Shopify vs eBay 2022: Which is Best for an Online Store?

There's no doubt that ecommerce is a very lucrative industry. In fact as time goes by more and more people are now buying things online especially since the global pandemic in 2019. 

When starting your online eCommerce business, the first thing you'll need to do is to pick a platform that'll host your ecommerce store. Creating an ecommerce business has never been easier with all the options available online.

There are plenty of options to choose from, but making up your mind on which platform to use can be very daunting

In this article, we’ll compare two popular choices for most people – Shopify and eBay. While both are great options for online stores, they still differ in many ways.

We'll also be providing you with an alternative to both platforms which will not only be cost effective but will have all the pro features you'll need in order to get your eCommerce store up and running in no time. 

I'll assume everyone knows what ebay and shopify is but for those who aren't familiar with both platforms here's a quick intro.

What is Shopify?

Shopify is a software as a service (‘SaaS’) tool — which means that it enables users to be able to create web stores for a price which is usually charged on a monthly basis.

Currently, it is one of the most popular hosted eCommerce platforms on the market.

With Shopify, you can quickly build and manage a professional online store with your chosen domain URL. The platform offers users a wide range of customizable templates, incredible SEO features, and flexibility.

What is ebay?

eBay, one of the world's biggest online marketplace with a wide range of products from big businesses to private sellers.

eBay has gained its popularity not only from selling used stuff but also for auctioning items as well. ebays is also the go-to site for anyone looking to buy or sell second handed products or just make extra income selling things online. 

Anyone can sell anything on eBay, from new and trending to old and unwanted items. In a few minutes you can list your items with photos, descriptions, prices, and shipping information.

What's the difference between shopify and eBay?

Both platforms share one main similarity together which is hosting a webstore but they differ in many ways. we'll be differentiating both platforms based on what sellers want to know when starting out their eCommerce business which are 

Fees.

Customization.

Branding.

Analytics.

Ease of Use.

Let's take a look at how Shopify and eBay stack up against each other.

Shopify vs ebay: Fees.

Shopify Fees. 

Shopify provides a 14-day free trial and three different pricing packages:

Basic Shopify: $29 per month with all the basics for running a brand new e-commerce store. You should also take 

‘Basic Shopify’ provides you with a blog that you can use to increase traffic to your store by publishing relevant keyword-rich content.

Shopify’s blogging feature doesn’t rival WordPress in the functionality stakes — it doesn’t provide a revision history, and the post categorisation options are fairly limited.

But that said, it’s perfectly usable and, with the publication of good content, can facilitate an inbound marketing campaign well.

Shopify: $79 per month with everything on the Basic plan and more staff accounts, improved reports, gift cards, POS, and shipping methods.

Advanced Shopify: $299 per month with everything on the Shopify plan and more staff accounts, advanced reports, POS, and shipping options.

Shopify Plus: plans start at $2000 per month and are based on your pricing customized plan. Shopify Plus is an additional option for high-volume merchants. The fees for Shopify Plus vary but are far higher, making it best-suited to enterprises looking for significant scale.

Shopify Lite: This is available for just $9 per month. It lets you sell via Facebook, interact with customers through the Messenger app, take credit card payments, and add products to a website/blog. 

Shopify Transaction Fees Explained.

Each time a customer purchases from you (a transaction), depending on which Shopify plan you subscribed to, a transaction fee will be charged. The fees are 2% for the Basic Shopify plan, 1% for the Shopify plan, and 0.5% for the Advanced Shopify plan.

For Shopify Payments, transaction fees are as follows:

Basic Shopify Plan –  2.9% + 30 cents per transaction

Shopify Plan –  2.6% + 30 cents per transaction

Advanced Shopify Plan –  2.4% + 30 cents per transaction.

These fees are on a per transaction basis, not on a per-item sold basis. So if someone buys 10 shirts from you in one single transaction, the 30 cents would be charged collectively and not on each shirt.

(Note: If you sell products in-person using Shopify’s Point-of-Sale system, the credit card rates are lower)

Shopify Payments is currently available to stores in the United States, Puerto Rico, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

eBay Fees.

eBay fees can be very confusing so I'll not be giving an in-depth analysis because of its convoluted nature. But I'll leave a link to their website where every fee charged is explained in full detail. eBay fees aren't totally fixed; some fees depend on the location of your buyer, while others depend on the type of items you're selling.

To simplify, ebay charges four(4) types of fees namely

Transaction fees: These are usually charged at the time of sale and are usually deducted from the buyers payment. An example of transaction fees are final value fees and international fees. final value fees are calculated as a percentage of the total amount of the sale, + $0.30 per order.

The total amount of the sale includes the item price, handling charges, the shipping service the buyer selects, sales tax, and any other applicable fees. international fees applies if your registered address is in the US, or 

The delivery address for the item (entered by the buyer during checkout) is outside the US, or

The buyer's registered address is outside the US (regardless of the delivery address for the item)

This fee is calculated as 1.65% of the total amount of the sale and is automatically deducted from your sales.

Listing Fees: This fee is usually charged at the time of listing your product on eBay and is usually charged from your available or processing funds. An example of listing fees are insertion and listing upgrade fees. insertion fees Every month, you'll get up to 250 zero insertion fee listings, or more if you have an eBay Store. After you've used up your zero insertion fee allowance, insertion fees will be charged. The average insertion fee for most categories is $0.35 per listing. You should also note that insertion fees are;

Non-refundable if your item doesn't sell

Charged per listing and per category. So, if you list your item in two categories, you'll pay an insertion fee for the second category too. 

