Are you thinking about making a career change? Selling online offers an excellent opportunity for anyone to make money using the internet. If you have no experience with selling online, you might find the topic somewhat exciting and intimidating. The thought of making money on your laptop from the comfort of home sounds appealing, but how do you make it happen?
There are numerous e-commerce platforms available where you can register, build yourself and website, and start selling. With dozens of these platforms available, how do you know which one offers you the best performance for your new career?
Selling online is easy when you have the right platform and a strategy. In this article, we’ll look at the difference between using the Shopify and Amazon e-commerce platforms. Both Amazon and Shopify have plenty of rave reviews from users and countless success stories of people who make $150,000 a year selling products from their Shopify or Amazon platforms.
Contents
- 1 Shopify Vs. Amazon – Which Is the Better Choice for E-commerce?
- 2 How Do You Sell Online with Shopify Vs. Amazon?
- 3 Comparing Shopify Vs. Amazon – What’s the Difference?
- 4 How Do I Choose Between Starting with Shopify Vs. Amazon?
- 5 The Pros and Cons of Shopify Vs. Amazon
- 6 Shopify Vs. Amazon – What are the Key Differences?
- 7 Shopify Vs. Amazon – Ease of Use
- 8 Shopify Vs. Amazon – Design
- 9 Shopify Vs. Amazon – Domain, and URLs
- 10 Shopify Vs. Amazon – Features and E-Commerce Tools
- 11 Shopify Vs. Amazon – Payment Solutions and Fees
- 12 Shopify Vs. Amazon – Attracting Customers
- 13 Shopify Vs. Amazon – Merchant Support and Helplines
- 14 Shopify Vs. Amazon – Pricing Model
- 15 Shopify Vs. Amazon – The Final Verdict
- 16 The Verdict
- 17 Shopify Vs. Amazon: FAQs
- 17.1 Why Should You Use Shopify?
- 17.2 Why Should You Use Amazon?
- 17.3 If I have little to no startup capital, should I choose Amazon or Shopify?
- 17.4 What payment processors can I use with Shopify?
- 17.5 What’s the best option for inexperienced online sellers?
- 17.6 Which platform offers the best all-around e-commerce experience?
- 17.7 If I want to sell on social media, which is the right platform, Amazon or Shopify?
- 17.8 Which platform will earn me more money – Shopify or Amazon?
- 17.9 Is it possible to use Amazon FBA and Shopify together?
- 17.10 Shopify Vs. Amazon – Which Platform Suits Newbies with Small Budgets?
- 17.11 Shopify Vs. Amazon – Which Is the Better Choice for Scaling My Business?
Shopify Vs. Amazon – Which Is the Better Choice for E-commerce?
E-commerce is gaining in popularity. In 2019, almost 17% of all global retail transactions occurred online, and that figure continues to grow. E-commerce plays a significant role in the lives of sellers and consumers. Finding what you want online is easy, and having it shipped to your residence makes ordering online convenient.
It’s no surprise to see levels of e-commerce slowly creeping up on brick-and-mortar retailer’s market share. Buying online saves you money. Physical retail locations need to pay for rent and overheads, whereas a virtual retailer has none of those expenses.
Therefore, you can usually find stuff cheaper online than what you would pay in a store. It makes sense to order online, and more people around the globe are switching to e-commerce to get everything from electronics to groceries.
Shopify and Amazon both offer selling programs where you can build an e-commerce store and start selling products online. However, both models are entirely different from each other, even though they serve the same function of selling online.
Shopify currently has over 820,000 users, with the platform accounting for $82 billion in sales since its launch. Amazon is the world’s largest online retail platform, receiving more than 150-million unique visitors per month.
Choosing the right platform to launch your e-commerce business might leave you feeling somewhat bewildered at the thought of choosing one or the other. Your selection depends on your goals for selling online, as well as your budget, and your enthusiasm.
How Do You Sell Online with Shopify Vs. Amazon?
Shopify and Amazon are e-commerce vehicles designed to help you make money selling products online. Both take a very different approach to the task, even if they have the same goal of making money through selling merchandise.
To sell with Amazon, you need a seller’s account or an FBA platform (Fulfilment by Amazon). With Shopify, you need to build an e-commerce store. With Shopify, you develop your webstore, populate it with products, and start selling. With Amazon, you register a seller’s account, and then start selling on the Amazon website.
