Last Updated on December 22, 2022 by
Do you want to sell handmade items, vintage jewelry, packaged food items, your grandmother’s recipe book, or anything else? Online medium is the way to go! Most shoppers today prefer to buy things online because of the convenience, low pricing, and comparison options.
If you want to sell your products online, there are plenty of platforms you can take help from. Shopify and Etsy are two major contenders in this context. Here, we will talk about the two shopping platforms and the reasons why a Shopify development store can be a better option for you.
Let’s dive in!
Introducing Shopify & Etsy
Shopify is an eCommerce development platform that allows businesses to develop, set up, and launch their own store. It assists businesses in selling their products not only on online platforms but in brick-and-mortar stores as well. Anyone with limited technical expertise can also use this platform to set up their online store.
Etsy, however, is an online marketplace where merchants can sell their products. Businesses can list their products in the marketplace and sell their products to a larger audience section.
Reasons Why Shopify is Preferred Over Etsy
More than 4 Million eCommerce stores are built on Shopify. It is a great platform to develop online stores, manage, and deploy them. Shopify presents businesses with many tools and applications that they can use to set up the store.
To tell you why Shopify is better than Etsy, here look at some of the reasons.
Customize your shop as you need
Let’s take a shopping complex for example. Shopify is similar to a shopping complex that lets you rent a space where you can set up your own store. You can design your store as you want and sell products to the customers that visit your store.
Speaking of Etsy, it acts like a supermarket where multiple vendors can get a shelf space to showcase their products. Any shoppers visiting the supermarket can browse through the products and may choose to buy them. However, you don’t get to design your shop or control who visits your store, or aids their experience in any manner.
But with Shopify eCommerce website development, you can custom build your store for the target audiences.
Sell anything you want
Shopify doesn’t restrict you to sell any particular product items. You can sell anything and everything as long as it is legal and comes under the jurisdiction of your country. But, that’s not the case with Etsy users.
Etsy allows you to list and sell items from a few categories only, such as –
- Craft supplies (any stationary or anything used for making crafts, ingredients, tools, etc).
- Handmade products (Pottery, art pieces, soft toys, sweaters, decorative items, etc).
- Vintage pieces (At least over 20 years old).
Thus, if you have products under these categories only, then Etsy can be an option. But with Shopify, you can sell any products you want.
Pricing is beneficial in the long run
Shopify provides businesses with five pricing plans that they can choose from.
- Shopify Starter plan ($5 monthly)
- Basic Shopify plan ($29 monthly)
- Shopify plan ($79 every month)
- Advanced Shopify plan ($299 monthly charge)
- Shopify Plus — Price based on custom project requirements.
Each plan let businesses use exclusive features that the Shopify platform extends.
Etsy also has multiple plans laid out for customers but these costs here are comparatively less than that of Shopify. Besides it, businesses also need to pay a listing fee of $0.20 for each product item. This fee recurs after every four months whether your products sell or not. A transaction fee of 6.5% is also levied for each item you sell.
Initially, Shopify might seem like a more expensive option but in the long run, the cost to sell products on Etsy can surpass the costs of Shopify.
Dropshipping products
Dropshipping is an excellent technique that allows vendors to ship a product to customers directly from the supplier. It is extremely convenient when you don’t manufacture the product and are running out of stock. You don’t have to invest in inventory and dropship products directly to consumers.
However with Etsy, dropshipping isn’t that easy. The platform allows you to sell certain products and self-manufacturing products, so dropshipping isn’t quite possible.
You own the domain
Branding is a critical part of any eCommerce business and having a distinct domain is an important step in this direction. Having an identifiable domain name can help in more than one way – Your brand is recognizable, your URL is memorizable, and can be easily accessed. When you avail of Shopify development services, you can even customize the site as per your needs.
However, when you sell with Etsy, you don’t own a domain and will have a harder time promoting and branding your eCommerce site.
As said, there are plenty of reasons that outsmart Etsy from Shopify as a leading eCommerce platform. For instance, let’s take an online marketplace like Amazon. Here, you can see the same product from multiple vendors. Now, buyers can choose to purchase any as per their needs and preference. So, selling your products with Etsy can be tricky as the competitors are here too.
Thus, developing a Shopify development store can be quite beneficial for businesses that are looking to establish their eCommerce brand. However, if you are specifically looking to sell handcrafted products on a portal, Etsy could be your choice.
Summary: Shopify is a renowned eCommerce platform and so is Etsy. But, there are plenty of reasons that set Shopify apart from many others. Here, let’s learn about those reasons.
Author Bio: Maulik Shah is the CEO of BiztechCS, a development company. He often takes the front seat in the company’s development projects, because he enjoys solving problems through technology. When it comes to writing for any blog, his contribution is priceless. Maulik ensures that his interaction with development is frequent enough, and his industry knowledge is ever-evolving so that he can share it. Despite his packed days, Maulik’s door is always open and he is generous with sharing this knowledge and experience.
Apart from this if you are interested to know more about Upselling and Cross Selling on Shopify then visit our Business category
