The two words describe different jobs
Nobody agrees on these terms, which is why the search results are so bad. Vendors call whatever they sell a portal, and buyers use the word for anything with a login. So set the labels aside and describe the jobs.
A A B2B customer portal is the logged-in area where a business customer looks up their own orders, invoices, quotes and pricing without phoning anyone. Ordering may or may not be part of it. What is b2b customer portal? is an account window. A signed-in customer sees their own history: orders placed, invoices, statements, shipment tracking, sometimes documents and warranty records. Almost every ERP ships one, because the data is already there and the portal is a view over it. Acumatica has a customer portal, Cin7 Core has a B2B portal, and NetSuite has a customer centre. They cost less than a storefront because they’re mostly configuration.
A storefront takes an order. To do that it has to answer four questions in real time, for this specific buyer: what may they see, what does it cost them, can they have it, and are they allowed to buy it. That’s a harder job than showing a record, and it’s where the integration work lives.
The four questions that decide it
Answer these about your actual customers rather than about the software. If any answer is yes, a portal on its own won’t carry you, and the sooner that is established the cheaper the project gets.
| Criterion | The question | A portal can do this | You need a storefront when |
|---|---|---|---|
| What may this buyer see? | Do different customers see different products, or the same catalogue? | Show everything the account has bought before, which is a reasonable proxy for a reorder list. | Assortment differs by contract, region or agreement, and showing the wrong item is a commercial problem. That’s Catalogue entitlement is the rule that decides which products a specific customer is allowed to see and buy. A dealer might see the full range, an end customer a subset, and a competitor nothing at all. What is catalogue entitlement?. |
| What does it cost them?A past invoice is a record. A price on a product page is a promise. | Is there one price per item, or a price per customer? | Show the price on a past invoice, which was correct on the day it was issued. | A live price has to reflect Contract pricing is a price that applies to one customer or one group of customers rather than to everyone. In B2B it is normal for the same product to have a different price for every account on the book. What is contract pricing?, a A price class is a label on a customer account that decides which set of prices they see. Acumatica and most ERPs use price classes so a seller can maintain one price list for a whole tier of customers instead of one per account. What is price class? or a Volume pricing gives a lower unit price at higher quantities, set by break points such as nine or fewer, 10 to 99, and 100 or more. The break points and the prices normally come from the ERP. What is volume pricing? break at the moment of ordering. This is the single most common reason a portal is not enough. |
| Can they have it? | Does availability depend on which warehouse serves them? | Usually shows nothing, or one company-wide number. | Buyers need a promise date, or Multi-warehouse availability is showing a buyer what is in stock for them specifically, based on which warehouse or warehouses can actually serve their order, rather than a single company-wide total. What is multi-warehouse availability? changes what you can commit to. Getting this wrong costs more than showing no number at all. |
| Are they allowed to buy it? | Does more than one person buy for the same customer? | One login per customer, usually. | You need a A company account is a customer record that holds several people, each with their own login and their own permissions. One buyer might place orders, another might only approve them, a third might only look up past invoices. What is company account? with several people, roles, spending limits and Order approval is a workflow where a buyer builds an order and somebody else at their company authorizes it before it is submitted. The rule is usually a spending threshold, a cost centre, or the buyer’s role. What is order approval?, because a purchasing assistant and a plant manager aren’t the same buyer. |
The test that settles it in one sentence
Ask whether a buyer can complete a purchase, at their price, without anyone at your company touching it. If the answer involves somebody checking the price, confirming stock, or keying the order into the ERP afterwards, you’ve a portal with an order form attached, whatever the vendor calls it.
That distinction is not academic, because the cost of the two arrangements is completely different. A portal that produces a request your sales desk turns into an order keeps your existing process and adds a channel. A storefront that produces a real order removes work, and it removes it only if all four answers above are handled correctly. Half a storefront is worse than a good portal, because the customer expects self-service and gets a phone call.
What each one costs to run, after it is built
The build number is the one everyone asks about and the smaller of the two. A portal is largely configuration over data the ERP already holds, so its running cost is close to the ERP’s. Note that the portal is often licensed separately: Acumatica prices its customer portal per portal, one company and one URL, and requires a CRM licence underneath it.
