Etsy al­tern­at­ives: where to shop for handmade pieces

Selling handmade products once relied on craft fairs and artists’ open house events – with the boom of e-commerce, crafters have gotten, well, crafty, and have been selling their wares online, too. Etsy is a lot of people’s go-to platform to sell or buy handmade arts and crafts. The platform was launched in 2005 in the US and has over 2.5 million re­gistered merchants today. The online sales platform is popular, but there are several reasons you might be looking for an Etsy al­tern­at­ive. We’ve got a list of Etsy-like sites to help you.

Whatever the reason you have for wanting an Etsy al­tern­at­ive, we’ve gathered a list of other sites like Etsy. Each shop will have a de­scrip­tion as well as its ad­vant­ages and dis­ad­vant­ages noted – if you’re in a rush you can also take a look at our com­par­is­on table at the bottom of this article.

This article was last updated in April 2021.

Storenvy is an online mar­ket­place based in the US for arts, crafts, and household goods offered by in­de­pend­ent sellers. Sellers can customise their shopfront and use their own domain name. Unlike Etsy, the cat­egor­isa­tion is more flexible, so you don’t have to worry about not fitting into a pre-made category as your product offering grows over time. It offers in­ter­na­tion­al shipping.

Amazon has a huge reach – its massive influence and customer base hasn’t gone unnoticed within the crafting community, which is why some sellers were excited about the launch of Amazon’s al­tern­at­ive to Etsy. Many sellers see the platform as an extremely lucrative al­tern­at­ive to Etsy. With Amazon Handmade, there is now also a way to sell your own handmade goods via Amazon.

Listing products on Amazon requires a lot of work, as the products need to be ac­cur­ately described with detailed in­form­a­tion to improve their vis­ib­il­ity. However, those who feel up to the challenge have a huge pool of potential buyers with 103 million Amazon Prime sub­scribers.

On Zazzle, designers cannot sell their own products, but they can offer their own designs that can be applied to specified products. To be accepted, you must apply with your best designs. These should be designed to be printed on office sta­tion­ery, tableware, textiles, or posters, for example. The products are then sold through Zazzle. The platform then gives a certain margin to the designer.

As with Zazzle, the Aus­trali­an mar­ket­place Redbubble also allows artists worldwide to offer their designs, which can be printed on clothing, bags, sta­tion­ery, or home decor. Over 700,000 artists worldwide are already re­gistered. The products are aimed primarily at a young target group, as licensed fan art for series, music, films, and the like can be offered via brand part­ner­ships.

folksy is a UK-based site that offers sellers the op­por­tun­ity to mingle with other creative minds. You can sell (or buy) lots of different crafted items that are perfect as gifts – and enjoy the fact that your products are sitting beside other creators’ shops. With a focus on community and British-based sellers, folksy has a more intimate feel than Etsy and you may find that, although folksy has a smaller audience, you won’t find it as hard to get seen.

eCRATER is a kooky version of eBay – at least that’s how it appears at first glance. The online mar­ket­place allows you to sell vintage col­lect­ibles and crafted items alike, and allows you to import your products from eBay, in case you already use that. There’s a free web shop builder to help you get your items sold. If you won’t ship to the USA, you won’t be able to use their service.

The Etsy al­tern­at­ives presented differ primarily in terms of pricing systems and fees, but also in the focus of the products and the scope of the buyer network. Ul­ti­mately, which mar­ket­place is the best choice for you and your products depends on your product, your savviness with marketing and SEO measures, and your sales goals. Whether Etsy or one of the al­tern­at­ives: With a little skill and work, your product is sure to soon become a big seller.

If you don’t want to be tied to a sales platform, you can also create your own online shop. With the online shop builder from IONOS, you can easily start your own e-commerce business. The un­com­plic­ated con­struc­tion kit helps you design your shop according to your own ideas. Many useful functions (such as various payment and shipping options) are already included here, as are marketing tools.

With your own shop, you can also decide for yourself whether and how you want to cat­egor­ise your products and what ad­di­tion­al in­form­a­tion you want to include. You do have to plan for hosting costs, but this also elim­in­ates the need for a sales com­mis­sion. The only dis­ad­vant­age is that you will probably not reach as large a user base as with Etsy or Etsy-like sites. With ded­ic­a­tion and good SEO, you can give it a good shot, though!