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You’ve probably already considered selling on Amazon but its way easier than you think.
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As your ecommerce business grows, choosing the right platform becomes one of the most important decisions you'll make. The platform you choose can impact everything from branding and customer acquisition to fulfillment, profitability, and long-term growth.
Two of the biggest names in ecommerce are Shopify and Amazon. Shopify powers more than 6 million online stores worldwide, while Amazon remains one of the largest online marketplaces, with nearly 2 million small and medium-sized businesses selling on its platform.
While both platforms can help you grow an ecommerce business, they take very different approaches. Shopify gives you full ownership of your brand and customer experience, while the Amazon marketplace provides access to a massive built-in audience.
In this ePlaybooks guide, we'll compare Shopify and Amazon side by side to help you determine which platform is better for scaling your business.
Shopify is an ecommerce platform founded in 2006 by Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake. It allows businesses to create and manage their own online stores, giving merchants complete control over their brand, website design, and customer experience.
To start selling on Shopify, merchants choose a pricing plan, customize their storefront, add products, and connect sales channels. Shopify also provides a wide range of tools for store management, analytics, marketing, payments, and third-party integrations.
Major brands such as Nestlé, Tesla, Nescafé, General Electric, and Red Bull use Shopify to power their online stores.
Amazon was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos and started as an online bookstore.
Today, Amazon offers various services, including ecommerce, cloud computing, and digital streaming.
The Amazon marketplace is an ecommerce platform that allows business owners and third-party sellers to list and sell their products (both new and used products) directly to customers.
To sell on the platform, you will need to set up your account by providing information such as your business name, business type, and contact information. Once your application is approved, you can create product listings and start selling your products on Amazon.
Amazon offers a range of features and tools, including reporting tools, Amazon Advertising, Amazon A+ content, and Amazon FBA, that can help you scale your Amazon business fast.
With the fulfillment by Amazon or Amazon FBA program, sellers can send their products to fulfillment centers and have them stored, packed, and shipped by Amazon to customers.
Let's dive into some of the major pros and cons of selling on Shopify vs Amazon:
Shopify is a platform that allows sellers to create their own stores, build their brands, and attract customers. On the other hand, Amazon can be viewed as a large and competitive marketplace with millions of sellers and buyers on the platform.
Let's examine a few key differences between Shopify and the Amazon marketplace to help you decide which is best for your business.
Shopify is a platform for building standalone ecommerce websites. This means you can create your own branded online store. It’s like owning your store on private property where you control everything from your store’s layout to the marketing strategy.
Shopify requires sellers to get their own customers, giving them complete control over branding and customer experience.
On the other hand, Amazon operates as a marketplace where you can list your products alongside others. Buyers visit Amazon to shop for a wide variety of products from different sellers. So, it’s like setting up a shop inside a bustling mall where customers are already present.
You can benefit from Amazon’s vast customer base and robust infrastructure, but you may struggle to stand out due to intense competition.
As an ecommerce business owner, customizing your store is essential to attracting visitors. A poorly designed store could lead to customers leaving your store and going to your competitors. So how do Amazon and Shopify differ in customization?
Shopify offers dozens of themes and designs (both free and premium themes) that sellers can use to build their stores and brands.
On the other hand, Amazon has fewer customization features. Amazon sellers have to work with a standard layout. If you're selling on Amazon, you will need to pay more attention to the product titles, product images, bullet points, and descriptions, following Amazon's requirements and policies. Amazon offers the A+ content feature, which allows sellers to upload more images and improve their brand. However, Shopify is more flexible with design and customization.
With over 2 billion monthly visitors, Amazon far outperforms its competitors. Amazon has a solid brand reputation with millions of buyers waiting to make a purchase. So what does this mean?
It means that as an Amazon seller, you can make your business visible to millions of customers all over the world, relying on Amazon’s existing reputation and customer base, alongside features like Amazon Advertising, an intuitive Amazon Seller Central dashboard, etc.
