Shopify vs Amazon: Which Is Best Platform for Selling?

Shopify and Amazon are well-known marketplaces. When it comes to buying online Amazon has to be the first marketplace reflecting our minds. When it comes to selling online, it may not reflect in our minds. As there are plenty of other marketplaces and platforms for selling online.

Platforms like Etsy, Shopify, and WooCommerce are famous for selling online. But as Amazon is a big marketplace for buying online it provides equal opportunity for sellers to sell their goods online.

Shopify is one of the famous online selling platforms but doesn’t have a marketplace like amazon to get traffic to product listings. However, it has offered integration with various multi-sales channels and third-party applications to get traffic.

How to sell on Shopify?

For selling on Shopify users need to create an online store. Shopify provides a 14-day free trial. The Process of creating a store on Shopify is easy. It provides various free themes and good customization features to build a beautiful store. Once the theme customization is done users can start uploading products and these products will be displayed and will be ready to sell.

Note: Shopify provides 14 days trial to build the store but to sell products online you need to choose one of their plans.

How to sell on Amazon?

To sell on Amazon users need to create a seller central account. Amazon has two selling plans individual plan and a professional plan. If you are a beginner choose an individual plan. To list products on amazon users need to have a product identifier code & government licenses such as Food licenses or company licenses. Once the product fields are filed and submitted amazon will review the product and approve them once after the approval the product will display. If you want to sell on amazon and use the “Amazon FBA” facility register for that and after approval send the inventories to the amazon warehouse once it reaches the warehouse products will start displaying on the amazon marketplace.

#Quick Summary – Shopify vs Amazon

#7 Main Differences

1. Ease of Use

Shopify is easy to set up and use. Shopify has excellent support and resources to help users get started. Amazon has imposed various guidelines to list and use the platform so users might find it difficult to set up and use.
Winner: Shopify

2. Themes & Editor

Shopify offers over 100 templates including free and paid themes for all kinds of business, Whereas Amazon offers only single free themes. Shopify themes can be customized whereas Amazon themes can’t be customized.
Winner: Shopify

3. Marketing feature

Shopify has various marketing tools such as integrations with social media, Blogging, Sales channel, and email marketing campaigns to drive traffic. Amazon is a big marketplace they have millions of active buyers so sellers can benefit from the market.
Winner: Amazon

4. Support:

Shopify offers 24*7 phone, live chat, and email support. Whereas Amazon too offers 24*7 Email support, and Live chat.
Winner: Shopify

5. Pricing:

Amazon plans are cheaper than Shopify, Amazon selling price ranges from $0- $39.99 Whereas Shopify Price ranges from $29-$299 per month, however Amazon takes commission from your every sales, but Shopify doesn’t take any commission, Because in Shopify, you own your eCommerce store where you can do anything
Winner: Shopify

6. Payments and Charges

Shopify offers 100+ payment gateways, Amazon too offers various payment options. Amazon has various kinds of charges associated with every transaction. Shopify imposes a transaction charge if customers use payment options other than the “Shopify payments”. (Shopify payments are limited to a few countries)
Winner: Tie

7. App store

Apps help in automation and adding new features to your store, Shopify has over 6000+ apps to assist in online business. Amazon doesn’t have integrations with third-party applications. Winner: Shopify

Themes and Customization

Shopify’s theme store has 9+ free and over 70+ paid professional themes. It has provided themes by the Catalog size and kind of industry as shown below. Amazon has a single theme for all the sellers selling online. Shopify has good customization & design features. Amazon as a Marketplace has a single theme for all the sellers selling online. Amazon users can’t customize the themes.

Pricing and Plans

Shopify has three basic plans

• Basic Shopify:$29/m($26)
• Shopify:$79/m ($71)
• Advance Shopify: $299/m ($269)

(Prices in the Bracket are applicable when you buy a year plan)

Shopify’s new plan “Shopify Lite” which costs $6/month offers a cart button that can be embedded on websites like Squarespace, WordPress, Wix, etc, and Social Channels like Facebook and Instagram, etc. Shopify has an enterprise plan “Shopify Plus” that starts from $2000/month.

There are two types of plans for selling on amazon.

Individual – $0.99/ item sold+ additional selling fees

Professional – $39.99/month+ additional selling fees

An individual plan is good for those who are looking to sell a bunch of products or to get exposure to selling on amazon. If you choose an individual plan amazon will charge a selling fee of $0.99/item you sell. Professional plan starts from $39.99/month, there are no selling fees charged for Professional plans.