Comparing Shopify Vs. Amazon – What’s the Difference?
The primary difference between Shopify and Amazon is the marketplace. With Shopify, you create a webstore, and then it’s your job to optimize your site and market it online. Eventually, as your SEO strategy gets traction, you’ll start to see traffic volumes to your store steadily building every week.
After a while, your store becomes popular, and you start making money. However, with Amazon, you register as a seller on the Amazon site. In your account, you have the option to build sales pages for products, and then you list them for sale on the Amazon site.
With Amazon, you benefit from receiving some of the traffic from the world’s most popular online retailer. There’s less need to optimize your listings, outside of an SEO-friendly description and title. You rely on Amazon attracting the business, and the buyer choosing your listing for their purchase.
How Do I Choose Between Starting with Shopify Vs. Amazon?
It’s challenging to decide on the platform that’s right for you. Selecting Amazon or Shopify for your online business requires you to examine your strategy for selling online, your budget, and the amount of time you must dedicate to your project.
With Amazon, you have options of starting a separate website, and then linking product offerings from your site to an Amazon listing you control. You also have the option of selling other people’s products through a referral system.
If you’re starting your e-commerce journey, it’s vital that you consider all your options, and choose the platform that accommodates your level of skill, and your budget.
With Shopify, you can store your products at your home, complete your packaging and logistics yourself, and control every aspect of the sales and logistics process. You also have the option of using drop shippers to handle your warehousing and logistics.
With a third-party warehousing and logistics firm, you can store your products at a separate facility, and use the warehouse team to pick, pack, and ship your goods to the customer. This strategy saves you space at home, taking the mess of handling the logistics off your hands.
Amazon doesn’t require you to build a website, although you can use it as a secondary strategy to drive traffic to your listing. With Amazon, you create the listing, and they follow the same process as Shopify of packing and shipping your goods yourself when you receive an order.
However, Amazon also offers FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon). With this model, Amazon acts as your 3PL partner. You have your suppliers ship the products to Amazon warehouses in the US or Europe, and the teams at the warehouse take care of your logistics when you process an order. Amazon also goes as far as taking care of the customer service and returns for you as well.
Both models offer an excellent e-commerce experience. Let’s unpack the differences between the offerings to help you understand which one provides you the best opportunity for your current situation.
The Pros and Cons of Shopify Vs. Amazon
As with any other business model, there are pros and cons to using Shopify and Amazon for e-commerce. Review the list below to see if there are any deal-breakers for you.
What are the Pros of Using Shopify?
- Easy to use, with flexible design and a variety of apps available
- High levels of reliability and security
- Excellent merchant support services
- Fast page loading speeds
- Variety of e-commerce tools and marketing features
- Mobile responsive templates
What are the Cons of Using Shopify?
- Monthly subscription and monthly fees on apps
- No built-in marketing features
- Customization can be expensive with apps
- Third-party transaction fees on sales
- Limited options per product
- The basic package doesn’t offer much value
- Dropshipping requires supplier apps or third-party warehousing solutions.
What are the Pros of Using Amazon?
- You benefit from the traffic that visits the Amazon site (150-million visitors a month)
- Inventory and FBA services in-house
- User-friendly interface
- Easy setup
- Multi-channel fulfillment services
- Less need to do any marketing for your listings
What are the Cons of Using Amazon?
- Many users on the platform bringing plenty of competition
- Challenging to build a brand
- Fewer layout and design options
- Fewer payment processing options
- Very poor merchant and customer support
- Returns too easy for customers
Shopify Vs. Amazon – What are the Key Differences?
When comparing these two options for selling online, it’s important to note that the key difference lies in Amazon being a digital marketplace. At the same time, Shopify is a dedicated e-commerce platform. Essentially, when you open a Shopify site, you’re starting a mini-Amazon by yourself.
Therefore, with Shopify, the platform gives you all the tools you need to build and launch your website. Amazon is different, in the sense that it allows you to sell products through its marketplace, alongside other sellers who are selling the same products.
Think of Amazon as having a stall at a flea market. Millions of people attend the market and walk past your store, but not everyone will stop and buy.
With Shopify, you’re building a store and waiting for specific foot traffic interested in your merchandise to enter and buy your products.
With Amazon, you might have an account, but the platform doesn’t provide any brand-building for your specific account. You must compete with all the other sellers, and the only way to make yourself stand out is through customer feedback on your sales.
