Etsy VS. Shopify review *HONEST!

okay the time has come we will be comparing shopify and etsy hey guys welcome back to my channel it is taylor if you don't know me um i own boardwalk beads which is this little business right here um some may not see it as successful but i would say i'm pretty proud of it i started off on etsy and now have moved to shopify i might reopen my etsy just to have it on the side so i can do both at the same time but a lot of you guys wanted to see my opinion on whether i liked shopify or etsy more so i am here to give my opinion please know that all this is just my opinion you might like something way more than the other one and that's great but i'm just speaking from my experience on both platforms here's like the basics you have to know etsy is for more handmade products like i started off with handmade jewelry handmade everything um now i obviously have some like non-handmade stuff like the rings and the t-shirts and stuff like that which i get made for me but etsy specializes in handmade crafts whereas shopify you can literally do anything there's not many rules let's see you have to follow some very strict rules um which you can read on their website and stuff like that i'm not gonna sit here and explain them but etsy is basically where everyone starts off you know most people start off on etsy because it's a search engine you don't really have to market like etsy does the marketing for you it pushes your shop out to people whereas shopify you're in charge every like person that comes to your website that's all you like that's shopify doesn't do any of that for you we'll get into the pros and cons of both starting off with the pros of etsy like i said etsy is a search engine which i think is obviously the biggest pro that i could give it basically markets your shop for you so it you know etsy's an app full of millions and millions of shops so it'll put your products and ads and this and that and that so it attracts mainly most of your customers for you unless you're you know have something on the side like instagram tick tock youtube that's also putting people in which you're gonna want another pro is how easy they make it etsy makes it so flippin easy to list products you know you've got your shop laid out for you there's really nothing you have to do that you don't like that doesn't explain all you have to do is list your products and make a bio and like it's just so easy and managing the shop is piece of cake filing taxes piece of cake i think so i've heard another pro of etsy their messaging system is just i would have died without it it is so helpful and now that i don't have it it sucks because i miss it it makes it so so easy to get in touch with customers and just anyone on etsy it's amazing in my opinion another pro shipping they make it so easy to ship on etsy you don't really have to do anything my whole experience on etsy i would sum it up to be really just smooth sailing and easy but now let's get to the downsides of etsy i'd say the biggest one is how many fees they charge i feel like yes they're smaller fees than shopify but they add up so if you're making a lot of sales those fees will add up whether it's the transaction fee shipping fee listing fees like there's just so many little things the biggest pain is the listing fee now if you have a shop and you only have like 20 listings you're fine listing fees not gonna affect you that much but if you're a bigger shop with like hundreds of listings it's 20 cents per listing and every time you restock a listing too so if it goes sold out you have to pay 20 cents to put it back on your shop that is definitely a pain because i used to sell out of things really fast and i would have to pay each time just to get them back up on my shop another downside is how you can't customize your shop yes it's easy because they have it laid out for you but it's so like cookie cutter all the same it's really nothing unique about the shop that you'll see on etsy everything looks the same which might just be me being nitpicky but i'm not a fan of that another downside is how many rules etsy has i know obviously everyone's going to have rules and every platform is gonna be different but etsy has strict rules and if they see that you're not following it they're going to come at you their customer service as well etsy in itself is not it if i could say i got my shop suspended this is why i switched to shopify i got my shop suspended because i was under 18 and i had thought that i had done everything right it was under my parents name like i thought i'd done everything right so when they shut it down i was pissed say the least um but i emailed them just saying like hey what's wrong like what can i fix they took four or five months to respond yeah i think it was more four months but they just emailed back yeah it was tough to get in contact with them and it was really tough to figure out how to get in contact with them yeah besides the fees and the setup of etsy i don't have that many complaints and like all the rules and stuff so that's really all i have to say for etsy now let's get on to shopify as i mentioned earlier shopify doesn't have as many rules as etsy has which i think is definitely a pro and they can't disable your shop you know also with shopify you're not necessarily connected to a platform like etsy so rather than being one of the millions of sellers on etsy you're just the one seller on your website so i think that kind of i don't know if it really matters for anything but i really like the way that shopify is set up in the way that i can view all of the analytics i can see like how many people are viewing my website at a certain time and i just all the analytics that it gives you are just great they're really awesome and you can also download like apps on shopify which will help you with different things there's thousands of apps you can download on shopify to make your website better if you choose to do that onto the cons of shopify um there's one thing that i'm pretty sure everyone will tell you is really really confusing at the start like designing your website this honestly might just be my experience but it was so confusing trying to figure out how to format it and how to code everything how to do this there was not much coding it was like one thing so i'm exaggerating figuring out how to start it and how to just navigate the whole platform for me was really difficult i had to watch a youtube video and like go along with the video on like how to set up things so i could better understand what i'm doing so so if you're thinking about starting a shopify store you're gonna want to go with the video it made it so easy for me to like just understand because at first i was like drowning in a sea of unknown another con of shopify is how you're in charge for any traffic you direct the website so unlike etsy it doesn't push your stuff out to people you're in charge of getting people to click on your website so ways i would do that is through instagram tick tock youtube any social media platform instagram being the one i think you should rely on most or tik tok if you're you know you got a good tick tock going on but it's really it's all up to you um which is why i would say start off on etsy and then switch to shopify once you built kind of like a community i switched to shopify when i had i think 50 000 followers i mean i could have done it sooner obviously and you could do it whenever i was just very skeptical of if i switch over to shopify will i get as many sales and it took me a little bit but i ended up getting as many sales as i would on etsy and i did on etsy another con of shopify is how people might think it's untrustworthy whereas on etsy you know like okay it's etsy you see the reviews you see this you know everything's fully legit because it's shopify people could be a little more skeptical of which understandable you know online it's a scary place so i've had so many people dm me like oh are you a scam and i have to explain like oh no you know i use shopify and i have to explain basically everything because having your own website you run that risk of like scaring people off you know that might be a little dramatic but i think you get what i mean you also have to pay a monthly subscription price whereas if you're not selling much on etsy the fees aren't going to add up to be a lot but if you're not selling as much on shopify your fees are still going to go up so if you're really just starting out like i said you're going to want to start out on etsy and when you feel comfortable you can switch to shopify or you can do both at the same time once you know once you've become established in my opinion i am happier on shopify than i am on it obviously there are a lot more little details that go into the pros and cons but i personally they're both great you honestly can't go wrong i hope you guys found some of this useful um i know you're probably thinking why am i taking advice from a 14 year old girl sitting in a room um but i've i've been around to experience a little bit for the past two years almost on both etsy and shopify so i'm not an expert i'm not a genius but this is all just my experience genuinely so i hope you found some of this interesting or useful and if you did make sure to comment down below if you want more videos like this i'm starting to post all the time now i used to not post a lot but now i'm trying to post every week if you aren't subscribed to please click that subscribe button it helps me out more than you can imagine um hit the like while you're at it maybe and i really appreciate you all and have a good day

Channel: Taylor Alex

Views: 5,164

Keywords: Etsy, Shopify, Entrepreneur, Business, Small business, E-commerce

Id: R6FTQjVftpA

Length: 10min 2sec (602 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 22 2021