Your own store, your own database, a flat monthly fee

Standfast Commerce is a hosted commerce platform. Whatever you sell — coffee, furniture, parts, apparel — you get your domain, your product URLs, your Klaviyo list, your ShipStation account and your own Authorize.net gateway, on a host that gives every store its own database. A flat monthly fee, never a percentage of your sales. We never touch your money. And we host the categories other platforms drop, which is where we started.

Already running a live storefront with over 700 products.

Who it is for

Any merchant who wants a hosted store without giving up a slice of every sale. Most stores on this platform sell ordinary goods and never see an age gate, a state block list or a compliance setting — those exist, they are optional, and they stay switched off unless you sell something that needs them.

It is also for merchants that other platforms will not keep. That is a harder problem and it is the one we built for first, so if it is your problem, the rest of this page is written for you too.

Where we came from

On 24 June 2026 Shopify emailed vape merchants a notice. The notice says Shopify no longer supports the sale of Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems, "including e-cigarettes, e-liquids, vaporizers, parts, and refills, regardless of nicotine content." Merchants had until 8 July 2026 to remove the products or face suspension. There is no public policy page; the rule arrives by private email, store by store. A store that Shopify terminates has no export right under its Terms of Service. In August a merchant who sold only batteries and accessories, no nicotine and no cannabis, reported on the Shopify Community that Shopify no longer allowed his products.

That is one industry on one platform, and it is not unusual. Square is removing CBD and hemp products. Card networks and app stores draw their own lines. The lesson generalises: a store whose catalogue lives somewhere that can delete it on a week's notice does not really own its catalogue. That is the problem this platform is built around, for every merchant on it.

Read what the notice actually says, with the dates and the sources.

What we did

We built this platform for a vaporizer retailer that Shopify would not keep — over 700 products, moved off Shopify in September 2026 with every product URL preserved, so its search results kept working. That store is live on Standfast Commerce today. The admin is shaped like Shopify’s, so your staff already know where things are. We do not name our merchants; ask and we will tell you what we can about the migration itself.

What moves with you

• Products, variants, prices, stock, tags and SEO fields, with the same handles, so /products/your-handle and /collections/your-handle keep working. Redirects and a sitemap are generated.
• Photographs, copied into your own storage before Shopify's links disappear.
• Collections, pages, blog posts, discount codes, URL redirects and a reviews CSV.
• Customers with their order history, and orders as history: nothing is re-charged, re-shipped or re-emailed.
• Or paste a read-only Shopify token and a mirror keeps your catalogue, customers and orders level every ten minutes until switch day.
• Not passwords. No platform can move them. Every customer sets a new one once, or signs in by emailed code.
• Not stored subscription cards. Every subscriber re-enters one card through a link we prepare and you approve.

Your data and your customers

Not a claim on a page — this is what the platform does for every store on it, yours included.

• Your own database. Every store gets its own database. No shared table, no query that can reach another store's rows.
• Your own file storage, private to your store. Product photos and uploads live under a storage prefix that belongs to your store alone. Nothing is public unless you publish it, and no other store's code can read it, list it or write to it.
• No cross-store access. A store's checkout, admin and background jobs are handed only its own database, its own storage and its own vendor keys — never another store's, by how the platform is built, not by promise.
• Your keys are sealed to your store. Klaviyo, ShipStation, Authorize.net and every other key you paste is encrypted so that even a copied database row cannot be opened anywhere but your own store.
• Two-step sign-in for staff, by default, with invite links, not shared passwords.
• We do not sell or share your customers' data. Not to us, not to anyone else. It is yours, on your store, under your own privacy policy.
• Exports any day. You can take your database and your files with you at any time. See the guarantee.

This is not a certification and not legal advice. See the PCI page for how card numbers are handled and the privacy page for what this site itself collects.

The apps you already pay for

Every app runs on your own account and your own keys, pasted once on the Apps screen. Klaviyo, ShipStation, Avalara, Smile, Chargeflow, Tidio, Yotpo and Google, plus AgeChecker if you sell something that needs an age check. Each card says "connected" or "not configured" and nothing in between. Klaviyo flows come across as drafts you switch on; segments are rebuilt on the new event names and we hand you the list.

Payments run on your own Authorize.net gateway and your own merchant account. If you need a high-risk merchant account and do not have one, the application is filed the day you sign, so it never waits behind the platform work. You sign with the processor, not with us. We never hold, route or touch your funds.

