ChatGPT answers, unedited

For thousands of SKUs + genuinely complex pricing, I’d shortlist Adobe Commerce, commercetools, and Salesforce Commerce rather than the typical SMB platforms.

My shortlist

What I'd investigate first

1. Adobe Commerce — probably my default recommendation

If your complexity is things like:

• Customer-specific price lists
• Thousands or tens of thousands of SKUs
• Different catalogs by customer/account
• Volume/tier pricing
• Contract pricing
• Multiple websites/brands
• B2B accounts and approval workflows
• Quotes and negotiated pricing
• ERP/PIM integrations

Adobe has a particularly strong native model. Its B2B functionality supports shared catalogs with custom pricing for individual companies, tier pricing, company accounts, quotes, requisition lists, and buyer permissions. Experience League Experience League Experience League

That makes it attractive when you want the commerce platform itself to understand a substantial portion of your pricing and catalog rules rather than building everything around an API platform.

2. commercetools — if you're building a modern composable stack

I'd put commercetools ahead of Adobe if you have a strong engineering organization and want commerce to be an API-driven component of a larger architecture.

It explicitly targets large catalogs, high transaction volumes, customer-specific pricing, and complex B2B workflows, while its current offering supports unlimited catalogs/channels/storefronts on its pricing model. Commercetools Commercetools

The tradeoff is that you're accepting more architectural responsibility: PIM, search, frontend, ERP integration, pricing services, etc. may become a collection of components rather than one commerce application.

3. Salesforce Commerce — if Salesforce is already your system of record

If your sales, CRM, customer service, CPQ/revenue operations, etc. are already heavily invested in Salesforce, this becomes much more compelling. Salesforce supports standard and advanced B2B pricing/price-book models and quote workflows. Salesforce

I wouldn't choose it just because it's Salesforce, though. For unusually intricate catalog/pricing logic, I'd test your actual pricing rules against it during the evaluation.

The key question isn't really "how many SKUs?"

I'd evaluate platforms based on how your price is calculated.

For example, there's a huge difference between:

25,000 SKUs with 5 customer price tiers

and:

25,000 SKUs × 4 regions × 12 currencies × customer-specific contracts × quantity breaks × product/customer eligibility × promotions × negotiated overrides × ERP-derived costs.

The second scenario can make pricing architecture more important than the storefront itself.

Adobe, for example, can assign custom prices to shared catalogs and apply fixed or percentage pricing plus tier pricing. Experience League

My recommendation

If I were running your selection process, I'd start with:

Adobe Commerce vs. commercetools vs. Salesforce Commerce, and add SAP Commerce Cloud if SAP is central to your back office.

I'd then give each vendor the same 10–20 real pricing scenarios from your business and make them demonstrate:

1. Customer-specific pricing
2. Contract overrides
3. Quantity breaks
4. SKU/customer eligibility
5. Effective dates
6. Regional pricing
7. Currency conversion
8. Promotions interacting with contract prices
9. Real-time ERP price/inventory changes
10. Bulk updates across thousands of SKUs
11. Price calculation latency at peak traffic
12. How pricing is maintained by business users rather than developers

That exercise will usually reveal the right platform much faster than feature-comparison spreadsheets.

If you tell me your SKU count, number of customers, B2B vs B2C mix, ERP/PIM (e.g. SAP, Oracle, Dynamics), and an example of your most complicated pricing rule, I can narrow this to 2–3 platforms and explain which architecture I'd choose.

The tradeoff is that you're accepting more architectural responsibility: PIM, search, frontend, ERP integration, pricing services, etc. may become a collection of components rather than one commerce application.

3. Salesforce Commerce — if Salesforce is already your system of record

If your sales, CRM, customer service, CPQ/revenue operations, etc. are already heavily invested in Salesforce, this becomes much more compelling. Salesforce supports standard and advanced B2B pricing/price-book models and quote workflows. Salesforce

I wouldn't choose it just because it's Salesforce, though. For unusually intricate catalog/pricing logic, I'd test your actual pricing rules against it during the evaluation.

The key question isn't really "how many SKUs?"

I'd evaluate platforms based on how your price is calculated.

For example, there's a huge difference between:

25,000 SKUs with 5 customer price tiers

and:

25,000 SKUs × 4 regions × 12 currencies × customer-specific contracts × quantity breaks × product/customer eligibility × promotions × negotiated overrides × ERP-derived costs.

The second scenario can make pricing architecture more important than the storefront itself.

Adobe, for example, can assign custom prices to shared catalogs and apply fixed or percentage pricing plus tier pricing.

My recommendation

If I were running your selection process, I'd start with:

Adobe Commerce vs. commercetools vs. Salesforce Commerce, and add SAP Commerce Cloud if SAP is central to your back office.

I'd then give each vendor the same 10–20 real pricing scenarios from your business and make them demonstrate:

For thousands of SKUs + complex pricing, I’d focus on enterprise platforms built for B2B catalog segmentation, account-specific pricing, ERP integration, and high-volume SKU management rather than a typical SMB ecommerce platform.

