Shopify B2B, Shopify Plus B2B, Shopify B2B alternatives, lumber yard eCommerce, building supply eCommerce
Shopify B2B vs ToolSwift for lumber yards: the US$1,368 app bill
October 5, 2026
Shopify B2B for a lumber yard means Plus, ten apps and an agency. ToolSwift builds in contractor credit, Moneris and LBM ERPs, from $399 a month.
Executive summary
Shopify B2B is Shopify's wholesale toolkit (company accounts, catalogs, payment terms), on every plan from Basic to Advanced since April 2, 2026; unlimited customer-specific catalogs need Plus, from CA$3,650 a month. A mid-size lumber yard adds about US$1,368 a month in apps. ToolSwift builds contractor credit, LBM ERP connectors and quoting in, from $399 a month.
I run ToolSwift. We build one thing: online stores and contractor portals for lumber yards, hardware stores and building supply dealers. Shopify builds online stores for everyone, and it reaches a lumber yard through its Plus plan, its App Store and its agency network.
That difference decides what you pay for. On ToolSwift, the things a yard needs are the product: contractor accounts that buy on credit, quotes that start from a photo of a materials list, connectors for Spruce, BisTrack, Eagle and the other LBM ERPs, Moneris as your own processor, live Orgill and Do it Best catalogs, delivery zones drawn around your trucks, and a branded app for your contractors. On Shopify, most of those are a subscription to someone else's app, or a build by someone else's developer.
I priced that app stack for a mid-size yard (10,000 to 15,000 products online, up to 1,000 online orders a month, one to four locations) from the App Store listings themselves. It comes to US$1,367.96 a month, or US$16,415.52 a year, before the Shopify plan, usage fees or any developer's time. Without the ERP middleware it is still US$617.96 a month.
Our price is one paragraph, in US dollars: $399 a month for the first store, $250 for each additional store, $99 a month for the branded mobile app, and $199 a month per store for the all-inclusive AI plan. One store with the app and AI is US$697 a month. No transaction fees, month to month with 30 days' notice.
A general store platform rents you the parts. A yard platform ships them.
Why I wrote this and how it's sourced
Shopify is the first name most people think of when they think "online store," so it's the comparison a dealer is most likely to run in their head before they ever call a vendor who works in lumber. This page runs it properly, against what a yard actually needs.
I'm comparing our platform with a competitor's, so read it knowing who wrote it. What I can offer is the sourcing. Every ToolSwift capability here is on our feature pages, such as quotes and payments, or in our published comparisons. Every Shopify fact comes from Shopify's own pricing pages, help center and changelog, or from App Store listings, all read on October 5, 2026. Each is linked in the Sources section. Where I looked for something on Shopify and couldn't find it, I say so in those words. That's different from saying it doesn't exist.
Two things about Shopify are easy to get wrong, so I'll set them straight up front. First, B2B is no longer Plus-only: since April 2, 2026, every plan from Basic to Advanced includes company profiles, payment terms, volume pricing and up to three active B2B catalogs. Second, the parts a yard leans on hardest, such as unlimited catalogs for customer-specific pricing, assigning a catalog directly to a company or location, deposits, partial payments, are still on Plus. A yard with 200 contractor accounts on negotiated pricing is, in practice, a Plus customer.
The sections follow the order a dealer usually evaluates in, starting with architecture and ending with implementation. The full comparison, group by group, sits near the end.
Built for one trade vs built for every store
ToolSwift is built for lumber, building supply and hardware; Shopify is built for every store, and a yard's specifics arrive through apps and partners.
What a ToolSwift store is
With ToolSwift you own a storefront built for your yard. The build starts with a design meeting: how your yard sells, how your customers search, what the homepage should push in April versus November. We build the site on our own component library, so custom doesn't mean starting from a blank page, and it doesn't mean an agency-sized bill.
Behind it sit two front ends on one catalog. A retail storefront on your own domain serves homeowners and walk-in buyers. A separate contractor dashboard, with a native branded app, serves your trade accounts. Both read from a native PIM, so the product record lives in ToolSwift rather than being copied out of your ERP.
The ERP is a connector. ToolSwift is headless and API-first. Storefront, catalog, pricing, orders, users, integrations: all of it lives in the platform, and your ERP connects to that API like any other data source. All data is available through our REST API, so a dealer with developers can point their own front end at it. If you change ERPs in four years, you swap a connector, and your storefront, your catalog, your customer accounts and your URLs stay where they are.
After launch, you manage content through a headless CMS and the store through the admin dashboard. Anything under about fifteen minutes of developer time, we just do, at no charge.
Built for one trade
Every line of our roadmap is lumber, building materials and hardlines. Two front ends for homeowners and contractors, quotes from a photo of a list, delivery zones drawn around real routes and distributor stock sold online without touching the yard are the core of the product. Nobody had to find them in an app store.
How Shopify is put together
Shopify is a general SaaS commerce platform with an app ecosystem around it. It supports headless builds as well, so "headless" alone doesn't separate the two. What separates them is what sits behind the API: on Shopify, B2B features are a layer inside a platform designed for every merchant, and anything specific to a trade is added by an app developer or a Shopify Partner.
