Zoey vs Shopify: Ecommerce Platform for B2B

The e-commerce landscape is saturated with B2C platforms promising quick wins and flashy storefronts. But for B2B businesses, the requirements are fundamentally different. You have complex ordering workflows, customer-specific pricing, bulk transactions, and long-term account relationships, all of which need to be addressed. Very few platforms are truly designed to achieve these. Zoey is one such B2B solution. Shopify is another, even though it is a dominant B2C player. The real question is: which is better of the two? Let’s address this debate in this in-depth comparative analysis.

 What is Zoey?

Zoey is a B2B ecommerce platform built specifically for wholesalers and distributors. It offers several features in alignment with the B2B selling and purchasing process. It combines an admin system (for customers, products, and orders management), a dedicated buyer portal, and a mobile app for sales reps and buyers. This arrangement helps wholesalers and distributors manage all their operations in one place. The platform integrates with popular back-office tools such as QuickBooks Online, NetSuite, Salesforce, and ShipStation, enabling bidirectional data flow. 

Key features of Zoey

• Order guides & favorites: Through this feature, your customers or reps can build product lists of frequently ordered items. This saves time by avoiding repeated searches across the whole catalog.
• Quick order forms:  Buyers can add multiple products in one go using table views and filters. Quantities across categories can be entered and added to the cart with a single click.
• Easy re-orders: Buyers can repeat past orders using a “Re-Order” button. This means they need not rebuild their cart.
• Flexible sale pricing: You can configure discounts for specific price lists or customer levels for fixed periods. You can also manage sale dates and discounted pricing via the admin console.
• Custom catalogs: Through this feature, you can create customer-specific product catalogs with tailored visibility and access. You can also control minimums, maximums, and increments to match wholesale needs.

Related read: B2B Ecommerce Solution For Distributors

What is Shopify?

Shopify is a cloud-based ecommerce platform catering mainly to the B2C businesses. For B2B sellers, Shopify offers business selling capabilities through its Shopify Plus module, which comes as a separate purchase. This module offers features like custom payment terms, automating invoice generation based on predefined rules, and several other tools that make it easier for sales representatives to manage their day-to-day tasks. You can integrate the platform with your preferred ERP, OMS, and CMS tools for data syncing, or use Shopify’s APIs with connectors like Boomi, Jitterbit, and Celigo to build custom integrations.

 Key features of Shopify

• Quick bulk ordering: This feature lets your buyers view all products and variants at once. It makes it easy to order multiple sizes, colors, or styles directly from product pages or an order form.
• B2B-optimised theme: You can launch your B2B store without any coding skills using a ready-to-use wholesale theme that also comes along with several website-building features for quick store setup.
• Workflow automations: You can use Shopify Flow, a workflow automation system, to optimize most of your B2B processes. From auto-sending invoices to managing account approvals, several processes can be automated. 
• Access controls: With this feature, you can add sales reps as staff with restricted access so they can only manage assigned customers and place orders on their behalf.
• Customer-specific catalogs: You can deliver a customized shopping experience by showing curated product catalogs to specific buyers or business locations.

Related read: Is Shopify Good for Wholesale? Here’s What You Need to Know

Comparing Zoey vs Shopify: Which is better?

Here is a quick comparison of Shopify vs Zoey in various key areas of B2B ecommerce:

Customization

Zoey

Zoey enables B2B businesses to personalize their storefronts without coding using a drag-and-drop theme editor. One can also use and tweak pre-built content blocks like banners, slideshows, and product lists for improved aesthetics.  For more advanced needs, users can add custom CSS, JavaScript, and HTML. Features like drafts, versioning, and responsive design tools are also available. They make it easy to test and deploy changes, ensuring a brand-consistent experience across devices.

Shopify

Shopify supports headless commerce, allowing developers to fully customize both front-end and back-end using the programming languages of their choice. At the same time, non-technical users can personalize storefronts and checkout flows through a user-friendly visual editor. Shopify also offers sandbox environments, enabling teams to safely test and refine custom features before they go live.

Winner: Zoey has a slight edge over Shopify, mainly because the customization offered by it is far more B2B-focused than Shopify. 