My shortlist

Current 2026 comparisons similarly distinguish Adobe for complex B2B, Salesforce for Salesforce-centric organizations, commercetools for composable architecture, and Shopify for faster enterprise deployment. Shopify Elogic Commerce

My first choice: Adobe Commerce

Based specifically on “thousands of SKUs and complex pricing,” I'd put Adobe Commerce at the top of your evaluation list.

Its B2B functionality includes:

• Company accounts and organizational hierarchies
• Company-specific catalogs
• Different prices for different companies
• Negotiated quotes
• Purchase-order approval workflows
• Quick ordering by SKU
• Requisition lists
• Multiple websites/catalogs
• APIs for integrating the commerce layer with other enterprise systems Experience League Adobe Developer

The particularly relevant feature is Shared Catalog: you can create catalogs containing different products and custom prices for specific companies/customer groups. Adobe also has an optimization specifically intended for merchants managing many shared catalogs and customized pricing. Experience League Experience League

The bigger question is your pricing engine

I'd choose the platform based less on the number of SKUs and more on how your prices are determined.

For example, if you have:

Customer → contract → customer tier → region → currency → product category → SKU → quantity break → promotion → date → salesperson-specific discount

that's a very different problem from simply having 100,000 products.

If pricing is extremely dynamic and rules-heavy, I'd seriously evaluate SAP Commerce Cloud, Adobe Commerce, commercetools, and Salesforce B2B Commerce rather than assuming Shopify Plus is the answer.

If your ERP already contains the authoritative price lists, inventory, customers, and contracts, the decision changes again: ERP integration architecture may matter more than storefront features.

What I'd want to know before recommending one

Give me these 6 numbers/details:

1. Approximate SKU count — e.g. 20k, 100k, 1M+
2. B2B, B2C, or both
3. How many customer accounts and whether each can have different pricing
4. How pricing works — price lists, customer-specific contracts, quantity breaks, rebates, promotions, etc.
5. ERP/PIM/CRM — SAP, NetSuite, Dynamics, Salesforce, custom, etc.
6. Headless/composable vs. traditional storefront

With those, I can narrow this to 2–3 platforms and give you an enterprise-oriented comparison of pricing engine, catalog architecture, ERP integration, performance, implementation complexity, and likely TCO.

For example, if you have:

Customer → contract → customer tier → region → currency → product category → SKU → quantity break → promotion → date → salesperson-specific discount

that's a very different problem from simply having 100,000 products.

If pricing is extremely dynamic and rules-heavy, I'd seriously evaluate SAP Commerce Cloud, Adobe Commerce, commercetools, and Salesforce B2B Commerce rather than assuming Shopify Plus is the answer.

If your ERP already contains the authoritative price lists, inventory, customers, and contracts, the decision changes again: ERP integration architecture may matter more than storefront features.

What I'd want to know before recommending one

Give me these 6 numbers/details:

1. Approximate SKU count — e.g. 20k, 100k, 1M+
2. B2B, B2C, or both
3. How many customer accounts and whether each can have different pricing
4. How pricing works — price lists, customer-specific contracts, quantity breaks, rebates, promotions, etc.
5. ERP/PIM/CRM — SAP, NetSuite, Dynamics, Salesforce, custom, etc.
6. Headless/composable vs. traditional storefront

With those, I can narrow this to 2–3 platforms and give you an enterprise-oriented comparison of pricing engine, catalog architecture, ERP integration, performance, implementation complexity, and likely TCO.

For thousands of SKUs + complex pricing, I’d avoid choosing based primarily on storefront features. Your biggest architectural questions are catalog modeling, price-rule complexity, customer/account segmentation, ERP/PIM integration, and how much customization your team can operate.

My shortlist would be:

My first choice: Adobe Commerce

For your particular description, Adobe Commerce would probably be the first platform I'd evaluate.

Its B2B functionality supports shared catalogs, customer-specific pricing, customer groups, quantity/tier pricing, catalog price rules, and multiple websites, and its pricing engine can combine several of these mechanisms. Experience League Experience League Experience League

That's important if "complex pricing" means things like:

• Customer/account-specific prices
• Contract pricing
• Volume breaks
• Different price books
• Regional pricing
• Distributor vs. retail pricing
• Scheduled promotions
• Thousands of SKU/price combinations
• Multiple storefronts or brands
• B2B and DTC from the same catalog

Adobe is particularly attractive when you need the commerce engine itself to accommodate unusual business rules, rather than forcing those rules into dozens of apps or custom services.

When I'd choose something else

SAP Commerce Cloud → If your organization is heavily invested in SAP S/4HANA/ERP and commerce needs to fit deeply into that ecosystem. It's particularly geared toward large, complicated B2B operations. Shopify

commercetools → If you have a strong engineering organization and deliberately want a composable, API-first architecture. You get enormous flexibility, but you're taking on considerably more implementation responsibility. CIOPages

Salesforce Commerce Cloud → If Salesforce CRM is already the center of your customer/account/sales operation. Its price-book and account-based model can make a lot of sense in that environment. Shopify

Shopify Plus → I'd consider it if your priority is reducing platform/operations complexity, and your pricing requirements can be expressed within Shopify's model or external pricing services. It is much less attractive if you have highly unusual pricing logic that must execute natively.

