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Shopify vs. Amazon is one of the biggest battles in the world of e-commerce. Although both platforms are renowned for being excellent e-commerce solutions, they differ greatly. Who wins the head-to-head comparison between Shopify and Amazon? Understanding the differences between Shopify and Amazon is crucial to choosing the right alternative e-commerce platform that best suits your needs.
So read on and find out:
Even though Shopify and Amazon help you sell products online for a monthly fee, they operate in a completely different way. In fact, 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 create your own online store. As for Amazon, it allows you to sell your products on its marketplace alongside other sellers.
Both e-commerce sites have specific features that distinguish them from each other. Below we will provide a detailed comparison of these features to help you make the best choice.
When choosing an e-commerce platform, pricing is one of the first criteria to consider. Let's take a look at the prices of these two platforms:
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The platform offers a 3-day free trial and 5 price plans:
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The more expensive your Shopify plan is, the more features it offers. Plus, you can upgrade or downgrade your plan at any time. Shopify is currently offering an exclusive limited time offer during which you pay only $1/month for a 3-month trial.
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Amazon offers 2 price plans:
Individual sellers: $0.99 per item sold. This plan only allows you to add new products to Amazon's product catalog and use Fulfillment by Amazon if you wish. According to Amazon, this plan is suitable for sellers who are testing what they sell.
Professional Sellers: $39.99 per month. With this plan, you get access to more advanced tools such as API integration, on-site advertising tools or adding multiple users.
In addition to paying for Amazon plans, you also have to pay additional sales fees such as referral fees and fulfillment fees.
Referral Fee: Amazon charges a referral fee starting at 8% per item sold. Your product category determines the referral fee rate.
Fulfillment Fee: The cost of shipping 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, videos and DVDs. For the FBA service, Amazon calculates charges based on the size and weight of your package. Thus, it will also charge you a storage fee if you use FBA.
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Find out more about the support services that both merchant websites provide to e-merchants:
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This hosted solution offers excellent customer support. Like any other e-commerce platform, you can ask for help from Shopify experts and other users on its forum. You can also find answers to your solutions in Shopify documents and video tutorials.
Moreover, the selling platform offers 24/7 live support via email, live chat and phone on Shopify Help Center. The support team will get back to you within minutes.
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Similar to Shopify, Amazon also has a forum for users to post their queries and get assistance from other users. In addition, it has a help center that already contains many frequently asked questions and answers.
If you would like to receive assistance directly from an Amazon customer support agent, they provide 24/7 support via email, live chat and phone.
You would definitely want to have a smooth and enjoyable selling experience with your platform rather than facing technical issues. Fortunately, Shopify and Amazon are simple and easy to use.
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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 create a Shopify account. After that, you can manage and change the layout, colors, text, etc, by dropping multimedia elements anywhere on the page.
Plus, it has an intuitive interface with visual cues, so you never feel lost when designing your e-commerce store. Shopify's main dashboard is also easy to navigate with everything you need in the left sidebar.
With Amazon, all you have to do is follow the configuration steps to register a store. After that, you'll need to upload your product information, which includes:
While you're selling, Amazon has tools that make things simple and straightforward. For example, you can use FBA to get rid of shipping costs.
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As an ecommerce store owner, you surely wouldn't want to lose customers because of a bad design. Fortunately, Shopify vs Amazon both offer you stunning designs. However, when it comes to design flexibility, Shopify gives you more freedom than Amazon.
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With Shopify, you can choose your store design from over 100 different themes, including 11 free and 106 paid. In addition, you can edit and customize your theme design to create a unique brand image. Shopify users can easily customize the template directly on the front-end using the theme editor.
Another way to modify your storefront design is to use Liquid. This is Shopify's templating language that interacts with your theme's HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
You can take a look at our article on the best Shopify themes themes before you make your choice!
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Unfortunately, Amazon does not allow you to customize your storefront as much. All Amazon pages are presented in the same way, recognizable by Amazon rather than by you. There are only three templates for the product detail page. You can upload your content and images, but you can't change the design.
Also, on the homepage, your products appear alongside your competitors' products. While this may be convenient for customers, it is very difficult for you to direct customers to your stores.
The most important thing to consider when comparing two platforms is definitely their e-commerce features. And Shopify vs Amazon is no exception.
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This hosted solution offers a host of powerful integrated features. For example:
You can add new products on your back-end interface or by importing CSV files. Filling in product information is intuitive and you can also assign categories to your products.