With Shopify, you get the chance to build your webstore into a brand, promoting your business with an independent identity.
Shopify vs. Amazon: Comparison Categories
- Category 1: Ease of Use
- Category 2: Design
- Category 3: Domains and URLs
- Category 4: E-commerce Features and Tools
- Category 5: Payment Solutions and Fees
- Category 6: Attracting Customers
- Category 7: Merchant Support and Helplines
- Category 8: Pricing Model
Shopify Vs. Amazon – Ease of Use
The ease of use of your platform is a key component of your e-commerce store. A comprehensive dashboard, with plenty of features, won’t help if you don’t know how to use it.
You need a clean and effective interface that’s easy to navigate.
The Shopify dashboard provides you with a quick-view of all your sales totals, products, and a sales breakdown. Setting up your Shopify account and building your first website can take less than a day if you’re only uploading a few products.
Overall, Shopify is a user-friendly platform providing an epic e-commerce experience for merchants and shoppers.
Setting up your Amazon seller account is even easier than building a Shopify store. The step-by-step registration process is straightforward, and as soon as you finish, you can start uploading your product listings.
FBA offers you a complete e-commerce solution for the logistics involved with managing your business. You don’t have to worry about picking, packing, and shipping your orders. You leave your inventory at the Amazon warehouse, and then monitor your stock levels through your dashboard.
Shopify also offers you the option of working with drop shippers, and you can use 3PL solutions that take the hassle out of storing and shipping your products.
Best ease-of-use – Winner: Draw
Both Shopify and Amazon are very user-friendly platforms. If you’re looking for the best option to launch and get selling as soon as possible, then Amazon is your best bet. There’s less work involved in setting up your Amazon account and creating your listings.
However, Shopify also offers a very user-friendly setup; it just takes a bit more time during the installation. However, the platform makes it easy to build your store and add products, using the drag-and-drop design features available.
Shopify Vs. Amazon – Design
The design of your site makes it easy to navigate. Think about the last time you discovered a site with poor design. Did you stick around and browse? The chances are you bounced from the site and continued your search elsewhere.
It’s the same with your Shopify store. You need an attractive store to capture customer’s attention and persuade them to buy from you.
Fortunately, Shopify offers you ten free custom themes for your store. These templates are user-friendly, and there are 50 other paid options for you to choose when selecting your theme. With Amazon, you don’t get the option of choosing the design in your listing. The best you can do is optimize your titles and descriptions.
Amazon wants consistent branding throughout the platform, so they don’t allow you to modify templates in any way. However, this issue is a blessing, as well. With no need to customize your listing, you save plenty of time during the setup and building phase.
Best design – Winner: Shopify
Shopify comfortably takes this category. Shopify comes with free design templates, and plenty of apps to help you customize the look and feel of your store. Change your images, color scheme, or anything you like. Best of all, there’s no coding required to give your store a custom look.
With Amazon, you have no say in templates, colors, or any other design features. You must stick to the Amazon branding, and there’s no way to change any design components on your backend.
Shopify Vs. Amazon – Domain, and URLs
Your domain and URL are a big part of building your brand identity online. When browsing through online listings, your customers will place more value on visiting a website with a custom URL, over other options.
When you purchase your Shopify package, you get everything you need to build the perfect e-commerce website. You get everything you need, including custom templates and a free hosted domain. As a result, you don’t have to go to the expense of buying a domain. The domain is free to use, and you get free hosting for your site. The costs around domains and hosting are the most expensive part of designing and launching your Shopify store.
If you’re a newcomer to e-commerce, Shopify’s free domain and hosting can save you money when you’re trying to grow your business in the early stages of its lifecycle. When you start making money, you can open a new domain, and get a custom URL for your webstore, improving your brand identity online.
However, with Amazon, there is no option to customize your URL or domain. You must go with what Amazon wants you to do because you’re participating in their platform. That said, this approach does make it a whole lot easier for people that are listing on Amazon, reducing the time you need to spend on your build. As a result, you get out into the market and start selling much sooner than with Shopify.
Best platform for domains and URLs – Winner: Shopify
With Shopify, you have the chance to apply for a custom URL for your store. Shopify provides your site with free hosting if you use the Shopify domain. As a bonus, the Shopify domain comes with breakneck page loading speeds, which are equivalent to using a dedicated or private hosting solution for your site.
