Shopify vs Amazon: where should you sell?

Who owns the customer

This is the difference that compounds. On Shopify, the email address, the purchase history, and the ability to market again are yours. On Amazon, the customer belongs to Amazon, and your ability to reach them again is limited to what the platform permits. If your product has any repeat-purchase potential, that gap eventually dwarfs the fee difference.

• Shopify: full customer data ownership
• Amazon: restricted post-purchase contact
• Retention economics favor owned channels
• Brand Registry helps but doesn't close the gap

Discovery and demand

Amazon's advantage is that shoppers arrive already intending to buy. You don't have to create demand, you have to win the comparison. Shopify gives you no built-in traffic at all, which means paid, organic, and social have to do the work. New brands often underestimate how much that costs.

• Amazon: high purchase intent, high competition
• Shopify: you build the demand
• Amazon ads are increasingly pay-to-play
• Owned SEO compounds; marketplace rank doesn't transfer

Real margin, not headline fees

Compare fully loaded costs, not sticker prices. Amazon takes referral fees, FBA fulfillment, storage, returns processing, and ad spend that's effectively mandatory. Shopify takes platform fees, payment processing, apps, fulfillment, and whatever you spend on traffic. The winner varies by product weight, price point, and repeat rate, so run your own numbers per SKU.

• Model per SKU, not per channel
• Include ad spend as a channel cost
• Weight and size drive FBA economics
• Returns behave very differently on each

Running both without cannibalizing

Most established brands should run both, with different jobs. Amazon is the discovery and volume channel, your own store is the margin and relationship channel. That works when pricing, assortment, and bundling are deliberately differentiated, and it breaks when the same SKU at the same price competes with itself.

• Differentiate bundles and assortment
• Keep pricing policy consistent and enforced
• Use inserts to move buyers to owned channels
• Watch for unauthorized resellers

A simple decision rule

If you're pre-product-market-fit and need to learn whether people will buy, Amazon gets you an answer fastest. If you already have demand and your problem is margin, retention, or brand control, your own store deserves the investment. Most brands cross that line without noticing, and keep over-investing in the channel that got them started.

• Early validation: lean Amazon
• Margin and retention: lean owned store
• Revisit the split every year
• Measure contribution margin, not revenue