Every UK creator who sells on Etsy eventually asks the same question: should I move to my own store? The honest answer depends less on fees than on where your buyers come from.
This guide covers when Etsy is still the right call, what you genuinely lose by leaving, and how to migrate without a gap in income.
When Etsy is still the right answer
Etsy is not a mistake. It is a demand rental, and for some creators that rental is a bargain.
- You sell physical or handmade goods where browsing and discovery drive the sale.
- You are still testing whether anyone wants the product at all.
- You want checkout, receipts and buyer protection handled for you from day one.
- You have no audience yet and no budget for ads.
The cost of staying
On a £20 digital sale, Etsy's fees land around 12.8% once listing, transaction, payment processing and the Regulatory Operating Fee are added. On a £5 download it climbs past 18%.
The bigger cost is not the percentage. It is that repeat buyers cost you the full fee every time, and you cannot take the relationship with you. Five years of sales on a marketplace leaves you with a shop, not an audience.
What you actually lose when you leave
Be clear-eyed about this: Etsy sends you buyers. Your own store sends you nothing on day one.
Most sellers who leave without a traffic plan earn less for the first three to six months. The fee saving is real but small compared with the loss of marketplace discovery, and it takes time for search rankings, email and social to fill the gap.
What you gain
Once traffic is solved, ownership compounds in a way marketplace sales never do.
- Full margin on every sale, including repeat purchases.
- An email list you own and can market to before a launch.
- Room for bundles, courses, bookings and subscriptions that a marketplace listing cannot hold.
- Your own brand, your own pricing, your own refund policy.
- No risk of a suspended account wiping out your entire income overnight.
Etsy versus your own store after twelve months
Numbers settle this argument faster than opinions. Say you sell 40 digital products a month at £20, which is about £800 in revenue.
- Etsy at roughly 12.8% in fees: about £102 a month, or £1,229 a year.
- Your own store on a free plan: about £20 a month in processing, or £240 a year.
- Difference: about £989 a year, before you count repeat buyers you can email for free.
The honest counterweight
That £989 is only a saving if you can replace Etsy's discovery. If paid ads, content and outreach cost more than £989 a year to produce the same £800 a month, then Etsy is still doing its job and leaving is a pay cut dressed up as a fee cut.
Run that comparison with your own numbers before you migrate. The question is never are the fees lower, it is what does a buyer cost me on each channel.
Signs you have outgrown Etsy
Most sellers wait until they are frustrated rather than until they are ready. These are the practical signals.
- You have repeat customers and no way to email them before a launch.
- Most of your traffic already comes from your own social accounts, not Etsy search.
- You want to sell a course, a booking or a bundle that a single listing cannot hold.
- A fee change or an account suspension would wipe out most of your income.
- You have stopped raising prices because the marketplace fee makes each increase feel pointless.
Three migration mistakes to avoid
The plan below works. These are the ways sellers break it.
- Closing the Etsy shop before the new store has traffic. Run both for at least 90 days.
- Copying the marketplace listing word for word. Your own store needs a page written for search and for trust, with your name and face on it.
- Moving every product at once. Migrate the three best sellers, learn what converts, then move the rest.
A 90-day migration plan that protects sales
The mistake is closing the Etsy shop on day one. Run both channels while you build the thing Etsy cannot give you: your own audience.
- Days 1 to 30: build the store and move your three best-selling products across. Keep every Etsy listing live.
- Days 1 to 90: publish consistently on the platforms where your buyers already are - search-friendly blog posts, short video, Pinterest - and send that traffic to your own store.
- Throughout: build an email list from your own store with a free download, then email it before every launch.
- Only reduce Etsy once your own store is covering the revenue you would lose, not before.
One rule that keeps you out of trouble
Do not use Etsy to push buyers into buying elsewhere. Etsy's fee-avoidance policy covers exactly that, and accounts get closed for it.
The compliant route is to build your audience off Etsy - social, search, email - and let buyers find your own store independently. Grow the audience in parallel rather than poaching the marketplace.
Which platform should you move to
If you only need a checkout for downloads, Payhip and Gumroad are quick and cheap to start. If you want the store, bio page, courses, bookings and email in one place, an all-in-one creator platform saves both subscription cost and the friction of stitching tools together.
CreatorOS is built for that second case: one branded page for your audience, with a store, courses, bookings and email behind it, free to start and no card required.
Verdict
Stay on Etsy while it is your only source of buyers. Move when you can point to another source - search, email or social - that already sends you sales. Leaving earlier than that is not a fee decision, it is a revenue cut.