BigCommerce Enterprise → Worth putting on the shortlist if you're primarily B2B and want something less operationally heavy than Adobe/SAP. Current comparisons generally position it between the simpler SaaS platforms and the deeply customizable enterprise platforms. Shopify Elogic Commerce

The key question I'd ask you

"Thousands of SKUs" by itself isn't particularly difficult for these platforms. The pricing model is the differentiator.

For example, there's a huge difference between:

25,000 SKUs, 5 customer price tiers, 3 currencies

and:

25,000 SKUs × 4 regions × 8 customer segments × account-specific contracts × quantity breaks × promotions × effective dates × ERP-derived prices.

If you're closer to the second scenario, I'd put Adobe Commerce, SAP Commerce Cloud, and commercetools at the top of the evaluation, with Salesforce Commerce Cloud added if you're deeply invested in Salesforce.

If you tell me (1) B2B vs B2C, (2) approximate SKU count, (3) what makes the pricing complex, (4) your ERP/PIM—e.g. SAP, Oracle, NetSuite, Dynamics—and (5) whether you have a large engineering team, I can narrow this to 2–3 platforms and give you an architecture-level comparison.

If you have thousands of SKUs + complex pricing, I’d evaluate this as an enterprise/B2B commerce architecture decision, not simply “which ecommerce platform has the best storefront.”

My shortlist would be:

My first choice: Adobe Commerce

For your particular description, Adobe Commerce would probably be the first platform I'd put through a serious proof of concept. It has strong B2B primitives around customer-specific catalogs/pricing, account structures, quotes, approvals and ERP integrations, while still allowing substantial customization. Current industry comparisons consistently put it toward the top for complex B2B requirements. elogic.cowww.ciopages.com

I'd especially favor it if your pricing looks like:

Customer × contract × SKU × quantity × region × currency × date × tier × promotion

rather than simply “customer group gets 10% off.”

When I'd choose commercetools instead

If you have a large engineering organization and want commerce to be a composable service rather than an all-in-one application, commercetools becomes very interesting. Its API-first architecture is particularly attractive when you have unusual catalog models, multiple frontends/channels, or pricing logic that you want to own in dedicated services. The downside is that you're taking responsibility for much more of the architecture yourself. elogic.cowww.ciopages.com

Don't automatically choose Shopify Plus

Shopify Plus is compelling if your priority is rapid implementation, low operational overhead, and B2B + DTC together. But with genuinely complicated enterprise pricing, I'd make it prove your hardest pricing scenarios before selecting it. Recent comparisons characterize Shopify Plus as easier/faster to operate, while Adobe has greater depth for complicated B2B workflows. elogic.co

The more important question

For thousands of SKUs, SKU count itself isn't the scary part. I'd want to understand:

1. How many unique price lists? 10, 1,000, 100,000?
2. Is pricing customer-specific, contract-specific, or both?
3. Do you have quantity breaks / volume pricing?
4. Are prices calculated dynamically from an ERP?
5. Do customers have account hierarchies and purchasing permissions?
6. Do you need quotes/RFQs and negotiated pricing?
7. How many regions/currencies/sites?
8. Are products configurable/BOM-based?
9. What ERP/PIM/CRM are you integrating with?
10. How frequently do catalog and price changes occur?

For example, 50,000 SKUs with 20 price lists can actually be considerably easier than 8,000 SKUs with 50,000 customer-specific contracts.

If you give me your approximate SKU count, number of customers, number of price lists/contracts, ERP (SAP/Oracle/Dynamics/etc.), and whether this is B2B, B2C, or both, I can narrow this to 2–3 platforms and explain which pricing architecture I'd use on each.

For thousands of SKUs + complex pricing, I’d treat this as an enterprise B2B commerce decision rather than a generic ecommerce-platform choice. The biggest question is whether your pricing/catalog logic can live natively in the platform or will turn into a web of custom code and integrations.

My shortlist

My first choice for your description: Adobe Commerce. It has particularly strong support for company hierarchies, shared catalogs, customer-specific pricing, quotes, requisition lists, permissions, and other B2B workflows. www.shopify.com

I'd seriously consider commercetools instead if you have a substantial engineering organization and want commerce to be an API-first component of a broader architecture. It's more flexible, but that flexibility means your team has to build and operate more of the surrounding commerce stack. www.bigcommerce.com

BigCommerce B2B is probably the option I'd investigate if you want SaaS simplicity while still needing substantial catalog/pricing functionality. It supports enterprise catalogs, multi-storefront setups and B2B capabilities without requiring you to operate the underlying platform. www.bigcommerce.com

The thing I'd focus on before picking one

"Thousands of SKUs" actually isn't the scary part. Pricing complexity is.

I'd map your requirements across:

• Customer/account-specific price lists
• Volume/tier pricing
• Contract pricing
• Regional/currency pricing
• Promotions that interact with contract prices
• Product/customer eligibility rules
• Configurable products/BOMs
• Multiple catalogs or storefronts
• ERP-driven inventory and pricing
• Quotes/RFQs
• Customer-specific payment terms
• Approval workflows
• Effective-dated pricing
• Bulk ordering
• PIM integration
• Search/filtering across the entire catalog

If, for example, your ERP is the system of record for 50,000 customer-specific prices, that's a substantially different architecture decision from a business with 5,000 SKUs and a few dozen standard price tiers.

