Shopify vs Amazon: Which platform will help you sell better?

For online sellers, the decision between Shopify vs Amazon is a critical one that can significantly impact the long-term growth of their business. In this article, NextSky provides a detailed, data-driven comparison to help you choose the solution that best aligns with your business strategy.

Overview of Shopify vs Amazon Platform

Shopify

Shopify is an e-commerce platform that allows you to build your own online store and sell products easily. It provides all-in-one tools to manage sales, payments, shipping, and marketing — supported by AI-powered features, third-party apps, and in-depth analytics reports. Additionally, Shopify offers multiple pricing plans, enabling businesses to scale or sell directly according to their needs.

Amazon

Amazon is a massive online marketplace where you can sell products, much like participating in a giant trade fair. This gives you instant access to millions of customers, but those customers are not specifically searching for your brand. As a result, Amazon is ideal for small businesses or individuals who don’t yet want (or need) to build their own standalone store. You can also let Amazon handle fulfillment (via FBA – Fulfillment by Amazon), saving significant time and effort.

1. Costs and fees - A Tie

Amazon

Amazon charges multiple types of fees: referral fees (a percentage of each sale) and transaction fees. Specifically:

• Individual Plan: $0.99 per item sold – suitable only for low-volume sellers with access to basic tools.
• Professional Plan: $39.99/month – unlocks advanced features and is required for higher sales volume.

Shopify

Shopify generally has lower overall costs than selling on Amazon, allowing you to reinvest the savings into marketing and product development. Importantly, when you use Shopify Payments (Shopify’s built-in payment gateway), there are no referral fees or transaction fees — only standard credit card processing rates apply.

Current Shopify pricing plans:

• Starter ($5/month): Sell via social media or simple pages.
• Basic ($29/month - $19/month when billed annually)): Ideal for beginners, online sales + occasional in-person sales.
• Grow ($79/month - $49/month when billed annually): For growing stores.
• Advanced ($399/month - $299/month when billed annually): Advanced reporting, lower transaction fees.
• Shopify Plus ($2,300/month): Enterprise-grade solution for large businesses.

Read more: Shopify vs eBay: Which Marketplace Fits Your Business?

2. Ease of Use - A Tie

Shopify

Shopify stands out with its intuitive drag-and-drop interface. You don’t need any coding skills to set up and customize your store. Everything — from adding products to editing layout, colours, fonts, and text — is clearly displayed in a sidebar. Visual cues also help you always know exactly what you’re editing.

Amazon

Amazon is relatively straightforward to manage listings, but the account setup process is more stringent. You must submit your ID/passport, bank details, credit card information, and phone number for verification. Listing products requires entering categories, SKUs, pricing information, shipping details, and relevant keywords. However, tools like FBA make selling and fulfillment much easier once you’re set up.

Verdict: Both platforms are user-friendly, but Shopify is more intuitive and beginner-friendly, while Amazon requires more upfront verification steps.

3. Design & Branding - Shopify

Shopify

Shopify offers superior flexibility. You can fully customize your store directly in the theme editor, controlling every aspect, including layout, colours, content, typography, and more. With over 986 themes (24 free + 961 paid) and the ability to edit code using Liquid, HTML, and CSS, you can create a truly unique brand identity.

Amazon

Amazon severely limits customization. All seller stores use the same fixed template, with only three available product detail page layouts. You can add content and images, but you cannot change the overall design. Moreover, your products appear alongside those of competitors, making it very difficult to establish distinct brand recognition.

Read more: Shopify vs GoDaddy: Which Website Builder Is Best?

4. Traffic and Customer Reach - A Tie

Amazon

Amazon attracts 2.45 billion monthly visits, mostly from loyal users. This presents a significant opportunity to promote products and reach a vast pool of potential customers. However, due to intense competition with many similar products, converting visitors into buyers can be more challenging.

Shopify

Shopify allows you to build your own independent online store, but it does not come with built-in traffic. If you don’t actively promote it yourself, attracting visitors will be difficult, requiring significant investment in SEO, advertising, and marketing. Tools like Triple Whale’s Pixel can help optimize sales performance and track results effectively.

5. E-commerce Features – Amazon

Both Amazon and Shopify offer powerful e-commerce tools, but Amazon stands out for its simplicity in store management. Detailed comparison:

Shopify

• Product management: Add products manually or via CSV, easy categorization.
• Inventory: Efficient tracking, but requires third-party apps for sub-collections or to exceed the 3-variant/100-combination limit.
• Add-ons: Abandoned cart recovery, automated tax calculation, logo & QR code generators.
• Payments: Supports over 100 payment gateways; using Shopify Payments eliminates transaction fees.
• AI Tools: Over 30 AI-powered tools for automating marketing, product management, and store operations.