These costs save you on your monthly operating expenses for your business. However, Shopify permits the use of other domains and URLs on your site as well.
Amazon doesn’t have any other option for custom domains or URLs, and you must use the URL that the listing provides, with no options for customization.
Shopify Vs. Amazon – Features and E-Commerce Tools
Designing an attractive store is one the first part of the battle of opening your e-commerce store. You need to add functionality to ensure that you have the best chance of processing all your sales and providing customers with what they need.
When you sign up for Shopify, you get a “Business-in-a-box” system that requires no external applications or plug-ins to work correctly. The platform features powerful e-commerce tools and loads of features to help you fine-tune your offering and increase conversion on your site.
The range of e-commerce tools on offer from the Shopify platform is fantastic. With Shopify, you have the chance to grow your site quickly, without much effort. Some of the tools on offer with your Shopify site include the following.
- Abandoned cart recovery – Contact your prospects and offer them another chance to checkout with their order.
- Intelligent inventory system – Keep an eye on your stock level and auto-order when your supply starts running low.
- Automatic tax calculation – Calculate the sales tax on your item automatically. The system adjusts the tax rate depending on your state.
- Logo maker – Build your brand with your Shopify store.
- Multi-channel selling – Sell all your products across all your social media accounts with multi-channel selling.
- Apps – The Shopify App Store has more than 2,400 functional apps to add to your Shopify site. Choose apps that provide your customers with useful functionality.
With Amazon, you do get some exciting e-commerce tools, but its nothing like the offering from Shopify. However, we do like the FBA program, and we think it has a lot going for it when we compare it to Shopify.
Amazon FBA allows you to create your listings, and then ship your products to the fulfillment center. The Amazon warehouse picks, packs, and ships the order to the customer after they place their order.
Amazon handles all returns and customer service as well! These features make Amazon FBA a service worth considering.
Unfortunately, the fees for Amazon FBA are less than transparent, and we found it challenging to nail down an exact pricing schedule for all our fees when using the platform. We think the platform would do much better if they had more transparency around the costs involved with the service.
Best Features and E-commerce tools – Winner: Shopify
Shopify wins this category. The platform gives you all the e-commerce tools you need to make your business a success. The Shopify App Store contains hundreds of apps to optimize your store and help you sell your products.
Amazon also offers a range of e-commerce tools to use with your reseller or FBA account. However, the offering lacks the same diversity as Shopify.
Shopify Vs. Amazon – Payment Solutions and Fees
The upfront costs of running your website are one thing, but sometimes you need to look deeper to discover the underlying costs of running your platform.
Shopify offers you a range of over 100 payment processors, including all the majors like credit and debit cards, Stripe, PayPal, and you even get apps to help you take payments in cryptocurrency. Unfortunately, Shopify charges you a 2% transaction fee when processing the sale through a third-party payment processor like PayPal.
If you want to avoid the charge, then you’ll have to use “Shopify Payments,” which is the official gateway owned by Shopify. You can also get lower rates when you migrate to the Shopify Plan and Advanced Shopify Plan. Advanced members only pay transaction fees of 1.3% when using third-party processors for payments.
It should come as no surprise that Amazon offers Amazon Pay as its preferred payment gateway on the site. You can also accept payment via credit and debit cards, but PayPal is not an option. We think that’s a tremendous mistake, as many shoppers require PayPal when checking out.
When signing up for Amazon, you’ll need to pay the Professional seller’s fee, and there are plenty of extra charges for using the FBA service. Fees can cost you anywhere from $2.41 to $137.32 for the fulfillment, depending on the unit.
FBA also requires you to pay warehousing fees for your products, and these charges can amount to between $0.69 to $2.40 per cubic foot. You’ll have to pay your warehousing fees monthly. The prices and fee structure for FBA change all the time. Your costs depend on economic conditions, the time of year, type of product, and volume of the order.
The individual selling platform might be an attractive option for new sellers. With this model, you only pay a fee to Amazon when someone buys your product. At $0.99 per product, it seems like the more affordable option. However, if you sell more than 20-products in a month, you may as well go for the Professional seller account.
Best payment solutions and fees – Winner: Shopify
Shopify offers more than 100-payment processor solutions for your e-commerce store. Sure, you’re not going to use them all, but it’s nice to know that you have all the major payment processors on hand, and even the more esoteric options, such as cryptocurrency.
