I have a purely B2B store - no D2C checkouts.
I want to offer maintenance bundles as a subscription - preferably bundling individual items, but I will create the bundles as a single item if necessary.
I’ve asked AI.
I’ve searched apps.
I’ve asked app developers.
I’ve searched for a solution for days now, and the only thing I can find is;
Set up auto-draft orders, which must be manually processed. No customer self-serve subscriptions.
Add TWO apps - one for more B2B functionality then piggy-back a subscription app on top of it. This option terrifies me.
You’re not missing anything, this is a real platform gap. Selling plans, which every subscription app builds on, aren’t supported on B2B checkouts, and draft orders can’t carry selling plans either. That’s why you get the same answer everywhere. The two workable patterns: sell the bundles through a D2C-style checkout for those buyers (separate products or a storefront section just for subscriptions), or stay on B2B and generate recurring draft orders with invoicing on a schedule using Flow or Mechanic, accepting that payment collection isn’t fully self-serve.
This is exactly the response I expected. Thank you for your reply even though it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I still have a tiny sliver of hope that there’s another way…
Your instinct about the two-app stack is right. A subscription app still creates selling plans, and B2B checkouts reject those no matter what the B2B app adds on top, so the piggyback setup breaks at payment, not just during configuration. The closest thing to self-serve inside B2B today is scheduled draft orders with automatically sent invoices; the customer still completes each payment manually. If hands-off subscriptions matter long term, a D2C checkout lane for those bundles is the only fully automated route right now.
There is a little more hope than this thread has given you, though not in the half you were hoping for.
The subscription part is genuinely closed. Shopify’s own developer docs state that B2B does not support purchase options such as subscriptions, and the draft order API says outright that draft orders do not support subscriptions, so no selling plan can ride along there either. Every subscription app builds on selling plans, which is why you keep getting the same answer no matter who you ask. Stacking a second app on top does not move that wall, it just moves where you discover it.
But the thing this thread keeps repeating, that your customer still has to complete each payment by hand, is not true anymore. If you are on Shopify Payments, B2B customers can save a card at checkout or from their customer account, which Shopify calls credit card vaulting. Then in Flow you build a workflow using the Payment schedule is due trigger together with the Charge vaulted payment for B2B order action, and Shopify charges that saved card itself when the terms fall due. The customer does nothing. Both halves are first party and documented.
So payment collection is solved and genuinely hands off. What is left is producing the recurring order in the first place, and that is the only piece with no native answer. Flow can send a draft order invoice but it has no action that creates a draft order, so the recurrence has to come from somewhere else, either a scheduled call to the Admin API or something small and custom.
That is a much smaller piece of work than the two app stack you were dreading, and it keeps these buyers on B2B pricing and payment terms instead of pushing them through a consumer checkout.
How many of these maintenance bundles are there, and is the cadence the same across all of them?
On bundling. You don’t need to build a bundle product at all. A draft order takes the individual items as separate line items, priced from that company’s catalog. So you can change what is in the bundle month to month by editing one workflow.
prerequisite:
Shopify Payments: Vaulted cards don’t work with other gateways.
The buyer saves the card once. You cannot do tat.
Debit a bank account than a card: US only.
There is no buyer facing portal to pause, skip or swap items. They contact you and you edit the workflow.
I don’t think you’ve missed anything obvious. Unfortunately, this is one of the current gaps in Shopify’s B2B ecosystem.
Native Shopify B2B works well for company accounts, catalogs, and payment terms, but recurring subscriptions for B2B customers aren’t as well integrated as many merchants would like. That’s why most of the recommendations end up being either:
Auto generated draft orders which lose the self service subscription experience, or
Combining a subscription app with your B2B setup.
I understand why the two app approach feels risky, but it’s also the route I’ve seen most merchants take when they need true recurring ordering with customer self management. The key is making sure the two apps officially support each other before committing.
If you’re willing to package the maintenance bundle as a single SKU instead of a dynamic bundle, you’ll likely have more subscription app options, as support for bundled subscription products is still inconsistent across apps.
Hopefully Shopify expands native support for B2B subscriptions in the future, because this seems like a fairly common use case for maintenance plans and recurring replenishment.