What is not built, said plainly

Read this before you call. Today the platform does not offer:

• Sezzle or any buy-now-pay-later.
• Judge.me, Stamped or Okendo reviews beyond a CSV import.
• Gorgias order lookup.
• Signifyd or NoFraud screening. Fraud checks are AVS and CVC only; keep your own.
• Route shipping insurance.
• Gift cards. Outstanding balances become single-use discount codes at import.
• Liquid themes or a theme marketplace. The storefront is one theme with your name, logo, colours and fonts, home-page sections you switch on, and custom CSS. A paid design port is available if you want your old look reproduced.
• Multi-currency, point of sale, or Metrc.

And if you sell age-restricted or otherwise regulated goods, these are not built either, and they matter more to you than anything above:

• The age check runs after the charge, not before it. A shopper confirms they are of age at the gate, the order completes, and the identity check runs afterwards; a failed check tags the order for a person to catch. If you need verification before payment, the platform cannot do that for you today. We would rather you read that here than discover it.
• PACT Act registration, monthly state reports, adult signature by product class, or a vape-accepting carrier. USPS, UPS and FedEx refuse vaping products; a store that needs a special carrier cannot be hosted yet.
• A consumer app in the App Store or Google Play. Both stores bar apps that sell vape, tobacco or THC products. Your shoppers get your website; your staff get an installable web app. A store with nothing restricted in its catalogue is not affected by this.

What it costs

Flat monthly fees, 0% of sales, month to month. Starter $149 a month. Growth $299 a month. Standby $99 a month for a store that has no notice yet and wants a mirror ready. Scale $2,000 a month for stores over $300,000 a month. Compliance $799 a month, from Q1 2027, for liquid-capable devices and 510 batteries. Migration $1,500 flat up to 1,000 products, $2,900 above that, or $0 with a 12-month prepay on Growth and up.

For comparison: BigCommerce charges 0.6% to 2% of sales when your gateway is Authorize.net or NMI, and a Shopify store on Basic or Grow paid a 1% to 2% third-party gateway fee on top of the plan. Every number is sourced on the rate card and the cost sheet.

How the switch goes

1. Export this week, whether or not you move. Products, customers, orders, discounts, pages, blog and theme images. The checklist is here.
2. Free dry run. Send us your products CSV. Within 48 hours you get a private preview link with your catalogue on it and the importer's problem list, row by row. Nothing signed.
3. Catalogue verdict. From your own product list we tell you which items are allowed, conditional or refused under our hosting policy, before you sign. For a catalogue of ordinary goods this step is a formality and comes back clean.
4. Sign. One page of business facts for our file. Processor statements and owner IDs go only to the processor, only if we file a merchant-account referral for you.
5. Your store is stamped. Your own database, your own storage, a provisional address, your first staff login with two-step sign-in, your brand.
6. Import, connect your apps, enter your gateway details. The Authorize.net Transaction Key is generated the morning of switch day; the old key keeps working for 24 hours so both checkouts take cards all day.
7. Rehearse. Sandbox orders, a label quote, a receipt to your own inbox. Then the same basket with a real promotion on your live Shopify store and on the new one, on a phone, a tablet and a desktop.
8. Switch, on your word. We copy every DNS record first, then you change one CNAME. Your email keeps working. Keep the Shopify plan read-only for 30 days for a final export, then close it yourself.

How long: with a clean export and a working merchant account, 5 to 7 business days from first call to live; a high-risk merchant-account application is the one item that can take longer, so it is filed on day one. The first merchants pay nothing until they are live plus 30 days.

The guarantee

A written go-live date. One month's subscription credited for every week we are late by our fault, capped at three months. Until your domain moves, you can walk away with your data and a full refund of anything prepaid. Your data exports any day.

What you can sell

Ordinary retail, with nothing switched on and nothing to think about: apparel, homeware, food and drink, parts, tools, books, supplements, pet supplies, whatever your catalogue is. No age gate, no state rules, no compliance screen. Most stores here are this.

Restricted and high-risk categories are the part that needs a policy, because we say yes to things other platforms refuse and no to a few things they allow. Today: legal glass, smoke-shop goods, rolling papers, dry-herb vaporizer hardware, cigars, leaf kratom where legal, and CBD that meets the federal definition on the ship date. Nicotine e-liquid, disposable e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches are not yet hosted — not because we refuse them, but because four things have to exist first: identity verification before the charge, the monthly PACT Act state report, adult signature by product class, and a state delivery matrix by class. We are building them. A merchant in that category also brings its own carrier, its own PACT registration and a processor that has underwritten nicotine, and we check all three before anything goes live. We screen every store in these categories against the attorneys-general and FDA warning-letter lists before we host it. The full policy is here.

Support

Checkout down: monitored around the clock, acknowledged within one hour, an owner paged. Same for an age gate or a state block failing open, if your store uses them. Everything else: email and tickets, Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 18:00 Pacific. Support hours and credits.