Multistores vs. Advanced Stores: Two Ways to Offer Team Stores

Custom stores let your customers — schools, sports teams, non-profits, companies, bands — get their own branded mini-store on your site, without your staff manually managing each order. Web2ink offers two different systems for this, and which one you use matters.

Why offer custom stores at all

Custom stores can bring in significant business at strong profit margins. Instead of your team fielding "can you make 40 shirts for our team" requests one at a time, the group gets a self-serve store: members pick sizes and pay individually (or the group orders in bulk), and it's fulfilled like any other order — with your markup or profit share built in.

The two systems

Multistores is the CPT-based storefront system — it powers individually-built storefronts with their own packing slips, box labels, and tiered shipping. It's the more foundational, flexible store system.

Advanced Stores (sometimes shown in settings as "astores") is the newer, self-service multi-tenant system: store owners sign up, get their own store instantly, and manage it themselves through a dedicated Store Owner / Supervisor panel in their account — without your staff building each store manually. Advanced Stores also includes:

• Premium, one-click store themes
• Store inventory tracking and low-stock alerts
• Store profits & payouts, so store owners can see and be paid their margin
• Pay-by-terms and free-shipping rules scoped to specific stores

If your plan is Pro, Advanced Stores (unlimited stores, premium themes, inventory, profits & payouts) is included. If you're not sure which system your site is using, check My Account → Managed Stores as an admin, or ask support — some sites run both, with Multistores for hand-built storefronts and Advanced Stores for self-service ones.

Which one should you use for a new store?

• Use Advanced Stores when you want the group/organizer to largely run their own store — pick a theme, manage their own product selection, and see their own profit — with minimal work from your team.
• Use Multistores when you're building something more custom yourself — specific packing slips, box labels, or shipping rules that need to be hand-configured per store.

Setting up a new Advanced Store

1. A store owner signs up through your public store-signup form (see Customizing Your Store Signup Form & Approval Workflow), or you create one for them from the admin.
2. Once approved, the store owner gets access to My Account → Managed Stores → [Store Name], where they set up their store details, pick a theme, add products, and configure shipping/pickup.
3. Orders placed through their store flow into your normal order management, tagged to that store.

Common questions

Can a store owner manage more than one store? Yes — the Managed Stores area lists every store a user has access to as owner or supervisor.

Can I (the admin) still see and edit every store? Yes — administrators have full visibility and editing access into every store, plus a dedicated Supervisors view for managing who has access to what.

Related: Applying & Customizing a Premium Store Theme, The Store Owner / Supervisor Panel, Explained, Store Inventory, Profits & Payouts.