Shopify's own Plus pricing page tells merchants to budget for partners, custom development and themes, plus "any third-party apps you need." The median store in Koala's September 2026 study of the 300 highest-traffic Shopify stores runs 14 apps.
Impact
On ToolSwift, contractor accounts, quoting, the LBM ERP connector, the native app and delivery zones come with the platform and are maintained by one team. On Shopify, a yard assembles those from apps, each with its own developer, its own bill and its own support desk. The more specific your trade, the more of your store lives outside the platform you're paying for.
ERP integration: Spruce, BisTrack, Eagle and the rest
ToolSwift connects to sixteen named ERP and accounting systems, including the LBM systems yards actually run; I couldn't find a Shopify App Store connector for any of the LBM ones.
The sixteen we connect to
We connect to Epicor BisTrack, Eagle, Prophet 21 and Eclipse; ECI Spruce and Deacom; DMSi Agility and Frameworks; Paladin, Genetiq, Sandbox ERP, Profit Master, PRISM and Ogasys/Acceo; and QuickBooks and NetSuite. Most of those are the systems lumber yards, building supply dealers and hardware stores in North America run every day, and the list grew because dealers asked for them one at a time. The wider set of connections (accounting, POS, shipping, marketing) is on our integrations page.
Every connector is built the same way, against the same architecture. Pricing and inventory sync in real time where the ERP supports it. Customer accounts, credit limits and net terms flow through from your system, so a contractor sees their real available credit in the dashboard.
How a connection gets built
Connecting your ERP is our job, done on our side as part of onboarding. If yours is one of the sixteen, it's configuration. If it's one we haven't met, we build the connector and then we own it. If you run something uncommon or built in-house, we do a feasibility assessment for free before we quote, so you know whether your system is workable before you've spent a dollar.
That ownership matters at 6 a.m. on a Monday, when a price file didn't sync. An integration with one owner has one phone number.
Keep your ERP, change the storefront
You spent years setting up your ERP the way your business runs: pricing, branches, job accounts, delivery. None of that has to move for you to change what your customers see. I made the same case to BisTrack dealers weighing Epicor's own store in my BisTrack comparison, and to Spruce dealers in my EvolutionX comparison.
What Shopify lists
Shopify's certified Global ERP Program collection in the App Store lists five connectors: NetSuite (from US$199.92 a month), Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Brightpearl by Sage, Acumatica and Infor eCommerce Connector. Its B2B page points to "Acumatica, NetSuite, Microsoft, and more through out-of-the-box connectors, or use Shopify APIs and iPaaS solutions."
I searched the App Store listings for BisTrack, Spruce, Eagle, Profit Master, PRISM, Paladin and Ogasys/Acceo and could not find a connector for any of them. Integrators who connect BisTrack to Shopify Plus describe doing it through middleware such as DCKAP, Jitterbit or Celigo, or through the BisTrack Web API. Celigo's integrator.io Standard plan lists at US$9,000 a year in the App Store.
Support follows the same lines. Shopify's help center says Shopify supports the apps Shopify makes; issues with a third-party app go to that app's developer. On a Shopify yard, the ERP link and the store are two vendors, and the middleware may be a third.
Impact
If you run Spruce, BisTrack, Eagle, Profit Master, PRISM, Paladin or Ogasys/Acceo, ToolSwift already has the connector and maintains it. On Shopify, I couldn't find one for any of those seven, so the link runs through middleware or a custom build, and its upkeep sits with whoever you hired.
Shopify B2B pricing: Plus and US$1,368 a month in apps
ToolSwift publishes one price with no transaction fees; Shopify's plan price is the start of a yard's bill, with apps, a processor fee and a build on top.
Ours, in one paragraph
$399 a month for the first store, in US dollars. $250 a month for each additional store. The branded mobile app is $99 a month, one price for the business, not per store. AI is billed on usage, or the all-inclusive AI plan is $199 a month per store. Every store includes 500 SMS text messages a month. No transaction fees. Month to month, with 30 days' notice.
One store with the app and the AI plan, the setup this article compares, is US$697 a month. A three-location dealer is $899 a month for the platform, or $1,595 with the app and the AI plan on every store. You can work out your own number without talking to anyone. The monthly fee is the platform: there's no separate hosting or licensing line, search is included for every client, and our cost is flat whether a location sells $30,000 online or $3 million. Integrations are quoted with onboarding, so you pay for the connectors you use and nothing else.
We don't take a percentage of what you sell. A platform that grows its own bill every time you have a good quarter has its incentives pointed the wrong way.
Shopify's plans
On Shopify's Canadian pricing page, Basic is CA$49 a month billed monthly (CA$37 billed yearly), Grow is CA$132 (CA$99) and Advanced is CA$517 (CA$389). Plus starts at CA$3,650 a month on a one-year term, or CA$3,400 a month on a three-year term. Shopify's Plus help page gives the same plan as US$2,500 a month on one year or US$2,300 on three. Shopify also lists "a variable platform fee for more complex business structures" for Plus and doesn't publish the rate.