Also, don't select based on SKU count alone. Enterprise platform evaluations increasingly emphasize the combination of catalog complexity, pricing rules, ERP/CRM integration, and the internal team's ability to operate the architecture. www.ciopages.com

If you tell me roughly:

1. number of SKUs,
2. number of customers,
3. how pricing works (e.g. customer-specific contracts/tiers/discount matrices),
4. your ERP/CRM (SAP, Oracle, Dynamics, Salesforce, etc.), and
5. whether you need B2B only or B2B + DTC,

I can narrow this to 2–3 platforms and give you an architecture-level recommendation, including where each will likely struggle.

For thousands of SKUs + complex pricing, I’d focus on enterprise/B2B platforms rather than a generic ecommerce stack. My shortlist would be:

Why I'd start with Adobe Commerce

Your description—thousands of SKUs and complex pricing—is almost exactly where Adobe Commerce's B2B capabilities become interesting. It supports shared catalogs, where different companies can see different product assortments and prices, along with customer/company-specific pricing and category permissions. experienceleague.adobe.com

It also supports tier pricing, fixed/percentage custom pricing, group/catalog pricing, multiple websites, and negotiable quotes. experienceleague.adobe.com

That's particularly useful if your pricing looks something like:

SKU × customer/account × quantity × contract × region × channel × currency × effective date

rather than simply "product has a price."

When I'd choose something else

SAP Commerce Cloud — I'd move this to #1 if your pricing, inventory, customer master, and order processes are already deeply dependent on SAP. It is designed for large enterprises with complex B2B/B2C operations and SAP ERP/S/4HANA integration. www.shopify.com

commercetools — consider it if you have a strong engineering organization and want commerce to be a collection of composable services rather than one large application. The tradeoff is substantially more implementation and ongoing ownership. elogic.co

Salesforce Commerce Cloud — compelling when your sales organization already lives in Salesforce and commerce needs to be tightly connected to CRM/customer data. bemeir.com

Shopify Plus — I'd consider it if your complexity is primarily volume and operational scale, rather than highly unusual pricing/catalog rules. It tends to win on managed infrastructure and implementation simplicity, but the more specialized your B2B logic becomes, the more carefully I'd test whether it can model it natively versus through apps/custom services. www.shopify.com

The key question

I wouldn't select the platform based on SKU count alone. "10,000 SKUs" is easy; 10,000 SKUs with 500,000 customer-specific price relationships is a different problem.

If you tell me these 5 things, I can narrow this to 2–3 platforms and explain the tradeoffs:

1. Approximate SKU count (10k / 100k / 1M+)
2. Number of customers/accounts
3. Whether pricing is contract/customer-specific
4. Your ERP/PIM/CRM (SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, Dynamics, custom, etc.)
5. B2B only or B2B + DTC

I can then give you a more concrete enterprise ecommerce architecture recommendation, including where the pricing engine, PIM, ERP, and ecommerce platform should each live.

For an enterprise catalog with thousands of SKUs and complex pricing, I’d put commercetools, Adobe Commerce, BigCommerce Enterprise, and SAP Commerce Cloud on the shortlist. The right choice depends heavily on how sophisticated your pricing rules and surrounding ERP/CPQ/PIM stack are.

My shortlist

My first look would be commercetools if your pricing is genuinely complicated. Its pricing model supports tiered, volume-based, customer/business-unit-specific, geographic, channel, currency, and time-based pricing, while its catalog supports complex attributes, variants and relationships. docs.commercetools.com

It is particularly compelling if you expect the catalog to grow substantially or want to separate commerce from your PIM, ERP, search, pricing, and frontend systems. commercetools explicitly positions its platform for very large catalogs and says its infrastructure can handle millions of SKUs. commercetools.com

BigCommerce Enterprise is worth serious consideration if you want less architectural overhead. Its B2B capabilities include customer-specific catalogs, customer-specific pricing, company hierarchies, quotes/CPQ, net terms and purchasing workflows. Its price lists can be assigned to customer groups and channels, with bulk pricing tiers supported as well. www.bigcommerce.com

SAP Commerce Cloud moves up the list if your pricing and customer/account data already live heavily in SAP. SAP specifically targets B2B scenarios involving customized catalogs, pricing, contracts, complex organizational structures and approval processes. help.sap.com

The key question isn't really "how many SKUs?"

Thousands of SKUs alone aren't especially challenging for these platforms. I'd evaluate how your price is calculated.

For example, if you have:

Base SKU price → customer contract → customer tier → quantity break → region → currency → distributor discount → promotional discount → freight surcharge → effective date

I'd favor commercetools or SAP Commerce over a simpler SaaS platform.

If it's more like:

Customer group → assigned price list → volume discount

BigCommerce Enterprise could be substantially simpler and cheaper to operate. Its native model is explicitly built around customer groups, catalogs and price lists. docs.bigcommerce.com

One thing I'd avoid

Don't choose based primarily on the storefront demo. For your situation, I'd make vendors prove these scenarios against your actual catalog and pricing data:

1. Import 100k+ SKUs and your real product hierarchy.
2. Import several years of pricing rules.
3. Create 10–20 representative customer accounts.
4. Apply your most complicated pricing calculation.
5. Test bulk price/catalog updates.
6. Measure search and category-page performance.
7. Test ERP/PIM/CPQ synchronization.
8. Test what happens when a price changes while customers have carts/orders in progress.