Shopify charges you a 2% transaction fee if you use any other processing platform other than its in-house option, “Shopify Payments.” To avoid paying the transaction fee, you’ll have to move up to a higher subscription, or use Shopify Payments.
In comparison, Amazon depends on the individual seller, and they are far less transparent. The lack of transparency with fees makes it challenging to budget for your costs.
Shopify Vs. Amazon – Attracting Customers
Selling online is easy if you know how to market your site or offering properly. Without marketing, no-one will ever see your product offering, and you’ll never make any sales.
Shopify comes as a complete business-in-a-box system, which includes tools to optimize and market your webstore. There are plenty of SEO and marketing apps available in the Shopify App Store as well. For instance, Omnisend is an email campaign manager that allows you to send bulk email campaigns to contacts on your list.
With Shopify, you get access to tools like email campaigns, multi-channel selling across social media accounts, abandoned cart recovery, and SEO programs designed to promote your store online.
You can’t beat the Amazon offering when it comes to SEO. The best part about this feature on Amazon – is that the platform does everything for you.
The single most significant advantage of using Amazon seller or FBA services is that you benefit from all the traffic visiting the site. The entire purpose of SEO is to attract more customers to your listings. With Amazon, you have 150-million people flocking to the platform every month to buy.
That’s 150-million prospects that might see your listing every month – There is no tool on Shopify that can claim to bring you as many prospects.
However, you need to be aware that competition on Amazon is stiff, and you’ll likely find yourself in a price war with your competitors. If you’re using FBA, and your margins are thin, that can be a problem. Amazon isn’t transparent with its pricing, and if your margins are low, you could end up losing money on the sale.
Best platform for attracting customers – Winner: Amazon
When it comes to selling online, speed is critical. The faster you get out of the blocks with your first sale, the better chance there is that you’ll make concurrent sales and start your business on the right foot. As an Amazon seller or FBA agent, you have the advantage of all the traffic visiting the site.
With more than 150-million monthly active users, Amazon is one of the busiest sites online. The hardest part about selling online is getting people to your listing. With Amazon, you don’t need to invest in SEO or other marketing tactics, as Amazon brings the traffic to you.
Shopify gives you all the marketing tools you need to succeed, but we felt that Amazon is the clear winner in this category.
Shopify Vs. Amazon – Merchant Support and Helplines
If things take a turn for the worst with your e-commerce platform, you need help, and you need it fast. The merchant support services from Shopify are the best in the industry. Shopify is a dedicated e-commerce platform, and they know that every minute your store stays down, you’re leaving money on the table in potential lost sales.
With Shopify, you get support over social media, 24/7 phone and live chat, support forums, as well as email support. We found the live chat to be the most efficient, and we had a representative on the other end in less than 45-seconds after launching a query. If you take the Shopify Plus plan, you get a dedicated support consultant for your account.
Unfortunately, Amazon leaves you hanging high and dry when it comes to finding help. There is a phone call request function where you send a request, and the support team gets back to you – we’re still waiting for that call. Otherwise, all you must rely on for support is the community forum.
Best merchant support and helplines – Winner: Shopify
As an e-commerce business owner, you want to know that there is someone that can help when things go wrong with your online store or listing. Shopify wins this category with the best merchant service offering in the e-commerce industry.
The phone and live chat support were the best we found online, with reps answering out questions in 45-seconds or less.
Amazon’s support is terrible. We know of several people who had accounts banned for no apparent reason, and then could not get a reply from Amazon regarding why the account got suspended in the first place.
Shopify Vs. Amazon – Pricing Model
When starting your e-commerce business, cash flow is critical. We realize you want an impressive store with all the features you need, but it might not be possible if you’re working with a small budget.
Building a platform that costs you a few hundred dollars a month is useless if you’re earning less than you spend. Therefore, you need to select a platform and a plan that suits your budget and your needs.
Amazon offers you two selling plans for your store.
- The Professional Selling Plan – $39.99 per month
- The Individual Selling plan – $0.99 per item sold
The individual selling plan means that you only need to pay the commission when you sell one of your products. However, if you’re selling low-cost products, this can end up costing you more than the Professional Plan subscription.
If you’re selling less than 40-items per month, the individual plan is your best option. However, the individual plan doesn’t come with all the features as the Professional, and you’ll have to do without custom shipping rates on the Individual plan.
