Shopify vs Etsy

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Which merchant e-commerce platform is better, Shopify or Etsy? See our pros and cons of both and let us know!

Shopify or Etsy?

Are you a business merchant who is trying to choose the appropriate platform so that you can start your e-commerce website?

You can look at a comparison between Shopify and Etsy and decide for yourself when launching your shop online.

The differences between, advantages and disadvantages of Shopify and Etsy will be analysed here.

Shopify

There are not many better platforms available to you other than Shopify if you want to start building your own retail business online. It is one of the best platforms that you will come across for your business projects. Shopify was established in 2004 as `Snowdevil’. The founders changed the name to `Shopify’ in 2008.

Today, more than 120,000 stores use this platform online and the number grows phenomenally with each passing day.

Shopify offers a comprehensive service for all e-commerce entrepreneurs. Shopify is also providing offline retail services with its POS or Point-of-Sale System. It involves both iPhone and Android apps along with compatible hardware like receipt printers, barcode scanners, delivery options and cash drawers. Shopify remains as a hosted solution.

Shopify Pros

You can create your own customised website
Shopify offers you a variety of themes to select from in its `Theme Store’. You can install it easily on to your website to make it functional and to look good. You can make comprehensive changes to templates if you can handle HTML or CSS.

Great customer service
Shopify offers you support round the clock on email, phone and live chat and users seem to find it useful. This is included in the monthly charges. This is a huge benefit to online retailers all over the world. This facility is not offered round the clock by Etsy.

App Store
This is one of the biggest features by Shopify and gives it an edge over Etsy. This store offers apps made by Shopify and all third parties. Retailers can get them either for free or on a monthly fee. They are also available on a one-off fee so that they can add functionality to your online store. Some of the popular apps are Beetailer, Wishlist+Reminder and KISSmetrics.

Variety of payment gateways
Shopify offers a whole variety of payment gateways to its merchants such as Braintree, Authorize.net, PayPal, PayMill, RealEx, Stripe, SagePay and RBS WorldPay while Etsy offers only PayPal and its own individual gateway known as Direct Checkout.

Shopify Cons

 

 

Higher fees per month
Charges are out of date. Check Shopify info for up to date info.
Basic charge is $29 per month and Professional charge is $79 per month that allows for professional reports, cart abandonment emails, 1% transaction fee. There is a facility for Professional Plus charge of $995 per month that is perfect for large corporate who have a big volume of visitors (>500,000 hits with >$165,000 monthly revenue online).

Support for multi-currencies is restricted
Shopify does not allow you to display prices of products in various currencies as may be desired by few businesses who would like to specify the rates themselves.

Third party apps’ dependence
The third party apps may have inconsistent levels of both cost and quality for the merchants. They may also find that they do not have access to adjust the feel and the look of some apps as per their needs.

 

Etsy

If you are trying to reach a higher number of audiences as a business merchant, Etsy is a channel that will help you. It is a marketplace with a community of designers and artists who are gathered online to sell their individual goods, ranging from hand-crafted ones to vintage items. The products that are mostly sold on Etsy range from arts to crafts and from house-ware to jewellery.

Etsy has more than a million shops that are active. It has become a platform which is rising in popularity every day as shoppers online are recognizing its value as an ideal place to discover unique goods and gifts.

Etsy Pros

Low cost for setting up shop
Etsy is one of the cheapest platforms available to you for selling your products online. It allows the setting up of shop for free.

Established group of a fraternity of buyers
This is one of the biggest advantages of selling on Etsy. Merchants can become a part of a large fraternity of loyal customers. It is a great platform to project and promote your business brand and its prices.

Easy process for signing up
You can sell your business goods instantly on Etsy and it allows you an easy signing up process. You can sign up even when using Facebook. You can start selling within a couple of hours after signing up.

Secured platform
Etsy offers a safe platform with checkout through PayPal. This is a payment gateway that most online merchants are quite familiar with. They are also provided a Secure Sockets Layer encryption as a standard feature so that the online shop will be secure in terms of bank details, names and addresses. There will not be any issues concerning data breaches.

Shipping and discount codes
Etsy offers online incentives by making it easy for merchants to implement several discount codes with shipping costs which are shared.

Etsy Cons

Reduced support service:
Its expansion schemes have made Etsy reduce its customer support services. It has even stopped its live chat facilities since the past four years as it was not able to tackle the demands of its sellers.

Overpopulation:
There is much competition online. There are more sellers on Etsy than there are buyers. It is sometimes hard for merchants to stand out while making their sales.

Profits are eaten into
Charges are out of date. Check official info for up to date info.
Etsy takes some of the profits made by its merchants. The fees charged are about 20 cents for listing each sales item. The item is listed only for a period of four months. It charges 3.5% of the price of a product after it is sold.

Etsy is not as customizable
Merchants may not find it easy to personalize their sales on Etsy as the platform does not offer many customization tools like HTML. The appearance of the shop fronts is going to look limited.

 

To summarise

Shopify will offer merchants a bespoke online shop while Etsy can offer attraction of instant traffic with less effort on the part of the merchants. Selling on Etsy could be a good way of trying out a new business concept and then gradually building up a customer following.

Once the merchants feel confident in their product ranges, then they can go for a bespoke online store that can project their business brand in a better way. Shopify makes it easy for them to run their online store and backs them up with a round the clock customer support service.

Shopify vs Etsy?
What do you think? Which one is better?

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