Marketplace fee ranges below are directional; Amazon and eBay publish current category schedules and change them, so confirm the live tables for your category before you list. Disclosure: we build PrestaShop modules at mypresta.rocks.
The pitch for marketplace selling is seductive: Amazon and eBay already have the customers, so list your products and let their traffic do the work. It can be a smart move. But "marketplace vs own store" is the wrong way to frame the decision, because for most PrestaShop merchants the honest answer is "both, in the right proportions." The real questions are which products belong on which channel, what each channel actually costs you once the fees clear, and whether your operation can keep stock honest across all of them without overselling. This guide is about making that call deliberately, with your PrestaShop store as the asset you own, and marketplaces as rented reach you switch on when the maths works.
This is the strategy and decision piece. For the hands-on PrestaShop side, connecting your catalogue to Amazon, mapping categories, generating a feed and keeping stock in sync, see our Amazon and PrestaShop multi-channel selling guide. And if "marketplace" makes you think of the PrestaShop Addons store rather than retail channels, that's a different thing entirely, covered in the PrestaShop Addons buyer's guide.
The honest economics: what a marketplace sale actually nets you
The single most common mistake we see is comparing your shelf price on Amazon to your shelf price on your own store and concluding the marketplace is "a bit more expensive." It isn't a bit more expensive. The fee stack compounds, and it compounds against your margin, not your revenue. Run the numbers per channel before you list anything.
| Cost component | Amazon (typical) | eBay (typical) | Your PrestaShop store |
|---|---|---|---|
| Referral / final-value fee | ~8–15% by category | ~10–13% by category, plus a fixed per-order fee | 0% |
| Payment processing | Bundled into referral | Included in the final value fee | ~1.5–3% (your PSP) |
| Fulfilment (if FBA / managed) | Storage + pick/pack/ship | You ship | You ship |
| Monthly / account fee | Pro seller subscription | Store subscription (optional) | Hosting only |
| Who owns the customer email | Amazon | eBay (limited) | You |
These ranges are directional, Amazon and eBay publish current category fee schedules and change them, so check the live tables for your category rather than trusting any blog's number (including this one). The point isn't the exact percentage; it's the shape. So what does that mean for you? Do the arithmetic on your worst-margin SKU, not your best. If a product carries a 40% gross margin and Amazon takes 25% all-in, you keep 15% before you've paid for the goods, and on a thin-margin line you can list at a confident price and still lose money on every order. Build a simple per-channel margin sheet before listing, and flag any SKU that goes negative once fees land.
The asset you own vs the storefront you rent
This is the argument that should anchor the whole decision, and it's the same one that runs through everything we believe about platform choice. When a customer buys on Amazon, they are Amazon's customer. You don't get their email, you can't retarget them, you can't build a relationship or a second sale. The platform can suspend your account, change its algorithm, raise fees, or launch a private-label product in your exact category using the sales data your listings generated, and you have no recourse. You are building on rented land.
Your PrestaShop store is the opposite: an asset you own outright, with the customer data, the brand experience and the code all under your control. That's not a slogan, it's the practical reason to keep your store as the primary channel and treat marketplaces as supplementary. We've made the broader version of this case in why owning your code matters more than ever, and the platform-versus-rented-store comparison in PrestaShop vs Shopify: a store you own or a store you rent. The marketplace question is the same trade-off in a different costume: reach you rent versus an asset you build.
A decision framework: which channel for which product
"Should I sell on marketplaces?" has no single answer. "Should I sell this product on this marketplace?" does. Run each SKU through four questions:
- Margin after fees. Does the line survive a 15–30% fee haircut and still clear your floor? If not, it stays exclusive to your own store. Commodity goods with healthy margin are marketplace candidates; thin-margin lines are not.
- Differentiation. Can the customer tell your version apart from a dozen identical listings? On a marketplace the format is standardised, you compete largely on price and rating. Products whose value is brand, bundling, content or service belong on your store, where you control the whole experience.
- Discovery value. Is this a product people actively search Amazon for? Use marketplaces for high-intent, easily-described items that act as a discovery channel; keep your premium, exclusive and configurable products at home where you set the rules.
- Operational load. Can you keep its stock honest across channels in near-real-time? If a SKU sells fast and stock is tight, the oversell risk (below) may outweigh the extra reach.
The pattern most healthy multi-channel PrestaShop stores land on: commodity/best-seller lines on the marketplaces as a paid discovery funnel, premium and exclusive lines kept to the owned store where margins and brand are protected, and a branded packaging insert (a card with your URL where marketplace rules permit, not a coupon, which many prohibit) to convert that first Amazon sale into a second sale on your site.
The operational reality on PrestaShop: don't oversell
The moment you sell the same SKU in more than one place, stock becomes a synchronisation problem, and overselling is the failure mode that hurts you on every channel at once. Sell the last unit on eBay while a customer is mid-checkout on your store and you cancel an order, dent your seller metrics, and erode the buyer trust that made the marketplace worth listing on in the first place.
On PrestaShop the stock you're syncing lives in the stock_available table, surfaced in the back office under Catalog → Stock (and per-product on the product page's Quantities tab). A serious multi-channel setup treats your PrestaShop store as the single source of truth for inventory and pushes changes outward to the marketplace listings, ideally event-driven off PrestaShop's stock hooks (such as actionUpdateQuantity) rather than a slow nightly CSV that lets the channels drift apart between runs. A few PrestaShop-specific things to settle before you go live:
- Decide your out-of-stock behaviour under Shop Parameters → Product Settings, whether PrestaShop allows ordering when stock hits zero (the PS_ORDER_OUT_OF_STOCK setting). Get this wrong and your own store oversells before the marketplace even gets a look in.
