Roots HQ vs. Whatnot

Roots HQ is a storefront and operations platform, not a marketplace — it has no built-in buyer audience of its own. Bringing buyers is on the seller; in exchange, the seller keeps the customer relationship (see Business ownership).

A live-shopping marketplace by design — buyers browse and discover sellers inside Whatnot’s own app.

Buyers check out on the seller’s own branded checkout — Roots HQ does not operate a marketplace checkout of its own.

Purchases complete inside Whatnot’s own in-app checkout.

Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.

Not offered by this product today, as far as we could confirm from its own documentation.

Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.

Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.

Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.

Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.

Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.

Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.

Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.

Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.

Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.

Not offered by this product today, as far as we could confirm from its own documentation.

Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.

Sellers use Whatnot’s own app account — there is no separate seller admin surface of their own for this to apply to.

Both halves are real and enforced: a global IP deny/blocklist (checked on every request) plus a per-tenant IP allow-list (checked at login and on every authenticated admin request) with CIDR range support. The allow-list only starts restricting access once a tenant adds at least one entry — an empty list means no restriction, not "deny everyone."

No separate seller admin surface of their own to restrict by IP.

Enforced at login: sign-in is refused with a 403 when the resolved country is on the blocked list, or (if an allow-list is configured) not on it — a real access-control gate, not just reporting.

No separate seller admin surface of their own to gate by country.

Each Tap-to-Pay device gets its own short-lived (24-hour) access token minted from a server-held refresh token — never the merchant’s main credential — and that one device’s token can be revoked individually without affecting any other device.

Sellers don’t run their own POS device integration on a marketplace.

Issuing and renewing the HTTPS certificate for a connected custom domain is fully automated (Let’s Encrypt via certbot), with safety checks before every nginx reload and automatic rollback if anything fails.

No independent domain exists to provision a certificate for while selling inside Whatnot’s app.

Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.

Whatnot account security (including any MFA) is Whatnot’s own account, not a seller admin surface Roots HQ or the seller configures.

Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.

Selling happens inside Whatnot’s own app — there is no independent hosted storefront to own.

Scoped to the customer contact list specifically (see “Data export” below for the exportable proof of this) — not a claim that every business record is exportable.

Whatnot retains the buyer relationship — sellers do not get a portable customer list.

Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.

By definition — Whatnot is a marketplace app, not an independent site the seller controls.

Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.

Whatnot ships no CRM/contact-record feature to attribute a sale into.

Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.

No CRM/contact-record feature in Whatnot’s seller documentation.

Admin-only, audit-logged CSV export of the contact list and consolidated multi-channel sales — api/src/routes/export.ts. This is not a full-account export or backup: no such feature exists, and tenant deletion is platform-owner-only with no pre-deletion self-export step.

Nothing of the seller’s own to export — see “You own the customer list” above.

Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.

Real and shipped, but narrower than the feature name suggests. See the note on this cell for the specific boundary.

Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.

No independent site exists to point a domain at while selling inside Whatnot’s app.

Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.

Real and shipped, but narrower than the feature name suggests. See the note on this cell for the specific boundary.

Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.

Real and shipped, but narrower than the feature name suggests. See the note on this cell for the specific boundary.

Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.

Real and shipped, but narrower than the feature name suggests. See the note on this cell for the specific boundary.

Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.

Real and shipped, but narrower than the feature name suggests. See the note on this cell for the specific boundary.

Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.

Real and shipped, but narrower than the feature name suggests. See the note on this cell for the specific boundary.

Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.

Real and shipped, but narrower than the feature name suggests. See the note on this cell for the specific boundary.

Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.

No CRM/contact records to segment — see “Contact records & tags”.

Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.

No email/CRM channel exists to campaign into — see “Contact records & tags”.

Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.

No SMS/CRM channel exists to campaign into — see “Contact records & tags”.

Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.

Whatnot’s own policy explicitly prohibits randomizer/prize wheels while selling on its platform.

Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.

No independent site/blog surface exists inside a marketplace app.

Real and shipped, but narrower than the feature name suggests. See the note on this cell for the specific boundary.

No independently indexable seller site exists inside a marketplace app.

Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.

Not offered by this product today, as far as we could confirm from its own documentation.

Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.

Real and shipped, but narrower than the feature name suggests. See the note on this cell for the specific boundary.

Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.

Real and shipped, but narrower than the feature name suggests. See the note on this cell for the specific boundary.