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 other sites like Etsy to help you.

Whatever the reason you have for wanting an Etsy al­ter­na­tive, we’ve gathered a list of other sites like Etsy. Each store 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 in the US for arts, crafts, and household goods offered by in­de­pen­dent sellers. Sellers can customize their store­front and use their own domain name. Unlike Etsy, the cat­e­go­riza­tion 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.

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.

iCraft­Gifts is a Canadian 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 – as the name of the website suggests. Sellers will need to pay a one-time reg­is­tra­tion fee ($25), come up with a unique store name, and set up payment, returns, and shipping policies. There are three sub­scrip­tion tiers, ranging from $5-12 a month.

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 webstore builder to help you get your items sold.

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 store. With the online store builder from IONOS, you can easily start your own e-commerce business. The un­com­pli­cat­ed con­struc­tion kit helps you design your store 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 store, you can also decide for yourself whether and how you want to cat­e­go­rize 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 other sites like Etsy. With ded­i­ca­tion and good SEO, you can give it a good shot, though!