---
title: "BSS B2B Lock alternatives: Inner Circle vs BSS B2B Lock"
description: "The widest set of lock conditions in the category, and the only free tier here that runs on a live store. What that free tier actually covers, and where it stops."
source: https://innercircle.monochrome.digital/compare/bss-b2b-lock/
---

[Home](https://innercircle.monochrome.digital/) [Compare](https://innercircle.monochrome.digital/compare/) BSS B2B Lock alternatives: Inner Circle vs BSS B2B Lock

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# BSS B2B Lock alternatives: Inner Circle vs BSS B2B Lock

The widest set of lock conditions in the category, and the only free tier here that runs on a live store. What that free tier actually covers, and where it stops.

|  | BSS B2B Lock, Login & Password | Inner Circle |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Price | Free tier, then $9.99 to $49.99 a month, or $95.88 to $479.88 a year | $14.99 or $34.99 a month, flat |
| Tied to your Shopify plan | Tiers carry Shopify plan names; the listing prices them as suggestions | No |
| Rating | 4.9 stars, 602 reviews | Too few reviews to mean anything yet |
| On the App Store since | 2019 | August 2026 |
| Built for Shopify | Yes | No |
| Free way to try it | Free plan on a live store, but it locks the whole site only; 7-day trial of the paid tiers | Free plan, no card, no time limit, works on a live store |
| Hides locked content from Google | Yes | No, keeping the shop indexed is the point |
| Age, IP and location conditions | Yes | No; country is available to auto-approve rules, not as a lock condition |
| Gates the checkout itself | Yes, on Shopify Plus, by product, tag or IP | Yes, on every plan, for locks naming their products or covering the whole store; not yet for collection or condition locks |
| Request-and-approve queue | Not described on the listing | Yes, with auto-approve rules on Starter |

BSS B2B Lock, Login & Password is by BSS B2B Suite; every figure above was read off [its App Store listing](https://apps.shopify.com/login-to-access-pages) on 15 August 2026. Prices, ratings and features move, and nothing in this build can check somebody else's listing the way it checks ours. Where this table and the listing disagree, the listing is right, and please [tell us](https://innercircle.monochrome.digital/contact/) so it gets fixed.

“Not described on the listing” means exactly that. It is not a claim the app cannot do something, only that we would not assert it without a source, and neither should a comparison written by a competitor.

## The short version

BSS has the widest set of lock conditions in this category and the only free plan on this site's comparison list that runs on a live store rather than a development one. Both of those are real and neither is a trick.

The free plan locks the whole website behind a condition, and that is all it does. So the question that decides between us is not price, it is whether you want the shop shut or the shop open. If everything should be behind the door, theirs is free and this page is a short read. If the shop has to stay browsable while only buying is gated, no free plan is on the table from either of us and the comparison starts again at the paid tiers.

## Where BSS is genuinely better

**A free tier that survives your store taking money.** Most free plans in this category, including Sami's and Ymq's, are development stores only. Theirs is not. If your requirement is "put the entire site behind a login or a passcode", you can do that for nothing, forever, and you should, rather than paying us or anyone else for it.

Worth knowing that this is close to what [Shopify's own password page](https://innercircle.monochrome.digital/guides/shopify-password-page-alternative/) does for free already. The reason to prefer BSS is that its conditions are better than a single shared password: logins, tags, IP, location. The reason to prefer neither is if you want to be found, which is the argument the rest of this site is about.

**Conditions.** Login, passcode, secret link, email subscription, age verification, customer tag, IP address and location. Nothing else here covers that spread without writing code, and if your rule is "over 18, in these countries, with this tag", they express it directly and we do not express it at all.

**Reach into checkout, on more kinds of rule.** On Plus they will gate checkout itself by product, tag or IP. We gate it too, on every plan including the free one, but only from locks that name their products or cover the whole store: a lock pointed at a collection, or at conditions like a tag or a vendor, still governs the storefront and stops there. So this is no longer "they do and we do not" — it is that they need Plus and we do not, and that they cover the tag-shaped rules we have yet to reach. If your gate is a tag and it has to hold at the till, that is still theirs.

**Seven years and 602 reviews.** On the App Store since December 2019, carrying Built for Shopify. We have days, and no badge yet. The reviews cluster around two things worth knowing: merchants separating wholesale and retail experiences inside one store, which is the job the app is clearly built for, and a support team that goes past the out-of-the-box behaviour and builds custom solutions for individual shops. That second one is not a feature you can compare on a table, and for a store with an awkward requirement it is often the deciding factor.

**Analytics on the locks themselves.** Their paid tiers include passcode management and lock analytics, so you can see how the rules are performing. Ours reports on a different axis: which pages produce requests, which creators brought people in, and what is piling up in interest lists that nobody has been let in to buy. Theirs answers "is the rule working"; ours answers "who is knocking". If your gate is stable and the question is whether it is configured correctly, theirs is the more useful instrument.

