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Shopify company account requests vs wholesale approval apps: what is native now, and what still is not
Two claims still dominate US wholesale advice: that Shopify B2B is Plus-only, and that Shopify has no native wholesale signup. Both are out of date. Since the April 2, 2026 changelog, B2B runs on Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus, and the free Shopify Forms app collects company account requests that sit under Customers > Companies > Ordering not approved until a merchant approves them. What is still missing: no way to add a buyer to an existing company, rejection means deleting the company record, and the form cannot run on a gated store. Five apps from $0 to $150/month close different parts of that gap, and they split into two different architectures. Researched September 3, 2026.
Your Theme Already Has a Cart Drawer. What You're Paying For Is What Goes Inside It.
Switching your cart to a drawer is a theme setting, not an app. Six cart drawer apps verified September 3, 2026 meter on four different units, and two of the free plans only work on development stores.
Shopify Online Tipping Is Real — It Just Doesn't Know Who the Tip Is For
Tipping is not a POS-only feature on Shopify. Online checkout tipping shipped in May 2020 and works on Shop Pay since March 2023, so a restaurant or salon can collect gratuity today without an app. But the online version is the weaker of the two: presets are percentages only, POS gets flat-dollar minimums, POS reports tips per staff member and online reports a single total, and refunding a tip online means typing the amount in by hand. Tips also break on Shop Pay Installments and on any cart with a selling plan. We checked Shopify's help center and five tipping apps on September 3, 2026 — Tip Cup, Tip Quik, TipGenius, SnapTip, and TipJoy — and they split by where the ask happens: before checkout, inside it, or after the order. None of the five listings claim to split a tip among staff.
Shopify Customer Account Login Options: What's Native, What Needs an App, and What Nothing Can Change
Shopify customer accounts no longer rely on an emailed code alone. Google and Facebook social sign-in is a free native setting, and an OIDC identity provider connection is native on Plus. What is genuinely missing is narrower than most articles claim: password login, providers beyond Google and Facebook, and SSO below Plus. Multipass does not work on customer accounts at all, and no app can replace the sign-in page. Six App Store apps compared with USD pricing. Researched September 2, 2026.
Shopify Already Has a Free File Upload Field. Your Cart Drawer May Be Eating It.
Almost every 'best Shopify file upload app' article skips the part where Shopify documents a free, all-plans file upload field on the product form. It works — until an AJAX cart drawer silently discards it, a failure mode Shopify filed against its own Dawn theme and fixed there in 2021, but which still hits any theme or app that serializes add-to-cart properties. And Shopify confirmed in August 2026 that natively uploaded files have no lifetime and no deletion policy, so they sit on the public CDN indefinitely. The apps that fix this meter on five incompatible units, including one that sells you retention length: three months for $9.95, twelve months for $24.95. Prices verified on the Shopify App Store September 3, 2026.