You Can’t Sell That Online: A Guide to Ecommerce Platform Restrictions

If you sell ammunition, holsters, CBD, vape products, or anything else regulated, you’ve probably heard some version of “you can’t sell that online.” Usually you can. You just need the right platform and the right payment setup, because your ecommerce platform and the processor behind your checkout each have their own rulebook. Those rules often have little to do with what’s legal where you operate, and either one can shut down your store faster than any ad network.

In our guide to marketing prohibited products online, we covered what Meta, Google, TikTok, Amazon, and other ad platforms allow. This post covers the other half: choosing the best ecommerce platform for restricted products, and the payment setup that makes it work.

Before you compare platforms, separate the three layers that decide what you can sell.

The first is the law: federal, state, and local rules for your product, plus the rules of every state you ship to. The second is your ecommerce platform’s acceptable use policy, which applies whether or not your product is legal. The third is your payment processor, and for most regulated merchants this is the strictest layer of all.

A store can clear the first two and still fail at checkout. That’s why the platform decision and the payment decision need to happen together.

Shopify has moved to a principles-based Acceptable Use Policy. Instead of publishing a list of prohibited items, the current policy puts the responsibility on you as the merchant to follow the law and the rules of your partners. It also states that Shopify Payments, the Shop sales channel, and other add-on products carry their own terms.

That last point is where regulated merchants feel it. According to Shopify’s Shopify Payments eligibility page, Shopify Payments prohibits products that require regulatory approval or compliance, including cannabis and related products, tobacco, firearms, holsters, ammunition, and weapons. If you sell in those categories on Shopify, plan on a third-party payment gateway from day one.

International selling adds another layer. Shopify Markets Pro restricts CBD products in any form, along with drugs, explosives, weapons, and related items, and hides prohibited products from customers in countries where they can’t be shipped.

Shopify can work for regulated brands that have already secured an approved third-party gateway and want Shopify’s checkout, app ecosystem, and ease of use. Review your full catalog against Shopify’s current policies and your gateway’s terms before you launch, and recheck when either one changes.

The BigCommerce Acceptable Use Policy, last revised July 31, 2025, limits use of its services to lawful purposes and doesn’t publish a product-by-product ban list. That approach has made BigCommerce a common choice for firearms accessory, CBD, vape, and supplement merchants.

Two caveats apply. BigCommerce’s policy reserves discretion to act on activity it considers harmful to its business, reputation, or customers. And like Shopify, BigCommerce doesn’t process regulated transactions on your behalf, so you’ll still need a payment gateway that approves your product category. Its open API and broad gateway integrations make that pairing straightforward.

With a self-hosted open-source platform, no platform owner signs off on your catalog. You control the hosting, the code, and the checkout. For merchants whose products sit in gray areas or change with state law, that independence is the main draw.

Self-hosting shifts the responsibility to you. Your hosting provider, your payment processor, and any extensions you install each set their own terms. Open-source platforms also take more work to secure and maintain, so budget for security updates, hosting, and the custom compliance features your category needs.

WooCommerce’s built-in WooPayments option is built in partnership with Stripe, and its prohibited products list includes firearms and ammunition, tobacco products including e-cigarettes and vapes, and drug paraphernalia. WooCommerce directs CBD merchants to Square or Viva Wallet instead of WooPayments. For other regulated categories, WooCommerce’s large extension ecosystem makes it straightforward to connect a third-party gateway that approves your products.

Magento Open Source is free to self-host, and Adobe Commerce is its licensed enterprise edition. Self-hosted Magento gives you full control of the codebase and checkout, which makes it a fit for large catalogs and complex B2B or multi-store setups.

Adobe Commerce now comes in more than one deployment model, and the one you choose changes who sets the rules. Merchants can run it on their own infrastructure, on Adobe’s cloud infrastructure, or as Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service, a fully SaaS version managed by Adobe that became generally available in North America in June 2025. When Adobe hosts or manages your store, Adobe’s service terms apply alongside your own, so review them against your catalog the way you would with any SaaS platform.

