Etsy vs Shopify
These are not two versions of the same thing. One is a marketplace that brings you buyers and charges per sale; the other is software that brings you nobody and charges per month.
The structural difference
Etsy takes a cut of each sale — a listing fee, a transaction fee on the item and shipping, and payment processing. Sell nothing and you pay almost nothing. Shopify charges a monthly subscription plus payment processing, and no commission. Sell nothing and you still pay the subscription.
So the comparison has a crossing point rather than a winner, and it is set by your order volume.
Where the crossing point sits
Take a $47 order. Etsy's per-order cost with a 6.5% transaction fee, a $0.20 listing fee and 3% + $0.25 processing comes to about $4.92 — and that is charged on every order regardless of how many you get.
On your own store paying only 2.9% + $0.30, the per-order payment cost is about $1.66, saving $3.26. Against that you have the subscription. So the crossing point is roughly:
Monthly subscription ÷ per-order saving = orders needed to break even
At a $39 plan and $3.26 of saving, that is about 12 orders a month. Below that, Etsy is cheaper. Above it, the subscription pays for itself and keeps improving:
| Orders/month | Etsy total | Own store total | Cheaper by |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | $24.58 | $47.32 | Etsy, $22.74 |
| 12 | $58.98 | $58.92 | Line-ball |
| 45 | $221.18 | $113.72 | Own store, $107.46 |
| 200 | $983.00 | $371.00 | Own store, $612.00 |
At 200 orders a month the gap is over $600 — about $7,300 a year decided by nothing but which platform processes the same orders.
Why the crossing point is not the answer
Because it prices the software and ignores the traffic, which is the actual product Etsy sells you. Etsy has buyers already searching for handmade goods. A new Shopify store has an address and nothing else — no search traffic, no browsing customers, no trust. That cost does not appear on any fee schedule and it is usually larger than the fee difference:
- Etsy's fee includes customer acquisition. That is what the commission buys, and for a new seller with no audience it is a bargain.
- Your own store's real cost is marketing. Add a realistic advertising cost per order and the table above changes shape completely. If acquiring a customer costs you $8 in ads, the $3.26 fee saving is irrelevant.
- Repeat customers are where an owned store wins. A returning buyer needs no acquisition spend, so the fee saving is pure margin. This is why the standard progression is to build an audience on a marketplace and then move repeat business onto your own site.
The practical answer for most sellers
Both, in that order. Start where the buyers are, because a fee on a sale you would not otherwise have made is cheap. Add your own store once you have repeat customers worth keeping and enough volume to cover the subscription — and then steer repeat buyers to it, since they cost you nothing to acquire twice.
Leaving a marketplace entirely for fee reasons alone is the version of this that goes wrong. Sellers who do it usually save on fees and sell considerably less.
Run both on your own product with the marketplace comparison calculator — it has an orders-per-month field precisely because this answer is volume-dependent.