## Where we differ

**The asking direction.** Their listing describes a custom message with a login or sign-up form where a lock bites. That is a door with a sign on it. What it does not describe is what happens when a stranger reads the sign and wants in: a form you designed, a queue that records what they asked for and which page they asked from, rules that let the obvious ones through without a human, and an approval that issues a code or becomes a Shopify draft order. If your problem is admitting people you already know, that gap will not matter to you. If your problem is recruiting people who do not know you yet, it is the whole thing.

**What the lock is for.** They will hide locked content from Google. We will not, on purpose, and it is the trade this whole product is built on: locked products stay browsable and indexable so a stranger can find one, want it, and have somewhere to ask. That is [the argument](https://innercircle.monochrome.digital/guides/members-only-store-google-can-find/), and its cost is real. If a catalogue must not be publicly visible, we are the wrong app and they are a good one.

We are also honest that our side of this is not absolute, and it is worth being precise about which half is solid. Who holds access is decided on our server, so the page cannot be edited into granting it and no code or tier can be forged, and Shopify checks that same answer again at the cart, so a direct cart link to a locked product is refused rather than paid for. What does not go away is that our locked pages are public pages: a price can still be readable from a cache, a search result or a product feed. Nor does the checkout half cover everything — collection and condition locks stop at the storefront, and if our check cannot run we let the sale through rather than hold up your customer. An app that hides content from search engines has none of the leak problem, because it is solving the opposite one. If a product must be genuinely unbuyable under all of that, unpublish it in Shopify, which does that job properly.

**Launches rather than catalogues.** Scheduled locks that open and close on their own, a countdown on the locked page, expiring codes, a waitlist that tells someone their position, member invites, and attribution per creator so a campaign can be counted rather than estimated. Their listing describes lock analytics, which is the reporting half of that and aimed at rule performance rather than at who brought whom.

**Pricing shape.** Their tiers are named after Shopify plans, and the listing prices them as suggestions rather than requirements, so read it before assuming either the generous or the ungenerous version. Their top tier is $49.99 against our $34.99; their entry tier is $9.99 against our $14.99. Which of those two comparisons applies to you is the whole of the pricing question.

They also publish annual prices, which none of the arithmetic above accounts for: $95.88, $239.88 and $479.88, saving about 20 percent against paying monthly. If you already know you want the app for a year, that changes the entry-tier gap from $5 a month to nearer $7, and it changes the top-tier comparison from us being $15 cheaper to us being roughly $5 cheaper. Worth running for your own tier rather than taking either app's headline number.

**Named tiers, and what happens after approval.** Their conditions decide whether somebody is in or out. Ours adds ordered levels you name, with a Shopify customer tag written on redemption so segments, discounts and Flow can key off the tier, and the highest tier somebody holds is the one that answers a lock. Renaming or reordering a tier never demotes a person who already earned it. If your access is one grade of buyer, that is machinery you will not open, and their tag conditions cover the same ground with less to configure.

**How much the app tells you about the person.** A request here arrives with the page it came from, the campaign that sent them, what was in their interest list and any note you add afterwards. Approving them creates the Shopify customer, records marketing consent where it was given, and issues a code. That is the half of the product their listing does not describe, and it is only worth anything if you are admitting people you did not already know.

## The honest test

If the whole site should be shut, install BSS's free plan today and do not read the rest of this. Nothing we sell beats free at the job it does.

Otherwise you are comparing their seven-day trial against our free plan. Put both on the same theme, lock the same product, and watch which one paints the price on a throttled connection with the cache cleared. Then go to Google and decide which behaviour you actually want: their locked product can be made to disappear from it, ours is meant to still be there with no price on it.

That last choice is not a feature comparison. It is a decision about whether strangers are supposed to find you, and it is worth making deliberately before either app is installed.

If you want to see where both of these sit against the rest of the field, including the apps neither page mentions, [the roundup](https://innercircle.monochrome.digital/guides/shopify-access-control-apps-compared/) puts fourteen of them on the same five questions.

## Other comparisons

[Inner Circle vs Locksmith](https://innercircle.monochrome.digital/compare/locksmith/) [Inner Circle vs Sami B2B Lock](https://innercircle.monochrome.digital/compare/sami-b2b-lock/) [Inner Circle vs Wholesale Lock Manager](https://innercircle.monochrome.digital/compare/wholesale-lock-manager/) [Inner Circle vs Ymq B2B Lock](https://innercircle.monochrome.digital/compare/ymq-b2b-lock/) [Inner Circle vs Atelier](https://innercircle.monochrome.digital/compare/atelier/) [Inner Circle vs EQL](https://innercircle.monochrome.digital/compare/eql/) [Inner Circle vs Locket](https://innercircle.monochrome.digital/compare/locket/) [All of them at once](https://innercircle.monochrome.digital/guides/shopify-access-control-apps-compared/)

## Try it against whichever you are comparing

The free plan is one lock and five codes, with no time limit and no card. Enough to put both apps on the same theme and watch which one paints the price.

[Install on Shopify](https://apps.shopify.com/inner-circle) [Watch it work first](https://innercircle.monochrome.digital/tutorial/) [Ask whether it fits your store](https://innercircle.monochrome.digital/contact/)