Shopify vs Amazon: Which is Better for Business in 2024?

Shopify and Amazon are two of the most well-known e-commerce platforms, each offering tools to help grow your business. But there's a challenge: how do you pick between them?

Both Shopify and Amazon are reliable choices, and it's possible to use both. However, each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Let's compare Shopify and Amazon by looking at their key features, pricing, and pros and cons to help you decide which one is the best fit for your business.

Overview of Shopify vs Amazon

Shopify and Amazon are major players in the e-commerce world, but they work in very different ways. Both help you reach a large audience, but the platforms themselves aren’t the same.

Shopify is a platform that is designed to let you build your own online ecommerce store from scratch.

On the other hand, Amazon is an online store itself—and a massive one! In fact, last year, sellers on Amazon in the U.S. sold 4.5 billion products, which means about 8,600 items were sold every minute.

Selling on Shopify is like renting your own space to set up shop, and many merchants prefer this. In fact, over 5.46 million websites are currently powered by Shopify (according to Builtwith.com).

Selling on Amazon is like having your products in a huge supermarket.

With Shopify, you'll need to do more work to set everything up and attract customers. However, you have complete control over your store. Since Shopify lets you create your own website, you can decide:

• How your brand looks
• The design of your storefront
• How to promote your products
• How to collect customer data
• How you want to sell your goods

On Amazon, there’s already a large customer base waiting, but you’ll also face more competition.

Using the supermarket example, selling on Amazon is like getting a spot on a shelf in a busy store. Many people will see your product, but the question is, will they pick yours or choose a competitor from the shelf above?

Both methods of selling have their advantages and disadvantages, which I'll go into detail about later in this comparison.

How Shopify and Amazon Compare

Let's take a brief lock at this quick table of comparison to have a better overall view first:

1. Ease of Use

Both Amazon and Shopify are well-known for having easy-to-use dashboards that make navigation and store management simple. Setting up your online store is really easy with clear instructions to follow.

When choosing an eCommerce platform, you want a smooth, hassle-free experience without dealing with technical issues. Thankfully, both Shopify and Amazon are designed to be user-friendly and simple to operate, making your selling journey much easier.

Shopify ease of use

You don’t need coding skills to create a Shopify store because it uses a simple drag-and-drop design. First, you’ll need to sign up for a Shopify account. Once you access the Shopify Dashboard, setting up your store is straightforward, as all the necessary options are on the left sidebar.

To add a new product, just go to Products > Add your products and fill in the details. You can easily manage and change the layout, colors, and text by dragging media elements anywhere on the page. The user-friendly interface includes helpful visual cues, so you won't feel lost while designing your online store.

Want to see how easy it is to set up a Shopify store? Check out our helpful blog here.

Now, let’s look at how easy it is to use Amazon.

Amazon ease of use

To set up a store on Amazon, you just need to follow the process. However, unlike Shopify, where you can explore the platform without providing personal details like your phone number or location, Amazon has a stricter registration process. 

When you create an Amazon seller account, you’ll need to provide several pieces of information, including:

• A recent credit card statement or bank account
• A credit card to charge
• A mobile phone number
• A valid government-issued ID or passport

Once your store is verified, you can move on to the next step: listing your products on Amazon.

You’ll need to upload details for each product, such as the category, SKU, product identifier, offer details (like price and shipping options), product details (including name and brand), and relevant search terms. After you’ve done this, you’ll be ready to start selling.

While you’re selling, Amazon provides tools to make the process easier. For instance, you can use Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) to handle shipping, allowing you to focus on other aspects of your business.

2. Design Flexibility

Both Shopify and Amazon offer beautiful designs for your online store. However, Shopify allows for more design capabilities, you will have a greater freedom to customize your store. With the Shopify theme editor, you can easily adjust the template right from the front end. 

As a store owner, you definitely want to avoid losing customers due to poor design, and with both platforms offering great options, Shopify stands out for its customization capabilities.

Shopify Themes

With Shopify, you can choose how your website will be designed with 200+ different themes, including free and paid ones.