There are also additional costs for using the FBA service, and Amazon isn’t very transparent with its expenses involved in the program.
With Shopify, you have the option of choosing from five plans. Shopify offers a free plan, but it has limited functionality. It’s an excellent way to get an idea of what to expect from Shopify, but it is useless for e-commerce. The Shopify Lite plan is also a waste of time.
To start with Shopify, we recommend you look at the Basic plan to start, and then scale your subscription as your business grows.
The five plans from Shopify include the following monthly subscription fees.
- The Free Shopify Plan – No charge
- The Lite Shopify Plan: $9 per month
- The Basic Shopify plan: $29 per month
- The Shopify plan: $79 per month
- The Advanced Shopify plan: $299 per month
There is also the Shopify Plus Plan available, but this solution is for larger e-commerce stores that require a custom platform. You’ll have to contact Shopify directly to arrange this plan.
If you pay for your annual subscription with a once-off payment instead of monthly, then you can save 10% on your subscription fees. Paying for 2-years upfront gives you a 20% discount on your platform fees.
Best pricing plans – Winner: Shopify
Amazon’s entry-level seller program is good value, and cheaper than the Shopify Basic plan, which has less functionality. Amazon suits first-time e-commerce merchants testing the waters to see if it’s a career they can handle.
Shopify also has an excellent pricing plan, but we feel the free and Lite plans are virtually worthless. If you want to start on the right foot with Shopify, you need the Basic plan to start.
For those first-time e-commerce entrepreneurs that commit to making your business work, we recommend you go with Shopify, and the Basic or Shopify Plan to start.
Shopify Vs. Amazon – The Final Verdict
Both Shopify and Amazon are powerful online selling platforms with plenty of opportunities for entrepreneurs. Let’s review our categories one more time to get a holistic view of the offering.
Ease-of-Use
- Verdict: Draw
- It’s easy to set up your online store and tweak its performance with Shopify. While it’s a user-friendly experience, it can’t match the simplicity of using your Amazon seller account. Complete your registration, upload your products, and start selling – it’s as easy as that.
Platform Design
- Winner: Shopify
- Shopify’s range of free and paid themes, along with the customizations and potential upgrades you can make with apps, make it superior to the design options you get with Amazon. With Shopify, you get the chance to build a brand identity, while Amazon requires you to use its branding in your listings.
Domains and URLs
- Winner: Shopify
- Shopify offers you free hosting, and the option to use a custom URL for your store. As your business grows, you can buy a domain and host your site yourself. This feature makes Shopify a scalable solution, with more potential for building a brand online than with your Amazon listings.
E-Commerce Features and Tools
- Winner: Shopify
- Shopify comes with a suite of the best sales tools available. There are also plenty of apps available in the Shopify App Store to help you upgrade the performance of your site and improve your marketing tasks.
- The Amazon features are also useful but lack the same variety as what’s on offer with the Shopify platform.
Payment Solutions and Fees
- Winner: Shopify
- With Shopify, you get a transparent fee structure, even if it is expensive. If you use the Shopify payment gateway, you can reduce the third-party transaction fees to zero. Shopify also supports over 100 payment processors.
- Amazon has far fewer options, with credit and debit cards, as well as Amazon Pay, being the primary payment option available. Amazon is also less transparent with its fees, and it’s challenging to estimate your costs effectively using the pricing model.
Attracting Customers
- Winner: Amazon
- When you open a Shopify site, you must spend time and money promoting your webstore and its products. SEO takes time to gain traction, and it might be months before you experience a breakthrough and start selling.
- With Amazon, there’s a possibility of you making a sale on your first day in the marketplace. You benefit from all the traffic visiting Amazon’s site, and someone might find your listing. As a result, there’s not much need for you to spend time marketing your store.
Merchant Support and Helplines
- Winner: Shopify
- Shopify’s support system is fantastic. You get plenty of channels of communication to support staff, with our favorites being the phone and live chat. Representatives are quick to respond to the live chat, offering useful information to help you with your support query.
- Amazon is the total opposite experience. The support is terrible, and you’ll have to rely on a support forum if you need any help with your listings or account.
Pricing Models
- Winner: Shopify
- Amazon offers you two pricing plans, $0.99 per item, and another subscription fee for $39.99 per month. There are also variable fees, but it’s an affordable means of starting in e-commerce.