The built-in payment option deserves the same attention. Payment Services for Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source is powered by the PayPal Commerce Platform, and PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy prohibits firearms and weapons. Regulated merchants on Magento or Adobe Commerce should plan on a third-party gateway instead, which the platform’s open architecture supports well.

Shopware is open source at its core, so the same self-hosting logic applies. Where it stands out for regulated merchants is checkout control. Extensions in the Shopware Store let you restrict which payment methods appear based on product, category, customer group, country, or cart total. A store that sells both regulated and unregulated items can send restricted products to an approved high-risk gateway while running everything else through a mainstream processor.

If you use Shopware’s own payment offering, Shopware Payments, review its terms against your catalog the same way you would for Shopify Payments or WooPayments.

Whatever platform you choose, the processor is the most common reason regulated stores lose the ability to take payments.

Stripe’s prohibited and restricted businesses list includes firearms, explosives and dangerous materials, cannabis dispensaries, and CBD products with THC above the local legal limit, including CBD edibles. CBD products with negligible THC fall under Stripe’s restricted category, which requires approval before you can process payments.

Merchants in these categories typically work with high-risk merchant account providers that specialize in firearms, CBD, vape, or supplement businesses. Expect a more detailed underwriting process, and ask about rates, reserves, and contract terms before you sign. Line up your processor before you build, then confirm that it integrates with the platform you’re considering.

Blayzer works with payment partners that approve firearms businesses from the start, so you can build your store around a processor that supports your category.

EBizCharge offers gun-friendly merchant accounts for gun stores, FFL dealers, ammunition sellers, accessory retailers, shooting ranges, and firearms manufacturers. It integrates natively with more than 100 ERP, accounting, and ecommerce systems, including WooCommerce, Acumatica, and NetSuite, which makes it a strong fit for firearms businesses that need payments connected to their back office.

ShotPay is a payments platform built for the shooting, hunting, outdoor, and tactical industry. It combines credit card processing, buy now pay later, layaway, and invoicing in one platform, and it’s available as an app in the BigCommerce App Store. Financing is a meaningful gap in this industry, since mainstream BNPL providers refuse firearms, ammo, and tactical categories.

Authorize.Net rounds out the setup for many stores. It’s a common gateway choice for firearms and ammunition merchants when paired with a firearms-friendly merchant account, and it connects to most major ecommerce platforms.

Firearm ecommerce faces the tightest payment rules of any category. Shopify Payments, WooPayments, Stripe, and PayPal all prohibit firearms, so every gun store needs a firearms-friendly payment partner like EBizCharge or ShotPay, regardless of platform.

From there, the choice comes down to how much flexibility your catalog needs. BigCommerce’s lawful-use policy and the control of self-hosted platforms like WooCommerce, Magento, and Shopware give gun stores the most room to sell firearms, ammunition, parts, and accessories. Shopify can work for accessory-focused brands with an approved third-party gateway in place.

Whatever you choose, FFL ecommerce requires a few features out of the box or through custom development: an FFL transfer workflow at checkout, state-level shipping restrictions for ammunition and regulated parts, and age verification. Learn more about our work with firearms and ammunition brands.

CBD ecommerce runs into payment restrictions on nearly every mainstream processor. Shopify Payments prohibits cannabis and related products, Stripe requires approval for CBD with negligible THC, and WooPayments sends CBD merchants to Square or Viva Wallet.

Square, one of Blayzer’s payment partners, runs a dedicated CBD program that lets approved sellers accept payments for hemp and hemp-derived CBD products with 0.3% THC or less in most U.S. states. Any business selling CBD through Square has to apply to the program, and Square doesn’t support marijuana, products above 0.3% THC, or paraphernalia.

BigCommerce and WooCommerce both give CBD brands workable paths when paired with a CBD-approved processor like Square. If you plan to sell internationally on Shopify, note that Markets Pro restricts CBD in any form.

CBD stores also need certificates of analysis on product pages, age gates where required, and state-by-state shipping rules. For more on building a compliant CBD storefront, see our cannabis and CBD compliance UX checklist.

Your storefront is only one place your products live. If you syndicate your catalog through product feeds to Google Shopping, Amazon, social commerce channels, or online marketplaces, each destination applies its own product policies, and those are often stricter than your platform’s.