You can modify and personalize your theme design to build a unique brand image. Shopify users can easily customize the template right from the front end using the theme editor. This editor includes a preview of the theme and a toolbar that lets you add or remove content and change your settings.

Another way to update your store's design is by using Liquid, which is Shopify's template language that works with the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript of your theme.

An even simpler way to customize or personalize your Shopify store is to utilize the Shopify Page Builder app such as EComposer, no code, but various elements.

Amazon Templates

Because of how an eCommerce marketplace works, Amazon doesn’t offer much flexibility to customize your storefront. All Amazon pages follow a similar layout, so your store will look more like Amazon’s brand than your own.

For the product detail page, there are only three template options. You can add up your content and images, but you can’t change the design.

Also, at homepage, your products will be right next to your competitors’ products. While this is convenient for customers, it makes it difficult to make your product stand out.

3. Local selling and point of sale

Shopify Local Selling and POS

(Image Source: https://www.shopify.com/pos/features)

Shopify allows businesses to create customizable online stores instead of just listing products. It means local businesses can 

• Build an online store that truly reflects the essence of their physical stores. 
• Design a site that aligns with your existing brand and use your own domain. 
• Implement local SEO strategies that can improve your business's visibility.

Shopify also has robust point-of-sale (POS) features that make it easy to process payments in physical locations. It allows retailers to manage all their online and offline sales through one system, keeping inventory synced regardless of where a sale occurs.

Amazon Local Selling and POS

On the other hand, Amazon does not offer the same opportunities for targeting a local audience. Its focus is on reaching as many customers as possible, as quickly as possible. While this can be beneficial, Shopify is typically the better choice for businesses with a local focus.

However, Amazon is currently working on a new POS system called “Project Santos,” which aims to compete with platforms like Shopify, Square, and PayPal. This means that Shopify's current advantage in POS may change in the future.

Although Amazon has some workarounds and integrations for selling at the point of sale, Shopify's POS capabilities are more developed and integrated into the platform. You can find more information about the guide to set up Shopify POS System here.

4. Payment and Fees

Shopify Payment and Fees

Shopify has its own payment gateway that is Shopify Payments. Many eCommerce platforms require you to use their built-in payment gateways to help track your transactions, and Shopify is no exception. However, this setup has its advantages. 

For example, it allows you to sync transactions with other tools, like tax invoice generators, and the biggest benefit is that you won’t incur any transaction fees!

Shopify also has over 100 different payment gateways, including Amazon Pay and PayPal. These payment gateways have transaction fees that typically from 0.5% to 2%, based on the specific gateway you choose and your pricing plan.

Credit card fees apply to all payment gateways, including Shopify Payments. The standard credit card rate on Shopify is 2.9% + 30¢. As you move up through Shopify’s pricing plans, the credit card rates decrease from 2.9% + 30¢ to 2.4% + 30¢.

Amazon Payment and Fees

On the other hand, Amazon primarily uses Amazon Pay as its main payment gateway, allowing you to use credit and debit card payments, but it does not support PayPal. 

Amazon provides two selling plans, allowing you to choose the one that meets your needs and budget.

• The Individual selling plan charges $0.99 for each sale.
• The Professional selling plan has a fee of $39.99 per month, not depending on how many items you sell.

These fees differ by product category and include referral and shipping fees. Referral fees have a minimum cost of $0.30 and generally range from 8% to 15% of the total sale price. However, for some categories, like Device Accessories, the referral fee can be as high as 45%, which means you could lose almost half of your sale to Amazon.

If you choose Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), there are various fulfillment fees that range from $2.41 to $137.32 per unit. Additionally, monthly inventory storage fees can range from $0.69 to $2.40 per cubic foot, depending on the size, type of product, and even the season. You can find more details on these fees on Amazon’s website.

(Image Source: https://sell.amazon.com/fulfillment-by-amazon)

5. eCommerce Features

Both Amazon and Shopify offer strong eCommerce tools and services to support your business. From our perspective, Amazon makes it easier to manage your online store compared to Shopify. 

