Poshmark vs Shopify: Which Platform is Right for You?

Poshmark vs Shopify: Which is the right platform for you?

Overall, Shopify is my top pick if you’re looking for a flexible, scalable platform that allows you to design your own store, build your brand, and sell across multiple channels. It’s suitable for companies in any niche, selling virtually any product, and offers excellent scalability.

Alternatively, Poshmark is a fashion marketplace, designed to support the resale of garments, home decor and accessories. It’s great if you’re selling pre-owned clothes or boutique products, but it doesn’t have the scalability or reach you’ll get with Shopify.

• Use Shopify: If you want to build a comprehensive online business selling virtually any kind of product on a range of platforms.
• Use Poshmark: If you want to make some extra money selling boutique, pre-owned or unique fashion or home décor items to an existing audience.

Poshmark vs Shopify: Pros and Cons

Shopify and Poshmark might both allow you to sell products online, but they’re very different products overall. Poshmark is targeted at everyday people who want to make a little extra cash. Shopify is more tailored to the needs of entrepreneurs who want to launch a comprehensive brand and online business.

Shopify Pros and Cons

Poshmark Pros and Cons

What the Two Platforms Do Best

It’s difficult to effectively compare Poshmark and Shopify side-by-side because they’re really designed for very different purposes. While you can launch a side hustle with Shopify using print on demand or dropshipping integrations, it’s intended more for entrepreneurs looking to scale their sales.

Poshmark is more of a solution built for individuals who want to make a little extra cash selling the items they no longer want through an active marketplace.

What Poshmark Does Best:

• Gives you access to an instant audience: With Poshmark you can save time and money looking for ways to attract customers to your store. You’ll be listing your items on a popular pre-existing marketplace, designed to attract fashion lovers.
• Simple setup: There’s no need to build a complex store, design an amazing theme, or even spend a lot of time managing inventory and processing orders. Poshmark makes it easy to start selling immediately, with no prior knowledge.
• Social selling: Poshmark turns selling into a social experience, with the ability to engage customers through comments, likes and shares. There are even “Posh parties”, which are events designed to amplify your reach in the community.

What Shopify Does Best:

• Complete control over your brand: With Shopify, you’re not competing for attention on a marketplace. You’re designing your own comprehensive store, complete with a custom theme, logo, a unique product collection, and domain name.
• Scalability: Shopify makes it easy to scale your reach with marketing tools, integrations, and omnichannel selling capabilities. It gives you an easy way to increase sales, and even manage large inventories of products, with minimal effort.
• Business management: Shopify’s wide range of tools make running a comprehensive business a lot easier. There are plenty of resources to help you with things like shipping, fulfillment, and customer relationship management.

Shopify vs Poshmark: Pricing and Fees

One of the biggest differences between Shopify and Poshmark is how much you’ll pay to use the platforms. As I mentioned above, Poshmark allows you to essentially get started for free, with no monthly costs, whereas Shopify has no free plan.

Poshmark Pricing and Fees

There’s no fee to sign up and create an account with Poshmark. You don’t have to pay for monthly access to anything, and there aren’t any listing or transaction fees. This means you can potentially get started for less than you’d spend to list items on a platform like Etsy.

Poshmark even gives you pre-paid labels for every order, so you don’t have to worry about the shipping costs of getting your items to customers.

The only fees you’ll have to worry about with Poshmark are commission fees. Poshmark takes $2.95 from each sale under the value of $15, and 20% from all sales above $15. Ultimately, while this makes Poshmark an affordable option for new sellers, it does mean it’s difficult to scale your business and maintain consistent profits.

Shopify Pricing and Fees

Unfortunately, there’s no way to use Shopify for free, beyond taking advantage of the three-day trial period for new subscribers. After that, you’ll need to pay for one of Shopify’s plans. If you want to sell through social media and messenger apps, you can use Shopify Starter for $5 per month.

Alternatively, if you want a comprehensive store, and all of the unique features Shopify has to offer, you’ll need one of the core plans, which start at $39 per month (or $29 per month paid annually). Prices range up to $2,300+ per month for Shopify’s Plus plan.

