The argument about whether to sell on Amazon or your own website is mostly a false one. Plenty of healthy small brands do both, deliberately, because the two things are good at different jobs.
Amazon has buyers you will never reach on your own, who trust the checkout and are already logged in. Your own site keeps the margin, the customer's email address and the ability to build something that is yours. The interesting question is not which to pick. It is how to run both without the wheels coming off.
Full disclosure: we build Orbit, and our Amazon plugin is free on every plan.
What each one is actually for
| Amazon | Your own site | |
|---|---|---|
| Traffic | Already there, enormous | You have to earn every visitor |
| Trust | Borrowed instantly | Built slowly |
| Fees | A referral fee per sale, plus fulfilment if used | Card fees, and your platform plan |
| The customer | Amazon’s | Yours, with their email address |
| Your brand | Inside Amazon’s frame | Entirely yours |
| Risk | Rules can change, accounts can be suspended | You own the shop |
Read that table and the sensible strategy writes itself: use Amazon for reach and discovery, use your own site for margin and relationships, and try to move repeat buyers from the first to the second over time.
The one problem that actually matters
One unit of stock, two places selling it.
You have one left. It is listed on Amazon and on your site. On Saturday evening it sells on your site. You plan to update Amazon on Sunday morning. At eleven at night it sells on Amazon too.
Now you cancel an order, and marketplace maths makes that expensive. Amazon tracks cancellation rates and can suspend accounts that drift above roughly 2.5%. A handful of oversells across a busy weekend can do more damage to your account health than a quiet year does.
Note that the failure here is not carelessness. It is latency. Manual updates happen when you are at a laptop; sales happen whenever they happen. Any gap is a window where the same unit is for sale twice.
How syncing fixes it
Stock lives in one place, your shop, and every channel reads from it. A sale anywhere decrements the single count immediately and every channel reflects it.
On Orbit the Amazon plugin is free on every plan: you push listings from one product catalogue, stock syncs both ways automatically, and marketplace orders arrive in your dashboard as native orders alongside website ones. One stock count, one order queue, one place to pack from.
That last part matters more than the syncing, honestly. Two order queues in two systems is how orders get missed on a busy week.
Pricing across both
The instinct is to charge the same everywhere. Look at the numbers first, because the two channels do not cost you the same.
An Amazon sale carries a referral fee, plus fulfilment costs if you use theirs. A sale on your own site carries card fees and your platform plan. Those are different numbers, and pricing identically means one of the two is quietly subsidising the other.
Two things to be careful about. First, Amazon has expectations about pricing competitiveness, so read the current policy rather than assuming you can price freely. Second, a lower price on your own site is a legitimate lever, but the better one is usually a better offer rather than a lower price: free delivery over a threshold, a bundle, a gift with purchase, something Amazon structurally cannot match.
Turning marketplace buyers into your customers
The long game, and the reason to bother with your own site at all. You cannot email Amazon customers to market at them, and you should not try. What you can do is make the physical product an invitation.
A well-made insert card in the parcel, offering something genuinely useful, such as registering a warranty, a care guide, or a discount on a reorder, moves a meaningful share of repeat buyers to your own site over time. Follow the marketplace's rules on what inserts may say, because they are specific and enforced, but within them this is the single most effective way to convert borrowed customers into your own.
Once they are on your site, subscriptions and gift cards are things Amazon simply cannot offer on your behalf.
Getting started sensibly
- Start with a subset, not the whole catalogue. Your best sellers, where the reach is worth the fee.
- Check the fee maths per product. Referral fees vary by category, and some products simply do not survive them.
- Connect stock sync before you list, not after the first oversell.
- Get barcodes right. Marketplaces care about product identifiers as much as shopping feeds do. Our post on what a product feed is explains GTINs properly.
- Watch your account health metrics weekly, especially cancellations and late dispatch.
- Add an insert card to every parcel, within the rules.
The honest limits
You are a guest. Rules change, categories get gated, accounts get suspended sometimes unfairly. Building a business entirely on a marketplace means someone else holds the keys, which is precisely why the own-site half matters.
Fees are meaningful. Referral fees plus fulfilment take a real bite. Some products are simply not viable there, and finding that out per product beforehand is cheaper than after.
Competing on your own listing. Depending on category and product, you may not be the only seller offering the same item, which is a different competitive situation from your own shop.
Questions people ask about selling on Amazon and your own site
How do I avoid overselling across Amazon and my website?
Keep one stock count and let every channel read from it, so a sale anywhere decrements the same number immediately. Overselling is a latency problem, not a carelessness problem: manual updates happen when you are at a laptop and sales happen at any hour, so any gap is a window where one unit is for sale twice. This matters commercially because Amazon tracks cancellation rates and can suspend accounts that drift above roughly 2.5%.
Should I charge the same price on Amazon and my own website?
Work out the numbers before deciding, because the channels do not cost you the same. An Amazon sale carries a referral fee and possibly fulfilment costs; a sale on your own site carries card fees and your platform plan. Pricing identically means one channel subsidises the other. Check Amazon's current pricing policies rather than assuming freedom, and consider competing on a better offer, such as free delivery over a threshold, rather than a lower headline price.
Can I get Amazon customers onto my own mailing list?
Not by exporting them, and you should not try. What works is a well-made insert card in the parcel offering something genuinely useful, such as a care guide, a warranty registration or a reorder discount. Follow the marketplace's rules on insert wording carefully, because they are specific and enforced, but within them this is the most effective route from a borrowed customer to one of your own.
Do I need a separate tool to sync Amazon with my shop?
Not on Orbit, where the Amazon plugin is free on every plan and pushes listings from your product catalogue, syncs stock both ways, and brings marketplace orders into the same dashboard as your website orders. Elsewhere this is usually a connector subscription, commonly £39 a month and up, or a per-order fee.
The short version
Use Amazon for reach and your own site for margin and relationships, and stop treating it as a choice. Sync stock from one count before you list anything, because overselling damages your account health rather than just embarrassing you. Check the fee maths per product rather than per catalogue. And put an insert card in every parcel, because moving repeat buyers to your own shop is the whole point of having one.