When comparing these two platforms, the most crucial factor to consider is their built-in eCommerce features, and Shopify and Amazon are no different in this regard.

Shopify eCommerce features

This hosted solution comes with many powerful built-in features:

• Shopify Product Management: You can easily add new products through your back-end interface or by importing CSV files. The process for entering product information is straightforward, and you can assign categories to your items.
• Shopify Inventory Tracking System: You can manage your inventory more effectively, helping you avoid selling products that are out of stock. However, you can't create sub-categories without installing additional apps. Also, the default system allows for a maximum of three product variants and up to 100 combinations.

• Abandoned Cart Recovery: This feature is included in all pricing plans. It helps you understand why customers didn’t complete their purchases and allows you to send follow-up emails. Additionally, Shopify provides other tools like automatic tax calculations, a logo maker, and a QR code generator.

Amazon eCommerce features

When it comes to eCommerce features, Amazon makes it easy to manage your products. You can add new items individually using Amazon's user-friendly listing tool. If you have many products to add, Amazon offers Inventory File Templates that you can edit in Excel.

You can also add variants to your products while setting them up in your seller account. However, keep in mind that you can only sell products that are physical to ship and serve, as Amazon is the only one allowed to sell downloadable content.

Like Shopify, Amazon offers several tools to help with online selling. For example, you can try Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), which allows Amazon to manage storage, packaging, and shipping for your products. On the other hand, with Shopify, you need to set up your own fulfillment options. With Amazon FBA, you just send your products to Amazon's storage, and when a customer makes a purchase, Amazon will take charge of the packing and shipping for you.

(Image Source: https://sell.amazon.com/fulfillment-by-amazon)

Moreover, Amazon simplifies global selling with its Seller Central Language Switcher, which supports languages like French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese. If you’re already using FBA, you can use the same inventory pool to manage sales from other channels through a feature called Multi-Channel Fulfillment.

6. Customer Support

Shopify Customer Support

Support is a crucial feature included in all Shopify plans, and contacting Shopify’s support team is straightforward. You can access email support and live chat, as well as support web pages available in 21 different languages. If you’re a ‘Shopify Plus’ customer, you also have the option for phone support.

This hosted solution offers great customer support. Similar to other eCommerce platforms, you can get help from Shopify experts and fellow users in the forum, or you can find answers in Shopify’s documents and video tutorials. The Shopify Changelog is also available for the latest updates.

Additionally, you can access live support 24/7 through email, live chat, and phone via the Shopify Help Center. The support team typically responds within just a few minutes.

Apart from live chat with support staff, you can also take advantage of the Shopify Chatbot for quick answers to your questions, as it will guide you through the help documentation while waiting for assistance.

Amazon Customer Support

Amazon does offer customer support, but it’s not heavily advertised. Support isn’t highlighted as a main feature on the Amazon Sellers’ website, and contact information for their support team isn’t easy to find in their online materials for sellers.

Instead, Amazon encourages you to use their available resources, such as help pages, community forums, and video tutorials, to resolve issues on your own. However, you can request a callback from Amazon by logging into your account and finding the ‘contact us’ section.

7. Marketing & SEO Tools

Shopify Marketing & SEO Tools

When selling online, marketing is essential to connect with your potential customers. Shopify offers a variety of marketing features to help with this. 

For search engine optimization (SEO), Shopify provides basic features that allow users to improve their store content and achieve better rankings in search results. You can:

• Edit meta tags
• Add alt text to images
• Create 301 redirects
• And generate an automatic XML sitemap (cannot fully customize URLs)

Moreover, Shopify has great features for blogs, including support for multiple authors, easy tag setup, and customizable SEO options.

Additionally, you can easily do email marketing using Shopify Email. This tool works like any other email marketing app and comes with pre-made email templates and a reporting feature. You can send up to 10,000 emails every month to your customers for free.

Shopify also integrates smoothly with Google and Facebook, allowing you to create ads for these platforms effortlessly. If these tools don’t fully meet your needs, you can always find and install more marketing apps from the Shopify marketplace to boost your marketing efforts.

