VTEX built a capable composable commerce platform. For retail enterprises with dedicated frontend engineering teams and a budget for ongoing VTEX IO development, it works. But manufacturers and distributors running wholesale operations alongside a direct-to-consumer channel have found a different reality: B2B functionality that requires the VTEX B2B Suite on top of the base license, a headless architecture that puts a developer between your business and every storefront change, and ERP integrations that run through middleware layers rather than a direct connection. If your North American operation is also discovering that VTEX's product roadmap prioritizes its LATAM enterprise base, the gap between what you need and what the platform delivers is only going to grow. Uncap is a Shopify Platinum Partner that migrates B2B manufacturers and distributors from VTEX to Shopify Plus. We do not replicate your VTEX setup on a new platform. We rebuild the architecture: one Shopify Plus instance where your wholesale buyers and your DTC buyers operate in the same environment, drawing from the same live ERP data, with pricing that enforces itself at login without custom code or developer involvement. No downtime. No data loss. No disruption to your customers.
Why B2B Manufacturers and Distributors Are Leaving VTEX
VTEX positioned itself as the composable commerce platform for enterprise retail. In large DTC and omnichannel retail environments, that positioning holds. But B2B manufacturers and distributors need something different: company account hierarchies, customer-specific pricing enforced at checkout, purchase order workflows, and an ERP that talks to the storefront in real time without a middleware layer in between. VTEX's architecture was not built around those requirements, and the B2B Suite add-on does not change the underlying reality.
The companies moving to Shopify Plus are not doing it because they want a simpler platform for its own sake. They are doing it because the composable approach that VTEX is built around adds developer dependency and ongoing engineering cost to every part of the commerce operation, and for a B2B manufacturer or distributor that cost compounds without producing a proportional return.
What B2B on VTEX actually looks like at scale:
Your storefront runs on VTEX IO or VTEX FastStore, which means any layout change, feature addition, or checkout modification goes to a frontend developer before it goes live. Your B2B functionality lives in the VTEX B2B Suite, a separate licensed module that handles company accounts and pricing at a basic level but requires custom development for anything specific to how your wholesale accounts actually buy. Your ERP (NetSuite, SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, or Acumatica) connects through a middleware integration that needs ongoing maintenance each time either system updates. Your DTC and wholesale channels either share a storefront that cannot cleanly separate buyer experiences, or they run as separate stores requiring two catalogs and two integrations. Every new wholesale requirement your sales team identifies becomes a scoped development project before it becomes a feature your buyers can use.
This is not a complaint about VTEX's capabilities in its target market. It is a recognition that composable commerce optimized for large retail enterprises is not the right architecture for a B2B manufacturer or distributor that needs to move faster and spend less on technology operations.
The Real Cost of an Architecture That Puts Developers Between Your Business and Your Storefront
The B2B companies we talk to who are running on VTEX are typically spending significantly more on technology than the same operation running on Shopify Plus. The visible cost is straightforward: VTEX licensing, the B2B Suite subscription, frontend developer retainers for VTEX IO maintenance, and middleware costs for the ERP integration.
The invisible costs are the ones that compound.
Developer dependency on every change. VTEX IO and VTEX FastStore are headless build systems. The storefront is a React application your development team owns and maintains. When your merchandising team wants to change how pricing displays, or when your sales team needs a new field at checkout for purchase orders, or when your operations team wants to add a product attribute, that request goes into a developer queue. On Shopify Plus, those changes are configuration. On VTEX, they are engineering work. The difference in speed and cost is not marginal.
B2B functionality that requires custom work to do standard things. The VTEX B2B Suite handles company accounts and basic pricing tiers. But wholesale operations typically need more: credit limit enforcement, net payment terms, location hierarchies for multi-site buyers, buyer-specific catalog restrictions, and purchase order workflows that connect directly to the ERP. Each of those requirements on VTEX is a customization project. Each one creates a dependency your team owns and must maintain through every platform update.
ERP integration fragility at scale. Connecting VTEX to NetSuite, SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, or Acumatica typically means building and maintaining a custom middleware layer. There is no embedded app infrastructure designed for direct ERP connectivity. When VTEX releases a major update, the integration needs to be tested and often patched. When the ERP updates, the same. The result is an integration that works until it does not, and when it breaks, the failure affects orders already in motion.
A roadmap built around someone else's market. VTEX's largest customer base and primary product investment is concentrated in Latin America, where it has dominant market position. North American B2B manufacturers and distributors are not the segment driving the platform's feature development. Shopify Plus is the opposite: its B2B roadmap is built around the US and European wholesale buyer experience, and the native B2B infrastructure it ships today reflects that investment directly.