Analytics & reporting

Zoey

Zoey provides basic but functional reporting tools for B2B businesses. All order, invoice, and payment data that a user has access to can be easily exported. The platform also offers custom reporting, along with pre-built reports that offer insights into key business metrics. Zoey also offers a CRM that includes an Account Dashboard with a quick view of sales activity. This includes data about drafts, quotes, orders, and recently purchased items. There is also a detailed activity log that tracks updates by date, time, and user.

Shopify

Shopify comes with a built-in analytics engine and reporting tools that give businesses a clear snapshot of performance, from traffic sessions to conversion rates. Users can leverage a customizable dashboard featuring interactive data cards and visual charts for quick insights. Beyond the basics, Shopify offers pre-built reports covering areas like customer acquisition, sales trends, inventory, marketing, and profit margins. For businesses on Shopify Plus, ShopifyQL a proprietary query language, allows the creation of custom reports that can be saved and reused. It provides more tailored insights into business performance.

Winner: Shopify is a clear winner in this area, owing to the more in-depth analytics and reports offered.

Order management capabilities

Zoey

Zoey offers a Multi-Document Order Management System, which aligns with standard accounting practices and integrates seamlessly with ERP workflows. This system allows businesses to manage all order-related documents, such as sales orders, invoices, shipments, and credit memos, within a unified interface. The platform also supports custom order status workflows, pick lists, and email notifications with PDF attachments. Additionally, Zoey facilitates order splitting by attributes, allowing businesses to efficiently manage complex fulfillment scenarios involving multiple distributors or fulfillment centers. 

Shopify

Shopify’s order management is relatively basic for B2B needs, providing core functionalities that work well for standard online retail but can be limiting for complex wholesale operations. Key features include quick bulk ordering, which allows buyers to select from all product variants. It could be something as simple as sizes or colors. The variants can be selected directly on the product pages or through a dedicated order form. Shopify also supports easy reordering, enabling customers to quickly repeat past purchases from their account. This encourages repeat business. 

Winner: Zoey has B2B-specific order management capabilities, which give it an advantage over Shopify.

Integrations

Zoey

Zoey provides pre-built connections with leading ERP and accounting software, including QuickBooks Online, NetSuite, and Salesforce. It facilitates seamless automation of workflows such as sales order management, invoicing, accounts receivable, and inventory fulfillment. For businesses with unique requirements, Zoey supports custom integrations through its Data Mapper (a no-code solution) and a REST API. They enable two-way synchronization of products, inventory, pricing, customers, orders, invoices, shipping, and tracking data.

Shopify

Shopify boasts an extensive app ecosystem with over 10,000 apps. This includes more than 300 Shopify Plus Partners and 80 Plus-certified apps specifically designed for B2B stores. Beyond the marketplace, Shopify also offers APIs and SDKs, enabling custom integration with third-party systems that may not be available as native apps. This gives businesses all the flexibility needed to extend their platform’s functionality.

Winner: Shopify is a clear winner simply due to the higher number of third-party apps that can be integrated with it. 

Security and compliance

Zoey

Zoey offers a strong security ecosystem that is aligned with SOC 2 standards. It is further strengthened through independent third-party audits and annual penetration testing. Zoey’s services are hosted on AWS, ensuring encryption at rest and in transit, continuous vulnerability monitoring, logging, and disaster recovery. Access controls follow least-privilege principles with SSO, 2FA, strong password policies, and quarterly reviews. Combined with annual risk assessments and vendor risk management, the measures deliver enterprise-grade security and compliance for B2B businesses. 

Shopify

Shopify, like Zoey, adheres to industry-leading standards for data and payment security. The platform provides end-to-end encryption for all transactions and includes advanced protections such as fraud and risk analysis, bot protection, and 3D Secure checkout to minimize exposure to fraudulent activity. Shopify is also a Level 1 PCI DSS-certified platform and complies with SOC 2 Type II standards, ensuring rigorous controls over data privacy, integrity, and secure payment processing.

Winner: It’s a tie. Both platforms offer strong security capabilities to safeguard sensitive data. 

Support

Zoey

In Zoey, users have access to ticket-based support and phone escalation. This level of support is available in the lower-tier plans. In the higher-tier plans, you get enhanced support, including shared or dedicated account management and priority ticket management. There is also personalized implementation guidance for users, at an extra charge. Apart from these, there is a vast repository of support documents and help texts. 