Amazon Marketing & SEO Tools

On the other hand, when you sell on Amazon, your potential customers will visit the Amazon site to search for the products they want. For instance, if someone searches for “women sweaters,” they will see results from various sellers.

Instead of focusing on Google SEO, you need to concentrate on Amazon SEO to improve your ranking on their search result pages. To do this, you should optimize your product details and search keywords.

Additionally, Amazon offers many marketing tools. For example, Amazon DSP is a platform that lets you buy display, video, and audio ads both on and off Amazon. Another tool is Amazon Live, which enables you to stream interactive and shoppable live videos directly on Amazon.

8. Shipping & Dropshipping

One key point to consider in the Amazon vs. Shopify discussion is shipping.

Shipping products with Shopify

If you choose to ship your products yourself using Shopify, you can set your own shipping rates based on factors like product weight, price, and quantity. This gives you a lot of flexibility in how you handle shipping.

Or if you prefer not to manage shipping on your own, you can link your Shopify store to a third-party fulfillment service, including Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) — which we'll discuss soon.

Another option is to explore dropshipping, where you don't handle the products directly.

Shipping products with Amazon

With Amazon, you have two main options for shipping products:

1. You can ship the products yourself.
2. You can use Amazon's “Fulfillment by Amazon” (FBA) service, where you send your products to Amazon for them to handle.

Using Amazon FBA can be a great choice for some businesses because it provides storage for your products and offers fast “Prime” delivery, which many customers appreciate. However, it’s important to note that this service comes with extra fees.

Dropshipping with Shopify vs Amazon

Dropshipping is a way of selling products where you don’t create, store, or ship anything yourself. Instead, when a customer places an order on your online store, you forward that order to a supplier, then they will send the product directly to the customer. In this setup, your eCommerce site acts as a middleman.

While you can technically dropship using either Amazon or Shopify, Shopify is a much better option for this type of selling. Shopify is designed to support dropshipping and allows you to connect your store with around 600 dropshipping apps and suppliers, making it easy to get started without a large investment.

You can also use Amazon’s FBA service to fulfill orders from your Shopify store by using a paid third-party integration or the official “Buy with Prime for Shopify” app. However, dropshipping on Amazon has some limitations and extra costs, making it more complicated than with Shopify.

(Image Source: https://sell.amazon.com/learn/what-is-dropshipping)

Here are two important points to consider:

1. Retailers you partner with cannot ship directly to your customers unless they recognize you as the “seller of record.” This means that orders cannot include packing slips, invoices, or any other information that shows a seller's name or contact details except yours.
2. Unlike Shopify, Amazon takes a cut from drop shipped sales, usually between 10% and 15%. This can significantly reduce your profit margins.

Overall, Shopify tends to be a better choice for dropshipping, especially if you plan to sell a large volume of products.

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Shopify vs Amazon: Pricing Breakdown

1. Shopify Cost 

Shopify has five monthly pricing plans:

• Shopify Starter — $5 per month
• Basic Shopify — $25 per month
• Shopify — $65 per month
• Advanced Shopify — $399 per month
• Shopify Plus — starting at $2,300 per month

You can lower these fees in a couple of ways.

First, if you pay for a year upfront, you will get a 25% discount on annual plans (as of now).

Additionally, Shopify has a new ‘subscription credits’ system that gives you back 1% of the sales you make through your Shopify store as credits, which can be used to offset your monthly fees. You can find more information about Shopify credits on their website.

There's also a free trial available for three days. If you decide to purchase a Shopify plan after the trial, you'll only pay $1 for your first month. You can get the trial and this offer on Shopify's site.

