Excel price list to online catalog: 3 ways that actually work
In most small B2B companies the whole product range lives in one spreadsheet: a column of names, a column of prices, photos pasted somewhere in between. That file gets emailed or sent over WhatsApp, and then the familiar routine begins — "can you send a photo of this one", "what's in stock", "I can't open the file on my phone". Orders arrive as voice notes, and someone retypes them by hand.
An online catalog removes that friction: the buyer sees products with photos, adds them to a cart, and you receive a finished order. The only question is how to get from a spreadsheet to that catalog. There are three real routes.
Route 1: build a webshop
The classic answer — Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce — and move the price list in. It's the most powerful option: your own platform, online payments, integrations.
Three traps for a wholesaler, though:
- Time and money. A store takes weeks of setup or a developer's budget. Every product has to be created: name, description, photo, category, variants.
- Your wholesale prices become public. A shop is indexed by search engines — anyone can see your trade prices, including the retail customers of your own partners.
- Every price update becomes admin work. The spreadsheet changed? Back into the dashboard you go.
Route 2: catalog builders
Tools like Catalog Machine, Flipsnack or Publitas assemble a catalog from a table. You upload a CSV, pick a template, and get a PDF or a web catalog.
What to know before you sign up:
- They can't see photos embedded in Excel cells. If your images are pasted into the sheet itself — the way most real price lists are built — you'll be exporting them by hand and matching them to rows yourself.
- A cart is often missing or lives in the expensive tier: the catalog looks glossy, but the buyer still writes the order out as text.
- Pricing is typically $20–50/month for the tiers that do the real work.
Route 3: a done-for-you "price list to catalog" service
The third route is to hand over the file as it is and get a working catalog back. That is how aiprice works: you send your Excel price list — photos in cells, merged headers, several sheets, nothing needs cleaning up — and within 24 hours you get a link to an interactive catalog with:
- search and categories;
- a photo next to every product, including the ones extracted straight from your spreadsheet;
- a cart that respects your trade rules: minimum order value, case-pack steps (box of 6, 12), color and size variants;
- orders arriving in your inbox as a clean spreadsheet, ready to import into your ERP or accounting system;
- a catalog hidden from search engines — only people you send the link to can see your wholesale prices.
Price updates work the same way: send a new file, the catalog is re-priced.
Side by side
| Webshop | Catalog builder | Price-list service | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time to launch | weeks | days (photos by hand) | within 24 hours |
| Photos from Excel cells | manual | manual | automatic |
| Wholesale prices hidden | no (indexed) | depends | yes, catalog is private |
| Cart and emailed orders | yes | rarely | yes, spreadsheet for ERP |
| Technical skills needed | yes | some | none — you send a file |
Where to start
- Open your price list and answer honestly: how many times a week do buyers ask you for a photo or for stock?
- If the answer is "constantly", you need a catalog — not a prettier spreadsheet.
- Try the fastest route with no risk: the first catalog at aiprice is free. Send your file to hello@aiprice.com.ua and look at your range through your buyer's eyes.
Open the demo catalog →
Read next: Wholesale price list with photos: how to build one in Excel · 7 things a wholesale catalog needs