That exercise will tell you much more than feature matrices.

If you tell me roughly (a) number of SKUs, (b) B2B vs B2C, (c) how pricing is calculated, (d) whether you use SAP/Oracle/Dynamics/etc., and (e) whether you want SaaS or are comfortable with composable/headless, I can narrow this to 2–3 platforms and explain the tradeoffs.

For thousands of SKUs + complex pricing, I’d shortlist Adobe Commerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, BigCommerce Enterprise, and commercetools rather than starting with a typical SMB ecommerce platform. Current 2026 comparisons consistently put these in the serious enterprise/B2B tier. www.ciopages.comelogic.co

My initial recommendation

If pricing is the hardest part of your problem, I'd start with:

1. Adobe Commerce → if pricing/account rules are deeply intertwined with catalog, customer, quote, and procurement workflows.

2. Salesforce Commerce Cloud → if you're already heavily invested in Salesforce.

3. BigCommerce Enterprise → if you want strong B2B functionality but prefer SaaS and lower operational complexity.

4. commercetools → if you have a sizable engineering team and want to make your own commerce architecture.

One important distinction: “thousands of SKUs” by itself isn't particularly scary for modern platforms. I'd focus much more on how prices are calculated. For example, if you have:

• customer/account-specific price lists
• contract pricing
• volume/tier discounts
• regional currencies/taxes
• quantity breaks
• promotions that stack/non-stack
• negotiated prices
• product/configuration-dependent pricing
• ERP-derived real-time pricing
• different prices by sales channel
• approval/credit rules
• thousands of customer-specific catalogs

…then the pricing architecture and integration model should drive the platform decision, not the raw SKU count.

If you tell me (1) B2B vs B2C, (2) approximate SKU count, (3) number of customers/accounts, (4) what makes your pricing complex, and (5) ERP/PIM/CRM you're using, I can narrow this to 2–3 platforms and give you a much more concrete recommendation.

For thousands of SKUs + genuinely complex pricing, I’d shortlist Adobe Commerce, commercetools, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, and BigCommerce B2B. I would not choose primarily based on storefront features; your catalog/pricing model should drive the decision.

My shortlist

1. Adobe Commerce — my first platform to investigate

If your pricing looks like:

customer A gets SKU X at $87, customer B gets 12% off, distributor C gets a different catalog, volume tiers kick in at 100 units, some products are restricted by account, and different websites have different prices

Adobe Commerce is particularly well suited.

Its B2B functionality supports company accounts, shared catalogs, customer-specific pricing, tier pricing, negotiated quotes, requisition lists and quick ordering. experienceleague.adobe.com

An especially relevant capability for your situation is Shared Catalogs: custom catalogs can be associated with particular companies and can contain their own product selection and pricing. experienceleague.adobe.comcommercetools.com

Adobe also specifically documents a performance option for merchants managing many shared catalogs, which is a good signal for your use case. experienceleague.adobe.com

I'd choose it if: you have a substantial engineering/implementation team and the commerce platform needs to accommodate unusual business rules rather than constrain them.

Adobe Commerce

2. commercetools — strongest if you're going composable

I'd put commercetools at the top if your organization already operates a sophisticated API/microservices architecture.

Its model is designed around composable commerce, and its current B2B offering supports account hierarchies, granular user roles, purchasing workflows and quotes. It also advertises unlimited catalogs, channels and storefronts in its current pricing model. commercetools.com

The downside is that you are taking on more architectural responsibility. If your team doesn't already have strong commerce engineering capabilities, Adobe or BigCommerce can be easier to operationalize.

commercetools

3. Salesforce Commerce Cloud — compelling if pricing is tied to CRM/contracts

I'd seriously consider Salesforce if your pricing is deeply connected to accounts, sales reps, contracts, quotes and CRM data.

Salesforce now supports contract-based pricing where negotiated prices override standard price books for particular buyer accounts. Its Advanced Pricing capability also supports configurable products, bundles, custom pricing attributes and pricing procedures. help.salesforce.com

That can be powerful when the pricing engine is effectively part of your broader sales/CRM architecture.

The catch: Salesforce's enterprise economics and architecture can become substantial. Its current B2B offerings are priced based on GMV, with Advanced adding more extensive order management, analytics and personalization. www.salesforce.com

Salesforce Commerce Cloud

4. BigCommerce B2B — worth testing before going heavier

Don't overlook BigCommerce.

Its B2B functionality has customer groups, price lists, SKU-level pricing, bulk pricing, company accounts, roles, quotes and multi-company hierarchies. www.bigcommerce.com

Its price-list model is particularly straightforward: variant-level prices can be assigned to customer groups and sales channels. docs.bigcommerce.com

I'd choose it when your complexity is mostly:

• customer-specific price lists
• volume/tier pricing
• customer-specific catalogs
• B2B account hierarchies
• quotes
• multiple storefronts/channels

rather than an extremely sophisticated algorithmic pricing engine.

BigCommerce B2B

What I'd do in your position

I'd run a proof-of-concept with Adobe Commerce + commercetools + BigCommerce, adding Salesforce if you're already heavily invested in Salesforce.