Shopify

Shopify provides 24/7 support to all users, even on its basic plans. There is an AI-driven Help Center Assistant that helps users quickly find relevant articles and walkthroughs. It even connects them to live advisors when needed, making support fast and efficient.

For Shopify Plus customers, support goes a step further with direct access to Plus Support Advisors via phone and email. It offers high-touch guidance for more complex issues, especially those commonly encountered in B2B sales scenarios.

Winner: Shopify, mainly because extensive support is offered to all its users, no matter which plan they are on.

As you can see, it is a tightly fought battle with no clear winners. Both platforms have their own strengths and weaknesses. 

Why is WizCommerce a better choice than Zoey and Shopify for B2B selling?

Both Zoey and Shopify have shown that they can manage the basic aspects of running a B2B ecommerce business. After all, Zoey is a B2B-first platform, offering core wholesale features out of the box. Shopify, meanwhile, offers scalability and a vast app marketplace, making it suitable for businesses that want to grow without too much effort. Each platform delivers value in its own way.

However, modern B2B businesses demand more than just the basics. They do not want to compromise on functionalities or B2B-specific features that can make their lives better and easier. 

This is where WizCommerce steps in. It is a dedicated B2B commerce platform that combines Shopify’s scalability and ecosystem strength with Zoey’s wholesale-first orientation, while adding its own set of advanced B2B capabilities designed for today’s enterprise buyers and sellers. Here are all the key features of WizCommerce:

1. A dedicated sales app for your reps

WizCommerce offers WizOrder, a powerful sales app built exclusively for your sales representatives. Such a dedicated app to simplify order management is unavailable in Shopify. The app offers a controlled and sales-rep–driven ordering process and is designed to handle large product catalogs with over 10,000 SKUs.

The app is connected to the ecommerce website for bidirectional data flow and offers powerful features such as typo-tolerant and AI-powered image search, advanced filtering and sorting, custom wishlists for targeted sales, etc. Reps can switch to a customer-specific dashboard if dealing with a particular customer to access order history, repeat purchases, and abandoned carts, while admins can track sales performance and analytics. 

2. Create stunning product visuals effortlessly

Most platforms, including Zoey and Shopify, don’t natively offer anything close to what WizStudio brings to the table. This built-in feature completely reimagines how B2B brands like yours create product visuals. Instead of wasting time and money on traditional photoshoots or wrestling with design tools, WizStudio delivers studio-quality lifestyle images in under 24 hours. The process includes just 4 simple steps:

1. Upload your raw product image
2. Share a quick brief
3. Receive a set of stunning, brand-consistent lifestyle shots within a day
4. Suggest revisions and finalize with rapid turnaround

For lean marketing teams, this is a game-changer. No more settling for generic stock photos!

3. AI recommendations for buyers

WizCommerce uses powerful AI algorithms to deliver intelligent product recommendations based on each customer’s purchase history and buying behavior. This helps in enhancing the buyer experience on the website, suggesting relevant products as they browse. 

Its “View Similar Products” feature automatically recommends alternatives for out-of-stock items, ensuring no missed sales opportunities, while the “Frequently Bought Together” function increases average order value by promoting complementary products. 

4. 24/7 Expert support that keeps you moving

Most platforms, including Zoey and Shopify, stop at standard help desks and ticket queues. WizCommerce goes far beyond that. Every client is paired with a dedicated success manager who ensures smooth onboarding and stays with you as your business evolves.

Support is truly round-the-clock, not just through email and live chat but also via Slack for instant access to experts. And we don’t just solve problems, we proactively help you scale with services like product digitization, catalog structuring, and data cleanup.

You can even raise tickets directly within the platform and onboard new team members through personalized role-based training sessions. This hands-on, always-available approach ensures nothing slows you down, no matter how fast you’re growing. And it’s the kind of support modern B2B teams need.

5. Tailored checkouts for your buyer’s needs

From day one, WizCommerce gives you all the necessary tools to alter the checkout flow for your buyers. Your buyers can:

• Select from multiple billing and shipping options
• Add notes to personalize delivery
• Choose how they want to pay (card-on-file, payment links, credit cards, and refund credits). 

You, on the other hand, can assign custom terms for each buyer, such as upfront payment options, deposits, or custom net terms. While Zoey covers basic wholesale workflows and Shopify relies heavily on apps for checkout customization, WizCommerce delivers deep, native checkout flexibility that balances buyer convenience with full seller control.

