Which e-commerce platform is most popular with tactical and FFL websites, WooCommerce or Shopify?
WooCommerce and Shopify Inc. dominate the e-commerce market. WooCommerce is a WordPress e-commerce plug-in used by over 6,500,000 websites, according to stats published by the data and usage company BuiltWith®.
Shopify Inc. (NYSE: SHOP) is a hosted, all-in-one e-commerce platform with a gross merchandise volume of over 42 billion dollars in Q3 of 2022 alone, based on Shopify’s public reporting.
FFL and tactical websites face unique challenges in terms of compliance and allowed-use policies – do those business owners choose one site builder over the other because of that? The short answer is yes.
WooCommerce is far more popular than any other solution for FFL and tactical
Our integration and inquiry data showed a roughly 2:1 ratio of tactical website owners who chose WordPress and WooCommerce vs. tactical website owners who chose Shopify Inc. as their e-commerce platform.
We anonymized a snapshot of 50 recent website integrations and inquiries. This data set showed that of sites that used either WooCommerce or Shopify, 40 percent used WooCommerce, and 20 percent chose Shopify as their solution.
Although our data focused on tactical and FFL sites using either Shopify or WooCommerce, many other site builders are commonly used by tactical and FFL site owners looking to accept payments for legal tactical items and FFL sales online. 
Wix was the only other platform with more than 10 percent usage among our data set of tactical and FFL integrations and inquiries, with 16 percent. After that, BigCommerce, Squarespace, and GoDaddy made up the vast majority of the rest – not counting GunBroker, which is our most common integration.
Note: Business owners should read the allowed-use policies for all their vendors, as tactical sites are sometimes caught up in those policies.
Not all site builders allow all types of tactical products
Certain site builders, including Shopify, have significant restrictions in terms of which FFL transactions are permitted. Others, like Weebly, prohibit all weapons. Again, though, policies change, so read your vendors’ terms carefully. Additionally, all FFL and tactical businesses should sit with a qualified attorney before processing any transactions.
Blue Payment Agency focuses on tactical and FFL payment gateways
We are a tactical- and FFL-friendly payment gateway provider based in Maine that focuses on placing US-based businesses with the appropriate payment gateway for their e-commerce website. If you’d like to learn more, click the start arrow below.