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Comment by gpm | Hacker News Reader

> Shopify controls what you can sell

In what ways? I'm sure there are businesses they refuse to support (like any company) but I have a family member running a Shopify store (selling things that you couldn't over Amazon due to logistics) and Shopify

- Doesn't have any pre approval process for products. We can add and edit products instantaneously with no process involving anyone else.

- Has never appeared to care, even when "products" are things like "we agreed on a delivery method over the phone".

I'd also point out that the store owns the brand with Shopify. We could switch out the backend for a different ones and the users wouldn't really notice. You couldn't do the same with Amazon.

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Try selling used Apple products which you can on any website or marketplace online, except Apple will contact Shopify and they will unpublish products without even telling you.

You used to be able to install custom Shopify apps on your own store, now they make you jump through hoops. Their ideal situation is an Apple like walled garden where you can only install apps from their store. Had a friend trying to vibecode a custom Shopify app so he could replace one from the App Store that was running him $250/m. It was so confusing that he just gave up. I’m trying to get him to switch to an open-source alternative.

Try selling Vape products or adult products and you’ll see you don’t really control the software. Selling used Apple products, vapes, and adult products is completely legal. Yes Stripe and PayPal can stop you from accepting payments for those products. But why is my business software doing the same?

Shopify not being willing to fight battles to keep supporting stores that other people don't want them to isn't exactly the same as them choosing what you can sell... Though I guess I see some similarity.

> I’m trying to get him to switch to an open-source alternative.

Well if you want an argument in favor between terrible support, glitchy software, huge price hikes, and so on we aren't particularly happy with Shopify either...

So... They're not choosing what you can sell. They're letting arbitrary third parties choose what you can sell? That seems worse.

Indeed it's worse, and apparently Valve/Steam is the only one who seems to care about something resembling freedom to sell legal things, even if we might subjectively disagree.

> Shopify not being willing to fight battles to keep supporting stores that other people don't want them to isn't exactly the same as them choosing what you can sell...

It is the same.

Or rather the latter is inclusive of the former.

Exactly, Shopify as a business can do what it wants. But I will never let software manage my business that I don’t have control over.

> I will never let software manage my business that I don’t have control over.

I can't imagine this is actually possible in 2026 unless your business is a something like a cash-only lemonade stand.

Opensource is the only way to free sellers from propeitary SaaS and marketplace middlemen. I’m actually working on building an opensource Shopify for every vertical from restaurants to gyms to hotels.

How are you handling payments? Cash and crypto only?

There’s an adapter system and we have Stripe and PayPal adapters but some users have created one for Solana Pay and Coinbase. Essentially it’s up to the seller what payments they want to support. Create the adapter functions once and you’re good.

There are self-hosted options for almost everything (e.g. WooCommerce).

EXCEPT payments. (Unless you do crypto, which has been used for purchases by <2% of US adults.)

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And the restrictions are not theoretical.

Most payment providers either outright prohibit (PayPal, CoinBase) or restrict (Stripe) legal gun transactions.

Hateful content is virtually universally banned by processors (see: Gab).

Even if you have your own stack for software, you still need someone for payments, and that's where it hits you. Shopify was letting Kanye sells nazi merch, they don't give a crap for most things unless it's trademark issues.

>Try selling Vape products or adult products

Are these legal in the place they are selling? Or is it against shopify TOS to do so? These two I am not surprised.

>will unpublish products without even telling you.

Giving some benefits of doubt here first. May be someone could explain the rationale behind it. Because on the surface this seems wrong.

As long as you get a high risk payment processor, you can sell these products in the US. But even when you connect this high risk processor to Shopify, they can still stop you from selling certain products. Payment processors are supposed to handle that and if my payment processor is ok with it, who made Shopify the judge, jury, executioner? Why is a software that manages my product catalog and orders deciding what I can sell? If I'm selling something illegal, my payment processor will handle it or the wronged company can sue me. Shopify shouldn't be deciding this.

I mean take a look at how peptides are exploding. It's legal to sell them for research purposes, but you can't on Shopify. Unless you are on Plus and have an account manager and go thru backchannels. Literally Shopify picking winners instead of letting the market do it's job.

That is the assumption Shopify is just software, but it is not. It is a service. And I don't see why a service can't have a choice to choose which customer it wants to serve. Especially in a market with plenty of options.

> But why is my business software doing the same?

Shopify runs a payment network called Shop Pay, and that network has relationships with the credit card companies like Visa. Honestly how do you expect to transact in goods that almost nobody will do business in? Even if you have the listing, what supported Shopify payment system will do the business?

Yes I know about Shop Pay (it’s a wrapper around Stripe). And just like Stripe and PayPal, Shop Pay gives Shopify the right to stop users from selling certain products.

I’m talking about connecting Shopify to authorize.net (credit card gateway) and a custom high risk processor. In that case, we are not using Shop Pay. But Shopify can still unpublish and restrict what you sell. That’s the issue. No one is saying Shopify has to allow sellers to sell high risk items under Shop Pay. It’s when you connect to a different payment processor.

> Had a friend trying to vibecode a custom Shopify app so he could replace one from the App Store that was running him $250/m. It was so confusing that he just gave up.

He can vibecode a full Shopify app but not a bash script that uploads it to his Partner Dashboard? I'll admit it's difficult to distribute custom apps widely, but for internal use it's like one TOML file, 3 lines of bash then copy-pasting a link.

> Their ideal situation is an Apple like walled garden where you can only install apps from their store.

On the flip side, like Apple, is that they have a customer base that is actually happy to pay for apps.

During Covid we were selling medical PPE on Shopify and they shut us down, along with lots of other people. We weren't price gouging or doing anything shady either.

Instead we setup our own site and were quickly getting large orders for 1 million+ masks per week from big box stores and hospital groups.

https://directpaynet.com/banned-ppe-seller-get-merchant-acco...

I read some interesting drama involving YouTube style false copyright flagging at scale.

Don't ask me for details but I got the impression they got just involved enough to maximize harm.

It's not software but a platform which has both pros and cons.

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