The B2B Edition developer documentation contains helpful resources for building custom B2B experiences. Use the information in the Overview to familiarize yourself with B2B Edition and gather necessary tools for development.
B2B Edition is BigCommerce’s all-in-one solution that offers enterprise-level B2B functionality to businesses of all types and sizes. It enables business owners to facilitate their B2B operations online and to provide customers with self-service account capabilities and seamless transactions.
B2B Edition integrates directly into your control panel, seamlessly blending the backend functionality of BigCommerce with a suite of tools for managing the different aspects of your B2B storefront experience, such as:
In addition to its management tools, B2B Edition includes the Buyer Portal: a unique storefront account area for Company users to efficiently handle their B2B purchasing workflows, such as requesting sales quotes or paying outstanding invoices. Stores can use the default version of the Buyer Portal, or a customized build for Stencil and headless storefronts alike.
To learn more about B2B Edition’s tools, settings, and storefront features, see the B2B Edition User Guide (Help Center).
Before you can start building a custom B2B solution, you’ll need a developer sandbox that can access our APIs. Use these steps to obtain the necessary tools and proceed with your development workflow.
To request a non-transactional sandbox store for development, fill out the form located in the “Create A Sandbox Store” step of the BigCommerce API Overview. The developer sandbox is free of charge.
To request B2B Edition provisioning on your store, install the B2B Edition app from the marketplace and then contact our support team to start the process. If you are a BigCommerce Partner, reach out to your partner manager to request B2B Edition.
In your request, make sure to specify whether you are developing on B2B Edition’s Buyer Portal experience or the legacy storefront experience. New B2B Edition stores use the Buyer Portal experience by default.
Depending on what you are developing, you may need auth tokens for B2B Edition’s Server to Server Management APIs or the REST Storefront and GraphQL APIs.
You can create an API account from Settings > API Accounts in your B2B Edition control panel to authenticate requests to the REST Management API. You can also generate management and storefront tokens via API requests. See Authentication for hosted storefronts to learn more.
Storefront auth tokens are associated with an existing B2C storefront customer or B2B Company user to authenticate requests. These tokens are typically generated using the REST Management API or via direct authentications with the storefront APIs. For tokens associated with Company users, the user’s assigned role and permissions determine which requests are authorized. See Company Roles and Permissions for a complete list of Company user permissions.
If you are building an integration that affects non-B2B resources of a BigCommerce store, such as products or orders, you must also create a BigCommerce store-level API account with the correct OAuth scopes.
Now that you have a sandbox store with the necessary auth tokens, you can start building your solution. Use the links below to find helpful information related to a specific development path.
As you proceed with your development, consult these resources for best practices, tips, and helpful reference material.