6. Multi-cart management: simplify complex B2B orders

WizCommerce lets your reps manage multiple shopping carts at once, turning complex B2B orders into an organized process. Whether handling different business units or juggling parallel deals, each cart acts as a self-contained workspace that reps can switch between effortlessly. No progress lost and no confusion.

When a deal is ready, carts can be submitted individually. This gives reps unmatched control and flexibility over every transaction. This is a feature designed for the realities of modern B2B selling.

7. Analytics & reporting: 360° insights for smarter selling

WizCommerce goes beyond basic analytics with a real-time, intuitive dashboard. It tracks revenue, order volume, abandoned carts, quotes, and more, all in one place. Powerful filters let you zoom in on the segments and trends that matter most. 

But what truly sets it apart is the built-in Lead Scoring System. By analyzing up to five years of buyer behavior, WizCommerce automatically ranks customers as High, Mid, or Low priority. This lets your sales reps focus on the deals that matter most and maximize conversions.

Add the dedicated Admin Dashboard into the mix, and your managers get full visibility into every rep’s performance. This leads to smarter coaching and a team that consistently hits targets. Such levels of insight are unmatched and a capability you won’t find natively in Zoey, Shopify, or most other B2B platforms.

8. Inventory intelligence: real-time stock details at your fingertips

WizCommerce gives both your sales reps and buyers instant access to up-to-the-minute inventory data. Available stock, backorders, and in-transit items are all visible right on the product page and the inventory dashboard, updated in real time.

This level of transparency completely re-energizes B2B selling and planning. Reps can confidently pitch products ready to ship and suggest smart alternatives when stock runs low. Buyers, on the other hand, can set realistic delivery expectations and build trust-based relationships with their own customers. It’s a capability that turns inventory from a bottleneck into a competitive advantage.

WizCommerce vs Zoey vs Shopify: A summary of differences

Here is a quick summary of all the differences between the three platforms, so that you can make an informed decision for your own B2B business – 

Conclusion

So far, we have seen that both Zoey and Shopify each have their strengths (and weaknesses).  WizCommerce rises above both, combining robust B2B functionality and user-friendly workflows in one future-ready platform. Every feature, from advanced checkout customization to AI-driven sales insights, has been carefully designed to help you sell more efficiently.

So, don’t settle for compromises. Explore WizCommerce, the best alternative for Zoey and Shopify, today, and take the first step toward a more scalable future for your business. Book a demo now.

 Frequently asked questions

1. What is the best alternative to Shopify?

If you are looking for a platform built with B2B needs in mind, WizCommerce stands out as the best alternative. It combines Shopify’s scalability with Zoey’s wholesale-first approach, while offering several additional B2B features natively.

2. What is the difference between Zoey and Shopify plus?

Zoey is a B2B-first platform designed specifically for wholesale operations. Shopify Plus, on the other hand, is a B2B module built on top of Shopify, an enterprise-grade platform primarily geared toward B2C commerce. Shopify relies heavily on third-party apps for several B2B functionalities.

3. How does Zoey’s B2B functionality compare to Shopify’s?

Zoey provides many B2B features, such as account-based pricing, quote management, and approval workflows, natively. Shopify, while flexible and scalable, is built primarily for niches in the B2C space. As a result, it often requires apps or custom development to match the same level of B2B capabilities offered by B2B-first platforms like Zoey or WizCommerce. 

4. What is Shopify primarily used for?

Shopify is primarily used for B2C ecommerce. It offers sellers a robust and scalable platform for selling products to end consumers. Its strengths lie in its user-friendly interface and a massive app ecosystem, which are typically valued in the B2C sector. 

5. How crucial are third-party apps for expanding the features of Zoey and Shopify?

Third-party apps play a significant role in extending functionality on both platforms. Shopify, being B2C-first, often relies on apps to add B2B features. Zoey includes more B2B functionality natively, but certain advanced workflows may still require integrations or customizations.

6. Is Zoey a suitable platform for small businesses or new startups?

While Zoey can serve small to mid-sized B2B businesses, WizCommerce is often a better choice for startups looking to scale quickly. It combines ease of use with several native B2B capabilities, ensuring that even lean teams can run complex operations efficiently from day one.