A storefront carries a second running cost that rarely appears in a proposal, which is the integration. Every ERP release can change connector behaviour, every new item type is a new mapping question, and someone has to own the reconciliation when the two systems disagree. That’s the cost people discover in year two.
The honest recommendation for a seller with a handful of accounts, one price list and one warehouse is a portal, and to spend the difference somewhere else. The honest recommendation for a seller with hundreds of accounts on negotiated pricing is that the portal will be outgrown fast enough that building it twice costs more than building the right thing once.
If you aren’t sure which of the four you’ve, log the calls
Most sellers arrive at this question through the phone rather than through a strategy document. Customers keep ringing, somebody says the word portal, and a project starts. Two weeks of tallying settles it more cheaply than any demo.
Have whoever answers the phone mark each call into one of four boxes. No notes, just a mark. Where is my order, is it in stock, what is my price, and can you place this order for me. The mix is remarkably stable, and one box usually carries more than half the volume.
A log dominated by order status is the best outcome, because your ERP already holds every field and a portal answers it cheaply. A log dominated by price is the one to take seriously: a portal won’t fix it, publishing a price list won’t fix it either if the list goes stale the day a contract changes, and it means this is a pricing architecture project wearing a customer service costume. A log dominated by "can you place this order" is the clearest business case for a storefront you’ll get, because you can put a labour number on it.
The mistake this prevents is the expensive one. Sellers often publish order status, watch call volume fall for a quarter, then watch it climb back as buyers return to the phone to check price. The status calls were downstream of not trusting the price. If price is in your top two, fix that first even though it is harder, because the cheaper fixes don’t hold.
While you’re counting, note how many calls come from the same few accounts. If a small number of customers generate most of the volume, the answer for them may be EDI, or electronic data interchange, is a long-established set of standard message formats businesses use to exchange purchase orders, invoices and shipping notices system to system. Large retailers and distributors often require it from their suppliers. What is EDI? or a scheduled report rather than a self-service channel for everyone.
The ERP-specific version of this question
The answer changes with what you run, because each ERP’s portal is a different product with different limits. Two of those are written up in detail here: whether the Cin7 Core B2B portal is enough, and when Acumatica’s customer self-service portal is the right stopping point.
If your ERP is not one of those two, the four questions above still decide it. Take them to whoever implements your ERP, and ask them specifically which of the four their portal answers live, in the buyer’s terms, at the moment of ordering.
The wider picture
This page answers one narrow question. Acro Commerce covers the strategy around it.
Common questions
- Can we start with a portal and add a storefront later?
- Often, and the thing that decides whether it is cheap or expensive is where price is calculated. If the portal shows prices your ERP calculated and hands the order back to the ERP, you’ve a pattern that extends. If the portal keeps its own copy of prices and customers, you’ll be migrating data and retraining buyers rather than adding a channel. Ask that question before the first build, not the second.
- Our customers say they just want to see their invoices. Is that a portal?
- Yes, and it’s worth taking at face value. If invoice visibility is the actual demand, a portal answers it at a fraction of the cost and a storefront would be an expensive way to deliver a document library. The reason to keep asking is that sellers usually hear this from the accounts payable contact, who is not the person placing orders.
- Is a dealer portal the same thing?
- Close, and the difference matters for permissions rather than for technology. A A dealer portal is a logged-in site for a manufacturer’s dealers or distributors, showing their own pricing, stock, order history and often marketing material and warranty claims. It’s a channel tool rather than a public storefront. What is dealer portal? serves a partner who resells your product, so it usually carries a price the dealer is not allowed to publish, sometimes stock they can commit against, and often co-op or A rebate is money returned to a customer after the fact for hitting an agreed volume or product mix, rather than a discount taken off the invoice at the time. The buyer pays the contract price now and receives the benefit later. What is rebate? terms. The four questions are the same. The consequences of getting entitlement wrong are larger.
Last updated 2026-08-24.