Which plan does a yard need? Since April 2, 2026, B2B runs on every plan from Basic to Advanced with up to three active B2B catalogs. Three catalogs is three price lists. Unlimited catalogs for customer-specific pricing, and assigning a catalog directly to a company or location, stay on Plus. So contractor-by-contractor pricing on Shopify means Plus.
The fee on your own processor
Shopify charges a fee on every transaction that runs through a processor other than Shopify Payments: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus. Shopify's help center says it applies "on all third-party and alternate payment gateways even when Shopify Payments is activated."
Here's the arithmetic for a dealer who keeps Moneris. On every 1 million dollars of online sales through Moneris, Shopify's fee is 2,000 on Plus, 6,000 on Advanced, 10,000 on Grow and 20,000 on Basic, before Moneris charges its own rate. ToolSwift charges no transaction fee on any processor.
The app stack a yard needs
This is the part nobody prices out loud, so I did. I took a mid-size yard (10,000 to 15,000 products online, up to 1,000 online orders a month, one to four locations) and found an App Store app for each thing a yard needs that Shopify's native B2B doesn't cover: quote requests, wholesale price rules, delivery dates, a branded mobile app, search across 15,000 products, an ERP link, selling by length, e-signatures, a loyalty program that reaches B2B accounts, and net-terms tracking. I used the plan on each listing that fits the assumed yard.
The total is US$1,367.96 a month, or US$16,415.52 a year. Without the ERP middleware it's US$617.96 a month. None of that includes the Shopify plan, usage fees, or the developer accounts some apps bill separately (Celigo's listing says external charges may be billed outside your Shopify invoice). Net Terms Tracker Pro includes per-customer credit limits at checkout; Credit Control for B2B Pro, at US$19 a month, is the dedicated alternative. If you want a bigger mobile app builder, Tapcart's plans list at US$500, US$1,250 and US$2,850 a month.
On ToolSwift, quoting, contractor pricing, delivery windows, search, signatures, loyalty, net terms and credit limits are in the platform, the native app is $99 a month, and the Takeoff Agent runs on the AI plan. Your ERP connector is quoted with onboarding.
The build
A Shopify agency quoted us $15,000 for a build. That's one agency's quote, and it isn't Shopify's price. For range, Shopify's own Partner Directory lists IT-Geeks builds from US$10,000 and ShopCreatify builds at US$40,000 to US$100,000.
The contract
ToolSwift is month to month, with 30 days' notice. A longer agreement is your choice, not a requirement, and saves up to 10% on two years or up to 15% on three. Shopify Plus is sold on a one-year or three-year term. I couldn't find a Shopify page describing early termination of a Plus contract; in a Shopify Community thread on ending a Plus contract early, merchants report being held to the full three-year term and refused a downgrade. Those are merchants' accounts, not Shopify's policy, and they're worth asking about in writing.
Impact
For one store with the app and the AI plan, the first year on ToolSwift is US$8,364. On Plus, the platform alone is US$30,000 on a one-year term (US$2,500 a month), before a US$16,415.52 app stack, a build, and 0.2% on every Moneris transaction. The second table is the same comparison line by line.
Shopify B2B means one blended store or two stores
ToolSwift runs a retail storefront and a separate contractor experience on one shared catalog; Shopify runs B2B either inside the retail store or in a second store.
Two buyers, one website
Two completely different people arrive at a lumber yard's website. A homeowner wants a deck. They don't know what a 2x8x16 is, they want photos, a price and a delivery date, and if the site feels like software they leave. A contractor wants to reorder what he bought last Tuesday, on his account, at his pricing, in under a minute. Anything built to charm the homeowner is in his way.
How ToolSwift splits it
ToolSwift runs two purpose-built experiences on a single catalog. The retail storefront on your domain is built like retail: browsing, imagery, product pages with real content, search for people who don't know the SKU, and checkout without a login requirement. The contractor dashboard and app are their own interface, built around how trade customers reorder.
A few details matter at a yard. The store selector uses geolocation to send each visitor to their nearest location, so they see that store's prices and stock immediately. Products you don't stock but can get from Orgill, Do it Best or Emery Jensen appear live, labeled "Available Online Only." Special-order items can be listed without a price, as quote requests rather than add-to-cart. Bulk pricing tiers show right on product pages, and bundles carry their own pricing.
One catalog, segmented
One PIM, one set of product content, one price book feeds both sides. Enrich a product once and it's enriched in both places. Customers sit in groups, and you choose which products each group sees, so some items show only to logged-in trade accounts. You can build a B2B catalog for a set of accounts with negotiated pricing and quantity tiers, and run banner promotions aimed only at B2B customers, separate from retail ones.
Marketing runs from the same dashboard: email and SMS campaigns through Klaviyo and ActiveCampaign, targeted by customer or customer group, and a loyalty program built in, where customers see and redeem points in their own dashboard.
