Key takeaways
- Etsy sells reach; your own store sells ownership. Most makers need both for a while.
- Etsy’s real fee stack in Canada runs roughly 11 to 13 percent per sale before ads, and it repeats on every single order.
- The one thing Etsy never hands over is the customer: no owned email list, no direct relationship, no shelter from a rule change.
- Etsy-only is the honest right call at the validation stage, at low volume, or when you simply have no time for a second channel.
- Your own store starts winning when repeat buyers, wholesale, and market traffic give you people you could send somewhere you own.
On this page
Etsy or your own store? The short answer
Etsy buys you marketplace traffic and takes fees plus the customer relationship. Your own store costs more up front and hands you the margin, the email list, and the brand. For most Canadian makers the smart move is both-and, not either-or: run Etsy as a channel until your own store carries itself.
I build stores for makers and I will still tell you to stay on Etsy when that is the right call. Etsy is a genuinely good place to start, and a store of your own is a genuinely good place to grow into. The mistake is treating them as a either-or fight when they do different jobs. Here is how the two stack up side by side, before we get into the money.
| Selling on Etsy | Your own store | |
|---|---|---|
| Traffic | Built-in marketplace shoppers searching with intent. | You bring the traffic through search, social, markets, and your list. |
| Fees | Roughly 11 to 13 percent per sale, plus ads, on every order forever. | A build cost, then hosting and card processing, with no marketplace cut. |
| The customer | Etsy’s contact. You cannot export them or freely follow up. | Yours. Email, repeat orders, and the relationship you control. |
| Brand | Your shop inside Etsy’s frame, beside lookalike listings. | Your name, your rules, no competitor in the sidebar. |
| Risk | Fee hikes, algorithm shifts, and suspensions are Etsy’s call. | You own the platform choice and the customer relationship. |
| Best at | Discovery and first-time buyer trust. | Repeat buyers, margin, wholesale, and long-term brand. |
Etsy rents you an audience. Your own store lets you keep the customer. The question is only ever which one you need more of this year.
The real Etsy fee stack a Canadian seller pays
Etsy’s cut is not one fee, it is a stack of them, and in Canada it lands harder than the headline 6.5 percent suggests. These are the pieces from Etsy’s published fee schedule as of July 2026. Fees change, so treat these as the shape of the bill, not a frozen quote, and confirm the live rates before you plan around them.
- Listing fee
- About $0.20 USD per listing, roughly CA$0.28 at current rates. Etsy bills it in US dollars, and a listing expires after four months or when it sells, so an active shop pays it over and over.
- Transaction fee
- 6.5 percent of the whole order, and that includes the shipping you charge, not just the item price. Raise your prices to cover the fees and the fee rises right along with them.
- Payment processing
- In Canada, roughly 3 percent plus CA$0.25 on a domestic order, or 4 percent plus CA$0.25 on an international one. This is separate from the transaction fee, so both land on the same sale.
- Regulatory operating fee
- Canada currently carries an extra fee near 1.15 percent of the order total, layered on top of everything else.
- Offsite Ads fee
- When Etsy advertises your listing off the site and the shopper buys within 30 days, you pay 15 percent of that order, or 12 percent once your shop clears US$10,000 in a trailing year, at which point it becomes mandatory. It is capped per order, but it stacks on a sale you might have made anyway.
Add the pieces up on a real order. On a CA$50 sale shipped inside Canada, the transaction fee is CA$3.25, processing is about CA$1.75, the regulatory fee is roughly CA$0.58, and the listing fee is a couple of dimes. Call it near CA$5.85, or about 12 percent, before you have advertised anything. Turn on Offsite Ads and one order in the mix can shed another 15 percent on top. None of this is a scandal. It is the honest rent on borrowed traffic, and it repeats on every sale for as long as you sell there.