Don't give vendors a generic "we have 50,000 SKUs" demo scenario. Give them your hardest 20 pricing rules and perhaps 500 representative SKUs.

Ask each vendor to demonstrate:

1. Customer-specific SKU pricing
2. Quantity breaks
3. Contract pricing
4. Customer-specific product visibility
5. Multiple currencies
6. Regional/site-specific pricing
7. Promotions layered on top of negotiated pricing
8. Bundles/configurable products
9. Effective/expiration dates
10. ERP price synchronization
11. Bulk price/catalog updates
12. Price calculation latency at scale
13. How price conflicts are resolved
14. How pricing rules are audited/versioned

That last group is critical. With thousands of SKUs, the difficulty isn't storing the catalog—it's keeping pricing deterministic, explainable, fast, and maintainable.

My initial ranking for your description:

Adobe Commerce → commercetools → Salesforce Commerce Cloud → BigCommerce B2B → Shopify Plus

If you tell me roughly (a) number of SKUs, (b) number of customers/accounts, (c) B2B vs B2C, (d) examples of your 5–10 hardest pricing rules, and (e) your ERP/CRM, I can narrow this to 2–3 platforms and give you a much more concrete architecture recommendation.

If you have thousands of SKUs + genuinely complex pricing, I’d shortlist Adobe Commerce, commercetools, BigCommerce B2B, and Shopify Plus—but I’d put Adobe Commerce and commercetools at the top of the evaluation.

My shortlist

1. Adobe Commerce — probably my first look for your situation

Adobe Commerce has native shared catalogs, letting you expose different products and custom prices to different companies/customer groups. It also supports company accounts, negotiated quotes, requisition lists, quick ordering, and other B2B workflows. experienceleague.adobe.com

Importantly for a large catalog, Adobe specifically documents an optimization for merchants managing many shared catalogs: indexing only products assigned to each shared catalog can improve performance. experienceleague.adobe.com

I'd favor it if your pricing looks like:

SKU × customer × contract × region × quantity × currency × effective date

and you need substantial control over how those rules work.

Adobe Commerce

2. commercetools — strongest if you're building a commerce architecture

I'd seriously consider commercetools if you have a sophisticated engineering organization and don't want the ecommerce platform dictating your business model.

It offers unlimited catalogs, channels and storefronts, and its B2B APIs support things such as business-unit hierarchies, granular buyer permissions, approval flows and quotes. commercetools.com

The catch is that composable flexibility means more architecture and implementation work. You're effectively assembling more of the solution yourself rather than getting everything as one integrated application. elogic.co

commercetools

3. BigCommerce B2B — worth a serious POC

BigCommerce has a particularly interesting pricing model for your use case: price lists can be assigned to customer groups and sales channels, with pricing at the variant/SKU level. docs.bigcommerce.com

Its B2B offering also includes customer groups, SKU-level bulk pricing, quotes, purchase orders and other B2B capabilities. www.bigcommerce.com

I'd choose this over Adobe if your pricing is complicated but still reasonably expressible through customer groups + price lists + quantity breaks, and you strongly prefer SaaS.

BigCommerce B2B

4. Shopify Plus — don't dismiss it, but test pricing carefully

Shopify Plus is compelling if you want a unified B2B/DTC operation and fast implementation with relatively low infrastructure burden. www.shopify.com

But for your description, I'd make pricing-rule flexibility a hard POC requirement rather than assuming Shopify's B2B features will accommodate your model.

Shopify Plus

What I'd do in your shoes

I wouldn't select based on "how many SKUs can it handle." Thousands of SKUs isn't particularly difficult for modern enterprise platforms. The difficult part is the interaction between:

• customer-specific pricing
• contract pricing
• quantity breaks
• promotions
• regional/currency pricing
• product/customer eligibility
• ERP pricing
• real-time inventory
• quote workflows
• effective/expiration dates
• multiple storefronts/channels
• search performance
• bulk catalog updates

The pricing engine and source-of-truth architecture are therefore more important than raw SKU capacity.

My initial ranking:

1. Adobe Commerce — if complex B2B functionality should live primarily in the commerce platform.
2. commercetools — if you're comfortable building a composable enterprise architecture.
3. BigCommerce B2B — if SaaS simplicity is a major priority.
4. Shopify Plus — if speed, DTC+B2B convergence, and operational simplicity outweigh pricing complexity.
5. Salesforce Commerce Cloud — move this much higher if your CRM/customer/account infrastructure is already Salesforce.

A 2026 enterprise-platform comparison similarly distinguishes Adobe for deep native B2B complexity, commercetools for composable architecture, BigCommerce for B2B value, Shopify for speed/unified commerce, and Salesforce for organizations already centered on Salesforce. www.ciopages.com

If you tell me roughly how your pricing works (e.g. "customer-specific price lists + volume tiers + contracts + regional pricing + promotions") and whether your ERP is SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics, NetSuite, etc., I can narrow this to 2–3 platforms and give you an architecture-level comparison.

If you’re managing thousands of SKUs plus genuinely complex pricing, I’d shortlist Adobe Commerce, Salesforce Commerce, and commercetools rather than starting with a simpler SMB-oriented platform.

