Let's talk about this. We understand the concern about leadership's political views - we strongly oppose them. But boycotting Shopify would actively harm the Canadian small businesses we're trying to help.

Here's why:
Shopify is essential infrastructure for most Canadian brands. (As are Meta, Google, Amazon, and more). It's like telling people not to use cars because they're bad for the environment, while offering no alternative infrastructure. The only people who lose in that scenario are the ones who give up their cars.

The reality is that Shopify powers the largest share of successful independent Canadian online stores for a reason - it's genuinely the best tool by a huge margin. From small businesses to major Canadian retailers, it's the backbone of Canadian e-commerce because no other platform comes close to matching its capabilities.

When people suggest "just switch to WooCommerce or Ecwid" or other platforms, they don't understand the depth of what they're asking. While some stores can make the switch, for most others Shopify isn't just a website builder - it's an entire ecosystem of inventory management, shipping optimization, tax compliance, sales channel integration, and developer tools that work seamlessly together.

This very marketplace would be 10x slower, more expensive, and harder to build on another platform. It is our view that our projected impact is 100x important than the small monthly fee going to Shopify.

More importantly, collective influence is more effective at generating change than individual boycotts. Shopify employs over 8,000 Canadians. They power over a million small businesses and over 130,000 in Canada. As this community of merchants grows, so does our collective voice to influence positive change. Building successful, influential Canadian businesses on the platform gives us more leverage to push for better leadership decisions, not less.

The goal isn't to make Shopify smaller - it's to make it better - to hold leadership accountable to Canadians so that we can be proud of this hugely successful, innovative company. That happens through engagement, not abandonment. And while Shopify is in the spotlight right now due to the political cycle, the reality is that problematic billionaires profit from almost every piece of infrastructure we use. Rather than impossible individual purity tests, we need collective action to push for systemic change.

Our founding team has and will continue to use our platform to call out leaders who promote rhetoric and policies that we believe to be un-Canadian. In the meantime, Common Goods welcomes vendors hosting their websites on most major platforms (Shopify, WooCommerce, Squarespace, Etsy, and more.)