What Etsy genuinely gives you
Etsy is not a trap, and pretending otherwise is dishonest. For a new maker it hands over three real things that a brand-new store of your own simply cannot, and those three things are worth paying for while you need them.
- Search traffic you did not have to build: millions of buyers already browse Etsy with their wallet open, looking for handmade and vintage.
- Borrowed buyer trust: the checkout, the reviews, and the buyer protection are Etsy’s, so a first-time shopper trusts the transaction before they trust you.
- Almost no start friction: you can list a product in an afternoon with no build, no hosting, and no developer.
That first one is the big one. A store of your own starts at zero visitors, and traffic is the hardest thing to build. Etsy points a firehose of buying-intent shoppers at your listings on day one. If you have nothing to sell yet and no proof anyone wants it, that head start is exactly what you need, and it is why the validation stage belongs on Etsy.
What Etsy quietly takes back
The cost of borrowed traffic is not only the fee stack. Etsy also keeps the parts of the sale that compound over time, and most sellers do not feel the loss until they try to grow past it.
- No email list you own. The buyer is Etsy’s contact, not yours, so you cannot export them or send the follow-up that turns one sale into five.
- No remarketing you control. You cannot quietly re-reach a browser who left without buying the way your own store can.
- Algorithm and policy risk. Search placement, fee changes, and account suspensions are Etsy’s call, and a rule change can move your income overnight.
- Fee stacking on every single sale, forever. It is not a one-time cost you clear, it is a cut on order number one and order number nine hundred.
- Lookalike listings right beside yours. A shopper on your product page sees a row of competitors in the "you may also like" strip.
The email list is the quiet one that matters most. On your own store, a buyer becomes a contact you can thank, update, and invite back, and the second sale to that person carries no marketplace fee at all. On Etsy, that same buyer is a stranger you rent access to once. Strong product pages and clear buyer confidence are what turn a first sale into a second, and the mechanics of that live in the guide on product photos, FAQs, and shipping that build buyer confidence. The relationship, though, only becomes yours to keep once the store is yours.
The hybrid play: Etsy as a channel, your store as home base
The move most Canadian makers should actually make is not choosing. It is running Etsy as a discovery channel and your own store as the home base that owns the customer. Etsy finds the new buyer; your store keeps them, emails them, and sells to them again without a cut coming off the top.
Think of Etsy as the market stall and your store as the shop with your name over the door. The stall gets you foot traffic you would never reach alone. The shop is where the regulars come back, where you set the rules, and where the margin stays yours. You are not abandoning the stall to open the shop. You are giving the people who found you at the stall a better place to become regulars.
Whether that home base should be a full Shopify store or something lighter depends on how much machinery your catalogue really needs. If you are weighing that, is Shopify worth it for a small store and whether a simpler store is enough both work the decision through with real numbers, and the wider platform question is covered in the best e-commerce platform for a Canadian small business guide.
When staying Etsy-only is the right call
Adding a store of your own is not always the next move, and building one too early just adds a channel you cannot feed. Stay Etsy-only, with a clear conscience, when these are true.
- You are still validating: you want to know anyone will pay before you invest in a store of your own.
- Volume is low. A handful of sales a month does not yet justify a second channel to run.
- You have no time. One channel done well beats two done halfway, and Etsy is the faster one to keep alive.
If you are at the validation stage, Etsy is doing the single most valuable thing it can: proving demand cheaply, with someone else’s traffic. Spend that season learning what sells, gathering reviews, and refining your product, not wrestling a store you are not ready to promote. The store is a growth tool, and growth tools are wasted before there is something to grow.
When your own store starts pulling ahead
The tipping point is not a magic revenue number. It is the moment Etsy’s fee stack starts taxing sales you could have kept, because you now have customers and traffic of your own that you are handing to a marketplace for no reason.
- Repeat buyers are showing up: the same names reorder, and you have no way to email them from Etsy.
- Wholesale or custom interest is arriving: buyers who need their own pricing, terms, or a reorder path Etsy was never built for.
