How many are leaving Shopify due to their ENDS policy and what platform are you going to?
We only sold Vape batteries and accessories (no nicotine or cannabis) JUST Hardware, but now Shopify does not allow it! MAKES NO SENSE
@moose_1 Before the platform question, do the data stuff this week if you havent already.
The part people get caught by is that suspension isnt just your products coming down. Account level enforcement can mean locked admin access and frozen payouts. Everything below gets much harder or impossible once that happens, so it needs doing while you still have a working login.
Export your customers, orders and products to CSV now and keep them somewhere off the platform. Customers is the one that actually matters, thats your business, and check the marketing consent column comes across intact or your new email platform wont let you import them.
Get your images out of Content, then Files. Nobody thinks of this and rebuilding a product catalogue without its photos is brutal.
If your domain was bought through Shopify rather than registered elsewhere and pointed at it, start the transfer out now. A Shopify registered domain on a restricted account is a genuinely painful problem, and its an easy one to avoid today.
Check your Shopify Payments balance and payout schedule and make sure there isnt money sitting in there waiting on a payout date.
On the policy itself, and I know this isnt what you want to hear. The wording in the notices covers parts and refills regardless of nicotine content, so hardware only doesnt exempt you. Its categorical by design rather than a judgement about what youre actually selling. Thats also why theres no public policy page to argue against, its been enforced through individual merchant notices rather than a published rule, which is part of why it feels so arbitrary. Appeals exist but they rarely go anywhere when ENDS is the core of the business, so I wouldnt spend your two weeks on that.
On where to go, the advice above about sorting your payment processor first is the important bit and I would put it even harder. Get the high risk merchant account approved before you build anything. Approval can take weeks, some processors have platform requirements of their own, and theres no point standing up a WooCommerce site only to find your processor wont work with it. The processor decides your options, not the other way round.
One thing worth deciding early too. If you sell anything outside the ENDS category, splitting it is workable. Keep the non vape products where they are and rebuild only the vape side elsewhere. Plenty of people have gone that route rather than moving everything at once.
I hear you, but many .coms are still selling vape items! How have they not been banned?