How Shopify handles it
Shopify's help center describes two store types. A blended store runs B2B and retail together; it can't gate the store to B2B buyers only, and both channels share inventory. A dedicated B2B store is a separate Shopify store.
For marketing, Shopify Messaging (formerly Shopify Email) includes the first 10,000 emails a month, then charges from US$1 per 1,000. I couldn't find a native points or tier loyalty program; Shopify has native store credit, issued by the merchant. Loyalty comes from apps: Smile's Standard plan is US$79 a month and its listing doesn't state B2B support, while BON Loyalty includes a "B2B tiers program" only on its US$129 Growth plan.
Impact
On ToolSwift, the homeowner and the contractor each get a front end built for them, from one catalog you maintain once, with B2B-only promotions and loyalty in the same dashboard. On Shopify, you choose between one blended store that can't be gated and two stores to run, and loyalty that reaches contractor accounts is a US$129 monthly app.
Credit limits at checkout: built in, or a Shopify app
ToolSwift enforces each contractor's credit limit at checkout; Shopify's B2B documentation describes payment terms but no credit-limit enforcement.
A contractor's morning on ToolSwift
It's 6:40 and a framer is in his truck. He opens your app, the one with your logo on his home screen, and his account is already there: his company, his pricing, his available credit. He reorders last week's materials in a few clicks, adds two items from his wishlist and checks out on account. Checkout knows his credit limit and enforces it, so nobody at your counter has to catch an over-limit order by hand.
At 9:15 a push notification tells him the order status changed. At noon he messages your counter about a second drop, inside the same order thread, with a photo of the site access. On Friday his invoice appears in the dashboard, and he pays it with the card he already vaulted.
Nothing in that morning needed a phone call.
How accounts are structured
ToolSwift separates company and user accounts. One company account carries several individual logins (an owner, a purchasing lead, a foreman), each with its own role and activation status. Customers are classed as Pro or Regular, tax exemption is a toggle, and each Pro account can carry a credit limit, with the available balance, credit due and usage visible to both sides. Custom pricing and discounts follow client type and order volume.
Around the order: bulk ordering and one-click reorder, real-time tracking with status updates, a choice of delivery or pickup, payment history, downloadable invoices and statements, and wishlists that turn into purchases. Messaging sits on the order or quote it concerns, and connects to SMS and WhatsApp Business. Credit applications, quotes, delivery confirmations and waivers are signed in the platform.
When a contractor phones and asks your counter to put it through, your staff create the order in the admin, choose the channel and add the products.
What Shopify's B2B documents
Shopify B2B has companies, with up to 10,000 locations each and contact roles of "Ordering only" or "Location admin." Payment terms run Net 7 to Net 90, due on fulfillment, or a fixed date. Shopify's help center adds: "Payments aren't automatically captured when the payment terms expire."
I couldn't find native credit-limit enforcement in Shopify's B2B docs. The Credit Control for B2B listing in the App Store puts it plainly: native B2B "can't stop a wholesale company that's over its credit limit ... from ordering again." Shopify's B2B docs don't describe job or project accounts either.
Shopify's own list of B2B incompatibilities includes local delivery, pickup points, accelerated checkouts (Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay) and subscriptions. Pickup in store is off by default for B2B and is turned on through Shopify Support. Orders and draft orders cap at 500 line items.
Impact
On ToolSwift, a contractor's company, users, credit limit, terms, invoices live in one account that checkout respects, on the app in his truck. On Shopify, terms exist, credit limits are an app, collection at term end is manual, and the two ways a yard hands over lumber (local delivery and pickup) need a workaround or a support ticket for B2B buyers.
A quote from a photo, or a Shopify draft order
On ToolSwift, a quote starts from whatever the contractor sends, through the Takeoff Agent; on Shopify, a quote is a draft order or an app.
The translation is the work
For most building supply dealers, quoting is the business. A contractor sends a materials list, somebody inside turns it into priced line items, and whoever comes back first with something accurate usually gets the order.
The bottleneck is the translation. A request arrives as a takeoff, a spreadsheet, a photo of a handwritten list or a voicemail. Somebody has to turn "2x6-16 PT" and "1/2 CDX" into your SKUs. Everything else is formatting.
What the Takeoff Agent does
The Takeoff Agent is live. It turns a contractor's voice note, photo, scan, takeoff or file (CSV or PDF) into a draft quote for your staff to review. It reads trade shorthand against your catalog, with that account's pricing applied, and produces a draft your team checks before it goes out.
Interpretation won't be perfect, and a person reviewing before the customer sees it is the right design. The gain is the difference between reviewing a draft that's mostly right and building a quote from nothing.
It also changes who can quote. Turning a takeoff into SKUs takes years of product knowledge, which is why only two or three people at most branches do it well. Reviewing a close draft takes far less, so more of your counter can carry the load.
How a ToolSwift quote moves
The draft lands in your quoting dashboard. Staff can also build and send quotes for a customer. Each quote gets an assigned rep, a due date and a revision history, and the list filters by period, status, customer, quote ID or rep. The customer and your team discuss it in a thread attached to the quote, and the contractor can sign it in the platform. Quote emails carry scheduled reminders before the due date.