- You have traffic you already control: market and fair crowds, a social following, or packaging you could point at a store you own instead of one you rent.
Watch for the repeat buyer especially. The first time someone reorders, Etsy takes its full cut of a sale you already earned through your own product and service, and you still cannot email that person. That is the clearest signal the home base is overdue. Wholesale interest and a market crowd you could point somewhere you own are the other two. When you have people, Etsy stops being a head start and becomes a tax.
What moving to your own store actually looks like
Moving is not a leap off a cliff, it is a handover you run in stages while Etsy keeps working. Nothing goes dark, and you never bet the whole business on launch day.
- 1Keep Etsy running. It stays your discovery channel while the new store finds its feet, so nothing goes dark.
- 2Stand up your own store with real product pages, honest shipping and pickup rules, and email capture from day one.
- 3Put your own domain everywhere: business cards, packaging inserts, market signage, and your social profiles.
- 4Seed the list. Invite past and repeat buyers to the store, and give them a reason to reorder from you directly.
- 5Let each channel do its job: Etsy keeps finding new buyers, your store keeps the repeat ones and the margin.
A proper Shopify storefront through Kootenay Made Digital is $5,000, or 12 payments of $469, which is $5,628 all in through Own It Monthly, and it comes with product structure, shipping, taxes, email foundations, and launch handled. That is the Shopify build path, and it is built so the store starts capturing customers from the first sale instead of renting them back to a marketplace. Etsy stays your stall for as long as it earns its keep. The store is simply the place the regulars finally get to come home to.
Sources and further reading
- Etsy: Fees and payments policy
Etsy’s master fee schedule: listing, transaction, payment processing, regulatory, and Offsite Ads rates. Fees change over time, so confirm the live figures before you plan around them. Accessed July 2026.
- Etsy Help: payment processing fees
The country-by-country payment processing rates, including the Canadian domestic and international percentages plus the flat fee. Accessed July 2026.
- Canada Revenue Agency: when to register for and start charging GST/HST
The small-supplier threshold, generally CA$30,000 in revenue over four consecutive calendar quarters, that decides when GST/HST registration is required regardless of where you sell. Confirm your own situation with the CRA or an accountant. Accessed July 2026.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to leave Etsy to open my own store?
No, and most makers do not. The common path is running both: Etsy for discovery and first-time buyer trust, your own store for repeat buyers, margin, and the email list Etsy never hands over. Treat it as adding a home base, not burning the marketplace down.
Can I sell the same products in both places at once?
Yes. Selling on Etsy and your own store at the same time is normal and allowed. The one discipline that matters is keeping stock and pricing in sync so you do not oversell the last unit or confuse a buyer who checks both. A store built with honest inventory rules makes that easy.
What happens to my Etsy traffic if I build my own store?
It stays on Etsy. Your own store does not inherit Etsy’s marketplace search, so you build the store’s traffic yourself through your domain on packaging, market signage, social, email, and Google. That is exactly why the hybrid setup works: Etsy keeps finding new buyers while your store keeps the ones who come back.
How long before my own store pays for itself?
Honestly, it depends on your repeat rate. A store built to capture emails and turn one-time buyers into repeat orders pays back faster, because the second and third purchase carry no marketplace fee. A store with no repeat engine behind it can take a long time. I will not put a date on it, because an honest answer cannot.
Do I handle GST differently selling on my own store?
The basic rule is the same wherever you sell. In Canada you generally must register for and charge GST/HST once you pass the small-supplier threshold, currently CA$30,000 in revenue over four consecutive calendar quarters. It follows your business, not the platform. Confirm your own situation with the CRA or an accountant.
Which platform should I use for my own store?
It depends on how much machinery you actually need. A small, simple catalogue may not need a full commerce platform at all, while a real product business usually lands on Shopify. The best e-commerce platform guide and the simpler-store guide walk through that decision with your own numbers.
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