Charged for the original listing and each time you choose to relist your item

Charged per listing if you create duplicate auction-style listings for identical items. Read more about our Duplicate listings policy

Charged only once per listing for listings with multiple items. Read more about listings with multiple items and listings with variations.

Listing upgrade fees Are charged when you want to enhance your listings to make them stand out by adding certain features, such as a subtitle, or bold font. You should also note that these fees vary depending on your item's price and the listing format and duration.

Monthly Fees; These fees are usually charged at the middle or end of each month and are charged from your available and processing funds. An example of monthly fees are store subscription fees.

Other fees and Selling costs: These fees are usually charged at the time they’re incurred. These fees are charged from available and processing funds. An example of these kind of fees are shipping labels, ad fees, refunds to buyers, dispute fees

For more Information on eBay fees you can check their website below for Selling fees

How fees and selling costs are charged.

Selling fees for ebay sellers.

eBay's Payment Method.

eBay accepts the following forms of payment at eBay checkout:

PayPal

PayPal Credit

Credit card or debit card processed through the seller’s Internet merchant account

Payment upon pickup

Payment upon pickup must offer one of the approved electronic payment methods. Listings may include the statement: “Contact me for payment methods to pay on pickup.”

Listings in one of our approved categories may offer the following additional payment options:

Bank-to-bank transfers (also known as bank wire transfers and bank cash transfers)

Checks

Money orders

Online payment services (for example, Allpay.net, CertaPay, Fiserv, Nochex.com, XOOM)

Shopify vs eBay: Customization.

Shopify is obviously the clear winner when it comes to customization. With about 100 modern and sophisticated designs, setting up your store will be a lot easier. Plus, all the templates are responsive; this means that they're perfectly optimized for desktops, tablets, and mobiles.

Thanks to shopify's more advanced editor and higher levels of customization, The Shopify app store also integrates logistics, shipping, payment options, push notifications to customers, and more. One good thing about shopify is their transparent and easy to understand fees, unlike eBay’s confusing charges. 

eBay on the other hand doesn't provide that much flexibility when it comes to design customization. You can design a unique storefront, but you’ll always be stuck with eBay’s logo and branding. When it comes to listings, sellers can manage title, variation options such as color, size and model, and initial description. 

The central overview area can be utilized to add more product information and images. But that's about it you can't do more than that. 

While eBay Store subscribers can send customers newsletters via email, the templates don’t have that much customization space and they also have rules as to what, and what not to include in those messages, not giving you full creative control over the content you provide.

Furthermore, eBay doesn’t provide merchants with newsletter metrics.

Shopify vs eBay: Branding.

In terms of branding both Shopify and eBay have their pros. Since Shopify has more design flexibility it's easier for you to build your brand since your store would be independent making it easier for you to change things and build a solid online presence. The downside to this is that you'll have to drive traffic to your website manually.

As we all know, people tend to come back to the store they trust to find the products they need. Sometimes even finding unique products which they never knew existed.

Thіѕ is the relationship between the store and the customers.

On еBау, the bіggеѕt drawback іѕ that you can't build rеlаtіоnѕhір with your customers.

еBау іѕ a mаrkеt рlасе and customers аrе on the hunt for the products with the best prices. And with your competitors' products being displayed alongside your own it can be very difficult to stand out or retain customers. No one cares about the brand, it's all about the price. So on eBay it can be very difficult to build a brand or connect with your customers.

Shopify vs eBay: Analytics.

Sellers can track the progress of their listings with the help of analytics. Analytics uses an algorithm to calculate and gather valuable information to help answer business questions. It’s the key to improving your business.

Shopify displays business insights through your dashboard.

In this dashboard, you can view stats like sales, top products, landing pages or referrers, returning customer rate, and more.

That's not all, Shopify users can also create their own custom reports easily.

Not to mention the Advanced Shopify and Shopify Plus plans also offer pre-defined reports.

While on eBay, If you want more comprehensive ecommerce control, you’ll need to upgrade to eBay’s Selling Manager Pro. Which allows you to save store listing templates, manage your products more effectively, and track your inventory. You’ll also be able to view sales reports, and automatically schedule listings or relist unsold items.

Selling Manager Pro is free if you’re on the Premium, Anchor, or Enterprise plan. If not, it’ll cost you an extra $15.99 per month. A lot of what ebay's Selling Manager Pro offers for a fee, Shopify gives you as part of your monthly plan.

Shopify vs eBay: Ease Of Use.

Easy to use is one of the most important factors to consider when you choose a platform.

Why? Because you wouldn’t want to spend days setting up your store only to realize it is impossible for you to manage, would you?

So how simple is it to run an online store on Shopify vs eBay platform?

To Shopify, ease of use is one area where it shines more than most other platforms.

You don’t need to be a web designer or coder to build your store. All orders can be managed from their automatable fulfillment dashboard.

It will save a lot of time and effort for you.

And whether you use the desktop or mobile devices, responsiveness is both taken care of.

With eBay, you won’t need to prepare any technical knowledge or have any experience.

eBay is the most simple eCommerce platform to use.

They also have some business tools that are intuitive, clear, and packed with massive documentation.

Shopify vs eBay: Alternative.

There's an alternative to both platforms and in my opinion I think it's worth checking out.

It's WordPress, a free content management system (CMS) or in simple terms, a site builder which enables users to just drag and drop. It powers over a million sites, and with just $100 or less you can pay for both a domain name and hosting which you'll only have to pay yearly.

That's not all, with astra's free theme and woocommerce integration you'll have a fully functioning website with most of those pro features at no extra cost to you. I really think when starting an ecommerce business you should focus on spending very little at least until you start getting sales