Shopify Vs. Etsy: Which One Is Best For Your Business?

Shopify and Etsy each provide an e-commerce platform for shop owners to sell goods and services. The major difference between the two is Shopify allows users to create their own branded space, whereas Etsy is a marketplace. Etsy is associated mainly with handmade goods but many sellers also resell vintage clothing, crafting supplies and other unique items. With Shopify, users can sell handmade goods, apparel, jewellery and many other products.

Free Trials and Plans

Shopify offers a three-day free trial. After that, you’ll need to pay a minimum of $38 CAD per month (paid annually) for the base plan, which many store owners find more than sufficient. Multichannel retailers might prefer the $99 CAD per month (paid annually) option. Stores requiring advanced reporting can benefit from its $389 CAD-per-month (paid annually) plan. If you have an existing blog or website and simply want to add a way to collect credit card payments for orders, you can get Shopify Starter for $7 CAD per month.

Etsy offers a 30-day free trial of its Etsy Plus plan, which gives 15 listing credits and $5 USD ($6.88 CAD) in ad spend per month. After the trial, you’ll pay $10 USD ($13.75 CAD) per month. This also includes discounts, customer restock requests and more banner options.

Fees

Transaction fees for online sales with Shopify start at 2.4% plus $0.30 CAD and get slightly more expensive with the lower-priced plans. Because Etsy doesn’t charge a monthly fee, unless paying for the Plus plan, you’re going to pay more fees on a per-sale basis. These fees are so numerous that third parties have come up with calculators for sellers to calculate profit.

First, you pay $0.20 USD ($0.28 CAD) per product upload to make it available in your store. If you renew this listing after four months using auto-renew, you pay the $0.20 USD ($0.28 CAD) again. Let’s say you have multiple quantities of the same item. If you sell one, you pay $0.20 USD ($0.28 CAD) again to keep the listing active. You won’t pay a fee for editing the listing, though.

For each Etsy sale, you pay a transaction fee of 6.5% of your listing price, besides the amount you charge for shipping and adding gift wrap. Payment processing fees are 3% to 4% plus $0.25 CAD per transaction for sellers. Currency fees apply if Etsy needs to convert foreign denominations into CAD dollars.

Customer Support

Shopify sellers can access customer support 24/7 via chat, email and phone. While Etsy advertises this as well, you must select a phone-based problem within its customer service tree to get a phone number. Most questions will make you email and wait for a response in two to five business days.

Storefront Design

While Shopify lets you create your own storefront with drag-and-drop design tools, Etsy is simply a marketplace. However, Etsy Pattern is a way to create your own website working in conjunction with your Etsy Shop.

With both platforms, sellers have access to standard templates to use for their policies and procedures. This is a benefit for sellers who don’t know how to articulate shop policies or those who don’t know what their policies should be.

A key difference between Etsy and Shopify is Etsy doesn’t give you customer emails, so you can’t build your customer base except through its marketplace. Customers can “heart” your Etsy shop and get notifications of new products, but it’s not the same as being able to send marketing emails to customers. This is a problem should the Etsy platform ever go away. Note that this scenario doesn’t apply if you have Etsy Pattern, which does allow email marketing.

With Shopify, you don’t have that issue; provided your customer opts into emails at checkout, you can send newsletters and store updates. Even if Shopify were to shut down, you’d still have your list of customers to market to.

It’s important to note that many Etsy shop owners also host a storefront on platforms, such as Shopify and Squarespace. The reason for this is that Etsy is a huge marketplace, and users can get their products in front of many people. They can’t do that with Shopify if they don’t already have a list to market to.

By having dual stores, when you mail a package to an Etsy customer, you can include a business card with a discount code for their purchase through your Shopify store. Once a shop is making enough money through Shopify, they often drop the Etsy store to help save on fees.

Both Etsy and Shopify provide sellers with a way to get their goods in the hands of customers after they’ve made a purchase online. Shopify charges a per-transaction fee and a monthly plan fee. Etsy charges multiple fees per sale and for listing items but charges no monthly fee for its base service. If you’re new to selling and don’t have a list of customers already, use Etsy if you sell handmade goods or artisan services. Shopify is great for retail sellers with an established customer base.

Canadian specific editing and research (including pricing) conducted by Anna Rey.

Related: Woocommerce Vs. Shopify