Best Platform to Sell Crafts Online: A Retiree's Comparison Guide

If you've spent years knitting, woodworking, painting, or making jewelry "just for fun," you've probably had someone tell you, "You should sell that." It's one of the most common ways retirees turn a lifelong hobby into a small, steady stream of income — and it's exactly the kind of idea we cover in our free Retiremint Starter Guide.

But here's where most people get stuck before they ever list a single item: which platform should I actually use?

Etsy, Amazon Handmade, Shopify, and Facebook Marketplace all let you sell handmade goods, but they work very differently — different costs, different learning curves, and different types of buyers. Picking the wrong one can mean months of frustration before you sell a single mug or scarf. Picking the right one can mean your first sale within a week.

So let's walk through each option honestly, the way we'd explain it to a friend, so you can find the best platform to sell crafts online for your situation — not someone else's.

What Matters When You're Choosing a Platform

Before comparing the platforms themselves, it helps to know what you're actually weighing. We'll score each one on three things:

1. Ease of use — How much technical setup is required, and how steep is the learning curve for someone who didn't grow up with this kind of software?

2. Fees — What does it actually cost to list an item, make a sale, and get paid?

3. Audience reach — Are there already shoppers looking for what you make, or do you have to bring your own crowd?

With that in mind, here's how the four major players stack up.

1. Etsy

Etsy is the platform most people picture first when they think of selling crafts online — and for good reason. It's a marketplace built specifically for handmade goods, vintage items, and craft supplies, with tens of millions of active shoppers already searching for exactly what you make.

Ease of use: This is Etsy's biggest strength for beginners. You don't need a website, a merchant account, or any coding knowledge. You create a shop, upload photos and descriptions, set a price, and you're live. The interface walks new sellers through each step, and there's a large community of existing Etsy sellers sharing tips.

Fees: Etsy charges a small $0.20 listing fee per item (items auto-renew every four months or when they sell), a 6.5% transaction fee on the sale price plus shipping, and a payment processing fee (roughly 3% + $0.25 in the US). It's not free, but the costs are predictable and scale with your sales — you're not paying much until you're actually earning something.

Audience reach: This is where Etsy shines brightest. Buyers come to Etsy specifically to find handmade and unique items, which means you don't have to build an audience from zero the way you would on your own website. Good product photos and honest descriptions do a lot of the selling for you.

Best for: Retirees who want the shortest path from "I made this" to "someone bought this," with the least amount of technical setup.

2. Amazon Handmade

Amazon Handmade is Amazon's invite-only marketplace for genuinely handcrafted goods, separate from the regular Amazon storefront. It puts your products in front of Amazon's massive customer base — but that scale comes with more structure.

Ease of use: Setup is more involved than Etsy. Sellers apply for an invitation, and Amazon reviews the application to confirm items are truly handmade. Once approved, the seller dashboard has more features (and more settings) than Etsy's, which can feel overwhelming to a first-time online seller. There's a real learning curve here.

Fees: Amazon Handmade charges a flat 15% referral fee on most sales — no separate listing fees, which simplifies the math, but it's a meaningfully higher percentage than Etsy's transaction fee.

Audience reach: Amazon's customer base dwarfs Etsy's in sheer size, and many shoppers already have a saved payment method and Prime shipping expectations, which can boost conversion. The tradeoff is that your handmade item is competing for attention inside a platform built primarily around mass-produced goods, so standing out takes more intentional branding.

Best for: Sellers who already have some products validated (maybe on Etsy first) and are ready to scale into a much bigger — but more competitive and higher-fee — marketplace.

3. Shopify

Shopify is different from the other three: instead of listing your items inside someone else's marketplace, you build your own standalone online store. Think of it as renting a storefront and putting your own sign above the door, versus renting a table inside someone else's craft fair.

Ease of use: Shopify has made huge strides in being beginner-friendly, with drag-and-drop store builders and templates. Still, it requires more decisions than Etsy or Amazon Handmade — choosing a theme, setting up payment processing, thinking through shipping rules, and (eventually) driving your own traffic. It's approachable, but it's not "list an item in five minutes" simple.