Amazon

• Product management: Add products individually or in bulk via Excel templates, and easy variant creation.
• Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA): Amazon handles storage, packing, and shipping — saving sellers significant time.
• Global selling: Multi-language support and multi-channel management via Multi-Channel Fulfillment.
• Payments: Accepts credit/debit cards and Amazon Pay.

6. Brand Visibility – Amazon

Shopify

With Shopify, you must build and promote your own brand from scratch — customers won’t naturally discover your store. Therefore, email marketing, social media, SEO, omnichannel selling, and abandoned cart recovery are crucial for attracting and retaining customers.

Amazon

In contrast, Amazon handles SEO and email campaigns for you, automatically exposing your store to millions of monthly visitors. This significantly increases sales opportunities, despite fierce competition and Amazon's own sales of the same products.

Read more: Shopify vs WooCommerce: Which E-commerce Platform Wins?

7. Marketing strategy

Shopify

Shopify requires you to generate your own traffic, as the platform does not drive customers directly to your store. Key aspects include:

• Advertising & marketing: Paid social ads, offline marketing, SEO.
• SEO tools: Meta tags, alt text, 301 redirects, XML sitemaps.
• Email marketing: Shopify Email offers 2,500 free emails/month and automated abandoned cart reminders.
• App ecosystem: Shopify App Store provides thousands of apps to enhance marketing when built-in tools aren’t enough.

Amazon

Amazon already has massive built-in traffic, so the marketing strategy focuses on product optimization. Key points:

• Product optimization: Keywords, high-quality images, compelling descriptions, and reviews to boost visibility.
• Paid advertising: Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands.
• Important note: Amazon controls the customer relationship, making sellers dependent on the platform for their sales and revenue.

8. Shipping & Fulfillment – Amazon

Shopify

Shopify does not handle fulfillment directly; therefore, you must either ship yourself or use third-party apps. This gives you complete control and flexibility — you can customize shipping rates by weight, price, rules, or integrate dropshipping to avoid holding inventory. However, these apps usually come with additional costs.

Amazon

Amazon makes operations extremely simple with Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), which stores, packs, ships, and handles customer service for your products. This saves a tremendous amount of time and eliminates the need for most inventory, pricing, and logistics management.

Additionally, customers can enjoy ultra-fast Prime delivery. Amazon also supports dropshipping, though it may negatively impact customer experience and profit margins.

9. Scalability and Integration – A Tie

Amazon

Amazon provides basic selling tools, but they are not as powerful as Shopify’s. However, its massive existing customer base and built-in integrations enable you to scale quickly without incurring heavy technology investment.

Shopify

Shopify offers numerous advanced e-commerce tools, enabling you to utilize CRM, automation, and various integrations to grow your business efficiently. However, building a brand and entirely using these tools requires more time and effort than Amazon does.

10. Payment Options - Shopify

Flexibility in payment methods is a key factor highly valued by many sellers, as it allows customers to pay in their preferred way, which can significantly increase conversion rates.

• Amazon: Although customers on Amazon don’t have too many payment options, credit cards, debit cards, and Amazon Pay balance still provide a certain level of flexibility.
• Shopify: Shopify supports over 100 payment gateways with no transaction fees (except those charged by the payment provider), ranging from PayPal to Apple Pay, providing customers with more choices and a smoother checkout experience.

11. Support – Tie

Shopify

Shopify offers 24/7 support via email, live chat, and phone, so you’re always covered when you need help. Additionally, you can find answers in their extensive documentation, tutorial videos, community forums, or changelog to stay updated on new features. As a result, issues, ranging from basic to advanced, are resolved quickly.

Amazon

Amazon also offers 24/7 support via email, chat, and phone, enabling sellers to reach out at any time. Additionally, Amazon provides a community forum and a comprehensive Help Center with numerous FAQs, making it easy to find solutions without lengthy wait times.

Read more: Shopify vs BigCommerce: Which Platform Is Better for You?

Selling on Shopify vs Amazon: Key Differences

Both Shopify and Amazon allow you to sell digital and physical products, making it easy for beginners to start earning income. However, Shopify lets you build your own branded store with your logo, brand identity, and the ability to create discounts, while Amazon does not offer these customization options.

Verdict: Shopify is ideal if you want to own your own store, fully control your brand, and maximize profits. On the other hand, Amazon is perfect if you want instant access to a huge customer base but are willing to share a

Shopify and Amazon: Which one should you choose?

Choose Amazon if:

• You are a reseller focused on arbitrage, wholesale, or retail price differences.
• You want immediate access to a massive pool of potential customers.
• You prioritize sales volume over brand building.
• You don’t have much time, budget, or resources to manage a separate e-commerce website.

Choose Shopify if:

• Marketing is the primary driver of your sales.
• You want complete control over your brand and products.
• Building a long-term brand is more important than just making quick sales.
• You plan to scale your business significantly.
• You sell directly and want to utilize multiple sales channels in addition to your own store.