On top of that, Shopify does charge transaction fees if you use a payment processor other than their built-in payment gateway, Shopify Payments.

Shopify vs Poshmark: The Core Features

Usually, when I’m comparing two sales platforms, they’ll have a lot of overlapping features. However, Poshmark and Shopify are very different. They do have some things in common, such as built-in payment processing capabilities, and marketing tools.

They can also both help companies with managing shipping processes and fulfillment. However, beyond that, these two platforms don’t have much in common.

The Unique Features of Poshmark

Poshmark is a very simple and straightforward marketplace that allows anyone to sell their unwanted fashion and home décor products to a wide range of customers. Top features include:

• Customizable listings: Once you have a Poshmark account, you can snap photos of your products, fill in a description, choose a price and list the item instantly on the platform.
• Built in audience: Poshmark connects sellers to more than 80 million community members across Canada, the US, and Australia, making it easy to find customers.
• Community events: Events like Posh Parties make it simple to connect with new customers and increase your reach to potential buyers with minimal effort.
• Simple shipping: Whenever you make a sale on Poshmark, you get a pre-paid pre-addressed label for shipping. You can even have your items picked up for free from home.
• Secure payment processing: Poshmark handles payment processing for you, ensuring both your money and your customers remain protected at all times.
• Social features: On Poshmark, you can connect with your wider community through likes, comments, shares, and more, building relationships with buyers.

The Unique Features of Shopify

Shopify is a far more advanced platform with comprehensive tools for ecommerce companies. Some of the most significant features of Shopify include:

• A full website builder: With Shopify you get to build your own website, with a unique theme and domain name, so you can elevate your brand, there are even tools for designing logos.
• Inventory management: Shopify gives you comprehensive tools for inventory, order and product management, so you can run your company more effectively.
• Marketing tools: As well as integrating with a range of marketing solutions, Shopify has its own tools for product promotions, email, and customer chat.
• Omnichannel selling; As well as selling through your own website, Shopify also allows you to sell through marketplaces like Amazon, and social media channels. You can even sell products in-person with Shopify POS.
• Secure payment processing: Shopify has its own dedicated payment gateway which supports a range of payment methods, or you can connect to your own payment processer.
• Analytics and reports: With Shopify, you can gain in-depth insights into product performance, sales, taxes, customer behaviors and more.
• Apps and integrations: Shopify has an extensive app market which allows you to extend the functionality of your store with accounting, marketing, customer service, and other tools.
• Warehousing and fulfillment: If you need help with fulfillment, Shopify offers a range of tools and services that can help you with managing inventory and delivery processes.

Poshmark vs Shopify: Ease of Use and Customer Support

Personally, I consider Shopify to be one of the most user-friendly ecommerce platforms out there. It has a straightforward interface, and is packed with useful tips and guides to help you navigate the process of setting up and running your store.

However, because it’s a more feature-rich solution, Shopify does have a higher learning curve than Poshmark. With Poshmark, anyone can start selling instantly with virtually no technical knowledge. There’s no need to be an expert in store design, business management, or even marketing.

From a customer support perspective, Shopify does have an edge, offering access to a wide range of self-help resources such as guides, FAQs, and videos. Plus, the company allows customers to reach out via chat, email, and phone. Poshmark does have some self-help resources, like FAQs and blogs.

However, it only offers direct support through chat and email. The company doesn’t always have the best reputation to responding to queries quickly either.

Poshmark vs Shopify: The Verdict

Shopify is definitely the better platform overall, particularly if you’re an entrepreneur looking to create a scalable business. It’s easy to use, and can even support individual sellers, particularly with integrations to dropshipping and print on demand apps.

Poshmark is really only the better option if you’re selling a handful of items to make some extra income, and you’re interested in the fashion and home accessories space. If you want to create a thriving business, you might struggle to do that with Poshmark.

Read more:

• Shopify vs Jumpseller
• Shopify vs BigCommerce
• Shopify vs Wix
• Shopify vs WordPress