- However, while Shopify might have the more expensive offering, we feel the Basic Plan is a better deal at $29 per month than the Amazon option. With Shopify, you have the chance to increase your subscription as your business grows.
The Verdict
We feel that if you’re looking for the easiest way to start selling online, Amazon reselling or FBA is a great choice. You can start by selling other people’s products and work your way up until you earn enough to start participating in the FBA program.
We like Shopify, and it’s an attractive option for selling online. Building a store is a rewarding experience, especially when it starts earning money.
That’s our problem with Shopify. It takes some time for your marketing efforts to gain traction. In some cases, it might take you six to 8-months before you see your first sale. Therefore, while it’s quick to launch your store, there is plenty of work you need to do to make a success of your e-commerce venture.
With Amazon, you must make your listing, and then sit back and wait for the money to start rolling into your bank account. There are ways to enhance the performance of your Amazon listings, allowing you to sell more products and boost your revenue.
Shopify Vs. Amazon: FAQs
If you’re still thinking about the best platform for your e-commerce venture, then read through the frequently asked questions below. The answers should give you more insight into selecting the right platform to meet your e-commerce needs.
Why Should You Use Shopify?
Use Shopify if you’re looking at starting a real business online. Plenty of big brands are beginning to use Shopify, signaling the versatility and value in the platform.
Shopify integrates with other SaaS tools and services, increasing the power and potential of your e-store. Shopify offers you a reliable and secure platform, as well as free hosting and custom URLs.
Why Should You Use Amazon?
Amazon is an excellent choice for those individuals that want to start selling right away. It’s an affordable subscription, and traffic visiting the site means that you could make sales from the first day you put up your listing.
If I have little to no startup capital, should I choose Amazon or Shopify?
If you’re broke and looking to start with e-commerce, then Amazon is your best option. The subscription fees are low, and there’s more chance of you selling products right out of the gates. With Shopify, building your site is easy. However, it might take you longer to start earning money, due to the time it takes your marketing efforts to gain traction.
What payment processors can I use with Shopify?
Shopify has over 100-payment processing options. You get all the majors, including credit and debit cards, as well as online payment options like Stripe and PayPal. There are also options to download from the Apps store that allows you to accept payment in cryptocurrency.
What’s the best option for inexperienced online sellers?
If you’re an inexperienced seller, then both Shopify and Amazon offer excellent alternatives. With Shopify, you get a “business-in-a-box” with everything you need to start your online business.
Which platform offers the best all-around e-commerce experience?
We think that Shopify offers the best all-around e-commerce experience. With Shopify, you can build a site, market products, accept payments, and build a brand online.
Shopify comes with fill multi-channel selling capability. As a result, you can sell your products through your social media accounts, allowing you to market directly to your audience and integrate your offering with Facebook ads.
Which platform will earn me more money – Shopify or Amazon?
That’s challenging to answer. We think that you’ll start making money faster with Amazon. However, in the long term, we feel that a Shopify store has more potential, provided you’re selling in-demand products.
Is it possible to use Amazon FBA and Shopify together?
Yes, you can use Shopify and Amazon together. You’ll need a Shopify store and an Amazon seller account. You can link the accounts, and then use the platform to monitor your sales on both your Shopify store and your Amazon account.
Shopify Vs. Amazon – Which Platform Suits Newbies with Small Budgets?
Most people that start selling online do it because they have no other choice. If you’re stuck at home during the COVID-19 lockdowns sweeping almost every nation in the world, then you might be looking at options to earn more income while you’re unable to go outdoors into the real world.
If you’re starting your e-commerce venture, it’s best to keep your costs as lean as possible in the first 6-months. During this time, you give your new business time to gain traction and start producing results.
The free trial is an exciting feature about Shopify, and the company recently extended the trail terms from 14-days to 90-days free. This extended trial period allows you to play around with the platform to see if e-commerce is for you.
Shopify Vs. Amazon – Which Is the Better Choice for Scaling My Business?
As your business grows, you need to scale your efforts. Doing so on, Amazon is going to be challenging. However, Shopify is a purpose-built e-commerce system designed to scale with your business as you grow. You can start with the free plan, then try a basic subscription. If your business starts to grow, then you can migrate to the Basic and Shopify plans for a small cost. When you’re business takes off, the Advanced Shopify Plan can help you take it to the next level.
