Contemplating where to sell your handmade items between Amazon Handmade and Shopify? No doubt, it’s very salient to choose the right platform to sell your handicrafts. For branded products, you will find umpteen resources to guide you pick the right platform.

However, for handcraft selling, there is barely any resource to give you an idea about which one to choose- Amazon Handmade vs Shopify. But fret not! We are crafting this write-up to render you holistic info about both channels for selling handicrafts, so you can take the right decision.

So, are you ready to know about Amazon Handmade vs Shopify at length; the overview, upsides & downsides, and the overall comparisons of both marketplaces?

Let’s get started…

Amazon Handmade- An Overview

Amazon Handmade functions as an entirely distinct ecommerce platform within Amazon and is dedicated solely to vendors selling handmade items. It has its own interface, application process, and policies that are distinct from Amazon’s more general retail platform.

Vendors looking to sell on Amazon Handmade will need to submit an application and wait for approval. The application is subject to audits in order to ensure that the items they list are genuinely handmade.

Suggested Article– Amazon Business Models.

Types of Products You Can Sell on Amazon Handmade

Amazon Handmade offers selected product categories of handmade items that can be sold on the platform. These are:

• Artwork
• Kitchen and Dining
• Outdoor and Home Care
• Pet Supplies
• Toys and Games
• Home
• Beauty and Personal Care
• Baby
• Stationery and Party Supplies
• Sporting Goods
• Clothing
• Shoes
• Handbags
• Jewelry and Watches
• Accessories

It means products like digital & downloadable Products, including downloadable art prints and sewing patterns, as well as Food & Grocery items and Electronics remain absent. However, you can sell some of these items on the broader Amazon platform, but you won’t be able to sell them via Amazon Handmade.

Suggested Article– How To Find Products To Sell on Amazon FBA.

Shopify- An Overview

Unlike Amazon Handmade, Shopify is an ecommerce platform built for people to set up and grow their online stores. It has a whole lot of robust ecommerce tools and apps to assist you do this.

Leveraging Shopify, you can create your very own ecommerce website. It lets you upload products, analyze data for marketing, and track customer orders. It’s a facile way to build an online store.

To date, Shopify is the second largest content management system (CMS) after WordPress, with a 6.5% market share. The closest competitors of Shopify are Wix, Squarespace, Joomla, and Drupal.

What makes this platform stand out is its intuitive and fascinating interface. Anyone can set up a Shopify store without writing a single line of code with ease.

Shopify sellers can access sturdy ecommerce tools and apps for web design, marketing, analytics, and store management. On top of that, Shopify offers 70+ professional templates in every style to choose from. Some of them are bold and colorful, while others feature a minimalistic design.

Types of Products You Can Sell on Shopify

• Lip stain
• Tumblers
• Model train sets
• Signage
• Wedding dresses
• Table runners
• Matcha
• Baby shirts
• Curtain and drape rings
• Cabinet knobs and handles
• Watch accessories
• Power tool accessories
• Dog toys
• Shot glasses
• Costume shoes
• Slipcovers
• Wall plates and covers

How do Amazon Handmade and Shopify Stack up to Sell Handcraft

You must be itching to know in detail about Amazon Handmade and Shopify before you decide where to sell your handcrafts. We will now list out different aspects of both these ecommerce platforms to give you an idea about their features, designs, pricing, and a bunch of other stuff.

User Interface Design

Amazon:

For both buyers and sellers, Amazon Handmade is designed to be intuitive and user-friendly. The platform makes it easy to set up an online store without any web development knowledge, allowing you to create and customize a storefront page.

It incorporates your product listings in its search results too along with providing a seller dashboard that tracks order and sale information along with a mobile app for sellers. Amazon Handmade’s seller dashboard doesn’t encompass information about how many users visited your shop and how they ended up there.

Shopify:

Shopify is designed to be easy for ecommerce beginners to kick off selling with.When you sign up for an account on the platform, an onboarding process is put forth that takes you through the key steps necessary to begin selling.

On top of that, a range of online resources and video tutorials are available to further help you understand how to go about it.

Fees & Pricing

Amazon:

Sellers wishing to sign up for Amazon Handmade can only sign up for the Professional selling plan, which costs $39.99 per month. On Amazon Handmade, this fee will be waived for approved artisans once 1 month is over.