On the other hand, Shopify offers SEO tools, apps, and integration that help sellers drive traffic to their stores. But it can get a bit complicated as you are responsible for marketing and SEO.
In practice, you will need to build a strong social media presence and engage in multichannel selling, amongst other marketing strategies, to build visibility and attract customers to your store.
Shopify and Amazon both offer fulfillment solutions, but Amazon currently has the stronger logistics network.
Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) allows sellers to store inventory in Amazon warehouses while Amazon handles picking, packing, shipping, returns, and customer service.
Shopify offers the Shopify Fulfillment Network (SFN), which provides fulfillment support for merchants. However, Amazon's fulfillment infrastructure remains larger and more established.
For businesses prioritizing logistics efficiency, Amazon has an advantage.
You can check out our article on FBA vs FBM to see which fulfillment option is best for you.
Both Shopify and Amazon offer payment options for sellers.
Shopify has its payment gateway - Shopify Payments. With Shopify Payments, sellers have access to more than a hundred payment gateways, including Amazon Pay, PayPal, and Stripe. Sellers can also receive credit card payments from their stores without any transaction fees.
On the other hand, Amazon has more limited payment options, with Amazon Pay being the major payment gateway. Amazon Pay is also available on other websites. With Amazon Pay, customers can securely complete purchases with their payment information already stored on the platform.
This is where the Shopify versus Amazon debate becomes particularly important. Amazon can help businesses scale quickly because the audience already exists. However, as sales increase, so do marketplace fees and competition. Sellers also have limited control over customer relationships and brand loyalty.
Shopify takes longer to build initially because businesses must create their own traffic and customer base. However, merchants maintain full ownership of their customers, branding, and marketing channels.
For businesses focused on sustainable, long-term growth, Shopify often offers greater scalability because growth is not tied to marketplace rules, fees, or competition.
Shopify offers four major pricing plans with different sets of features. These pricing plans include:
On the other hand, Amazon only offers two major plans:
While Amazon's monthly subscription may appear lower, sellers must account for referral fees, FBA fees, storage fees, and advertising costs, which can significantly impact profitability at scale.
Think of Amazon as a powerful customer acquisition channel and Shopify as your brand's home base. Amazon gives you access to millions of shoppers who are already looking to buy, while Shopify gives you full control over your storefront, customer relationships, and brand experience.
By integrating Shopify with Amazon, you can list products on both platforms, reach a wider audience, and create multiple revenue streams. This multichannel approach can help increase sales, strengthen brand visibility, and reduce your reliance on a single platform.
Getting started is relatively straightforward. Simply set up your Shopify store, create an Amazon seller account, and connect the two platforms. From there, you can manage product listings and inventory across both channels.
Keep in mind that while this strategy can increase your visibility and potential for growth and sales, it also means that you have to bear the cost of using and maintaining both platforms. However, for many growing brands, the added reach and scalability outweigh the extra costs.
Want to see if there are hidden growth opportunities in your Shopify or Amazon business? Get a free revenue report from ePlaybooks to uncover potential revenue leaks, optimization opportunities, and strategies to scale faster.
We've looked at the pros and cons of selling on Amazon and Shopify as well as the major differences between the two platforms.
Now the question is: which of these platforms is better for scaling your business? Well, there isn't a clear-cut answer to this question, as it all depends on your goals and preferences.
If you don't have an existing customer base, and your priority is reaching a large audience quickly and generating sales with minimal upfront marketing, Amazon can accelerate growth.
On the other hand, if you want to build a long-term brand, own your customer relationships, and create a scalable ecommerce business with greater control and profit potential, Shopify is typically the stronger choice.
In summary, you want to consider how much time, effort, and control you want to have over your business.
We hope this article helps you make the right decision and gets you started on the right foot. If you need help managing and scaling on multiple ecommerce platforms, including Shopify and Amazon, you can contact ePlaybooks’ Amazon account management services.
You’ve probably already considered selling on Amazon but its way easier than you think.
Call Us Now