What is the single fact that decides Cin7 against Business Central?
Microsoft ships the Shopify connector itself and puts it in the box. Its own documentation says "the app is preinstalled for all new sign-ups and trials", and its FAQ says "the organization must have both a Business Central license and a Shopify license to use the connector". There is no third bill and no third vendor to chase when something breaks, which for a mid-market team without an integration specialist changes both the cost and the risk of the project.
That is not a knock on Cin7’s Shopify integration, which is also first party, documented and included in the subscription. The difference is what sits around it. Cin7 counts your integrations and prices them: two ecommerce and app integrations on Standard at 349 US dollars a month, four on Pro at 599, six on Advanced at 1,199, read 20 August 2026. Business Central does not count them. It licenses users, at 80 US dollars a month for Essentials and 110 for Premium, paid yearly, and what you connect is your business.
For a company running a storefront, a 3PL, a tax engine, a shipping platform and a marketplace feed, that counting model is the whole comparison. Five integrations is an Advanced plan on Cin7. On Business Central it is a Tuesday.
Checked against: Microsoft Learn: getting started with the connector for Shopify, read 20 August 2026, Microsoft Learn: Shopify connector FAQ, licence requirements, Cin7 pricing page: integration counts by plan, Microsoft: Dynamics 365 Business Central pricing
Cin7 and Business Central on the mechanics a B2B storefront needs
Both vendors publish prices, which makes this the easiest comparison in the set to budget and the hardest to fudge. Every cell is from vendor documentation read on 20 August 2026.
Where a cell says the vendor does not document it, we could not find a primary source. That is different from the capability being absent, and on both of these products the documentation is thinner than the software.
| Criterion | Cin7 Core | Business Central |
|---|---|---|
| Published priceCross-over is around seven Essentials users. Below that Business Central is cheaper per seat; above it Cin7’s bundled users start winning on licence cost alone. | Standard 349, Pro 599, Advanced 1,199 US dollars a month, with users included at five, ten and 15. | Essentials 80 and Premium 110 US dollars per user per month paid yearly, Team Members 8. |
| Integrations included | Counted and gated. Two on Standard, four on Pro, six on Advanced. Extra integrations are paid add-ons. | Not counted. You license users, not connections. |
| Shopify connector | First party, included, with a documented settings surface. One chosen Sale price tier becomes the storefront price. | First party from Microsoft, "preinstalled for all new sign-ups and trials", requiring only a Business Central licence and a Shopify licence. |
| Price points per productFor a distributor with break-quantity pricing this row is decisive on its own, and it is a Cin7 Core limit rather than a Cin7 limit. Cin7 Omni documents volume breaks and effective dates. | Ten. "Cin7 Core lets you set up to 10 price points for each individual product." | No published ceiling. Business Central uses price lists and customer price groups with quantity and date conditions. |
| Quantity breaks and date-effective prices | Not documented in Cin7 Core. Documented in Cin7 Omni, with Add Volume Break taking a Price and a Minimum Quantity, plus Start Date and End Date. | Native. Price list lines carry minimum quantity and starting and ending dates. |
| Published API limits | None. Cin7 states only that "API limits are applied on per API Application basis". | Published. 6,000 OData requests per user in a five-minute sliding window, five concurrent per user, 100 connections, 95 queue, HTTP 429 on exceed. |
| DeploymentIf you run Business Central on premises, the connector advantage that anchors this comparison does not apply to you. | Cloud only. | Cloud or on premises, but the Shopify connector "isn’t available for on-premises deployments". |
| AccountingThis is the real category difference. Moving from Cin7 Core to Business Central replaces two systems with one, which is a bigger project and a smaller stack. | None of its own. Cin7 Core posts to Xero or QuickBooks Online. | Full general ledger. Business Central is the accounting system. |
| Implementation effort | Cin7 markets Core as out-of-the-box, and small teams do implement it without a partner. | A partner-led ERP implementation with a general ledger cutover. Not a weekend. |
Checked against: Cin7 pricing page, Microsoft: Business Central pricing, Essentials, Premium and Team Members, Cin7 Core help centre: Pricing and price tiers, Cin7 Omni help centre: Create a contract price, Cin7 Core help centre: Connecting to the Cin7 Core API, Microsoft Learn: operational limits for Business Central online, Microsoft Learn: Shopify connector FAQ, unsupported deployments
Where does Cin7 Core beat Business Central?
On inventory depth for the money, and on not needing an implementation partner to switch it on. Those two are why Cin7 Core has the installed base it has.
Every published Cin7 plan includes unlimited inventory locations, which at 349 US dollars a month is unusual. Multicurrency selling is documented and included, with rates fetched automatically from openexchangerates.org and manual override available. Cin7 lists advanced manufacturing, production planning and bill of materials traceability under Core. For a wholesaler or brand whose problem is stock across locations rather than financial control, that is a lot of capability arriving quickly.
