What are the cons of selling on Etsy?

Here are the main cons found

John Nguyen

7 min readAug 28, 2024

I and you have gone through many analyses on how to sell on Etsy.

Today, I want to share a little about the disadvantages of selling on Etsy.

Quick Overview

I found 15,000 reviews about Etsy on Trustpilot.

It is rated poorly with an average rating of only 1.5

But why are there still so many people selling on this platform, including buyers?

I browsed through a list of reviews evaluating this marketplace and discovered that.

Many reviews are from sellers. They complain about their accounts being suspended for unclear reasons and being ignored by the Etsy support team.

In addition, there are poor customer support services that do not meet customer needs.

Transactions and products often encounter issues.

Some people complain about Etsy holding funds and not refunding them.

Therefore, I think about 60% of user reviews on Trustpilot might be from sellers.

This demonstrates that Etsy is a marketplace of significant interest to many sellers. As for buyers, I think leaving complaints is understandable if a large number of sellers are removed from the marketplace daily, and customers receive no support after payment.

Anyway,

Perhaps this is how Etsy is protecting itself from unreliable sellers.

For these reasons, I believe the negative reviews on Trustpilot regarding Etsy are understandable and normal. They do not necessarily indicate that this marketplace is unreliable.

On the contrary, it is being appreciated for the efforts they are making.

Pros and Cons of Selling on Etsy

Let’s take a detailed look at the pros and cons found in selling on Etsy reviews.

Pros of Selling on Etsy

Here are some of the top pros found in reviews on selling on Etsy:

Easy to set up: I can easily create an account and run ads with ease. If you have ever sold on other marketplaces like Amazon, you will have to learn a lot of things related to keywords, campaign optimization, etc. But with Etsy, I just need to list the product and then let the ads run automatically; I don’t need to know too much about ad campaign techniques.
The good thing here is that I just need to focus on creating value for customers and choosing the right niche market to sell.
I easily generated revenue after a period of activity on this marketplace.

No hosting or domain fees: One thing is for sure, if I build a website, I will incur some costs to create and maintain it. Even when I sell on Amazon, I have to pay $49/month to maintain the account.
But with Etsy, I don’t incur any fees at all. Maybe except for the initial account setup fee, which ranges from $20–30. But after that, it’s completely free.
The listing fee is $0.2 (too small to mention in this article)
Quicker product visibility: “This is what I like the most: I can reach up to 100 million shoppers on this marketplace. Of course, I have to sell products. But the algorithm on this platform prioritizes new products.
I see that I can reach 12–30 people when I first create a listing, which is an important foundation for my product to be distributed after these people review it.
However, with other marketplaces, I might have to pay a fee to run ads to reach the first customers.

The number of customers reached is very large, even for small shops. As shown in the photo above, the shop only has about 85 reviews but has received 16,147 customers, while the listing was created just 2 weeks ago.

As you can see, there are some key features that make selling on Etsy worth it.

What Are the Cons of Selling on Etsy?

Here are the main cons found in reviews on selling on Etsy:

Saturated marketplace: Because of the automated advertising system, older and more reputable stores tend to have higher rankings.
So if I try to enter a niche where all competitors have a high number of reviews, I’m certainly holding a loss in my hand.
If I join niches with smaller volume, my revenue will definitely never match the TOP 100 stores. Anyway, I find this interesting, and I’m only focusing on myself.
Difficult to build customer loyalty: I noticed that there are about 100 million active buyers on Etsy who aren’t looking for your handmade items only.
Instead, they’re looking for all handmade items. And there is always fierce competition over pricing, with customers ready to abandon me if a competitor’s product is priced lower.
Therefore, it’s difficult to build your brand image and connect with customers. For example, it’s difficult to form an email marketing campaign through Etsy.
Transaction and currency conversion fees: For every item I sell, Etsy charges a transaction fee of 6.5% of the price, including delivery and wrapping.
If I list an item in a foreign currency, I am charged a currency conversion fee of 2.5% for every sale I make.
I think it is quite fair because I don’t intervene much in running ads, but in return, the cost I have to pay for an item sold can be from 9–12%
No shipping support: Unlike other marketplaces, such as Amazon, Etsy sellers are left to sort out the order fulfillment process themselves. Therefore if my order has an issue I will have to handle it by myself with the supplier and the customer, it will never be as fast as Amazon FBA. I have to proactively handle everything.
Offsite advertising fees: Etsy buys ads on partner sites. You can choose offsite ad promotion. If a buyer orders within 30 days of clicking, you pay a fee: 15% for under $10,000 sales, 12% for more. Combined with other fees, this can reduce revenue.
Many sellers do not like Etsy’s offsite ads, but personally, I feel differently. I am still listing it here for us to have an overall perspective.