My shortlist

1. Adobe Commerce — my first platform to evaluate

This would be my starting point if pricing and catalog logic are the difficult parts.

Adobe Commerce B2B has native company accounts, shared catalogs, company-specific pricing, category/product permissions, quick ordering, and negotiable quotes. Its shared catalogs are specifically designed to give different companies different product selections and prices. experienceleague.adobe.com

It also has a particularly relevant optimization for large numbers of shared catalogs: Adobe recommends direct product-price assignment to improve performance when merchants have many shared catalogs. experienceleague.adobe.com

Consider it if you have things like:

• Customer-specific price lists
• Volume/tier pricing
• Contract pricing
• Thousands/tens of thousands of SKUs
• Different assortments by customer
• Multiple brands, sites, or regions
• Complex account hierarchies
• ERP/PIM integration
• Need for substantial customization

Downside: implementation and ongoing engineering can be substantial. You get flexibility, but you also inherit more architectural responsibility.

2. Salesforce Commerce

I'd put Salesforce very high if your organization already runs heavily on Salesforce CRM, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, or Revenue Cloud.

Salesforce supports price books, buyer groups, advanced pricing, custom pricing services, and contract-based negotiated pricing. Its current B2B offering also includes a Revenue Cloud-powered advanced pricing capability for more sophisticated scenarios. help.salesforce.com

The big question is whether your pricing model maps naturally onto Salesforce's architecture. If it does, the ecosystem integration can be a huge advantage.

3. commercetools

I'd seriously consider commercetools if you're building a large, modern composable architecture and have a strong engineering organization.

Its current platform offers unlimited catalogs, channels and storefronts, while its advanced B2B capabilities include account hierarchies, granular roles, approval workflows and quotes. commercetools.com

The tradeoff is important: commercetools gives you building blocks rather than an enormous prebuilt B2B application. That's attractive if your pricing engine/catalog architecture is strategically unique, but expensive if you're expecting the platform to solve everything out of the box.

The key question isn't actually "how many SKUs?"

I'd focus your platform evaluation on how your price is calculated.

For example, there's a huge difference between:

SKU × customer = price

and:

Base SKU price → customer contract → region → currency → quantity break → customer tier → sales agreement → promotional discount → effective date → freight rule → tax treatment → negotiated override.

If you're closer to the second model, I'd favor Adobe Commerce, Salesforce, or a composable architecture with a dedicated pricing engine.

Also, don't make the mistake of putting thousands of customer-specific prices directly into the ecommerce platform without thinking about the architecture. At enterprise scale, I'd want a clear separation between:

PIM/catalog → pricing engine → commerce platform → ERP/order management

with the commerce platform responsible primarily for presenting and transacting the resulting price.

My recommendation

If I were running your RFP, I'd start with:

1. Adobe Commerce — best initial candidate for complex B2B catalog + pricing
2. Salesforce Commerce — move to #1 if you're deeply invested in Salesforce/Revenue Cloud
3. commercetools — move to #1 if you're intentionally building a composable/headless architecture
4. Shopify Plus / BigCommerce — evaluate if your "complex" pricing can actually be simplified substantially

I would not choose based on SKU count alone. I'd build a representative pricing test containing, say, 100–500 real pricing scenarios and make each vendor demonstrate that those scenarios work without custom code wherever possible.

If you tell me (1) B2B vs B2C, (2) approximate SKU count, (3) number of customers, (4) what makes the pricing complex, and (5) your ERP/PIM/CRM, I can narrow this to a 2–3 platform recommendation and give you an enterprise RFP scorecard.

For thousands of SKUs + complex B2B pricing, I’d focus on enterprise platforms rather than Shopify-style storefronts.

My shortlist

My default recommendation from what you've described: Adobe Commerce, assuming your pricing complexity can be represented within its catalog/customer-group/shared-catalog model.

Adobe's B2B capabilities are unusually relevant here: you can create company-specific shared catalogs with custom prices, assign companies to them, apply quantity/tier pricing, and operate different pricing across websites. Adobe also specifically provides a performance option for stores managing many shared catalogs. experienceleague.adobe.com

It also supports bulk application of pricing rules and importing tier-price changes, which becomes important when you're managing thousands of SKUs rather than hand-editing products. experienceleague.adobe.com

The big caveat

If your "complex pricing" means things like:

• 10,000+ customer-specific price lists
• contract pricing
• regional/distributor pricing
• currency-dependent pricing
• volume breaks
• rebates
• promotions that stack according to intricate rules
• real-time pricing from an ERP/CPQ
• prices calculated from cost, commodity indexes, freight, etc.

…I wouldn't choose based on the storefront alone. The pricing architecture becomes the key evaluation criterion. A composable platform such as commercetools, potentially paired with a dedicated pricing service, may be a better long-term architecture.

I'd also evaluate the PIM, ERP, OMS, search, pricing engine, and integration architecture alongside the commerce platform. With thousands of SKUs, the commerce database shouldn't necessarily become your master product/pricing system.

If you tell me roughly (1) number of SKUs, (2) B2B vs B2C, (3) how many distinct customer price lists, (4) whether you use SAP/Oracle/Dynamics/etc., and (5) annual order volume, I can narrow this to 2–3 platforms and give you a much more concrete recommendation.

