Shopify vs Amazon comparison is one of the biggest battles in the eCommerce world. Even though both platforms are popular for being excellent eCommerce solutions, they greatly differ.
Which is the winner in the Shopify vs Amazon head-to-head comparison? It is crucial to understand the differences between Shopify vs Amazon in order to choose the platform that works best for your needs.
Let’s continue reading to find out:
- How is Shopify different from Amazon?
- Shopify vs Amazon – Features comparison
- Shopify or Amazon – The main pros & cons
- Integrate Amazon into Shopify
Shopify vs Amazon – Pros and Cons Analysis
Before getting into the detailed comparison of Shopify vs Amazon, let's take a look at their pros and cons first. I believe these pros and cons will be one of the critical factors to decide which platform is suitable for your business.
Shopify pros and cons
Pros | Cons |
✅ Highly customizable storefront with a good selection of themes ✅ Full branding control ✅ High scalability ✅ Huge app and integration ecosystem ✅ 24/7 support via phone call, email, live chat ✅ Flexible pricing tiers with 5 different plans | ❌ Might require extensive technical knowledge to customize your store ❌ Pretty high transaction fees (up to 5%) ❌ High themes and apps pricing |
Best for: Businesses of all sizes, especially those seeking for a user-friendly and highly scalable eCommerce platform. | |
Amazon pros and cons
Pros | Cons |
✅ Massive customer base ✅ Easy to set up and manage your store ✅ High scalability ✅ Built-in fulfillment options for storage, packing, and shipping ✅ Flexible pricing structures | ❌ High competition among millions of other Amazon sellers ❌ Limited customization options ❌ Strict seller policies |
Best for: Merchants who sell high-demand products and want to take advantage of Amazon's huge customer base. | |
Shopify vs Amazon – What Are The Differences?
Even though both Shopify vs Amazon help you sell products online for a monthly fee, they work in completely different ways.
The main difference between Shopify and Amazon is that Shopify is an eCommerce platform while Amazon is a marketplace. In other words, Shopify provides you with the tools to build your own online store, while Amazon lets you sell on its marketplace alongside other sellers.
Shopify | Amazon | |
Shopify offers 5 different pricing tiers, including Starter, Basic, Shopify, Advanced, and Plus. | Amazon provides users with 2 pricing structure: for individual sellers and professional sellers. | |
Both platforms is really easy to use and requires no technical expertise to set up and manage. | ||
Shopify comes with a good selection of website designs, both free and paid options. | Amazon's customizability is quite limited as merchants aren't allowed to change their design. | |
This platform provides good built-in marketing functions and third-party extensions to promote your store. | Amazon offers several marketing tools, including Amazon DSP, Amazon Live, and many more. | |
Shopify equips its users with several eCommerce features, including product management, inventory tracking,... | Amazon comes with many eCommerce functions that can make your online selling journey a breeze. | |
With Shopify, merchants have to increase their brand visibility on SERPs on their own. | Amazon takes the liberty of tackling SEO and running email campaigns for you. | |
Shopify provides extensive and responsive support via phone call, email, and live chat. | Amazon supports their merchants via email, live chat, and phone call. | |
#1 Pricing
💡 The Verdict
It's a tie since it's hard to conclude that Amazon or Shopify is more affordable as these two platforms providedifferent pricing plans. Shopify divides pricing plans according to the number of features you can access. While Amazon still has a monthly plan with many advanced tools, it also provides a plan that charges you per item.
