Pros / Cons of Etsy vs. Shopify (and other stand-alone websites)

Whether you are someone who is just getting started in the world of online sales or you are a seasoned veteran making many sales a week, you may feel yourself getting pulled in different directions for what you should be doing for your business. It can be a little confusing, especially if you consider yourself more of a crafter / maker than an online salesman.

Etsy wants you to do their business on their marketplace, but companies like Shopify want you to migrate your shop over there and host a stand-alone site. They've been so successful at getting new sellers, that now Etsy even offers "Pattern", they're own version of allowing you to have a stand-alone shop.

But all you want to do is grow your business and make sales, so what's the best way to accomplish that?

Well I'm sorry to say that there's no one answer that fits every situation. You'll have to evaluate your business and goals for yourself, but what I am going to do for you is to create a Pros / Cons list with as little bias as possible so that you can make the right decision for yourself.

Pros of using Etsy

1. Large audience / customer base getting exposed to your items

One of the absolute best things about Etsy (and other marketplaces like it: eBay, Handmade at Amazon) is the built in audience. Etsy does so much of the leg work for you, by creating a brand that people go to in order to shop. In order to gain traffic, you have to get people who are already shopping on Etsy to find you.

That's a much smaller ecosystem than sifting through the whole internet trying to determine your target audience and bring them to your site.

2. Can get started and set up with no knowledge of web design / coding

To get started on Etsy, you need NO knowledge of design, coding or website management. It is very easy to start a shop on Etsy. While there are certainly Etsy "best practices" to know and follow to get maximum visibility, most of what you'll be worrying about is things like:

• photos
• descriptions
• keywords
• titles

I think we can agree that is pretty basic for starting an online store, and as you can see from the following image, the set-up process is pretty straight forward.

3. Can be successful with little marketing effort, when product listings are well optimized and have a target audience

Etsy brings an audience to your store. If you have well optimized products that people are already searching for, you're not going to have to worry about Facebook Ads, Google Ads or other types of marketing to get those first visitors to your store.

Certainly, a smart shop owner looking to build their business and their brand will set up channels for re-marketing and connecting with customers and potential customers, especially on social media. But if you're selling on Etsy, you can ease into this, and won't have to feel like it's "do or die" for driving traffic to your shop. Etsy even automatically handles things like collecting as many reviews possible for your shop, a huge part of creating trust with customers and building your online business.

4. Allows you more time to focus on creating your products / fulfilling orders / creating new inventory

Since Etsy takes away so many barriers of entrance – site design, advertising, marketing, etc. you'll have more time to spend on the part of the business that you love: creating your products and filling orders.

Cons of using Etsy

We just went through several great pros of Etsy that make it sound pretty great. But that's not to say there aren't a number of cons to consider too.

1. If Etsy goes down, Etsy sellers go down too.

Buyers don't shop on EtsySellerShop101... Buyers shop on Etsy and buy from sellers they find with a product that they like. If Etsy goes down for any reason, Etsy sellers go down too. Your success is dependent on the success, business decisions, and potentially even personal decisions of Etsy's investors, board of directors and staff. Ways this could happen:

• Public loses trust in Etsy: through scandal, sale to another company, lawsuits, ethics, etc. We've seen this a little bit with Uber lately and the #DeleteUber campaign. Plagued with political, ethical and workplace harassment issues, the first group of people being hurt by the #DeleteUber campaign is the drivers.
• Competition: Etsy is at the top of their game, because there hasn't been a ton of real competition for their business model in the early stages. Things like Amazon Handmade are making a run for the Etsy business model and customer base. This, and other potential competitors could come in and dilute the audience on each platform.

2. Limited Branding

On Etsy, you are selling on their marketplace, so there is limited ability for branding. While you can customize certain aspects of your "shop", most views that you will receive will simply be to product pages, giving you a small icon for a logo. The only other visuals you will be showing will be product photos.

3. Listed alongside competitors / more likely to compete on price

One of the major downsides to Etsy, I believe, is that it actually drives down artisan prices from where they should be. As in any free market, people will always come along that see an opening to break into a market at a slightly lower price than what is already being offered. When you are listed directly next to your competitors for whatever items you are making – and very small branding ability – there's little incentive for a buyer to purchase the more expensive item.

Selling on Etsy, may cause you to have to drive your prices down lower than they should be to make sales.



See this photo above: It's the first page of search results for "Crochet Dishcloth". There are over 15,000 search results and nearly every result out of the first 12 (which one is a paid ad) is from a different shop.