When it's approved, the quote converts to an order with the same lines and pricing, on the same account, with nothing re-entered. The contractor gets a push notification when a quote is ready, and keeps the whole history in the dashboard and the app.
Assist AI, our AI assistant that helps staff reply to emails and builds quotes from the conversation, is in review.
How Shopify quotes
Shopify has no native quote object. Its help center describes draft orders, which you create "on behalf of your customer and then send them an invoice." Draft orders created on or after April 1, 2025 are deleted after a year of inactivity. Shopify added price locks on drafts on December 11, 2024. B2B buyers can also submit a checkout for approval, which creates a draft. I couldn't find revision history for drafts in Shopify's docs.
A customer-facing quote request comes from an app; QS Request a Quote Pro lists at US$36.99 a month. Every path starts from products a buyer finds and adds, or from staff typing them in.
Impact
ToolSwift turns what a contractor actually sends, a photo, a voice note or a takeoff, into a priced draft your team reviews, then carries it through a rep and revisions to a signature and an order, without re-entry. On Shopify, a quote is a draft order someone builds by hand, or an app's form, and an untouched draft disappears after a year.
Orgill and Do it Best stock live, with no Shopify app found
ToolSwift's native PIM sells distributor stock live from Orgill, Do it Best and Emery Jensen; I couldn't find a Shopify app for any of the three.
Selling more than you stock
The biggest online opportunity for most dealers is everything you could get, beyond what's in the yard. Say you stock 8,000 SKUs and could source 70,000 through Orgill or Do it Best. The other 62,000 are orders going elsewhere because nobody knows you can get them.
Distributor stock, live
We integrate directly with Orgill, Do it Best and Emery Jensen. Products from the distributor's DC appear in your storefront, read live via API and labeled "Available Online Only." An item you don't stock can ship to the customer straight from the distribution center at the DC's shipping rate, without touching your yard.
Distributor data arrives thin: truncated descriptions, missing attributes, one weak photo. Enrichment is work we do. We clean up descriptions, specs, images, and map the data against your ERP or POS item file, your part numbers and your items. The result is your catalog, yours to keep.
Lumber is sold in lengths
A 2x10 comes in lengths from 8 to 16 feet, in several grades, some treated. In ToolSwift each variant carries its own attributes and images, its own price and its own inventory, so every length has its own price and its own stock count. Categories nest three levels deep and restructure by drag and drop. Products load manually or by bulk CSV, bulk price changes take a few clicks, and dimensions and weights feed shipping costs. AI writes product descriptions and SEO tags and categorizes products by attributes like material, dimensions, color.
How Shopify handles the catalog
Shopify allows up to 2,048 variants per product across at most three options, and its help center warns that "some third-party themes might not support more than 100 variants." Species, grade, treatment, dimension and length are five attributes for three option slots. Unit pricing is there to "display the price per unit" in feet, yards or meters; it's display only. A length calculator comes from an app, such as Easify Product Options Pro at US$9.99 a month.
I couldn't find an App Store app for Orgill, Do it Best or Emery Jensen catalogs.
Impact
On ToolSwift, your catalog reaches as far as your distributors, with DC drop-ship and enrichment mapped to your own item file. On Shopify, the catalog is what you load, inside three options per product, and selling by length is an app.
Shopify filters stop at 5,000 products per collection
ToolSwift includes hybrid search for every client and opens your catalog to AI crawlers by default; Shopify's native search needs exact matches on tags and barcodes, and its agent checkout is for US buyers only.
Search for both buyers
ToolSwift search runs a hybrid model. Exact matching serves the contractor who types a part number and should get that part. Semantic matching serves the homeowner who describes the job in words that appear nowhere in your catalog. Natural-language and visual search sit on top, and search reads directly from the unified catalog, distributor stock included. It's in the platform for every client.
What Shopify's native search does
Shopify's search-behavior page says typo tolerance applies only to product title, product type, variant title and vendor. Tags and barcodes need exact matches. A partial SKU matches only across hyphens. Filters stop at scale: "Collections that contain more than 5,000 products don't display filters," with a maximum of 25 filters per store. A yard with 15,000 products online meets that limit in its first big category, which is why the stack above includes Searchanise Advanced at US$89 a month.
Being found by people who don't know you
Someone a few towns over types "pressure treated 2x6 near me," or asks an AI assistant where to buy cedar decking. Whether your product pages show up is decided by how they render and whether crawlers get in.
ToolSwift storefronts render server-side, with incremental static rendering where it helps, so a crawler receives a complete page with name, price, specs. Sitemaps generate from the catalog automatically. Only the API and the customer portal paths are closed to crawlers, so GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended can read your catalog unless you decide otherwise. Products sync to Google Merchant Center from the platform, and Google Analytics data feeds into ToolSwift's analytics next to your orders. We've implemented the Universal Commerce Protocol, the standard Shopify co-developed with Google and announced on January 11, 2026.