In addition, you’ll pay a Referral Fee. This fee is Amazon’s share from each sale and is determined by the category of the item sold. All the categories are eligible for Amazon Handmade, the referral fee is 15%.

Shopify:

Shopify asks for a monthly subscription fee plus a transaction fee for processing payments (unless you use Shopify Payments).

Basic Shopify: Charges $25 per month for basic features, like up to 2 staff accounts, unlimited product listings, 24/7 support, multiple sales channels, and your SSL certificate.

Shopify: Charges $65 per month for all the features of Basic, plus up to 5 staff accounts, inventory locations, a discount on your transaction fees, and standard reports.

Advanced Shopify: Charges $399 per month for Shopify features, plus up to 15 staff accounts, advanced reports, and third-party calculated shipping rates.

You can also tap into “Shopify Lite” to add a shopping button to an existing store for $9 per month. Apart from that, Shopify Plus is available at a custom price for businesses selling products of high volumes.

Shipping and Order Fulfilment

Amazon:

Amazon boasts fulfillment centers where they hold your stock and ships it out to your buyers when an order comes in. It offers the option of purchasing shipping labels for sellers who fulfill orders themselves (known either as MFN or FBM) directly through Amazon via the Amazon Buy Shipping program.

Amazon Buy Shipping will automatically suggest the most efficient and low-priced shipping service that fulfills your delivery commitment to your buyer. It comes with a myriad of added shipping-related seller protections too.

Moreover, you’ll enjoy automatic tracking uploads to your orders, saving you considerable work on closing orders and marking them as shipped.

Shopify:

Shopify sellers can deliver directly to customers; however, they may also deploy Shopify Shipping to streamline the whole thing.

This option will let you connect your Shopify account to USPS, DHL, DPD, or other shipping carriers to fulfill orders rapidly and cheaply. Vendors can print shipping labels straightaway from their accounts as well.

Alternatively, you can approach a dropshipping business via Shopify. In this case, you won’t need to maintain an inventory of products and handle oodles of deliveries.

Once a buyer places an order, the dropshipping supplier receives a notification from your Shopify store. After that, he prepares and ships the order right away to your customer.

Advertising and Marketing

Amazon:

Amazon provides a wide variety of advertising and marketing options for different sellers. The first one is CPC (also known as PPC) product advertising program which is meant for Amazon Sponsored Products. This program allows you to select the product listings you wish to promote, input your bid (the maximum amount you’re willing to pay to have your ad displayed), and define the duration of your campaign.

Working on the same CPC model, Amazon’s Sponsored Brands is a cracking tool for sellers who sell their own branded handmade goods. This program works to promote your entire brand, not just selected listings.

You’ll be able to create custom ad creatives, which, if clicked, will direct buyers to the store landing page you designate like the home page, best-selling products, etc.

For offsite ads, Amazon offers the Sponsored Display Ads program. This program functions either on a CPC basis or on an impressions-based vCPM basis (cost per thousand viewable impressions). This program embodies both automatically generated and custom ad creatives, letting you choose exactly what will be shown to potential buyers.

For sellers curious about establishing their own brands, Amazon’s storefront option is a fine way to make a great first impression on buyers. This program lets you create and tailor your very own storefront on Amazon, helping you establish your brand’s look and feel.

Shopify:

Shopify extends content marketing and SEO tools out of the box. You can initiate a blog on Shopify, add SEO features, and optimize it by adding meta descriptions, title tags, and item details to aid people find your products.

Shopify also allows you to integrate your store with a wealth of marketing tools. Furthermore, you’ll get $100 free credit for Google advertising, access to product reviews, site map generation, and whatnot when you sign up for Shopify.

Other marketing features encompass:

• Product reviews
• Gift cards
• Social media integration
• Built-in email marketing
• Analytics to guide your marketing strategies.
• Generated sitemap.xml
• Discounts
• Sell on Facebook

Potential Customers/Attracting Customers

Amazon:

You’re likely to be aware that Amazon has the largest market share of all online platforms – 37.8% of the entire ecommerce market in Q4 of 2022 – but that mesmerizing market share doesn’t necessarily translate to Amazon Handmade.

