Is it better to sell on Amazon or to open your own online store?
It is not a binary choice but a calculation. On Amazon you buy traffic with a fee on every sale; with your own store you must build that traffic, but the customer and their data stay yours.
Short answer
- Amazon brings existing demand, but keeps a referral fee that varies by category.
- The professional plan adds a fixed monthly fee, regardless of sales.
- On the marketplace you do not own customer data and cannot work on repeat purchases.
- With your own store the margin is intact, but the cost shifts to acquiring traffic.
- The soundest combination uses the marketplace to get found and your own store to bring customers back.
The comparison
Marketplace versus own store
| Criterion | Amazon | Own store |
|---|---|---|
| Traffic | Immediate, already there | To be built with SEO and campaigns |
| Cost per sale | Category fee plus subscription | Fixed subscription plus payment fees |
| Customer data | Not yours | Yours, reusable |
| Rules of the game | Change unilaterally | You define them |
| Brand | Barely visible next to competitors | Entirely yours |
A practical example
Example: a product sold at €40 with a €24 cost leaves €16 of margin. On a marketplace with a 12% fee, €4.80 goes away, plus the monthly plan and any fulfilment: a little over €11 remains. On the same product sold from your own store the payment fee is about €0.80: the difference is the budget you can invest in getting found.
Common mistakes
- Building all your revenue on a single channel you do not control.
- Comparing the marketplace fee with the platform subscription while ignoring the cost of traffic.
- Opening your own store with no plan to get found, then concluding that “it does not work”.
- Keeping two separate catalogues that drift apart on prices and stock.
How 4shopy helps
- The catalogue is single and imports from a file, so you do not rewrite product pages twice.
- Product pages emit Product and Offer structured data, with price and availability.
- Customers and their orders stay in your store, reusable to bring them back.
- Q&A pages and the blog are included tools for getting found without depending on the marketplace.