4. Harder to re-market to past customers. *Not* impossible. Harder.

One major part of running a successful e-commerce business is re-marketing to past customers. Past customers are your best marketing avenue as they have already shown interest in your product and actually completed a purchase.

Re-marketing to previous customers is difficult with Etsy. There are certainly still things you can do, for instance, encouraging to them to follow your social media accounts or sign up for an email list. However, your real estate for making these pitches is small and you must make sure you are not violating Etsy's seller policies with your strategy.

5. Etsy can terminate your account at anytime.

You are a seller on Etsy's site and ultimately, they need to protect their brand. They have a number of policies regarding items you can sell, communication with buyers, customer service and more. If Etsy determines you are not satisfactorily following their policies, they can terminate your shop.

There are a number of stories floating around the internet (take with whatever level of credibility you will) of sellers who have had their store terminated with little help or warning from Etsy. Just Google "etsy shop terminated" to see some of these threads.

Some reasons Etsy may give for termination are: too many cases opened against your shop, poor customer service and copyright violations.

Chances are if you are running a clean business and working hard to be an ethical, respectable store owner, you won't really run into issues with Etsy threatening or deciding to shut down your store. However, the fact that they are able to hold that kind of control over your business is certainly worth keeping in the back of your mind and being mindful of.

Pros of using Shopify

Confused yet? Well, now we've still got Shopify to talk about!

1. Create your own brand.

This. This is the main reason to start a Shopify store. Be warned it takes a lot of work. But if this is a priority for you, there's no question. Shopify provides you the tools to create your own website, with your own domain name, with your own style and design. You can control nearly everything about the user experience, style and design of your store and really work towards building a brand without piggy-backing off a larger brand. The average user, will not know that your store is set up on "Shopify" – it will only see the online presence that you put out there.

Here's an example of the home page of my site made with Shopify:

2. Ability to gather and analyze data.

With Shopify you can easily gather all kinds of sales data, customer data and all the information you may need to help you make inventory, marketing and business decisions. Through the provided Shopify reports and setting up a Google Analytics account, you can really dig deep into customer behavior and your store data. 

Note that you are able to set up Google Analytics for your Etsy shop as well, although the Etsy generated reports are not nearly as helpful as Shopify's.

Cons of using Shopify

We've got just one last category here to look at: the cons of Shopify! Soon you'll be ready to make a decision that's right for you.

1. More set up time

Shopify takes significantly more work than Etsy to set up shop. You've got a lot more things to think about than simply listing products. Although coding knowledge is not necessary, you are essentially creating an entire shop. You'll have lots of things other than product listings to be thinking about:

• Choosing a theme
• Color scheme
• Navigation
• Landing Pages
• Reviews
• Content Pages

And this list above is by no means exhaustive. Nor, is it a once and done situation either. You will always need to be making adjustments on your site to improve and optimize it.

2. More set up costs

Etsy is pretty clear about the fees: $0.20 for each listing and then they keep a percentage of the transaction. It's pretty simple and low cost to get started.

Shopify on the other hand, you'll likely get a short trial period to start with, but then there will be a monthly fee for keeping your shop up. On top of that, you'll also have the expense of buying your selected domain name. Plus if you have to hire out any work for opening up shop: creating a logo, custom design work on your site, etc., these can all be start up costs before your store is even up and running. You will also of course have transaction fees for each sale as well. (This is true for ANY online sales to account for credit card processing.)

3. No visitors unless you bring them.

The biggest downside though to Shopify is traffic. You won't get any traffic unless you are driving it to your site somehow. This will require A LOT of extra effort and time on your part, in order to make sure your target audience even knows you exist. It will probably mean any combination of the following:

• taking out ads on Facebook, Instagram or Google
• building your brand on social media channels
• creating / writing strong, shareable content through blog posts
• working tirelessly on optimizing your site to show on search
• working with influencers to advertise your product

So what's an aspiring store owner to do? 

Take a good look at the pros and cons of each of these options. How much time and effort are you willing AND able to put into your success? What is your ultimate goal? How important is your brand to you?

And it's not unheard of to go both routes – although, definitely don't start both at the same time. Get one going and working before you work to open the second "location". If you already have a successful Etsy shop and are looking to migrate to Shopify, you probably don't shut down your current Etsy shop, but instead work Shopify as a second part of your business.

What do you think? Are there any pros or cons for either of these that aren't listed here?

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