding the best platform. There is no best platform. There’s only the platform that fits your operational reality. Your integration requirements, your pricing complexity, your team’s capabilities.
Comparison sites will tell you which platform has the most features. We’re telling you features don’t matter. Architectural fit matters. Integration capability matters. Pricing model alignment matters.
Start with your constraints. Eliminate platforms that can’t accommodate them. Validate your assumptions with real proof-of-concept work. Then pick from whatever’s left.
That’s the selection process comparison sites don’t explain. It requires understanding your business, not just comparing checkboxes.
Evaluating B2B ecommerce platforms? We’ve implemented them all (Shopify, Magento, Shopware, BigCommerce, Salesforce, headless) and we know where each one breaks. Before you commit to a multi-year platform decision, we can help you identify which options actually fit your operations. That’s usually a 30-minute conversation.