Shopify pricing

Amazon selling pricing

Ease of Use

———-Getting started —————

• Shopify provides a 14-day free trial after you sign up to try out their platform.
• Although Shopify is easy to get started for a complete beginner it may take a few days to get used to its features and applications.
• To sell on amazon user needs to create a seller central account to get started.
• After registering with amazon. They will verify the business and will approve creating a seller central account.

———–Setting up a shop ———–

• Shopify provides hosting, storage, SSL, and inbuilt themes.
• Shopify has a user-friendly theme editor that allows the creation of a beautiful homepage.
• Shopify users can seek 24/7 help from the Shopify customer support team.
• Amazon users need to be aware of various policies and rules that are defined by amazon for selling on their platform.
• Amazon users need to arrange GTIN/UPC numbers for each of the products they sell.
• Sellers need to be cautious while listing the product as Amazon marketplace will block duplicate products or uses branded keywords to list products.

Payments and Charges

Shopify has provided over 70+ payment options which include popular payment providers like PayPal, stripe, etc.

Amazon uses multiple payment methods and services to accept payments from customers. Below is the list of accepted payment methods for amazon.com users.

• Visa (including the Amazon Rewards Visa Signature Card)
• Amazon Store Card
• Amazon Secured Card
• MasterCard/Eurocard
• Discover Network
• American Express
• Diner’s Club (U.S. billing addresses only)
• JCB
• NYCE
• STAR
• China UnionPay (credit card only)
• Visa, MasterCard, or American Express prepaid credit or gift cards

The accepted payment methods can vary from country to country. Amazon.com may accept different payment methods as of amazon.UK This is done to support local payment methods. users can also offer Cash on Delivery in some locations.

———-Charges associated with Shopify——-

Transaction charge on each sale if payments are accepted through other payment providers like (PayPal, stripe, square, etc)”, then Shopify charges[2% on (the $29 plan), 1% on (the $79 plan), and 0.5% on ($299 plan)]. Zero transaction fees are charged when “Shopify payments” are used to receive payments, but it’s available only in a few countries.

Shopify payments supported countries

Credit card processing rates can vary for different payment providers, but if you use Shopify payments you can get special credit card rates 2.9% + 30¢ USD for $29, 2.6% + 30¢ USD for $79, and 2.4% + 30¢ USD for $299 plan. an additional fee of 1% for US merchants is applied upon selling cross-border countries.

Shopify credit card charges

In the process of operating and managing Shopify, one might come across Shopify apps although they are free, and the paid users may need a paid subscription for the enhanced specific feature.

———-Charges associated with Amazon——-

Referral Fee:- Amazon Charges a referral charge on every item you sell on amazon. The referral fee varies from category to category.

Book Rental Fee:- The rental book service fee is $5 per book rented to a customer

Closing fees:- If you sell items in the categories of Books, DVDs, Music, Software, Computer/Video Games, Video Games Accessories, etc Then closing fees of $1.80 will be charged per item sold.

High-volume listing fee:- If your selling SKU exceeds over 1.5 million products then for every additional product you add listing fees of $0.001 will be charged. for 1.5 million SKUs there are no listing fees

FBA Fees:- If you wish to choose amazon FBA services there are plenty of FBA fees associated.

Note: Through Shopify payments received from customers will be directly credited to the seller’s account but in the case of Amazon the payment will be held and then will be released within a week.

Product Management

Shopify’s Product section consists of options like inventory, Collections, Gift cards, etc. Users can Import products In the CSV file and upload them here, In the media, add Images, Videos, 3d Models of products. Users can add multiple variations of the product like color, size, material, etc. Each variation can be specified for different prices, SKUs, etc.

Shopify dashboard

Shopify product editor

Adding Products to amazon isn’t straightforward. Under the Catalog section, go to the products option. To list a product users can search for the product on amazon by Name, ASIN, UPC, etc. or if it is not sold on amazon they can create a new one. To add a product a unique Identifier is needed basically a GTIN/UPC/EAN/JAN/ISBN barcode number to distinguish different product listings on amazon. Users can purchase these codes from the GS1 website.

Selling on Amazon

Product Id is the first field to be filled in the products section of the amazon seller central account.

Amazon product field

Note: If you add used barcode Codes amazon will not approve as they will cross-check the codes from their database.

Note: users can list products without the UPC Code by applying for GSTIN exemption.

Shipping

Shopify offers various options for shipping products. Users can self-ship products or let third-party services do that for them. Shopify has integration with one of the best logistics companies like USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL, and more. They provide shipping discounts and also provide real-time shipping rates to the customers.

For Warehouse storage of inventories, Shopify has third-party logistics like ShipBob, ship monk, etc. services to ship and fulfill the orders. If the user needs inventories to sell then Shopify has dropshipping apps to provide inventories. These dropshipping agencies take care of product sourcing to shipping. So that users can just focus on growing businesses.