What Moving to Shopify Plus Actually Changes
Shopify Plus is not a simpler version of what VTEX does. For B2B manufacturers and distributors, it is a fundamentally different relationship between your business and your technology.
The most significant change is the removal of developer dependency from routine commerce operations. Shopify Plus is a managed platform: the storefront, the checkout, the B2B buyer experience, and the ERP integration all work without a frontend engineering team maintaining a React application. When your team needs to change pricing logic, add a product, update a checkout field, or adjust how wholesale accounts access the catalog, those are configuration changes, not development projects.
B2B infrastructure is native to the platform. Company accounts with location hierarchies, customer-specific price lists enforced at login, purchase order submission at checkout, net payment terms (net 30, net 60, net 90), and credit limit enforcement are part of what Shopify Plus ships. No B2B Suite equivalent. No separate license. No custom development to activate the functionality. When Shopify updates the platform, these features update with it.
The unified commerce architecture is where the structural change is most visible. Shopify Plus runs B2B wholesale and DTC retail on one instance: one catalog, one ERP integration, one inventory pool. A wholesale buyer authenticates into their company account and sees their contract pricing, their approved addresses, their payment terms, and their purchasing workflow. A DTC buyer lands on the public storefront with retail pricing from the ERP's base price list. Both channels draw from the same live inventory. Both channels route orders into the same ERP workflow. The two-store problem that VTEX's architecture creates, with its separate catalog maintenance and separate integration requirements, does not exist on Shopify Plus.
What Uncap does differently from a standard migration:
Most agencies migrate what exists on VTEX to Shopify Plus. We use the migration as the moment to fix what was wrong with the architecture. That means designing the unified commerce structure from the start: one Shopify Plus instance, B2B and DTC running on the same catalog and the same ERP connection, with pricing, catalog access, and checkout behavior determined by who is logged in. We map your ERP's customer accounts, pricing classes, and order workflows into Shopify's native B2B primitives. We handle data migration, URL mapping, and 301 redirects so your SEO rankings carry over. And we run the go-live on a cutover plan that keeps your VTEX store live until the moment we switch. We have done this for 350+ B2B businesses. We know where migrations break and we build to prevent it.
Migration gets you on the right foundation. The Revenue Engine is what makes it perform.
Once your unified Shopify Plus operation is running, Uncap's Revenue Engine layers on top: Dealroom for conversational quote-to-cash, CPQ for complex B2B pricing and product configuration, Portal for embedded buyer self-service, CRM for Shopify-native customer and revenue workflows, CLM to take quotes through to signed contracts and confirmed orders, and AI Agents for upsell, cross-sell, and margin recommendations. The migration solves the architecture. The Revenue Engine accelerates what runs on it.
What We Build During Your VTEX to Shopify Plus Migration
Unified Commerce Architecture. We design the Shopify Plus environment to run B2B and DTC from a single instance from day one. Company accounts, gated pricing by login, public storefront with retail pricing, and both channels drawing from the same live ERP inventory. The developer-maintained dual-channel setup that VTEX's composable architecture requires goes away at the structure level.
Real-Time ERP Integration. We connect Shopify Plus to your ERP (NetSuite, SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, Acumatica, Sage, Epicor, and others) with bidirectional sync for inventory, customer accounts, pricing, and order data. Orders from both B2B and DTC channels create ERP documents immediately. No middleware layer, no re-entry, no sync delay, no inventory divergence between channels.
Customer-Specific Pricing and Payment Terms. Every wholesale account gets the pricing your ERP holds for them, enforced at checkout through Shopify's native price list infrastructure. Net 30, net 60, and net 90 terms, purchase order submission, and credit limit enforcement are built into the checkout flow without custom code.
Full Data Migration with URL Mapping. We migrate your product catalog, customer records, order history, and content from VTEX to Shopify Plus with complete URL mapping and 301 redirect implementation. Your SEO rankings carry over. Your customers land on the right pages after cutover.
Catalog and PIM Integration. For distributors with large or complex catalogs, we build the catalog architecture in Shopify and connect it to your PIM or product data source. Product data, pricing, and availability stay current in both the B2B and DTC channels without manual updates or developer involvement.
Go-Live Without Revenue Disruption. We run parallel environments throughout the migration. Your VTEX store stays live until the planned cutover. In-flight orders are protected through the transition. The go-live happens on a timeline and process your operations team controls.
Why Manufacturers and Distributors Choose Uncap for This Migration
350+ B2B ecommerce stores built. Uncap has been building wholesale and distribution commerce on Shopify since 2013. Not generalists. B2B unified commerce is all we do.
Shopify Platinum Partner. Platinum designation means direct access to Shopify's product and engineering teams and early visibility into B2B platform features before general release.