Who the AI serves
Both platforms have AI. The difference is who it's for. Shopify's Sidekick and Shopify Magic are assistants in the merchant's admin. Shopify's agentic storefronts reach ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, the Gemini app and Copilot, and Shopify's own blog says "purchasing across all channels is currently available to US buyers only."
ToolSwift's Takeoff Agent serves the contractor: he hands over a photo or a voice note and gets a quote back. Around it, AI recommends products from purchase history and runs chatbots that answer customer questions around the clock. On the admin side it writes descriptions and tags, and flags potentially fraudulent orders.
Impact
On ToolSwift, search handles part numbers and plain-language descriptions across your whole catalog, crawlers can read it, and the AI works for your contractor. On Shopify, search past 5,000 products per collection is an app, and agent checkout leaves out Canadian buyers.
Mobile: a native app for the contractor
ToolSwift ships a native, branded app for your contractors with the platform; on Shopify, a branded app is a builder subscription.
Where your contractor actually is
Your contractor isn't at a desk. He's in a truck at 6:40, or outside a supply yard deciding whether to drive to you or to the box store eight minutes further on.
What the ToolSwift app does
The ToolSwift app downloads from the App Store or Google Play under your brand. It carries the whole contractor dashboard: quotes, orders, invoices, statements, the catalog and messaging. A contractor orders on site, checks an invoice from the truck or reorders between jobs.
Because it's native, it sends push notifications to the lock screen: an order status update, a quote ready for approval, an invoice due, a message from your counter. And it reaches the camera, the most useful input on a job site, because the camera sees the broken bracket, the profile that needs matching and the handwritten list. That's where the Takeoff Agent earns its keep.
An icon on the home screen gets used. A bookmark in a browser, behind a login, gets forgotten.
What Shopify offers
Shopify's own mobile app for shoppers is Shop, where merchants get a storefront inside Shopify's app, next to every other Shopify merchant. A branded app under your own name comes from an app builder: Plobal's Growth plan lists at US$199 a month and Tapcart's Growth plan at US$500 a month.
Impact
ToolSwift's contractor app carries your brand, your contractor's account and his credit, with push and the camera, as part of the platform. On Shopify, your brand sits inside Shop, or you pay a builder US$199 (Plobal Growth) to US$500 (Tapcart Growth) a month for your own app.
Delivery, pickup and multi-location yards
ToolSwift prices delivery by zones you draw on a map, with windows and cut-offs per zone; Shopify's local delivery stops at 10 zones per location and doesn't work for B2B orders.
Lumber isn't a parcel
A yard doesn't ship cartons. A load goes to a site with restricted access, on a day the crew is there, and the cost depends on distance and trips far more than weight. What the customer cares about most is the date.
How ToolSwift handles fulfillment
ToolSwift has three fulfillment methods, Pickup, Delivery and Shipping, and each switches on or off down to the individual product. Lumber can be delivery-only, fasteners can ship, special orders can be pickup at the branch.
Delivery pricing for your fleet is set on an interactive map. You build zones by zip code, city, state or country, draw your real delivery radius, run several zones at once and give each its own pricing tier. Delivery policies set methods and rates, handling times, delivery windows, cut-off times for same-day orders, and rules by region or zone. Buy online pick up in store and curbside pickup run alongside delivery. Parcel shipping connects through Shippo or ShipStation with tracking. Distributor items drop-ship from the DC. More on the shipping feature page.
Several yards, one platform
The store selector sends each visitor to their nearest location by geolocation, with that yard's prices and stock. Each location can be enabled for fulfillment, so orders go where the stock is, and locations stay synced in real time. Staff accounts are limited by role and store.
How Shopify handles delivery and locations
Shopify's local delivery sets zones by postal code or radius, with "up to 10 delivery zones per location" and a maximum radius of 160 kilometers (100 miles). Its local delivery docs don't describe customer delivery dates or time slots; date pickers and LTL freight quotes come from apps, such as Bird's Growth plan at US$49.99 a month. Carrier-calculated shipping is on Advanced and Plus; Grow needs an extra fee or yearly billing. And local delivery is on Shopify's list of features incompatible with B2B.
Every plan from Basic to Advanced allows 10 locations; Plus allows 200. Order routing can "ship from the closest location." Per-location retail pricing needs POS Pro or Plus. Nearest-store pickup availability depends on a theme that supports it, or "a Shopify Partner" can build it, and I couldn't find a native yard selector that switches price and stock by location.
Impact
On ToolSwift, a contractor gets delivery priced by your real zones, with windows and cut-offs, from the yard nearest him. On Shopify, local delivery isn't available to B2B buyers, delivery dates are an app, and a selector that changes price and stock by yard is theme or partner work.
Payments in Canada: Moneris, Interac and your terms
ToolSwift keeps your processor, including Moneris, with no transaction fees and Moneris card vaulting for contractors; Shopify charges its own fee on Moneris and vaults B2B cards only on Shopify Payments.
Your processor, your rates
ToolSwift is gateway-agnostic: Stripe, VersaPay, Clover, Square and Moneris. You connect your own processor, keep your rates and your banking relationship, and funds settle directly to you. We aren't in the flow, we don't hold a balance, and we charge no transaction fees.