Real-time shipping rate

With regards to shipping, there are 2 options to ship products.

FBM(Fulfillment by Merchants):- In this process, the merchant has to take care of all the shipping and Inventory management.

FBA(Fulfillment by Amazon):- In this process, the merchant has to send his inventories to one of the amazon warehouses and Amazon will take care of the shipping, and fulfillment process and Provide customer service. This requires additional cost as FBA services include plenty of fees.

Fees associated with FBA

FBA Fees
If the user opts to sell and ship using FBA. Users need to pay the FBA fee as Amazon takes care of packing, and shipping, and also offers customer services. FBA fees are calculated by dimensions, the weight of the package

FBA Storage Fees

Amazon charges Storage fees for each product stored in their warehouse. These storage fees are been charged monthly and will be deducted from the positive balance or from the credit card. The storage fees depend on the size of the product. Usually from October to December the storage cost will be high as there will be more demand for the products.

If a product stays in a storage house for more than 365 days then long-term storage fees will be applied which will be $6.90 per cubic foot.

Note: Fulfillment fees can be varied if you use the service add-ons.

Marketing

Shopify has good marketing features as it lets users automate social media and email marketing campaigns. Shopify has its own email software to send personalized messages for promotions, newsletters, cart recovery, cross-sell, etc. Besides this Shopify integrates with Over 100 third-party email automation. Shopify automates ad campaigns for Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Google from the Shopify dashboard. Shopify has over 1400+ marketing apps.

Shopify has integration with multichannel platforms like Facebook, Amazon, Etsy, eBay, etc. Users can sync inventories directly from Shopify to these multi-channels. users can manage all of their orders and inventory from one place.

As Amazon is a competitive marketplace that houses millions of sellers. There are millions of people shopping daily on this platform. The amazon marketplace can be used to drive free sales as well as paid sales

Amazon SEO:– Millions of shoppers use amazon to search for their favorite products. So it’s important to add those search keywords in the title, description, and alt text so the searchers can find the listing. If you are getting started on amazon it’s preferred to add keywords with low competition. Once the listing gets more sales and reviews users can add keywords with high volume.

Amazon displays those listing first which is fulfilled by amazon so that the prime customer can get their product faster. Amazon also conducts occasional sales and provide preference to prime member first.

Amazon PPC:

Amazon also runs paid ads within its marketplace. This is also a good way to get sales from the amazon marketplace but the PPC cost depends on the search volume of the product. If the product is competitive then the Cost per Click will be high as the competitors will be running ads and also paying more money to run their ads

There are three types of Ads that can be displayed using Amazon PPC

1. Sponsored product ads

This ad will be displayed when the user conducts a search on the amazon platform. this ad will be displayed in the first rows of the search appearance. This ad will be displayed for the keywords you specify in the ads manager

2. Sponsored Brands

In the Sponsored brands ads will be displayed brand name & logo. Upon clicking this ad the visitors will be shown the full catalog offered by the Brands.

3. Product display ads

These ads are displayed in the related item sections. These ads will be displayed when a customer chooses to see a product and the related products will be shown below in a carousel mode.

Support and Resources

Shopify and Amazon support team operate 24/7. Their support system is available through Live Chat, Phone, and Email. Amazon’s Email support team usually reply in within 8-10 hours. Users can request a call back using the phone method just mention your number and the seller support employee will call you in a few minutes.

Shopify has forums and communities to solve Shopify-related queries. Shopify also provided plenty of blogs and videos for reference. Amazon has a seller central forum to discuss the issue related to seller central.

Shopify support

Amazon support

Pros and Cons: Shopify vs Amazon

Conclusion: Shopify vs Amazon

Use Shopify over Amazon

• If you are trying to build the business to showcase the services and also sell them online as Shopify makes you enable this feature

• If you are looking to build an online store and want to customize and do branding, then Shopify is best.

• If you want to build a store with full authority and want to scale it then Shopify is best as it has all those necessary features and applications.

• If you want to sell a bunch of products then amazon is good as it has a free plan and a big marketplace that can get you free sales.
• If you are looking to sell worldwide without the need of managing inventory and shipping then amazon is good as it has a worldwide customer base
• If you already have a product and want to brandy then amazon is the best platform as you can get the customer base you are looking to sell.

Declan Kingston

Declan Kingston mainly works around strong Data to create powerful visuals, complex graphs to make the right decision for companies. He has been working in this field for over 8 years, has a strong knowledge of eCommerce platforms and website builders. He has worked with Ethereum and Looker Data Sciences, Inc. (now part of Google Cloud).