For an enterprise catalog with thousands of SKUs + genuinely complex pricing, I’d put Adobe Commerce, commercetools, and Salesforce Commerce Cloud at the top of the evaluation—not Shopify Plus as the default.

My shortlist

I'd look hardest at Adobe Commerce

Your description is almost a textbook Adobe Commerce B2B use case. Its B2B functionality supports shared catalogs with custom prices for individual companies, multiple pricing structures, customer-group pricing, tier pricing, and negotiable quotes. experienceleague.adobe.com

It also has a particularly relevant optimization for your situation: Adobe documents a setting that stores only products assigned to shared catalogs in the price index, specifically noting it as a best practice for merchants managing many shared catalogs. experienceleague.adobe.com

For example, if you have:

• 20,000 SKUs
• 500 enterprise customers
• Customer A gets 12% off
• Customer B has negotiated fixed prices on 3,000 SKUs
• Customer C sees only 7,000 SKUs
• volume breaks at 10/50/100 units
• different prices by region/site
• occasional negotiated quotes

…Adobe Commerce has native concepts that map fairly directly onto that model. experienceleague.adobe.com

When I'd choose commercetools instead

I'd favor commercetools if you have a strong engineering organization and want commerce to be a composable platform rather than a monolithic application.

Its current offering supports unlimited catalogs/channels/storefronts and has B2B capabilities including business-unit hierarchies, granular permissions, approval flows and quotes. commercetools.com

The catch is important: you'll generally be assembling more of the solution yourself—pricing services, frontend, integrations, workflows, etc. That's attractive if your architecture team wants that flexibility, but expensive if you simply want a powerful commerce application.

The decision I'd make

Choose Adobe Commerce if:
Your biggest problem is business-rule complexity and you want a substantial amount of B2B functionality already modeled in the platform.

Choose commercetools if:
Your biggest problem is architectural flexibility and you want pricing/catalog/commerce capabilities exposed as services that can evolve independently.

Choose Salesforce Commerce Cloud if:
Your organization is already heavily invested in Salesforce CRM, CPQ, customer/account data, and related tooling.

Choose Shopify Plus if:
Your pricing is actually simpler than it sounds and your priority is reducing ecommerce operational burden rather than maximizing configurability.

One thing I'd not do is select based primarily on the number of SKUs. 20,000 SKUs with one price each is easy; 5,000 SKUs with thousands of customer-, quantity-, geography-, contract-, and channel-specific price rules is the hard problem.

If you tell me roughly (1) number of SKUs, (2) number of customers/accounts, (3) B2B vs DTC, (4) how your pricing rules work, and (5) your ERP/CRM, I can narrow this to a 2–3 platform recommendation and an evaluation scorecard.

For an enterprise catalog with thousands of SKUs + complex pricing, I’d shortlist Adobe Commerce, BigCommerce B2B, commercetools, and Shopify Plus—but I’d put Adobe Commerce and BigCommerce B2B at the top of the first evaluation round.

My shortlist

Why Adobe Commerce stands out: it has deep native B2B capabilities around customer-specific catalogs, pricing, quotes, purchasing workflows, and account structures. That's particularly attractive when your pricing isn't simply "base price minus discount." elogic.co

Why I'd seriously consider BigCommerce: its price-list system lets you maintain different catalog pricing and assign it to customer groups and channels, which maps nicely to contract/customer-tier pricing. Its B2B tooling also supports customer-specific catalogs, pricing and CPQ-style quoting. docs.bigcommerce.com

commercetools becomes compelling if your catalog/pricing logic is sufficiently unique that you'd rather treat commerce as an API platform and build the business rules around it. The trade-off is substantially more engineering ownership. elogic.cowww.ciopages.com

Shopify Plus is worth including if operational simplicity and speed to market are important. But I'd pressure-test it heavily against your pricing engine before committing; it is strongest when the underlying B2B rules are relatively conventional. www.shopify.com

The key question isn't SKU count

Thousands of SKUs by itself isn't particularly difficult for modern enterprise platforms. I'd focus your evaluation on whether you have things like:

• Customer/account-specific price books
• Contract pricing
• Volume/quantity breaks
• Customer + product-specific discounts
• Regional pricing/currencies
• Effective-dated prices
• Sales-rep negotiated pricing
• Complex product configurations
• Multiple catalogs by customer segment
• ERP-driven inventory and pricing
• Quotes/RFQs and approval workflows
• Multiple brands/storefronts
• Thousands of pricing rules that change frequently

If you have several of those simultaneously, I'd lean Adobe Commerce or commercetools. If your requirements are complex but still mostly standard B2B patterns, BigCommerce B2B could give you a better complexity/operational-cost balance.

One important architectural point: don't automatically make the ecommerce platform your system of record for pricing. With sophisticated enterprise pricing, I'd usually evaluate an architecture where ERP/CPQ/pricing services remain authoritative and the commerce platform consumes the resulting price/catalog views.

If you tell me (1) approximate SKU count, (2) number of customers, (3) how pricing is determined, (4) ERP/CRM you're using, and (5) B2B vs B2C, I can narrow this to 2–3 platforms and give you a more concrete architecture recommendation.