Your inventory can be managed more efficiently and you can avoid selling out of stock items. However, you cannot create subcategories on your Shopify store without installing apps. Shopify's default system also does not allow more than 3 product variants and 100+ combinations.
This feature is default for all price plans. With it, you can determine the reasons why customers have not visited their shopping cart and send them emails. In addition, some of the other tools offered by Shopify are automatic tax calculation, logo creator and QR code generator.
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Amazon also allows you to conveniently manage your products. You can add new products individually using Amazon's interactive listing tool. If you're trying to add multiple products at once, Amazon has editable inventory file templates in Excel ready for you.
You can also easily add variations to your products while adding them to your seller account. However, you can only sell physical products that can be shipped and services, as only Amazon is allowed to sell downloadable content.
Like Shopify, Amazon also has many tools to support your online sales. For example, you can use FBA to let Amazon completely manage the storage, packaging and shipping of your products. With Amazon FBA, you simply send your products to Amazon's storage. That way, every time a customer buys your products, Amazon packs and ships them for you.
In addition, Amazon makes the global sale seamless. This platform provides the Seller Central language selector 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. This is a feature of Amazon called "Multi-Channel Fulfillment".
Whether you want to dropship on Amazon or Shopify, it's important to understand how the platform helps you attract customers. So let's take a look at both platforms:
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With Shopify, you have to create your own brand. In fact, people have to search for your business to find you. This means that marketing is essential to expand your customer base.
Email campaigns, multi-channel selling and strong social media presence, personalized shopping, abandoned cart recovery and SEO. All of these elements that the commerce site offers are important to build your brand and create a customer base.
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Amazon is taking the liberty of tackling SEO and launching email campaigns for you. With millions of visitors per month, the odds are stacked in your favor. In fact, shoppers come to Amazon with their eyes open and wallets primed.
However, just like the two-sided medal, the competition for customers' attention is quite fierce. Once visitors are on the site, they have to grab your products instead of your neighbor's. Even more difficult, Amazon itself sells on the platform.
In this section, we will explain the advantages and disadvantages of both platforms.
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Easy to create your own website: Shopify is one of the most user-friendly e-commerce platforms available. Simply choose a template and use its drag-and-drop design feature to create your website. You can still create a Shopify website to start selling online even if you don't have any coding skills.
A diverse range of e-commerce tools: with Shopify, you have access to many tools to help you create the best site for your business. Abandoned cart recovery, inventory system, logo creator, tagline creator, etc. are available for all price plans.
Diverse payment options: Amazon can't compete with Shopify in terms of the number of payment gateways. Shopify offers over 100 options to choose from, such as PayPal, Stripe, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, as well as Shopify internal payments.
Building your reputation is a must: selling with Shopify means you have your own website for your brand. Therefore, if you don't promote your store, there won't be any traffic to your website.
Limited customization: compared to open source e-commerce platforms, Shopify is a bit limited when it comes to customization. As a result, even if you modify the template they offer, you'll still be limited in what you can do with the design. This can lead to your website looking like other sites that use the same template.
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More traffic: the Amazon marketplace registers hundreds of millions of visits every month. When you sell your products on Amazon, you have access to a large number of potential customers browsing this website for the products they're looking for.
Amazon manages your product: even though this is an optional program, it's important to mention FBA as a big Amazon pro. It's much easier for sellers not to have to worry about product fulfillment, packaging and shipping. What's more, Amazon provides customer service if people have a problem with your products in FBA.
Many competitors: one of the biggest disadvantages of trying to sell on Amazon is that there are many other sellers offering the same products as you. What's more, Amazon offers you very limited customization space.
Limited payment options: Amazon Pay only accepts credit cards, debit cards and transfers from the available balance in your Amazon Pay account. There is no option for third-party payments such as PayPal.
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To conclude, Shopify vs Amazon are heavyweights in their own industries. Ultimately, it's each person's preference that counts. However, you don't necessarily have to choose Shopify or Amazon. You can get a combination of these two top platforms by using Shopify Amazon integration.
We hope this comparison between Shopify and Amazon contains the information you're looking for and has contributed in some way to your decision. Finally, if you'd like to get started with Shopify, you can get started right now and take advantage of a $1 3-month free trial.
The main difference between Shopify and Amazon is that Shopify is an e-commerce platform while Amazon is a marketplace. In other words, Shopify provides you with the tools to create your own online store, while Amazon allows you to sell on its marketplace alongside other sellers.
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