For Canadian dealers, native card vaulting through Moneris tokenizes a contractor's card, so repeat orders don't need a new payment link. ToolSwift also takes credit cards, cash, net terms, ACH, credit balances for prepayments and credit-card-free bank payments through Konek, including Interac Direct.
Terms and AR in one place
Checkout enforces each account's credit limit. Your team watches overdue balances in real time, sends bulk payment requests, shares payment links by SMS and email and tracks each request. Every B2B invoice sits in one place, marked paid, pending or overdue, and contractors see their credit limit, available credit and outstanding balance with a "Make a Payment" button. Details are on the payments page.
What Shopify's help center says
Shopify charges its third-party fee on Moneris online: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced, 0.2% on Plus, on top of Moneris's own rate, and "even when Shopify Payments is activated." Shopify Payments in Canada runs 2.8% + 30¢ online on Basic down to 2.15% + 30¢ on Plus, with a minimum settlement time of 3 days.
For B2B, vaulted cards are "available only to merchants that use Shopify Payments." Vaulted bank accounts are for US merchants and US bank accounts only, and I couldn't find Canadian pre-authorized debit or EFT in Shopify's B2B docs. Shopify Payments Canada lists Interac debit for in-person transactions, not online checkout.
At the counter, Shopify says card readers require Shopify Payments, and "Moneris Semi-integrated terminals are handled as a separate payment provider in Shopify POS, and orders paid with Moneris might not support all Shopify POS return or exchange workflows."
Impact
A Canadian yard on ToolSwift keeps Moneris, vaults contractor cards through it, takes Interac Direct through Konek and pays no platform fee on any of it. On Shopify, keeping Moneris costs a Shopify fee on every sale, vaulted B2B cards require switching to Shopify Payments, and bank-account vaulting is for US accounts. If you're on Moneris, that list decides the question before anything else does.
Shopify POS drops a contractor's company pricing
ToolSwift connects to the counter system you already run and records each order's channel; Shopify's answer at the counter is Shopify POS, where B2B company prices don't apply.
Your counter stays your counter
Your counter runs on your ERP or POS, and your staff know it cold. ToolSwift connects to it rather than replacing it: the sixteen ERP and accounting connectors above, plus POS systems including Lightspeed and Square. Every order records its sales channel, POS or online, so analytics compare the two by location, and phone or counter orders your staff enter in the admin run through the same system as online ones.
That means a contractor's account, pricing, credit are the same whether he buys at the counter, on the app or on the phone with your inside sales rep.
What Shopify POS means for a yard
Shopify POS Pro is CA$119 a month per location, and casual in-person selling is "included with every paid plan"; Plus includes 20 POS Pro locations. Shopify's help center says "Company-specific prices for B2B markets aren't available for retail purchases," so a contractor's negotiated prices don't follow him to a Shopify POS sale. POS draft orders are only on POS Pro locations. In a Shopify Community thread on selling to B2B companies in POS, merchants have asked for B2B company selling at the counter since October 2024, with posts as recent as July 2026.
Impact
On ToolSwift, the counter keeps running on the system you chose, and the contractor's account is the same everywhere he buys. On Shopify, moving the counter onto Shopify POS costs CA$119 a month per location below Plus, and the contractor's company pricing stays online.
Shopify gives a contractor the homeowner's return rules
ToolSwift sets return policies per product or category and reports by location across POS and online; Shopify applies one set of return rules to retail and B2B orders alike.
Returns at a yard
A yard takes back a box of screws gladly and a custom-cut beam never. ToolSwift return and refund policies are set per product or category: return windows, who covers return shipping, refund methods, and automated refund conditions and approvals, applied to eligible orders automatically. Analytics track return rates by product and the impact of returns and refunds on sales.
Shopify's return rules cover windows, a return shipping fee, a restocking fee and final-sale items by product or collection. They apply to standard and B2B orders alike; Shopify says separate B2B return rules aren't available. Return rules on POS need POS Pro, customers can't request exchanges in self-serve returns, and where Shopify Payments is available, third-party gateway transaction fees aren't refunded.
Reporting by yard
ToolSwift's analytics track sales over time with period comparisons, top products and categories, gross margins and average order value, and revenue by location, payment method and customer type (Pro versus Regular). Order analytics cover POS and online orders together, with fulfillment times and repeat rates. Inventory analytics flag fast-moving and dead stock. Sales, orders, returns, products sold compare by location, so you see which yard is pulling its weight.
Impact
On ToolSwift, a contractor's returns follow the rules you set per product, and every yard's numbers sit in one dashboard across counter and online. On Shopify, a trade account gets the same return rules as a homeowner.
Implementation and support: weeks, one team
ToolSwift launches in weeks with one team and 24/7 human support; Shopify's own enterprise estimate for migrations with complex integrations is 12 to 16 weeks.