- Watch combinations. Products with attributes hold stock per combination, not per product. A sync that only reads the product-level total will mis-report sizes and colours and cause exactly the cancellations you're trying to avoid.
- Hold a safety buffer. No sync is instant. Listing a buffer (e.g. reserve a unit or two on fast movers) absorbs the latency between a sale firing and the other channel updating.
The connector mechanics, feed generation, category mapping, the Amazon Selling Partner side, are the subject of the dedicated Amazon and PrestaShop guide; this section is about the inventory discipline that has to sit underneath whatever connector you choose.
Pricing across channels without confusing yourself
Your marketplace price has to absorb the marketplace fees and still leave margin, which usually means it sits above your own-store price. That's not a problem to hide, it's the marketplace earning the premium it charges by supplying the traffic and trust. Two coherent approaches, and you should pick one per product deliberately rather than letting it happen by accident:
- Fee-loaded marketplace pricing. Price each channel to hit the same net margin, so the Amazon price is higher. Cleanest economically; just make sure your own-store price stays the genuinely better deal so customers who find you on the marketplace have a reason to come direct next time.
- Flat pricing as a marketing cost. Keep the price equal everywhere and accept the lower marketplace margin as the cost of brand exposure. Simpler for the customer, and defensible if you treat the marketplace explicitly as a discovery spend rather than a profit centre.
PrestaShop's Specific Prices (per-product, and via Catalog → Discounts for catalogue-wide rules) let you keep your owned-store pricing and promotions clean and independent of whatever you publish to the marketplace feed, so a marketplace price change never accidentally undercuts a campaign you're running on your own store.
When multiple channels are the right move, and when they aren't
Sequence matters more than most new merchants expect. If you're just starting, build and stabilise your own PrestaShop store first: establish the brand, learn your true per-product margins, get fulfilment and returns running smoothly. Adding Amazon and eBay on day one multiplies your operational complexity, three sets of customer-service rules, three return policies, three places to oversell, before you've proven the core. Expand to marketplaces once the owned store runs cleanly and you have margin headroom to give away.
Go multi-channel when: you have commodity or best-seller lines with margin to spare after fees, your stock sync is genuinely reliable, and you can treat the marketplace as discovery that feeds your owned store. Stay single-channel (for now) when: your margins are thin, your differentiation is brand/service/content that a standardised listing erases, or your operation can't yet keep stock honest across channels without manual babysitting.
Common questions about marketplace vs own-store selling
Is it cheaper to sell on Amazon or on my own PrestaShop store?
Per sale, your own store almost always nets more, there's no 8–15% referral fee, just your payment processor's ~1.5–3%. But "cheaper per sale" isn't the whole question, because the marketplace supplies traffic and trust you'd otherwise pay to acquire. The honest framing: your own store wins on margin per order; the marketplace can win on total profit for a commodity line where its discovery brings sales you wouldn't have made at all. Run the per-SKU math on your worst-margin product, not your best.
Which of my products should go on marketplaces, and which shouldn't?
Send commodity and best-seller lines with margin to spare after fees, and items people actively search the marketplace for. Keep premium, brand-led, bundled or configurable products on your own store, where you control the whole experience and the full margin. The test per SKU: does it survive a 15–30% fee haircut and still clear your floor, and can the customer tell your version apart from a dozen identical listings? If the answer to either is no, it stays exclusive to your store.
Can I email Amazon customers to come buy direct next time?
No. Amazon's terms prohibit using order-derived customer data for your own marketing, and they actively monitor for it. Importing buyers into a newsletter or retargeting them is a fast route to a suspended account. The legitimate move is a branded packaging insert (a card with your URL, where marketplace rules permit, not a coupon, which many prohibit) so the first marketplace sale can become a second sale on your own site, without crossing the data line.
How do I stop overselling when the same stock is on two channels?
Treat your PrestaShop store as the single source of truth for inventory and push changes outward, ideally event-driven off stock hooks (like actionUpdateQuantity) rather than a slow nightly CSV. Settle your out-of-stock behaviour under Shop Parameters → Product Settings (PS_ORDER_OUT_OF_STOCK), sync at the combination level for products with attributes, and hold a small safety buffer on fast movers to absorb sync latency. The wiring details are in the Amazon and PrestaShop guide.
Should I launch on marketplaces and my own store at the same time?
Usually not. If you're starting out, stabilise your own store first. Establish the brand, learn your true per-product margins, get fulfilment and returns running cleanly. Adding Amazon and eBay on day one multiplies operational complexity (three sets of service rules, three return policies, three places to oversell) before you've proven the core. Expand to marketplaces once the owned store runs cleanly and you have margin headroom to give away.
The bottom line
Marketplaces are rented reach: powerful, occasionally essential, and never yours. Your PrestaShop store is the asset, the customer data, the brand, the code, the margins all belong to you. The merchants who thrive long-term aren't the ones who pick a side; they're the ones who keep a strong direct channel and bolt on marketplace presence where, and only where, the per-SKU maths says yes. Build the asset first, run the fee arithmetic honestly, keep your stock in sync so you never oversell, and use the rented space on purpose. For the technical implementation of the Amazon side, pick up the multi-channel selling guide next.
Keep reading
- Amazon and PrestaShop multi-channel guide, the hands-on plumbing: SP-API, stock sync, order import.
- Why owning your code matters, the same rent-vs-own logic applied to the platform itself.
- PrestaShop vs Shopify: own or rent. Building the asset you keep versus the storefront you rent.