Amazon admits this and has decided to lean into this boutique niche by taking steps to ensure that its Handmade platform allows only certified handcraft sellers. Owing to this, it may be harder for you to get started on Amazon Handmade.

But it also means that you’ll be targeting a more niche customer base– one that’s willing to pay a premium for their very own unique handmade piece.

Shopify:

When it comes to Shopify, it ranks 4^th among the top 5 ecommerce platforms with a market share of 11%. The ecommerce platform chiefly attracts online retail and small stores selling a wide range of products.

The best part of Shopify is that they serve every retailer building their websites for online business. With that, they create an opportunity to serve all revenue groups through their different subscription plans.

Inventory and Listing Management System

Amazon:

With Amazon, sellers don’t get the platform to manage their inventory. But there is an exception when it comes to sellers who’ve chosen to partner with Amazon through the Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) program.

For Amazon sellers who don’t leverage FBA exclusively for all their inventory and fulfillment needs, a third-party inventory and listing management system is a perfect way to stay on top of inventory.

Shopify:

Shopify boasts a built-in inventory management system, but it’s optimized for drop shippers who’re handling finished goods. However, if you’re dealing with raw materials, sub-assemblies, and final products, Shopify’s basic IMS is not going to take care of it.

But, as we mentioned before, Shopify’s app store has a reply to everything, and there is Shopify inventory software that manufacturers can tap into to manage their business.

Pros and Cons of Selling in Amazon Handmade

Pros of Selling on Amazon Handmade

• Attains massive potential reach. As Amazon Handmade products are integrated into the larger Amazon ecommerce site, selling on Amazon Handmade can get you in front of a larger global audience than any other platform.
• Offers complimentary professional plan. Sellers approved for Amazon Handmade receive professional plan perks for free.
• Free of listing fees. Amazon doesn’t charge product listing fees which means you only pay if you make a sale.

Cons of Selling on Amazon Handmade

• Amazon rivals its own sellers. Amazon has scores of in-house brands selling similar products offered by its vendors. This means small businesses are effectively in direct competition with the world’s largest ecommerce company.
• Higher selling fees. Even though Amazon Handmade sellers receive Amazon’s professional selling plan at zero cost, the 15% selling fee charged on each sale is still higher than those charged by many other marketplaces.

Pros and Cons of Selling on Shopify

Pros of Selling on Shopify

• User-friendly and the best platform to sell products online. You also don’t require any coding or design experience. The platform is ideal for those who want to get the company up and running as soon as possible.
• With Shopify’s default features, you can add products, manage your inventory, set up shipping, and create discount codes effortlessly.
• Offers more advanced features for those with more specific requirements, such as wholesale or B2B integration.
• Leverage a variety of Shopify payment processors, including PayPal, Stripe, and Shopify Payments. This will simplify your consumers’ payment processing.
• Shopify has an abundance of themes from which you can build your store. These themes shape and streamline the online store experience for merchants and their customers.
• Assists you to build fast, flexible themes at scale deploying Liquid, Shopify’s theme templating language, alongside HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and JSON.

Cons of Selling on Shopify

Even though Shopify provides a wide variety of themes, design customization is limited. You will need to hire a designer if you want to make custom changes to the appearance and feel of your store.

Every sale you make on Shopify incurs a transaction fee. You have to pay this fee to use third-party payment gateways other than Shopify payments. Fees differ depending on the plan, but these Shopify fees can overwhelm you if you don’t make out how much you’re paying.

The ecommerce platform doesn’t boast an Email hosting feature. If you want to create an email address for your store, you will need to look for another provider.

The migration of Shopify users to other platforms is a tricky process. While migrating from Shopify, you may potentially lose part of your saved data. The only option you will have is to export your website as a CSV.

It’s Your Turn…

Now, the ball is in your court! You have to decide whether you should choose the marketplace or the ecommerce platform to sell your products. We have evidently put forth the upsides and downsides of both channels.

To make your job easier, we would suggest you prepare a blueprint of your problems, goals, budget, etc. Later, try to find out which channel has the better features and solutions to your needs. Then, you can make out which one you should opt for between Amazon Handmade and Shopify.

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