Shopify pricing plans

Here’s a breakdown of Shopify pricing for its most popular plans:

All these plans provide essential eCommerce features, like unlimited catalogs for both digital and physical products, credit card processing, gift cards, abandoned cart recovery, discount codes, and an SSL certificate. However, there are some important differences between the plans:

• The Shopify Starter plan doesn’t allow you to create a fully customizable online store. Instead, it focuses on selling products through social media and messaging apps or by adding a “buy button” to an existing website.
• The number of users allowed on your account varies by plan. For instance, the Starter and Basic plans only allow one staff account, while Advanced Shopify lets you have up to fifteen.
• The Shopify Plus plan is specially designed for larger businesses, with pricing that depends on your specific needs. This plan offers advanced security, API and fulfillment features, as well as dedicated customer support and phone calls.
• Custom reports are only available on the more expensive Advanced and Shopify Plus plans.
• Credit card fees are lower on the higher-tier plans.
• If you use Shopify Payments (Shopify's built-in payment gateway), you won't have to pay transaction fees. On the other hand, if you opt for a third-party payment processor, transaction fees do apply, and these fees vary depending on your plan, being lower on the more expensive options.

2. Amazon Cost 

To sell on Amazon, you'll need to create a “seller account,” which comes in two types:

• Individual: $0.99 for each item sold
• Professional: $39.99 per month

(Note that these prices are for the U.S., and they may vary slightly in other regions, but the types of plans remain the same.)

Here are the main differences between the two plans:

• The Individual plan is a pay-as-you-go option, meaning you don’t pay a monthly fee. Instead, you pay a fee for each item sold. However, this plan limits you to selling fewer than 40 items a month, and you won't be able to use Amazon's advertising services or access detailed reports.
• The Professional plan is a subscription service with a monthly cost. It lets you sell with unlimited number of products, use all of Amazon's selling features, set your own shipping fees, sell in multiple categories, advertise on the platform, and add more users to your account.

If you plan to sell around 40 items or more each month, the Professional Amazon seller account is your only option.

In addition to these monthly fees, Amazon charges a referral cost on each sale, which can be from 8% to 15% based on the type of product you're selling.

Due to the different structures of Shopify and Amazon, it’s hard to determine which pricing is the best value. However, if you're considering Shopify, we recommend the Shopify plan as the best option. For those leaning towards Amazon, the Professional plan is the only one worth considering for serious sellers. Lastly, if you want to avoid referral fees entirely, Shopify is the better choice.

Shopify vs Amazon: Pros & Cons

If you’ve been through all the features above but still haven’t known how to decide, then this Pros and Cons table of comparison between Shopify vs Amazon might help you.

For more information about the pros and cons of Shopify, please click the link to learn more.

Shopify vs Amazon: Which is Better?

When comparing the two different eCommerce platforms, it’s quite hard to pick a clear “winner”. Since Shopify vs Amazon are quite different, it’s more helpful to point out when it might be better to use one over the other.

In general, Shopify is ideal if you need to have control over your branding, marketing, and audience. On the other hand, Amazon is a better choice if you want to reach existing markets.

That said, it’s also a good idea to consider integrating Amazon to Shopify. The approach will allow you to enjoy the advantages of each and reach more customers while also reducing risks by diversifying your traffic sources.

FAQs

1. How to integrate Amazon into Shopify?

Integrating Amazon into Shopify can be done through various methods, including:

• Using Amazon Buy Button: Add Amazon products directly to your Shopify store.
• Using third-party apps: You integrate Amazon into Shopify with apps like Amazon Sales Channel and Amazon Sync.
• Using the Amazon API: For more advanced integrations, you can use the Amazon API to connect your Shopify store directly to Amazon's systems.

The best method for integrating Amazon into Shopify will be based on your needs and technical capabilities.

2. What are the differences in terms of fees and costs?

Both platforms have their own fee structures. 

• Shopify charges a subscription per month fee plus transaction fees. 
• Amazon typically charges referral fees based on the product category and selling price.

Additionally, both platforms may have additional costs for services like shipping, storage, and advertising.

3. Which platform is better for selling physical products versus digital products?

Both platforms can handle both physical and digital products. However, Shopify is generally considered more versatile for selling digital products due to its flexibility and integration options with digital product delivery platforms. Amazon is better suited for physical products, especially if you plan to use their fulfillment services.