Sell on a marketplace or build your own online shop?

It is not an either/or: most profitable merchants do both. The right question is what the commission buys — traffic — and how long you are willing to rent it.

Short answer

A marketplace brings buyers immediately but usually takes 8–20% of the sale price.
Your own shop costs a fixed subscription plus payment fees, with no commission on the margin.
On a marketplace you own neither the customer relationship nor the purchase data.
Brand, search visibility and a customer list are only built on your own domain.
The most common combination: marketplace for acquisition, own shop for margin and loyalty.

The comparison

Marketplace or own shop

Criterion	Marketplace	Own shop
Traffic	Immediate, supplied by the platform	To be built: SEO, social, e-mail
Cost per sale	8–20% commission	Fixed subscription and payment fees
Customer data	Held by the platform	Held by you
Competition	Direct on the same product listing	None on your own domain
Risk	Account suspension, rule changes	Dependence on your own acquisition

A real example

Example: a merchant sells €3,000 a month on a marketplace at 15% commission, that is €450 taken every month. An own shop on a €10/month plan keeps that margin, but the traffic is on them. The maths is the monthly commission: past a few hundred euros, funding your own channel starts to pay.

Common mistakes

Relying on a single channel and losing all revenue to an account suspension.
Opening a shop with no acquisition plan, then concluding “the shop doesn’t work”.
Pricing lower on the marketplace than on your own site.
Not slipping an invitation to visit your own site into the shipped parcel.

How 4shopy helps

The shop runs on your own domain, with your colours and your brand.
The catalogue is exportable, which makes feeding marketplaces in parallel easier.
Customers and orders belong to you and stay usable for loyalty work.
A multi-vendor marketplace mode exists if you want to host your own sellers.