Shopify Pricing
The platform offers a 3-day free trial and 5 pricing plans:
- Shopify Starter: $5/month
- Basic Shopify plan: $39/month
- Shopify plan: $105/month
- Advanced Shopify plan: $399/month
- Shopify Plus: Starts from $2,500/month
Starter | Basic | Shopify | Advanced | Plus |
$5/month | Billed monthly: $39/month Billed yearly: $29/month | Billed monthly: $105/month Billed yearly: $79/month | Billed monthly: $399/month Billed monthly: $299/month | 1-year contract: $2,500+/month 3-year contract: $2,300+/month |
Transaction fee: ✓ 5% when using Shopify Payments | Transaction fee: ✓ 2.9% + 30¢ online ✓ 2.6% + 10¢ in person ✓ 2% for 3rd-party payment providers | Transaction fee: ✓ 2.7% + 30¢ online ✓ 2.5% + 10¢ in person ✓ 1% for 3rd-party payment providers | Transaction fee: ✓ 2.5% + 30¢ online ✓ 2.4% + 30¢ in person ✓ 0.6% for 3rd-party payment providers | Transaction fee: Competitive rates for high-volume merchants |
Key features: ✓ A simple storefront (including product pages, contact page, and checkout) ✓ Mobile point of sale to sell in person and accept payment anywhere ✓ Link in bio to sell on social ✓ Access to Shopify apps ✓ Shopify order management and integrated fulfillment network | Key features: ✓ Up to 77% shipping discount ✓ 10 inventory management ✓ 24/7 chat support ✓ Localized globla selling (3 markets) ✓ POS Lite | Key features: ✓ Up to 88% shipping discount and insurance ✓ 10 inventory locations ✓ 24/7 chat support ✓ Localized globla selling (3 markets) ✓ POS Lite ✓ 5 additional staff accounts | Key features: ✓ Up to 88% shipping discount, insurance, 3rd-party calculated rate ✓ Custom reports and analytics ✓ 10 inventory locations ✓ Enhanced 24/7 chat support ✓ 15 additional staff accounts ✓ 10x checkout capacity ✓ POS Lite | Key features: ✓ Up to 88% shipping discount, insurance, 3rd-party calculated rate ✓ Custom reports and analytics ✓ 200 inventory locations ✓ Priority 24/7 phone support ✓ Localized global selling (50 markets) ✓ Unlimited staff accounts ✓ Fully customizable checkout with 40x capacity ✓ 200 POS Pro locations with Shopify Payments ✓ Sell wholesale/B2B |
Best for: Influencers and small businesses who wants to sell on social media. | Best for: Small businesses who are just starting their eCommerce journey. | Best for: Small and medium businesses. | Best for: Medium to large business who wants to expand their store's capability. | Best for: Enterprises who seek for a a platform that can scale as they grow. |
The more expensive your Shopify plan is, the more features it has. It is also notable that you can upgrade or downgrade your plan anytime. Besides, Shopify is currently running an exclusive time-limited offer during which you pay only $1/month for your first month.
Amazon Pricing
Amazon has 2 pricing plans
- Individual sellers: $0.99 per item sold. This plan only lets you add new products to the Amazon catalog and use Fulfillment by Amazon if you want to. According to Amazon, this plan is suitable for sellers that are testing what they sell.
- Professional sellers: $39.99 per month. With this plan, you have access to more advanced tools such as API integration, on-site advertising tools, or adding multiple users.
Additional Amazon selling fees
Besides paying for Amazon plans, you also need to pay for additional selling fees such as referral fees and fulfillment fees.
- Referral fees: Amazon charges a referral fee starting from 3% per item sold. It is your product category that determines the referral fee rate.
- Fulfillment fees: The cost to ship your orders depends on whether you fulfill your own orders or use Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA). If you fulfill your own orders, Amazon only charges if you ship books, music, video, and DVD products. For the FBA service, Amazon calculates the fee based on the size and weight of your pack. Amazon will also charge you storage fees if you use FBA.
- Other fees: In certain cases, additional costs may incur. For example, one type of fee that you might have to pay is a high-volume listing fee. When you have a high volume of active, non-media listings that have not sold in 12 months, Amazon will charge a monthly fee of $0.005 per eligible listing to cover cataloging costs.
#2 Ease of Use
💡 The Verdict
In terms of user-friendly, both Amazon and Shopify are famous for their clear and simple dashboard to navigate and manage. You can easily follow the instruction when setting up your online store.
