How to fully own a site? reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Coffeeaddicteddd · 2023-12-27 10:35 Hey all, Shopify shut down my store. I have 100.000 of money left in my account that I can’t access. Looking for an alternative ecommerce partner right now. How can I actually OWN a site, so that I don’t have to worry about some kind of a Silicon Valley nerd who will shut down my store? Any tips/suggestions? Thanks! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- d4nm3d · 2023-12-27 10:46 > Silicon Valley nerd that's not how to get help in a place like this. Also, have a look at the sidebar : https://github.com/awesome- selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- revereddesecration · 2023-12-27 10:52 Sounds like you violated ToS or broke the law, I’ll be generous and assume the former. You can host all kinds of shops, but you’ll still need to take payment somehow. Those payment gateways will also have ToS that you’ll likely violate. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Coffeeaddicteddd · 2023-12-27 10:52 Thanks! (Removed the nerd part 😉) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Coffeeaddicteddd · 2023-12-27 10:53 That’s the thing. I sold my own perfume. Payed my taxes. Shipped everything within 2 working days. Didn’t do anything that’s against the law. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- revereddesecration · 2023-12-27 10:54 Sounds like it’s worth taking Shopify to court to get that money they owe you, at the very least. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ZolfeYT · 2023-12-27 10:58 $100 wouldn’t even be worth pursuing tbh. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FuriousRageSE · 2023-12-27 11:00 They can probably invent a "problem" that they can blame on, and get away with it. (If OP is innocent, and nothing "strange" was done). Sure, shopify seems to be canadian.. but its awfully close to the usa, so im going to assume the corps are out to shaft op- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- revereddesecration · 2023-12-27 11:01 It says $100,000 in the OP ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ArgoPanoptes · 2023-12-27 11:01 If they shut it down, there is a reason, and it was told to you. Businesses like Shopify do not randomly shut down a commercial website and hold the money. If you were selling perfume, maybe you need certifications and authorisations to sell them online. We can make a lot of conjectures, but you were told by Shopify the reason, maybe try to fix that before trying to host your business somewhere else. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ZolfeYT · 2023-12-27 11:04 I’m not 100% sure honestly, I’m from the US so I read it as $100 and they just added it like Shopify and PayPal show it with 3 numbers after the decimal, but OP is from UK it seems based on their profile so it could be $100,000 but even then Shopify releases all money in 120 days. But 100,000 is definitely worth pursuing if they didn’t do anything that would get them in more trouble. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Coffeeaddicteddd · 2023-12-27 11:09 I quote ‘please note that for security and privacy reasons we are unable to divulge the results of our reviews and investigations’ So I still don’t know why they shut down my store. The perfume is my own perfume, not a branded one. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ArgoPanoptes · 2023-12-27 11:19 I think it is because of permissions. In most countries you need gov permission and certifications to sell such a product because it can harm people. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- schklom · 2023-12-27 11:20 I would get a lawyer to send a letter threatening litigation if they do not tell you the reason or give you your money back. Something that ends with e.g. "Please note that for security, privacy, financial, and legal reasons, I need to either retrieve my money or know why I cannot access it. Please also note that if you do not respond positively, I will have no choice but to file a lawsuit for theft." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AnonsAnonAnonagain · 2023-12-27 11:20 In the US we tend to denote thousands with , Whereas outside of the US, it tends to be with a . So, 100.000 in EU would be 100k or 100,000 in US ---------------------------------------------------------------------- GoTeamScotch · 2023-12-27 11:22 Idk if there's new apps these days, but when I looked a few years ago there weren't many great options. I tried Magento and OpenCart, and one or two non-php options and ended up landing on WooCommerce (a WordPress plugin). Folks around here will probably laugh at me for suggesting WP or PHP in general, but that's my take. WP+WooCommerce powers a huge number of online shops. If you're looking to get up and running fast, find a hosting provider like GoDaddy, BlueHost, AWS, or one of the other major players. They'll usually have a WP deployment option. Then just install WooCommerce from the plugins area and start setting it up. P.s. I agree with others. It's very odd for Shopify to just close a store. I'd keep pestering them if it were me. Or hire a local lawyer to write a strongly worded letter to get some more info. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- valdecircarvalho · 2023-12-27 11:28 Selfhost an ecommerce is not bananas and the worst part is the integration with payment gateways. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Malossi167 · 2023-12-27 11:34 Running your own webshop involes more than just running the server to host the website. And even that is not trivial. You also have to deal with payment processors, inventory system, shipping cost calculator, etc. And all the legal stuff can be a nightmare. It takes time and money to set all of this up and it only really makes sense when you run a pretty big shop. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AnApexBread · 2023-12-27 11:34 >How can I actually OWN a site, so that I don’t have to worry about someone who will shut down my store? Buy your domain name, get a commercial internet plan from your ISP, set up a webserver in your house, use opencart. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sinofool · 2023-12-27 11:40 No comment on why Shopify shutdown your store. In order to own a e-commerce site technically, you need: 1. A connection or multiple connections to the internet 2. A server or multiple servers run e-commerce website software. 3. A contract with payment processors or banks for the money. 4. A contract with shipping companies for the merchandise. Depends on the level of ownership you want, each of these needs specialized people to setup and maintain. It is a reason for Shopify business model exists and profit. Let me just expend only 1. The internet connection. You can use a residential internet connection but it is no guarantee of availability, you will also need to deal with dynamic IP change. Your power outage, ISP upgrades all brings you site down. When 90% availability is acceptable, this kind of setup is very cheap. The other extreme of internet connection is you become part of the internet. You will own a few actual fiber connections to other networks and you exchange your IP space with others. If your peers happen to be in different countries, not even a single government can bring you down. In the meantime, you got the power to bring down the whole internet. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ZolfeYT · 2023-12-27 11:53 I was thinking too much about what I would do in this situation if it was 100k, so I thought it was $100 but then checked his profile and saw he was from the UK. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- KD_done · 2023-12-27 12:14 Right.. owning a website. It starts with a domainname. This is not "ownership", but a registration that is valid as long as you pay for it. A .com is $12-ish, yearly. The second part is hosting. Now, depending on the type of hosting required (amount of visitors, traffic, etc.) you could be paying as little as $5 dollars or for an good volume website perhaps even $60 monthly. And now the website part itself. There are many, and I mean, many different ecommerce software. Some are in the FOSS category (free how to use as you please), and others are licensed. And depending on how much you want to do yourself, the features you want, you can dive in and start setting up (building) shop. And now, getting payed for the services you provide. Some see this as the complicated part, but if you have a legitimate company it's easy as pie. Pay, Adyen, Multisafepay, Mollie, all these companies do in effect the same thing. As a payment service provider they give you the ability to provide a multitude of payment options. Like creditcard, SEPA, iDeal, Sofort, Alipay, and so on, and so on. Payouts occur every other day, or week, however you prefer it. And if you have collected all the pieces and make them work, you can start filling your shop and selling goods.. because now you "own" a e-commerce webshite. My advice? Get your dealings with Shopify sorted, and make sure you stay within their TOS. They are pretty cool/relaxed, especially if the shop has a good turnover monthly. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -quakeguy- · 2023-12-27 12:19 You can self-host practically all parts required to run a store, BUT, there is no way to self-host a payment processor. You will always be at mercy of one and their terms of service and they can potentially hold your money hostage in a dispute. You can go the way of only accepting crypto as payment, but good luck getting enough clients to maintain reasonable reveneus. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Nintenuendo_ · 2023-12-27 12:50 What was their reasoning for shutting down your store? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mnopw · 2023-12-27 13:17 You don't want to have your shop hosted at home. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mrkesu · 2023-12-27 13:19 If you want to "own a site" you'll have to use some of that "100.000 money" to buy a decent dedicated internet connection and set up your own server. Working from the ground up I'd start with DNS I suppose. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AnApexBread · 2023-12-27 13:23 Agreed, but OP wanted to "actually own a site." There's no way to be 100% self reliant but hosting at home is as close as they can get to being self reliant (absent becoming an ISP and Domain reseller). Hosting in the cloud put them a the mercy of the VPS provider. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mnopw · 2023-12-27 13:35 Having 100k in his account it sounds very well like he could host dedicated servers from multiple operators making backups to somewhere else. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- primalbluewolf · 2023-12-27 13:38 A handful of French countries do this, but in general commas are the correct separator in most locales. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AnApexBread · 2023-12-27 13:52 >Having 100k in his account I'm not sure that's 100K. There's a dot there, not a comma. dots in math separate whole numbers from fractions of numbers. So 100.000 would be 100, not 100K. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AnApexBread · 2023-12-27 13:56 >sounds very well like he could host dedicated servers from multiple operators making backups to somewhere else. That still isn't "actually owning a site." OP doesn't actually own the hardware. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- malastare- · 2023-12-27 13:58 >I quote ‘please note that for security and privacy reasons we are unable to divulge the results of our reviews and investigations’ So, there's some legit violation that they're looking at, and even if they won't give you the gritty details, they told you more than what you shared (which is fair of you to not lay all our business out for us) and it seems clear to me that this is a ToS violation with Shopify. That's fine, but you might want to check on what spooked them because it might continue to be a problem. But now it would become your problem and there'd be no other corporation to shield you. Put more bluntly: Shopify didn't shut down a shop with 100k in pending revenue because someone didn't like the amount of sugar in their coffee that morning. There's a problem and you really should figure that out ---------------------------------------------------------------------- No_Eye7024 · 2023-12-27 15:35 That 'own site' still needs a payment processor which has its own 'TOS'. So unless OP wants to deal in crypto, he's out of luck. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- hardonchairs · 2023-12-27 15:36 Are you quite sure that the emails are real and that you didn't instead get your credentials stolen and locked out by criminals? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SIN3R6Y · 2023-12-27 15:50 Fastest option is probably get a decent sized VPS, wordpress / woocommerce on it. Payment provider like [Authorize.net](https://Authorize.net) (your bank probably offers it as a service). That's about the closest you'll get to owning it. Another good payment option is Ayden if you meet the capital requirements, they are also quite lax as far as ToS goes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mrkesu · 2023-12-27 17:31 That's like saying "I can't have 100% privacy on the internet, so I don't care about my privacy at all" You can never "own" your site completely on the public internet since we have domain registrars, but he can still own it much more than he does now. OP won't do anything because it's too much work and he'll just find another webhost anyway, *but if he wanted;* he'd start from the ground up with a dedicated connection and a DNS server. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- adamshand · 2023-12-27 18:21 Yes they do. I had similar thing happen to me using Redbubble. Spent a couple of days setting up a shop selling my sister's art. Then got an email saying our store was shut down for breaking guidelines. No information was provided about what guidelines I'd broken, there was no right of appeal, nobody replied to my messages to support. At least it happened quickly when I'd only invested a couple of days. But never again. 🖕🏻 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- adamshand · 2023-12-27 18:33 The most important thing you can do is to own the domain name. This means you can move your site to another service whenever you like. In theory, "the powers that be" can turn off your domain name, but in practice this *very* rarely happens. The second most important thing you can do is run your own ecommerce software. That means if your hosting account gets shutdown, you can setup the software somewhere else and redirect your domain to the new site. WordPress + WooCommerce is probably the easiest way to get started doing this. And of course, remember to back everything up so if you have to move things, you have everything you need. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- KD_done · 2023-12-27 19:31 That's not difficult at all.. and integration is often plentiful available with a large amount of payment service providers, which gives you plenty of payment options you can offer to your customers. It's not a pita, at all. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ciscorandori · 2023-12-27 20:13 Reminds me of why moved all domains to two different reliable domain registrars (split them up) and don't have them connected directly to hosting. \#1 thing you need to do right now -- while your site is down -- is move your domain away from Shopify to a registrar like : [https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/best-domain- registrar/](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/best- domain-registrar/) What country is your business in ? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- valdecircarvalho · 2023-12-27 20:48 i rather spend my time making marketing to sell more and money than hosting a ecommerce. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- amarao_san · 2023-12-27 22:05 Ethereum or any similar crypto allows accepting payments without adhering to arbitrary ToSes. You need to follow law and that's enough. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- KD_done · 2023-12-27 23:50 And I send invoices for people who want stuff hosted, and ask me to spend 10 hours a month on stuff that take perhaps 1 hour at most. I don't do marketing :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- katrinatransfem · 2023-12-28 00:41 You can’t self-host a payment provider, and that is the bit that holds your money. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sakujakira · 2023-12-28 09:11 Calling Germany a French country, that’s wild. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- primalbluewolf · 2023-12-28 11:27 Oh, this was unintentional! Ive only ever had French speakers point this out to me, not the German ones. Interesting. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sakujakira · 2023-12-28 15:55 Tbf, if I remember correct Switzerland uses both. Most Spanish, French and Germanic countries and ex-colonies use it. There is a nice map at the German Wikipedia site: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dezimaltrennzeichen#/media/Datei%3ADec imalSeparator.svg ---------------------------------------------------------------------- primalbluewolf · 2023-12-29 02:31 That is the decimal separator, not the thousands separator? Is there a 100% correlation? If so, that's a lot more of the planets surface using it than I expected. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sakujakira · 2023-12-29 07:38 My bad, the correlation is not 100%. The English Wikipedia has a list, but for example, says the French are using space as a separator. Which might be formally correct, but from my experience using the . is more widely used. From a formal aspect, using the space in Germany would be correct too, but I’ve never seen anyone using it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator There is also a explanation for the digit grouping, not only the decimal separator.