Clients reduce total technology costs by 30 percent or more. Shopify Plus eliminates the frontend developer dependency, the B2B Suite licensing overhead, and the middleware integration cost that VTEX operations carry. The migration typically pays for itself within the first 12 months.
B2B expertise that is operational, not theoretical. We understand purchase orders, buyer pricing negotiation, ERP order acknowledgment, multi-warehouse inventory, and the complexity of running wholesale alongside direct-to-consumer. You will not spend time in the engagement explaining how your business works.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a VTEX to Shopify Plus migration?
A VTEX to Shopify Plus migration is the process of moving your ecommerce operation from VTEX Commerce to Shopify Plus, including products, customers, orders, integrations, and storefront architecture. For B2B manufacturers and distributors, it also means rebuilding wholesale-specific functionality in Shopify's native B2B infrastructure: company accounts, customer-specific pricing, purchase order workflows, and ERP integration, replacing the VTEX B2B Suite and custom VTEX IO development that handled those functions. A full-scope migration covers data migration with validation, URL mapping and 301 redirects to protect SEO, and a cutover plan that keeps the business running throughout.
What is ecommerce replatforming?
Ecommerce replatforming is the process of moving an online store from one platform to another. For B2B manufacturers and distributors on VTEX, replatforming is typically driven by the cost and speed constraints of composable commerce: developer-dependent storefronts, B2B functionality that requires custom builds beyond what the VTEX B2B Suite provides, and ERP integrations that need ongoing maintenance through a middleware layer. A replatforming project covers data migration, storefront redesign, integration rebuilding, and go-live planning. For unified commerce implementations it also includes consolidating B2B and DTC into a single platform architecture.
How long does a VTEX to Shopify Plus migration take for a B2B business?
A VTEX to Shopify Plus migration for a B2B business typically takes 10 to 16 weeks, depending on catalog complexity, ERP integration requirements, and whether the project includes consolidating separate B2B and DTC channels into a unified Shopify Plus instance. A straightforward migration with standard ERP integration runs closer to 10 weeks. Projects that include unified commerce architecture design, multi-warehouse ERP setups, or complex customer pricing structures typically run 14 to 16 weeks. Uncap runs a parallel environment throughout so the VTEX store stays live until cutover.
Will my VTEX store stay live during the migration?
Yes. Uncap runs parallel environments throughout the migration. Your VTEX store continues taking orders while we build, integrate, and test the Shopify Plus environment. The cutover to Shopify Plus happens at a planned time with your operations team present. In-flight orders are handled through the transition and there is no period where your storefront is unavailable to customers.
Does Shopify Plus replace the VTEX B2B Suite?
Yes, and without the additional licensing cost or custom development dependency. Shopify Plus includes native B2B infrastructure that covers what the VTEX B2B Suite handles and more: company accounts with location hierarchies, customer-specific price lists enforced at login, purchase order submission at checkout, net payment terms (net 30, net 60, net 90), credit limit enforcement, gated catalog access by account, and bulk ordering tools. These are core platform features maintained by Shopify with every platform release, not a separately licensed add-on that requires developer configuration to activate or extend.
Does Shopify Plus require a frontend development team to operate?
No. Unlike VTEX's composable architecture, Shopify Plus is a managed platform. Merchandising, pricing, catalog management, checkout configuration, and B2B buyer experience setup are handled through the Shopify admin without frontend engineering. Changes that would require a VTEX IO developer on VTEX are configuration changes on Shopify Plus. Businesses that migrate from VTEX to Shopify Plus typically reduce or eliminate their frontend development retainer costs within the first year.
What is the difference between a VTEX to Shopify migration service and a migration tool?
A migration tool transfers data. A migration service rebuilds the operation. Tools handle product records, customer data, and order history, but they do not redesign the commerce architecture, remove the VTEX IO developer dependency, connect your ERP directly to Shopify, build the B2B and DTC unified structure, or manage the go-live process. For a manufacturer or distributor moving off VTEX, a data transfer tool moves the content but leaves the architectural problems in place on the new platform. A service like Uncap treats the migration as the moment to fix those problems, not just replicate the existing setup on a different platform.
Ready to Move Your Operation to Shopify Plus?
A platform migration is a significant decision. Uncap makes it a straightforward one. Your free migration assessment covers your current VTEX setup, your ERP integration requirements, your B2B and DTC channel structure, and a realistic scope and timeline for moving to unified commerce on Shopify Plus. No pressure, no pitch deck. Just an honest plan for your business.
Book Your Free Migration Assessment
Uncap is the #1 Shopify Platinum Partner for B2B manufacturers and distributors. Chicago-based. 350+ stores built. Trusted by wholesale brands since 2013.