You would definitely want to have a smooth and pleasant selling experience with your eCommerce platform instead of dealing with technical hassles. Fortunately, both Shopify and Amazon are straightforward and easy to use.
Shopify ease of use
You don’t need to have coding skills to set up a Shopify store with its drag-and-drop design. At first, you need to register a Shopify account.
After you get into the Shopify Dashboard, everything becomes easy to set up Shopify store since everything you need will be displayed on the left sidebar.
To add a new product to Shopify, simply go to Product > Add your products and fill in your product information.
To manage and modify layout, colors, text, and so on, you can drop media elements anywhere on the page. It also has an intuitive interface with visual cues, so you never feel lost when designing your online store.
Curious about how simple it is with setting up a Shopify store? Our video below may be of help to you!
Next, let's move onto Amazon ease of use.
Amazon ease of use
With Amazon, all you need to do is follow the set-up stages to register a store.
However, unlike Shopify where you can try out the platform without filling in information such as phone number or location-based, with Amazon, the registration process is much stricter. When you register an Amazon seller account, you may need to go provide all the information below:
- Valid government-issued ID or passport
- Recent bank account or credit card statement
- Chargeable credit card
- Mobile phone
And as your store gets verified, you can now process the next step – listing products to Amazon.
From now on, you need to upload your products information which includes product category, SKU, product identifier, offer details (price, shipping option, etc), product details (name, brand, etc), and search terms, and then you are ready to sell.
While you are selling, Amazon has tools that make it simple and straightforward. For example, you can use FBA to get rid of taking care of the shipping.
#3 Design
💡 The Verdict
Shopify is the winner! Shopify vs Amazon both provide you with stunning designs. However, when it comes to design flexibility, Shopify gives you more freedom than Amazon. Shopify users can easily customize the template directly at the front end by using the Shopify theme editor.
As a store owner, you surely wouldn’t want to lose customers due to bad design. Luckily, Shopify vs Amazon both provides you with stunning designs. However, when it comes to design flexibility, Shopify gives you more freedom than Amazon.
Shopify Themes
With Shopify, you can choose the design of your store from 100+ different themes, including 12 free and 134 paid ones.
You can edit and personalize your theme design to create a unique brand image. Shopify users can easily customize the template directly at the front-end by using the theme editor. The theme editor includes a theme preview and a toolbar that you can use to add and remove content, and to make changes to your settings.
Another way to edit your store-front design is by using Liquid – Shopify’s Template Language which interacts with the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript of your theme.
Feeling overwhelmed due to a glut of Shopify themes in the market? Let's check out our suggested list of best Shopify themes before purchasing!
Amazon Templates
Due to the peculiarity of an eCommerce marketplace, unfortunately, Amazon does not allow you to make that much customization on your storefront. All Amazon pages are laid out in a similar way which is recognizably Amazon’s rather than your own.
There are only 3 templates for the product detail page. You can upload your content and images, but cannot change the design.
Additionally, on the homepage, your products appear alongside your competitors’ products. Even though this can be convenient for customers, it is very hard for you to direct customers to your stores.
#4 Marketing
💡 The Verdict
We can see that both Shopify vs Amazon provide powerful marketing tools. However, Amazon will not be as ideal as Shopify if you want to build up your personal brand.
Shopify marketing
When selling online, marketing is a must for you to reach your potential customers. Shopify provides you with many marketing tools. Regarding SEO, Shopify offers a basic set of SEO features for users to optimize store-level content to ensure higher SERP positions.
You can edit meta tags, add alt text to images, create 301 redirects and auto XML sitemap, etc. However, users are not allowed to fully customize their URLs.
In addition, Shopify also has many impressive features for blogs such as multiple authors, easy-to-set tags, and customizable SEO parameters.
Moreover, you can also do email marketing easily with Shopify Email. Just like any email marketing app, this tool has ready-made email templates and a report generator. It allows you to send up to 2,500 emails to your customers for free.
