Every merchant who joined Shopify handed Shop their catalog, their customer lists,
and their transaction history. Shop uses that data to acquire those customers
directly — then charges the merchant a non-refundable acquisition fee
for the privilege. When the customer returns the order, the fee is gone.
The merchant absorbs the loss. Shop keeps the data.
After documenting seven layers of undisclosed fees and observing a structured pattern of customer lock-in,
and good faith advocacy by WellSpr.ing as ombudsman,
Naturologie.com built a full sovereign replacement for approximately the cost of one month
of Shopify Plus license. The open-source bundle is provided. The exit is yours.
A Customer Acquisition Cost is charged the moment an order is placed — Shopify's moment of maximum benefit. The fee is retained when the customer returns the item. Order #15368: $36.61, delivered, returned 13 days later. CAC: gone.
Apps, Shipping, and Shop Campaigns appear as single aggregate lines. No per-order, per-app, or per-shipment breakdown. Shopify has the data. They choose not to show it.
Shopify withholds sales tax from payouts under SC Commerce Services Inc. — visible only in payout detail views. Not disclosed at Shop Campaigns enrollment. Creates accounting obligations not mentioned in the Plus Agreement.
Label cost charged to the merchant exceeds the shipping rate collected from the customer. $5.77 label on a $4.90 collected rate. Invisible in aggregate billing. Undiscoverable per-order.
Third-party processors (Affirm, Authorize.net) trigger a 2% surcharge — on refunded orders too. Shopify support: "Remove them and stick to Shopify Payments." Restraint of trade on the public record.
POS Pro billed at $67/month whether used or not. NaturoMedica ran Lightspeed as its actual POS. $201 billed for zero utilization across three months. No alert. No audit flag.
Shop Cash — funded by merchant CAC fees — incentivizes repeat purchases through the Shop app rather than the merchant's own channel. The merchant funded the acquisition of their own customer by Shopify.
Shop Pay Installments deploys Affirm to buyers at checkout. Affirm scrambled to onboard 800,000 merchants in one week. The default rates of those merchants' customers are the receipt.
You do not need a cutover day. The NotShop bundle runs alongside Shopify during migration. Stop the CAC meter immediately — then migrate on your own timeline.
Deploy sovereign stack. Connect Shopify Storefront API. Shopify remains primary.
Sovereign stack is primary. Shopify API connected for legacy order management.
Shopify cancelled. Sovereign only. Your data, your customers, your commerce.
The single highest-impact action before full migration: disable Shop Campaigns today. Admin → Marketing → Shop Campaigns → Pause. You lose no existing customers. You stop the non-refundable CAC extraction immediately. This one action saves the average merchant $200–800/month while the rest of the migration proceeds.
This is the exact stack running Naturologie.com after NaturoMedica exited Shopify Plus in April 2026. Authored by Naturologie. Deposited to WellSpr.ing public git under MIT license.
Merchant or buyer — if Shop extracted from you, the public record strengthens for everyone who comes after. Cases are classified, published, and referenced in the WellSpr.ing dossier.