✦ Access Control
Shopify B2B Access Control
Wholesale pricing should not be public. Your wholesale business should be. Those two requirements pull in opposite directions, and how you resolve them decides whether trade buyers can find you at all.
Capabilities
The controls available
Locking is not all-or-nothing — the level matters.
Storefront Lock
Restricts access to the store — products, pricing, everything — while deliberately leaving the application form reachable.
Checkout Lock
Leaves browsing open but restricts checkout to approved, logged-in B2B customers, so pricing can stay visible while ordering does not.
Price Visibility Rules
Hiding prices from anonymous visitors while keeping product detail, specifications, and availability public.
Public Marketing Pages
Category, capability, and application pages that stay crawlable so trade buyers can find you before they have an account.
Approval-Linked Access
Access that unlocks on approval, so the approval decision and the permission state never drift apart.
Password vs. Account Gating
Choosing between a blunt store password and per-company account gating, which behave very differently for SEO.
The mistake that costs the most traffic
The instinctive way to protect wholesale pricing is to put the whole store behind Shopify's password page. It works, and it removes you from search entirely. A password-protected storefront cannot be crawled, so none of your category pages, product detail, or capability content can ever rank. Trade buyers researching suppliers will not find you, and the only people who reach the store are those who already knew your name.
That is a bad trade for a business whose buyers research online, which is now most of them. The better model separates the two concerns: keep information public and put pricing and ordering behind the login.
A layered approach
- Public and crawlable: who you supply, product ranges, specifications, minimums, lead times, territories, and the application page
- Locked to approved companies: products, collections, and pages, if your catalog itself is commercially sensitive
- Visible but not actionable: product detail without prices, with a clear route to apply
- Behind login: company pricing, catalogs, stock levels, ordering, and account history
- Approved only: checkout, payment terms, and reordering
Storefront lock versus checkout lock
These are different tools for different businesses. A storefront lock restricts the store to approved companies while keeping the application route open — the right answer when even your product range is commercially sensitive, or when you contractually cannot show certain brands publicly. Onboard B2B documents this behaviour: a Storefront Lock that restricts access to your products, collections, and pages, alongside a Checkout Lock that prevents unauthorized checkouts.
A checkout lock is lighter. Browsing stays open, so your catalog remains crawlable and useful for research, but checkout is restricted to approved, logged-in B2B customers. For most wholesale businesses this is the better default: you keep search visibility and still ensure nobody unapproved can place an order.
Running wholesale alongside retail
If you sell direct-to-consumer from the same store, a blanket lock is not an option — it would take your retail business offline. There the work is conditional: public retail experience for anonymous visitors, B2B catalog and pricing for logged-in company contacts, and rules deciding which products appear in which context. That interacts closely with company and catalog structure.
Whatever the configuration, keep the application page indexable. It is the single page a prospective wholesale customer needs to find, and it is the one most often accidentally locked away. Our SEO services cover making the public layer actually rank.
Related
Elsewhere in the Shopify B2B cluster
Wholesale Development
Building the wholesale storefront itself — catalogs, minimums, and order forms.
Learn more →FAQ
Common questions
Usually not. A Shopify password page blocks search engines entirely, so your store cannot rank for anything. Account-based access control protects pricing without removing you from search.
Yes, and it is often the best compromise. Product detail, specifications, and availability stay public and crawlable while prices only render for logged-in company contacts.
A storefront lock restricts the whole store to approved companies while keeping the application form reachable. A checkout lock leaves browsing open and only restricts who can actually place an order.
It depends entirely on which layer you lock. Locking checkout or prices is SEO-neutral. Locking the whole storefront removes your pages from the index, which is why the public layer needs to be planned deliberately.
Balancing private pricing with being findable?
We will map which layers of your store should be public, gated, or approval-only — without taking you out of search.
Plan Your B2B Access