The user maths also favours Cin7 sooner than people expect. Ten users on Business Central Essentials at 80 US dollars each is 800 a month against Cin7 Pro at 599 with ten users included. Business Central gives you a general ledger for that, so it is not a like-for-like number, but if you are happy with Xero or QuickBooks Online then the comparison is fair and Cin7 wins it.
And the switching cost cuts hard the other way. Business Central is an accounting migration, which means a chart of accounts, a cutover date, opening balances and a parallel run. If your books are fine and your storefront is the problem, replacing your accounting system to fix your website is a large solution to a smaller problem.
Checked against: Cin7 pricing page: unlimited inventory locations on every plan, Cin7 Core help centre: Multicurrency and currency conversion, Cin7: Core or Omni, which one is right for your business, Microsoft: Business Central pricing
What does Microsoft not tell you about the Shopify connector?
Three limits, all published, all easy to miss because they sit in the FAQ rather than the marketing. Any one of them can disqualify the connector for a specific company, so check them before the connector becomes the reason you chose Business Central.
None of these is unusual for a first-party connector and none is hidden. They are simply the sort of detail that gets skipped in a demo and discovered in week six of a build.
It "isn’t available for on-premises deployments". If your Business Central runs on your own servers, this connector is not for you.
It "doesn’t work for Embed App", meaning tenants whose client URL uses the bc.dynamics.com format.
It "doesn’t work with other Dynamics 365 applications, like Dynamics 365 Sales or Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management". If your commerce plan assumed one Microsoft stack, this is the row that breaks the assumption.
Microsoft’s FAQ does not document how Shopify B2B companies, catalogues or per-customer pricing map to Business Central price lists, so treat B2B-specific behaviour as something to prove in a sandbox rather than to assume.
Checked against: Microsoft Learn: Shopify connector FAQ, Microsoft Learn: getting started with the connector for Shopify
Which businesses should stay on Cin7 and which should move?
Stay if your books work, your price book fits in ten bands, and you run four integrations or fewer. Move if two of those three have stopped being true, and move for the ERP reason rather than for the storefront reason.
The clearest move signal is the integration count meeting the price book ceiling at the same time. A company adding a storefront, a 3PL and a marketplace in the same year, whose customers have started asking for quantity breaks, has hit two Cin7 Core ceilings at once, and paying up to Advanced solves one of them and not the other. That is the moment when Business Central or Cin7 Omni becomes worth pricing.
The clearest stay signal is a business whose only complaint is the website. Cin7 Core plus a properly built storefront is a common and successful architecture, and swapping a working inventory system for an ERP implementation to fix a front end is how a one-quarter project becomes a two-year one.
Checked against: Cin7 pricing page: integration and order ceilings by plan, Cin7 Core help centre: Pricing and price tiers, the 10 price point ceiling
Common questions
- Is the Business Central Shopify connector free?
- There is no separate connector licence. Microsoft builds the Shopify Connector app, states it is "preinstalled for all new sign-ups and trials", and its FAQ says the organization needs both a Business Central licence and a Shopify licence. Three published limits apply: no on-premises deployments, no Embed App tenants, and no interoperability with other Dynamics 365 applications such as Sales or Supply Chain Management.
- How many integrations does Cin7 allow?
- Cin7 gates them by plan: two ecommerce and app integrations on Standard at 349 US dollars a month, four on Pro at 599, and six on Advanced at 1,199, read from Cin7’s pricing page on 20 August 2026. Additional integrations are available as paid add-ons. Business Central does not count integrations at all; it licenses users at 80 US dollars a month for Essentials and 110 for Premium, paid yearly.
- Is Business Central more expensive than Cin7?
- It depends almost entirely on user count, and both vendors publish enough for you to work it out. Ten Business Central Essentials users at 80 US dollars each is 800 a month, against Cin7 Pro at 599 with ten users included. Business Central includes a general ledger for that money, so if you would otherwise pay for Xero or QuickBooks Online alongside Cin7, the gap narrows further.
- Does Cin7 support quantity break pricing for a B2B storefront?
- Cin7 Core does not document it. Its pricing article covers static, markup and append pricing with a ceiling of 10 price points per product, and says nothing about quantity breaks. Cin7 Omni does document it, with an Add Volume Break control taking a Price and a Minimum Quantity, multiple breaks per product, and start and end dates on the contract price. Business Central carries minimum quantity and effective dates on price list lines natively.
- Can Business Central run a B2B storefront on its own?
- No, and neither can Cin7. Both are back-office systems that feed a storefront; the storefront is a separate product. Business Central’s advantage is that Microsoft publishes and preinstalls the Shopify connector, so the plumbing to one common storefront comes with the ERP. What that connector does with Shopify B2B companies, catalogues and per-customer prices is not documented in the FAQ, so prove it in a sandbox.
Last updated 2026-08-20. Facts on this page last checked against source 2026-08-20.