A few examples: Google Merchant Center prohibits dangerous products in Shopping ads. Amazon’s weapons policy prohibits listing all firearms, firearm ammunition, and ammunition components, and Amazon prohibits CBD and cannabinoid products under its drugs and drug paraphernalia policy. Shopify’s own Shop sales channel also has separate product eligibility rules from the rest of the platform. Pushing a restricted SKU into the wrong channel can get the listing disapproved, and repeat violations can put your entire merchant account at risk.

The fix is to manage feeds by channel rather than sending your full catalog everywhere. Use feed rules or a feed management tool to exclude restricted products from channels that prohibit them, and review each channel’s policies when you add new products or new destinations. We’ll cover feed strategy for restricted products in more depth in an upcoming guide.

Whatever you sell, the right platform has to support the features your category requires. Depending on your products, that can include:

• Age verification at checkout or account creation for products sold only to adults.
• State-level shipping restrictions that block or reroute orders where a product is banned or limited. California and Connecticut, for example, require a state ammunition vendor license, and New York routes ammunition sales through a dealer.
• FFL transfer workflows for firearms, so customers can select a licensed dealer for pickup.
• Product documentation like certificates of analysis for CBD, posted where shoppers and payment underwriters can find them.
• Excise tax automation for vape and tobacco products. States calculate vape excise tax differently, some as a percentage of price and others by volume, per cartridge or per milliliter of e-liquid. Avalara, a Blayzer tax partner, offers tobacco and vape tax compliance that handles both excise and sales tax.
• Channel-specific feed rules that keep restricted SKUs out of marketplaces and shopping channels that prohibit them.
• Carrier rules, since federal law prohibits mailing small arms ammunition through USPS, and most vape products are nonmailable under the PACT Act. Private carriers set their own requirements.

If you sell hemp or CBD, also watch the federal definition of hemp that takes effect November 12, 2026. It may change which of your products remain federally compliant, and your processor’s terms may change with it.

It depends on your products, where you ship, and which payment processor approves you. BigCommerce and self-hosted platforms like WooCommerce, Magento, and Shopware give regulated merchants the most flexibility. Shopify can work once you have an approved third-party gateway in place.

Shopify’s Acceptable Use Policy no longer lists prohibited items. Shopify Payments does, and it prohibits cannabis and related products, tobacco, firearms, holsters, ammunition, and weapons, among other regulated categories.

Shopify Payments prohibits firearms, holsters, ammunition, and weapons. Merchants in these categories need a third-party payment gateway and should review Shopify’s current terms before building.

Shopify Payments prohibits cannabis and related products, and Shopify Markets Pro restricts CBD in any form for international sales. CBD merchants on Shopify need a third-party payment gateway that approves CBD.

The BigCommerce Acceptable Use Policy limits use to lawful purposes without listing banned products. CBD merchants on BigCommerce still need a payment processor that approves CBD sales, such as Square’s CBD program.

Yes, with the right payment setup. WooPayments doesn’t support CBD, and WooCommerce directs CBD merchants to Square or Viva Wallet instead.

Self-hosted Magento gives you full control of your catalog, while Adobe-hosted versions of Adobe Commerce add Adobe’s service terms. On either, the built-in Payment Services option is powered by PayPal, which prohibits firearms and weapons, so firearms merchants need a third-party gateway that approves their category.

Most merchants selling firearms, ammunition, CBD, or vape products need a processor that approves their category, because mainstream options like Stripe, PayPal, WooPayments, and Shopify Payments prohibit or restrict them. For firearms businesses, Blayzer partners with EBizCharge and ShotPay, both of which approve firearms and ammunition merchants. For CBD, Square’s CBD program supports approved sellers of hemp-derived products.

Blayzer Digital has helped businesses build and grow online since 1998, with hands-on experience across BigCommerce, Shopify, Shopware, Magento, Adobe Commerce, WooCommerce, and WordPress. If you sell restricted products, we can help you match your catalog to the right platform and payment partner, set up channel-specific product feeds, integrate tax compliance tools, and build in the features your category requires. Learn more about how we work with regulated industries.