Notably, Shopify integrations with Google and Facebook also help you create ads for these platforms seamlessly. If these tools have not met your needs, you can always install more marketing apps on the Shopify marketplace to empower your marketing campaigns.
Amazon marketing
On the other hand, if you sell on Amazon, your potential customers will go to the Amazon site and search for the products that they want.
For example, when searching for “women's summer dresses“, you may see search results from different providers.
Therefore, instead of Google SEO, you need to focus on Amazon SEO in order to rank as high up the search result pages as you can. In order to do that, you need to optimize your product information and search terms.
Besides, Amazon also has many marketing tools. For example, Amazon provides you with Amazon DSP, which is a demand-side platform that allows you to buy display, video, and audio ads both on and off Amazon.
Another example is Amazon Live, which allows you to stream live videos that are interactive, and shoppable across Amazon.
#5 eCommerce Features
💡 The Verdict
All in all, both Amazon vs Shopify has some robust eCommerce tools and services to help with your business. To our point of view, Amazon can simplify the management effort on your eCommerce store better than Shopify.
The most important thing to consider when comparing two platforms has to be their default eCommerce features and Shopify vs Amazon is no exception.
Shopify eCommerce features
This hosted solution offers many powerful built-in features:
- Shopify product management: You can add new products on your back-end interface or by importing CSV files. Filling in the product information is intuitive, and you can also assign categories to your products.
- Shopify inventory tracking system: Your inventory can be managed more efficiently and you can avoid selling out-of-stock products. However, you cannot create sub-categories on your Shopify store without installing apps. Shopify default system also does not allow more than 3 product variants and more than 100 combinations.
- Abandoned Cart Recovery: This feature is by default for all pricing plans. Thanks to it, you can find out the reasons why customers didn’t check out their carts and send emails to them. Besides, some other tools that Shopify offers are automatic tax calculation, logo maker, and QR code generator.
Amazon eCommerce features
When it comes to eCommerce features, Amazon also allows you to manage your products conveniently.
You can add new products individually using Amazon's interactive listing tool. If you are trying to add many products at a time, Amazon has Inventory File Templates that are editable in Excel ready for you.
You can also easily add variants to your products while adding them to your seller account. However, you can only sell physical products that can be shipped and services, since only Amazon is allowed to sell downloadable content.
Like Shopify, Amazon also has many tools in place to support your online selling. Let's have a glance at Shopify vs Amazon FBA comparison.
For example, you can use FBA to let Amazon handle the storage, packaging, and shipping of your products completely while with Shopify, you need to set up some fulfillment features for that.
With Amazon FBA, you just need to send your products to Amazon’s storage. Whenever there’s a customer buying your products, Amazon will pack and ship them for you.
Furthermore, Amazon makes global selling seamless. This platform provides Seller Central Language Switcher that supports French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese. If you already use Fulfillment by Amazon, you can manage online sales from other channels using the same inventory pool with a feature called Multi-Channel Fulfillment.
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#6 Brand Visibility
💡 The Verdict
Amazon has more advantages since it will do SEO and email campaigns to attract customers. In contrast, you will have to do the marketing yourself to draw customer attention to your site with Shopify.
Shopify
With Shopify, you must promote your own brand – people actually need to search for your business to find you. This means marketing is a must to widen your customer base.
To drive traffic to your Shopify store, email campaigns, multichannel selling and a strong social media presence, personalized shopping, abandoned cart recovery, and SEO – all of these are important for growing your brand and building a customer base.
Amazon
Meanwhile, Amazon takes the liberty of tackling SEO and running email campaigns for you. With millions of visitors a month, the odds are stacked temptingly in your favor. Buyers come to Amazon with their eyes peeled and wallets primed.
However, just like a coin with two sides, the competition for customers' attention is pretty fierce. Once visitors are on the site, they need to grab your products instead of your neighbor's. Harder yet, Amazon itself is also selling on the same platform.
