Why the category is so confusing
The phrase has no owner. An ERP vendor uses it for a feature that ships with the licence. A commerce platform uses it for a paid module. A specialist vendor uses it for their whole product. An agency uses it for a project. All four answer the same search, and a buyer comparing them is comparing things that aren’t alternatives to each other.
The useful sort is not by feature list, because every feature list contains the same words. It’s by where price gets calculated for a specific customer, because that determines what the integration has to do, what it costs to run, and what happens when your pricing gets more complicated. Everything else is downstream of it.
The four categories, and where price lives in each
Read the middle column first. It’s the one that predicts the second year of the project.
| Criterion | What it is | Where price is calculated | Fits when |
|---|---|---|---|
| The ERP’s own portalThe cheapest correct answer when it fits, and the one most often dismissed too early. | A view over data the ERP already holds. Usually licensed as an add-on, sometimes per portal, sometimes needing CRM underneath. | In the ERP, correctly, by definition. It’s the same engine that prices the invoice. | Account visibility is the real demand, reorder is enough, and nobody needs a public catalogue. |
| A B2B module on a general platformThis is where most 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? projects either work or quietly fail, depending on whether the connector carries the effective price. | Shopify B2B, BigCommerce B2B Edition, Shopware B2B Components. A commerce platform with company accounts, price lists and approvals added. | On the platform, from a synced copy. The connector has to keep that copy right. | Your pricing fits the platform’s model of it, and you want the platform’s storefront, apps and checkout. |
| A purpose-built B2B platform | A product designed for B2B first, often sold as reading directly from the ERP. | Sometimes read live from the ERP, sometimes synced. Ask which, and ask what happens when the ERP is unavailable. | Your pricing is genuinely too complex for a synced copy, and you would rather buy that problem than build it. |
| A custom buildThe right answer less often than agencies suggest and more often than platform vendors admit. | A storefront assembled from a framework plus Middleware is a layer of software that sits between the ERP and the storefront, translating and enforcing rules that neither system holds on its own. It can be a hosted integration platform or a custom service. What is middleware?, or a headless front end over your own services. | Wherever you decide, which is the advantage and the liability. | Your requirements genuinely have no product-shaped answer, and you’ve somewhere to put the ongoing ownership. |
Four questions that eliminate three of them fast
Take these to a demo rather than a feature grid. Each one removes categories quickly, and none of them can be answered with a yes.
Show me a logged-in buyer seeing a negotiated price that differs from list, and tell me which system calculated the number on the screen. If the answer is a nightly sync, ask what happens on the day a price changes.
Show me two people from the same customer with different permissions, one of whom needs approval above a limit. This eliminates most ERP portals immediately, and it’s the requirement sellers discover last.
Tell me what happens when the ERP is unavailable. A read-through architecture goes down with it. A synced one keeps selling and may sell something at the wrong price. Both are defensible; not knowing which you bought is not.
Tell me who owns the integration when the ERP releases an update. On a native connector the platform vendor moves and you follow. On middleware or a custom build, that’s your calendar item, twice a year.
What the category pages won’t tell you
The B2B module on a general platform usually depends on a plan you haven’t priced. Shopware’s B2B Components are included in Evolve and Beyond but not in Rise or Community. BigCommerce price list export from Acumatica is documented as working only for stores on the Enterprise plan. Shopify B2B needs a Shopify plan that includes it. In each case the ERP-side connector licence is a separate purchase again.
The ERP-side connector is also usually licensed per storefront. If you plan a second brand or a second region later, ask now what the second one costs, because on some editions you can’t buy it at all.
And the running cost of any synced architecture is a person, not a fee. Someone has to notice when a price list fails to publish. In our experience that job lands on whoever built it, until they leave.
Checked against: Shopware: B2B Components are included in the Evolve and Beyond plans, Acumatica help: price lists export to BigCommerce only on the Enterprise subscription plan, Acumatica Licensing Guide, April 2026: one commerce integration licence covers one shopping site
The wider picture
This page answers one narrow question. Acro Commerce covers the strategy around it.
Common questions
- Which category is cheapest?
- Over three years, usually the one that matches your pricing model, whatever its licence cost. The expensive projects we see aren’t the ones that bought the wrong price band. They’re the ones that bought a category whose model of pricing didn’t match theirs, and then paid to bridge the gap every year.
- Do we need a portal at all if we already have EDI?
- Frequently yes, and for a different set of customers. 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? serves your largest accounts, who have their own systems and will never log into anything. A portal or storefront serves the long tail who currently phone or email. They’re different channels for different customers, and neither replaces the other.
- How do we compare vendors that all claim the same features?
- Stop reading feature lists and ask each one to demonstrate the four questions above with your data, or with data shaped like yours. A feature list tells you a word appears in the product. A demonstration tells you which system calculated the number on the screen, which is the thing you’re actually buying.
Last updated 2026-08-24. Facts on this page last checked against source 2026-08-24.