My take: don’t pull back from Amazon just because the fees hurt. The stronger 2026 strategy is usually Amazon for demand capture + Shopify for customer ownership and brand building—but deliberately reduce your dependence on Amazon over time.
The key distinction is:
Amazon should be a channel you exploit, not the asset you build the company around.
Amazon itself now explicitly frames Amazon and Shopify as complementary rather than mutually exclusive.
Why I wouldn't abandon Amazon
Amazon is effectively paying you in traffic, trust, conversion, and fulfillment infrastructure. If a $50 product sells profitably on Amazon after all costs, walking away from those sales doesn't magically make the customer acquisition cost disappear—it transfers that cost to you.
And there's a real danger in assuming you can simply move Amazon volume to Shopify. Recent industry analysis suggests brands that try to make a clean migration often lose substantial revenue because the Amazon demand doesn't automatically transfer to their own site.
So I'd ask:
"What is Amazon's contribution margin after all costs?"
Not:
"Amazon takes 30%, while Shopify only takes ~3%, so Shopify is better."
Your Shopify sale might require $15 of Meta/Google/TikTok acquisition expense. Your Amazon sale may require $8 of PPC but come with a much larger fee stack. The relevant comparison is contribution profit per incremental customer, not platform fees.
But Shopify is where the long-term value compounds
This is the part I'd take seriously.
On Amazon, you primarily own the product/listing. On Shopify, you can build an owned customer relationship: email/SMS, first-party behavioral data, subscriptions, bundles, cross-sells, loyalty, post-purchase marketing, etc.
That matters enormously if your product has:
- repeat purchases
- multiple SKUs
- subscriptions
- meaningful brand differentiation
- high customer lifetime value
- a story/community/content component
Amazon is particularly powerful at capturing existing intent. Shopify is much better for creating and retaining demand. That's essentially the strategic split emerging in current ecommerce thinking.
I'd use a "two-engine" model
Amazon = acquisition engine
- Capture high-intent searches
- Generate volume
- Build reviews/social proof
- Let FBA handle fulfillment
- Keep hero products highly competitive
- Use Amazon advertising where incremental profit supports it
Shopify = brand engine
- Tell the full brand story
- Capture email/SMS
- Build repeat purchasing
- Sell bundles and higher-AOV products
- Introduce new products
- Build loyalty/community
- Own the customer relationship
- Develop channels that aren't dependent on either Amazon or paid ads
Then make the channels reinforce each other without trying to force customers to violate Amazon's rules.
The metric I'd watch most closely
I'd build a simple channel P&L:
| Amazon | Shopify |
|---|
| Revenue | $ | $ |
| COGS | -$ | -$ |
| Marketplace/payment fees | -$ | -$ |
| Fulfillment | -$ | -$ |
| Advertising | -$ | -$ |
| Returns | -$ | -$ |
| Agency/software | -$ | -$ |
| Contribution profit | $ | $ |
| New customers | # | # |
| Repeat customers | # | # |
| Contribution/customer | $ | $ |
Then add one particularly important number:
12-month customer value.
A first-time Shopify customer who costs you $18 to acquire but subsequently generates $120 of gross profit may be vastly more valuable than an Amazon customer who produces $12 of contribution profit and remains essentially inaccessible to you.
I wouldn't necessarily try to make Shopify bigger than Amazon
This is an important nuance.
The goal isn't necessarily:
Amazon 80% → Shopify 80%
I'd rather see something like:
Amazon 60% / Shopify 30% / other 10%
than:
Amazon 90% / Shopify 5% / other 5%
The first business still gets tremendous Amazon volume, but Amazon no longer has existential control over the company.
And eventually, if Shopify becomes the more profitable growth engine, you can let its share naturally increase.
One thing I'd avoid
Don't intentionally cripple Amazon to "force" customers onto Shopify.
If Amazon is producing profitable incremental demand, turning it off can destroy more value than it creates. Instead, make Shopify better enough that customers who encounter your brand directly prefer buying there.
That means things Amazon can't easily replicate:
- bundles/kits
- exclusive SKUs
- subscriptions
- better education
- personalization
- loyalty rewards
- richer brand experience
- content/community
- post-purchase ecosystem
My rule of thumb
I'd think about it this way:
If Amazon is profitable → keep it.
If Amazon is profitable but represents >70–80% of your business → diversify aggressively.
If Shopify is growing profitably → feed it more capital.
If Shopify growth requires substantially more CAC than Amazon and produces lower contribution profit → don't move volume just for philosophical reasons.
If your product has strong repeat/LTV economics → invest heavily in Shopify because you're leaving future value on the table by being marketplace-dependent.
The current consensus isn't really Amazon vs. Shopify. It's increasingly Amazon for reach, Shopify for ownership, with the optimal mix depending on the economics of your particular product.
If you give me your average selling price, COGS, Amazon fees/FBA, Amazon ad spend, Shopify AOV, Shopify CAC, and repeat-purchase rate, I can actually model the two channels and tell you where the next $100k of growth should go.