#7 Support
💡 The Verdict
So is Amazon or Shopify better at customer support? Since both platforms provide 24/7 support via email, live chat, and phone, it is a tie between Amazon vs Shopify in this aspect. Even if you are a new store owner or a large enterprise, you can access the support any time you need.
Shopify support
This hosted solution provides excellent customer support. Like any other eCommerce platform, you can seek help from Shopify experts and other users on its forum, or find the answers for your solutions in Shopify documents and video tutorials. Shopify Changelog is another source to get the latest updates.
In addition, you can get 24/7 live support via email, live chat, and phone on Shopify Help Center. The support team will respond to you within a few minutes.
Amazon support
Similar to Shopify, Amazon also has a forum for users to post their queries and get support from other users. This platform also has a Help Center that already has many frequently asked questions and answers.
If you want to receive support directly from an Amazon customer support agent, they do provide 24/7 support via email, live chat, and phone.
Bonus Reading: Integrate Amazon Into Shopify
By this time, some of you might have already had your final decision. But some of you might still be wavering. But fret not, here's the good news for the waverers: Amazon can be integrated into your Shopify store. It means that you can build your own eCommerce website while promoting your products on the world’s largest marketplace at the same.
Once you've successfully integrated Amazon into Shopify, you can create Amazon listings and offers straight from Shopify, sync inventory and product details, link products, and much more.
Shopify – Amazon integration with a multi-channel selling tool
Using a multi-channel tool like LitCommerce is preferable for non-tech merchants who want to expand their business without knowing a line of code. With Shopify Amazon integration, you can import existing products from Shopify and list them on Amazon in bulk, turn on inventory sync to keep it consistent across sales channels and fulfill orders within one central place.
By walking through 4 simple steps, you can reach tons of million potential buyers worldwide by the following:
- #1: Connect Shopify to Amazon by filling in the Store URL and the API password.
- #2: List products on Amazon with just a click.
- #3: Sync Shopify and Amazon inventory.
- #4: Manage Amazon orders from LitCommerce central dashboard.
Shopify vs Amazon – FAQs
Which one is better, Amazon or Shopify?
There is no single "better" platform between Amazon and Shopify. The best choice depends on your specific business needs and goals.
In short, Amazon is ideal for reaching a massive audience quickly and leveraging its established infrastructure, but it offers limited branding control and high competition. Shopify provides more customization and control over your brand but requires more effort to drive traffic and build customer relationships.
What is the disadvantage of Shopify?
One main disadvantage of Shopify is the need to drive traffic to your store. Unlike Amazon, which has a built-in customer base, Shopify relies on you to attract visitors through marketing and advertising efforts. This can be time-consuming and require additional investment.
Is it legal to sell Amazon products on Shopify?
Yes, it is generally legal to sell Amazon products on Shopify. However, there are some important considerations. You must ensure you are sourcing products legitimately and complying with both Amazon's and Shopify's terms of service. Additionally, be mindful of pricing and avoid practices that could be perceived as misleading or unfair competition.
It's always best to consult with a legal professional for specific guidance on your situation.
Who is Shopify best suited for?
Shopify is best suited for entrepreneurs and businesses who prioritize building a strong brand identity and having full control over their online store's look and feel. It's also a good choice for those who want to cultivate direct customer relationships and are comfortable investing time and effort into marketing and driving traffic to their store.
Final Words
To conclude, both Shopify vs Amazon are heavyweights in their own sectors. In the end, it’s each person’s preference that matters.
However, you don’t necessarily need to choose either Shopify or Amazon. You can get a combination of these two top-notch platforms by using Shopify Amazon integration.
Hopefully, this Shopify vs Amazon comparison has the information that you are seeking and has somehow contributed to your decision.
Last but not least, don't forget to check out our LitExtension blog and join our Facebook Community to get more eCommerce tips and news.
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