Fees: Shopify runs on a monthly subscription (plans typically start in the $25–$40/month range) plus payment processing fees per transaction. There's no marketplace transaction fee like Etsy's, which means more of each sale stays with you — but you're paying that monthly fee whether you sell anything or not.

Audience reach: This is Shopify's biggest tradeoff. There is no built-in audience of shoppers browsing a Shopify-powered store the way there is on Etsy or Amazon. You are entirely responsible for bringing people to your store, whether through social media, email marketing, or paid ads.

Best for: Sellers who already have (or are ready to build) their own following — on Instagram, Facebook, or through word of mouth — and want to keep more of each sale and build a brand that's fully theirs.

4. Facebook Marketplace

Facebook Marketplace is the simplest and lowest-cost way to start selling, largely because it wasn't built specifically for handmade goods — it's a general local buying-and-selling platform many retirees are already comfortable using.

Ease of use: If you already have a Facebook account, you're most of the way there. Listing an item takes just a few minutes, with no shop setup, no subscription, and no approval process. This makes it the fastest way to test whether a product idea sells at all.

Fees: For most person-to-person listings, Facebook Marketplace is free. (Facebook does charge a selling fee on shipped, checkout-enabled listings, but simple local listings typically cost nothing.)

Audience reach: This is both its strength and its limit. Facebook Marketplace is excellent for local sales — craft fairs' online cousin, in a sense — especially in community buy-and-sell groups. But it doesn't have the built-in "shoppers looking specifically for handmade goods" audience that Etsy offers, and reach is often limited to your local area unless you're shipping items.

Best for: Testing a new product idea with zero financial risk, or selling locally to neighbors and community groups without any setup at all.

Quick Comparison at a Glance

Platform	Ease of Use	Typical Fees	Audience Reach
Etsy	Very beginner-friendly	~$0.20/listing + 6.5% transaction fee + payment processing	Large, built-in audience actively seeking handmade goods
Amazon Handmade	Moderate — application required, more complex dashboard	15% flat referral fee	Massive audience, but more competition and less handmade-specific
Shopify	Moderate — more setup decisions, but templated	~$25–$40/month + payment processing	You must bring your own audience
Facebook Marketplace	Very easy — near-zero setup	Free for most local listings	Local/community-focused, not craft-specific

So, Which Is the Best Platform to Sell Crafts Online?

Honestly, there isn't one universal answer — it depends on what you're optimizing for right now:

• Want the fastest, easiest way to get your first sale? Start with Etsy. The built-in audience does a lot of the heavy lifting.

• Already have a few products people love, and ready to think bigger? Consider layering in Amazon Handmade once you understand your margins.

• Want to build something that's fully your own brand, long-term? Shopify is worth the extra setup, especially once you have some social media following.

• Want to test an idea with zero cost and zero risk before committing to anything? Facebook Marketplace is the low-stakes starting line.

Many successful retiree sellers actually use more than one — starting on Etsy or Facebook Marketplace to validate an idea, then expanding to Shopify or Amazon Handmade once they know what sells.

You Don't Have to Figure This Out Alone

This is exactly the kind of decision that can quietly stall a great idea for months — not because the idea isn't good, but because there are too many options and no clear starting point. That's precisely why we built the free Retiremint Starter Guide: it walks you through matching your specific hobby, budget, and comfort level with technology to the platform that actually fits, instead of guessing.

And if you're ready to go a step further — setting up your first shop, writing product descriptions that sell, and building simple habits to keep it running without eating up your whole day — The Retiree's Roadmap (with its companion workbook) walks you through the entire process, platform by platform, with the same no-jargon approach we use here.

It's never too late to turn your passion into profit. The first step isn't picking the "perfect" platform — it's picking one and getting started.

Ready to see which platform fits your craft? Grab the free Retiremint Starter Guide and take the guesswork out of your first sale.