Web hosting and eCommerce for an Online FFL?

[Knight_Who_Says_Ni]

I'm in the process of getting an FFL (home-based, I'm outside of California) right now, my plan is to do online sales and dabble with certain clients locally. I've helped run GunBroker pages for an FFL before, but I also want to do my own online storefront. I've used Shopify and Wix for other online retail stores, but from what I hear they're hit and miss with firearm related stuff.

What eCommerce services are you guys using to host online stores? Same with credit card processing.

Any and all help would be appreciated!

Knight

[OCArmory]

Better off finding one associated with your distributor. Unfortunately home based means you can not use many of them. I know RSR has one that lets you use live inventory and drop ship.

[ugimports]

Are you technical enough to build your own?
If not, there are options like:
sitebiz.com
ammoready.com
outdoorbusinessnetwork.com
gearfire.com

All of those rely on you already having distributor accounts set up though.

As OC Armory said it might be easier just to use one associated to a single distributor to start.

[ArmsUnlimited]

Volusion

[Knight_Who_Says_Ni]

Better off finding one associated with your distributor. Unfortunately home based means you can not use many of them. I know RSR has one that lets you use live inventory and drop ship.

Do you know which distributors don't support home-based FFL's? The plan is to be home based until it's generating enough I can lease out a local space. The hope was to go through RSR to start, as I've worked with them quite a bit in the past at other jobs.

Are you technical enough to build your own?
If not, there are options like:
sitebiz.com
ammoready.com
outdoorbusinessnetwork.com
gearfire.com

All of those rely on you already having distributor accounts set up though.

As OC Armory said it might be easier just to use one associated to a single distributor to start.

I have built my own websites in the past, but the ability to drop-ship certain items direct from distributors is really appealing.

That being said, one of the distributors I've talked with and plan on using doesn't offer the ability to link their live inventory w/ drop shipping. So whatever platform I use needs to be able to integrate my own inventory.

The more I look into it the less worried I am about setting up the eCommerce platform, finding decent credit card processing seems to be a bigger problem for most FFL's.

[ugimports]

We use these guys:

http://wareeverpay.com/

We are considering changing to these guys:

https://freedomprocessing.us/

But haven't gotten enough info from them yet (just received a spam mailer).

[Burbur]

RSR doesn't do kitchen table FFLs any more.

Maybe you could sweet talk your old sales rep into an exception.