How a ToolSwift launch runs
We run the whole implementation ourselves, with one project team and one dedicated account manager: requirements, data migration, the ERP or POS integration, the design of your retail and contractor sides, catalog setup with pricing, staff training, launch. The team sets milestones with your staff and keeps disruption at the counter to a minimum. Onboarding is quoted to your catalog and integrations, and you know that number before you start.
After launch, you get 24/7 human support from people with full-stack access to your platform.
Enrichment is part of our project rather than homework afterward. When you compare timelines, ask how many products will be properly enriched on launch day, and who does the rest.
What Shopify says
Shopify's enterprise blog says "simple stores might complete in 6-8 weeks. Enterprise migrations with complex integrations typically run 12-16 weeks." Its B2B replatforming guide lays out phases of 2 to 4 weeks for discovery, 4 to 6 for selection, 6 to 8 for data preparation and 8 to 12 for implementation.
Phone support from Shopify is available on Plus, POS Pro or the Retail plan; chat is on all plans. For each app in the stack, support comes from that app's developer.
Impact
On ToolSwift, one team builds the store, the connector and the catalog, and the same team answers at any hour. On Shopify, the platform, the agency, the middleware and ten apps each have their own support line, and a problem between two of them belongs to nobody in particular.
The bottom line
ToolSwift is the platform built for a lumber yard, and Shopify is a platform a lumber yard can be built on, with Plus, apps and an agency.
What ToolSwift gives a yard
A custom retail storefront on your domain and a separate contractor dashboard with a native branded app, on one catalog you own. Connectors for Spruce, BisTrack, Eagle, DMSi Agility, Paladin, Profit Master, PRISM, Ogasys/Acceo and the rest of sixteen named systems, built and maintained by us. Credit limits enforced at checkout, net terms and AR in one dashboard. Quotes from a photo, a voice note or a takeoff through the Takeoff Agent. Orgill, Do it Best and Emery Jensen stock sold online and drop-shipped from the DC. Delivery zones drawn around your real routes. Moneris or any of our gateways, with no transaction fees. And a price you can read today: $399 a month for the first store, $250 per additional store, $99 for the app, $199 per store for the AI plan, month to month.
What a yard adds on Shopify
Plus for contractor-specific pricing, from CA$3,650 a month on a one-year term. About US$1,368 a month in apps for quoting, delivery dates, a branded app, search, an ERP link, selling by length, signatures, B2B loyalty and net terms. A Shopify fee of 0.2% to 2% on every Moneris sale. A build: a Shopify agency quoted us $15,000. And a one-year or three-year term.
The decision rule
If your contractors buy on account, your ERP is one of the LBM systems, and you take Moneris, count how many of those three Shopify covers natively. Each one it doesn't is a monthly app or a custom build, with its own vendor.
If you want to see a contractor quote built from a photo against your own catalog, book a ToolSwift demo.
The full comparison, group by group
Each table matches a section above: ToolSwift builds the LBM ERPs, contractor credit, quoting from what contractors send, a native app and your own processor into the platform at a published price, while Shopify reaches them through Plus and apps from other vendors.
FAQ
Is Shopify good for B2B?
Shopify B2B covers company accounts, payment terms, volume pricing and up to three B2B catalogs on every plan from Basic to Advanced, with unlimited customer-specific catalogs on Plus. For a lumber yard, its help center lists local delivery as incompatible with B2B, pickup is off by default, and credit-limit enforcement, quote requests, delivery dates come from apps.
Does Shopify work with Moneris?
Yes, as a third-party gateway, with Shopify's transaction fee on top: 2% on Basic down to 0.2% on Plus, even when Shopify Payments is active. B2B vaulted cards need Shopify Payments, and at POS, Shopify handles Moneris semi-integrated terminals as a separate payment provider. ToolSwift runs Moneris with no transaction fee and vaults contractor cards through it.
Does Shopify integrate with BisTrack or Spruce?
I couldn't find a Shopify App Store connector for BisTrack, Spruce, Eagle, Paladin or the other LBM ERPs. Integrators connect BisTrack to Shopify Plus through middleware such as Celigo, Jitterbit or DCKAP; Celigo's Standard plan lists at US$9,000 a year. ToolSwift has its own connectors for Spruce, BisTrack and fourteen other ERP and accounting systems.
How much does Shopify Plus B2B cost?
Shopify Plus starts at CA$3,650 a month on a one-year term or CA$3,400 on three years (US$2,500 or US$2,300 on Shopify's help page), plus a variable platform fee for complex businesses that Shopify doesn't publish. B2B is included; apps, a build and third-party processor fees are extra.
Sources
All pages read on October 5, 2026, unless a date is given.
ToolSwift:
ToolSwift features: Quotes, Orders, Payments, Shipping, Integrations, Customers, Products, Pro accounts, Analytics, Marketing, Messages, Store locations, Policies, AI features
Shopify pricing and support:
Shopify B2B and quoting:
Shopify payments, POS, returns:
Shopify catalog, search, delivery, locations, AI:
Shopify App Store listings (US$ prices):
Third parties:
Related in ToolSwift
Accounts your customers run themselves
Pricing, orders, invoices and credit in one login, on desktop and in the app.