How Shopify's Seller Fees Compare to Other E-commerce Platforms
Shopify’s seller fees are cost-effective when compared to other e-commerce platforms. Shopify has an easy-to-use dashboard that integrates easily into Link My Books for quick and accurate bookkeeping. But how does Shopify compare to other e-commerce platforms? Let’s look at eBay and Etsy and see how Shopify’s seller fees stand up to them.
eBay
eBay offers all users a free auction style of selling products, but setting up an online shop with them comes with benefits. The main two fees that eBay charges sellers are a listing fee, also known as an insertion fee, and is the cost for putting an item up for sale. Listing fees are nonrefundable even if the item doesn’t sell.
The other fee they charge is a final sale or final value fee. Like Shopify’s seller fees, eBay’s depends on which package the seller chooses. eBay Shops come in Basic, Featured, or Anchor.
eBay Shop Fees - UK (from April 2023)
Basic eBay Shop
- Monthly Cost: £27
- Free fixed price listings: 250
- Free 7-day auction-style listings: 100
Featured eBay Shop
- Monthly Cost: £77
- Free fixed price listings: 1500
- Free 7-day auction-style listings: 600
Anchor eBay Shop
- Monthly Cost: £437
- Free fixed price listings: Unlimited
- Free 7-day auction-style listings: 1000
Shipping Costs and Conversion Fees
The advantage of having an online store, means you can sell to anyone in the world. However, one of the drawbacks to this is that you must pay for shipping and, if applicable, conversion fees for converting money from one currency to another.
eBay uses the Global Shipping Programme, so all duties, taxes, and customs calculations necessary for selling and transporting goods into the EU are automatically calculated. The buyer will see and pay these at checkout and will not incur extra charges when the item is delivered.
If your shop’s registered address is in the UK, but the seller uses a different currency, then the currency conversion charge eBay applies and retains is 2.5%.
Final Value Fees
Final value fees, applied after an item has sold, varies depending on the category under which it falls. These fees can range from 3% up to 12.9%, have limits such as “Up to £650 or £1,000”, and all final value fees cost 0.30p plus the final value fee percentage.
VAT
VAT is an indirect tax charged on most services and items sold within the United Kingdom and European Union. The standard rate is 20%, and businesses collect it rather than consumers. While the standard VAT rate is 20%, 5% and 0% may also apply to specific goods.
Etsy
Etsy is a site uniquely built for selling items artists create and charges each user for every listing they make. For every listing an artist makes on its site, Etsy charges 20 cents which is roughly 15p. This charge will last through the four month listing period. If the item re-lists either automatically or manually, the fee will be charged again. If you have multiples of the same type of product, this fee will be applied to every one of the units.
This is much more than Shopify’s seller fees, as you can make unlimited product pages as part of every monthly package. Beyond the listing fee, Etsy charges four other mandatory fees: transaction fees, regulatory fees, payment processing fees, and offsite ad fees.
Transaction Fee
This is what you pay to use Etsy’s site and is 6.5% of the total sale of each item after it sells.
Regulatory Fee
UK law requires everyone to pay to use online sales platforms, so all online sellers, regardless of platform, must pay it. Etsy charges sellers 0.25% of the total sale.
Payment Processing Fee
This fee is charged when using Etsy’s money-transfer system. For sellers in the UK, this charge is 4% of the total sale plus 20p. VAT is charged at 20% of each of these fees.
Offsite Ad Fee
Etsy also charges an offsite ad fee at 15% of the total sale, and only applies if the sale was a direct result of a buyer clicking a specific ad to get to the listing. All sellers are automatically opted in. Sellers who make less than $10,000 (approximately £7,800) can opt out. For sellers who make over this amount, the fee is reduced to 12%, and they cannot opt out.
Conversion Fees
Similar to eBay, Etsy charges a 2.5% currency conversion on the sale amount of every product.
Shopify
Shopify is a site that allows sellers in almost every country in the world to create an online store, no coding involved. Shopify doesn’t have any strictly free plans, but it does offer a free three day trial and three months of Basic Shopify for £1 a month.
You can buy these plans at the monthly price, but paying for the year up front saves you 25%. There are no Shopify fees in the UK for making listings. Every plan allows you to show unlimited products up to a limit of 50 products per page.
Basic Shopify
- Monthly: £25 per month
- Annual: £19 per month
Shopify
- Monthly: £65 per month
- Annual: £49 per month
Advanced Shopify
- Monthly: £344 per month
- Annual: £259 per month
Shipping Costs
Shipping rates are added to a customer’s order at checkout.
Transaction Fees
Unlike other e-commerce platforms, you won’t need something like a Shopify fees calculator for all of the added costs. If you use Shopify Payments, you won’t have to pay any transaction fees. But if you want buyers to be able to use any major credit card, Shopify fees in the UK for this are as follows:
Basic Shopify
- 2% + 25p online
- 1.7% + 0p in person
Shopify
- 1.7% + 25p online
- 1.6% + 0p in person
Advanced Shopify
- 1.5% + 25p online
- 1.5% + 0p in person
This would be the only reason you’d need a Shopify fees calculator. For everything else, Link My Books can calculate it and keep track of all of your bookkeeping for you.
Shopify - Made Even Easier
Shopify seller fees are lower than eBay and Etsy. To make this easy-to-use platform even easier, you can integrate your Shopify accounting with Link My Books. If you’d like to get your bookkeeping accounted for and free up more time for other pursuits, look into Link My Books for Shopify sellers.
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