How much does a B2B ecommerce portal cost in Australia?

A B2B ecommerce portal in Australia costs from a few hundred dollars a month to well over A$300,000 to build. The quote you get for the build is the number everyone compares, but it’s rarely the biggest part of the bill. Over three years, the platform licence, apps, middleware, upgrades and the people to run it can cost as much again.

This guide adds those lines up from published sources, for wholesalers, distributors and manufacturers selling to trade customers in Australia and New Zealand. We make TierCommerce, one of the routes compared here, so we’re not neutral. Every figure is linked so you can check it, and where a vendor doesn’t publish a price we say so.

What agencies quote for the build

An Australian ecommerce agency publishes these ranges for a B2B portal build, excluding GST:^[1]

The same agency puts a mid-market Shopify Plus project with an ERP integration at A$80,000–180,000.^[2] Most wholesalers with contract pricing in their ERP need the integrated tier at least, because a portal that can’t show each customer the price the ERP will invoice sends buyers back to emailing your team.

What the build quote leaves out

Build ranges are useful, but they don’t include the costs that recur every month. These are the lines to add.

The platform licence

• Shopify Plus costs A$3,700 a month on a three-year term, or A$4,000 on a one-year term: A$133,200 or A$144,000 over three years.^[3] Shopify says more complex, higher-volume businesses move to a variable platform fee, which it doesn’t publish.^[4]
• BigCommerce plans from 1 June 2026 are Core A$42 Growth A$114 Scale A$433 and Performance from A$2,172 a month, billed annually. Customer price lists need Performance, and Scale pays 0.9% on sales above A$48,309 a month.^[5] Its B2B Edition is priced by quote.^[6]
• Adobe Commerce is licensed on your gross merchandise value and average order value, and its licence terms count refunded and unpaid orders too.^[7] Adobe doesn’t publish the fee itself, so ask for it at your forecast order value, not today’s.

Apps and connectors

On Shopify and BigCommerce, B2B features such as quotes, credit limits and company onboarding, and the connector to an Australian ERP, are usually apps. In our audit of 62 listings, a typical Shopify Plus stack for a MYOB wholesaler costs A$874 a month, and one for Pronto Xi A$1,677 a month plus installation. Our Shopify Plus B2B cost guide lists every app.

Middleware

If the ERP connects through an integration platform, add its subscription. The published list prices start at A$36,232 a year for Jitterbit Standard. Our ERP integration cost guide compares them.

Forced upgrades

Adobe gives each Commerce release three years of standard support; version 2.4.6, for example, reached the end of support on 11 August 2026.^[8] Any three-year cost for a self-managed Adobe store should include an upgrade project. Custom portals need the same: frameworks, PHP versions and ERP APIs all move.

People

Someone has to run the portal and the integration. If that’s an employee, SEEK puts the median integration developer salary at A$132,500.^[9] With 12% superannuation,^[10] that’s about A$148,400 a year before leave, payroll tax and equipment. SEEK’s median for an ecommerce manager is A$110,000.^[9] Most wholesalers don’t hire an integration developer; they pay an agency by the hour instead, which is the maintenance line below.

Overruns

Budgets slip. In Panorama Consulting’s 2026 survey of 170 mid-market ERP projects, 30% went over budget, and the most common reason, for 54.9% of those, was that additional technology had to be bought to meet the project’s goals.^[11] It’s a global sample, mostly North American, but the connector and middleware subscriptions in a portal project are exactly that kind of purchase.

Three routes over three years

The chart adds the published lines for three routes over three years. The custom portal uses the agency’s integrated-portal range plus A$1,640 a month for hosting and maintenance, from the planning model in our comparison of NetSuite portals.^[12] The Shopify Plus route uses the agency’s project range, the licence and our audited app stack. US-dollar prices are converted at about US$0.69 to the Australian dollar, the rate on 1 October 2026.^[13] Switch the Shopify term, or add middleware at Jitterbit’s list price of A$36,232 a year.^[14]

On those figures, three years costs A$134K–A$209K for a custom portal and A$245K–A$345K on Shopify Plus with an agency build, before Shopify’s payment fees. Adding middleware takes them to A$243K–A$318K and A$353K–A$453K. On TierCommerce the subscription is A$18K–A$54K over three years, from the Essentials base price (Xero and MYOB Business) to the Professional base price (Pronto Xi, NetSuite, Options, MYOB Acumatica, Business Central, SAP Business One, Cin7 and Unleashed), with the ERP integration included and onboarding quoted separately.

Where the money goes on each route

• Yes: Better for a wholesaler
• Partly: Depends, or ask
• No: Watch out

What each route gives your customers

A cheaper portal that can’t check a customer’s credit limit, take a quote or let them pay an invoice online leaves that work with your team. Compare the features before the price.

What a portal returns

Cost is only half the case. The other half is what moves online. East Coast Bullbars’ dealer portal, which our team built in 2017, has taken more than $90 million in dealer orders, syncing around 6,000 ERP rows a day for products, pricing, customers, invoices and orders.^[15] Dealers find parts by vehicle or part number, see live stock and their own prices, and order without calling.

For your own case, count the orders your team keys by hand, the calls to check prices and stock, and the invoices chased by email. Our order automation ROI calculator prices the order entry side.

How to compare quotes

1. Ask for three years, not the build. Every quote should cover build, licence, apps, middleware, hosting, maintenance and upgrades.
2. Price your order value, not today’s. Licences and platform fees that grow with sales should be priced at where you expect to be in year three.
3. Check the ERP route. Ask whether the integration is built by the platform, the ERP vendor, a third-party app or the agency, and whether it syncs customer-specific prices.
4. Find the caps. Order caps on connectors, operation caps on middleware and customer limits on catalogues all trigger upgrades.
5. Ask who you call. When an order doesn’t reach the ERP, who finds out first, and who fixes it?

See TierCommerce pricing, how the platform works, or our guide to the best B2B ecommerce platforms in Australia and New Zealand. To see a working store, book a demo and tell us which ERP you run.