By Jon Saints - 14 Mar 2010
My wife runs an online store on Etsy http://dsenyo.etsy.com. Her sales are growing, and we wondered, in purely $ terms, at what point does it pay to leave Etsy and switch to the online store to Shopify?
The answer: Sooner than you might think.
Both sites make it really easy and fun to sell online.
Etsy is the way to start off if you are selling hand made goods for sure. On Etsy its easy for buyers to wander from seller to seller looking for products. They can easily leave your store for another vendor, but as we have found, this community of wandering buyers have also provided us with many sales. Etsy also promotes your products to their homepage, providing valuable exposure for your products.
Shopify offers more customization and personalization of your store. Stores are not connected so buyers cannot directly wander to other stores. Shopify does not provide any built in promotion of your products either. They provide a simple, beautiful store front for your products that you must promote yourself.
Because Etsy provides such good exposure for our products we will never fully abandon Etsy. But now that we are growing and able to do more of the promotion ourselves, Shopify becomes a sensible option for our small business ecommerce needs. Only consider Shopify over Etsy if you fell your business has the momentum to promote its online store on its own. Once you do find that momentum, at what point will switching actually start saving you $?
Well, Etsy charges $0.20 to list a products and takes 3.5% of each transaction. Shopify charges $24 per month for their basic plan and takes 2.0% of each sale. Using this data, at $1600 is sales per month, Shopify becomes the cheaper option.
As sales continue to grow, you’ll want to upgrade to Shopify’s $59/month plan when you reach $3500 in monthly sales.