Own store or marketplace - where you actually earn more

Allegro, Poland’s biggest marketplace, gives you traffic from day one; your own store gives you margin and contact with the customer - and most of the businesses I work with are better off having both at once. A marketplace is cheap at the start and expensive at scale, because you pay a percentage of every sale, forever. Your own store is the opposite: it costs money up front, and then the cost per order drops the more you sell. The crossover point can be worked out on a sheet of paper - and that is the whole decision.

The question “sell on a marketplace or build my own store” is settled by four numbers: platform fees, margin, how often customers reorder, and the cost of acquiring a customer through advertising. Below I break both channels down into cost lines, show the formula for the break-even point, and say plainly when moving is a waste of time.

The short answer: what pays off when

The rule that holds almost always: on a marketplace you sell a product, in your own store you sell a brand. If the customer comes back for your name and not for the lowest price, you have a reason to build a store.

What selling on a marketplace really costs

The commission is only one line. The real cost of a marketplace is made up of several:

• Sales commission - calculated on the full order value, usually between a few and a dozen-plus percent depending on the category; Allegro’s price list changes, so check the current rate on your own account
• Featured listings, promoted offers and on-platform advertising - in a competitive category effectively compulsory, which is another percentage of turnover
• The cost of free delivery - under buyer loyalty programmes it is you who funds the shipping, not the platform
• Price pressure - the least visible cost and the most expensive: right next to your offer sits an identical one, a few zloty cheaper

On top of that comes something no price list mentions: you do not have a customer database. The buyer’s details are there to fulfil the order, not to build your own mailing list - and when the platform changes its rules, you are left with a warehouse and no audience.

What your own store really costs

Your own store is a one-off cost plus a running one. The breakdown I use when planning a budget:

The key difference is in the last row. On a marketplace, traffic is included in the commission. In your own store you swap the commission for a marketing budget - and that is the real substance of this decision. If you are counting on customers finding the store by themselves, the move will end in falling revenue. I laid out the cost of the build itself in the piece on what a WooCommerce store costs.

Run the numbers on your own figures - in five steps

The formula is simple and you do not need a spreadsheet with macros for it. Take the last three months of data:

1. Add up your marketplace fees - commissions, promotions, advertising, funded deliveries; times four gives you the annual cost of the channel
2. Work out the annual cost of your own store - the build spread over three years plus hosting and maintenance times twelve
3. Subtract - the difference is the budget you could put into marketing your own store every year and come out level
4. Check what it costs to acquire a customer through advertising - if you do not know, run a test on a small budget before deciding
5. Compare the acquisition cost with the commission on a single order - if advertising is cheaper than the commission, your own store starts earning

An example, to show the mechanism: with a 200 PLN basket and a commission of around 10% you hand the platform about 20 PLN per order. At 300 orders a month that is around 6,000 PLN, so of the order of 70,000 PLN a year - and the annual cost of your own store with maintenance is lower than that. This is an illustration of the mechanism, not a promise: your category, margin and cost per click can push the result either way.

When to stay on the marketplace and not overthink it

There are situations where building your own store is spending with no return:

• You sell somebody else’s widely available goods and price is your only edge - the customer will compare offers where they already are anyway
• You have small volumes - annual commissions are lower than the cost of running a store
• You have nobody to handle marketing and no budget to buy it in
• You are starting from zero - a marketplace is the cheapest way to check whether the product sells at all

In those cases a solid company website and good product photography are a better investment than a store nobody will visit.

When to move sales in-house

The signals that in my experience most often mean it is time for your own store:

• Customers come back - you see the same names on order after order, and you cannot write to them
• Commissions have crossed the threshold - the annual total of fees is a multiple of the cost of running a store
• You have your own brand or product that cannot be compared penny for penny with the offer next to it
• You want to sell bundles, subscriptions, configurators - the platform will not handle that
• You sell B2B - you need individual prices, credit limits and invoices; that is natural territory for a store built for your company, not for a platform
• A change in the platform’s rules can rewrite your P&L overnight

The option that wins most often: both channels at once

The healthiest model is not “either-or” but a split of roles. The marketplace is the acquisition channel and the outlet for excess stock; your own store is the channel for margin, repeat orders and bundles. There is one condition: one warehouse, one truth about stock.

Technically this is done with an integration: stock and prices in one place, pushed out to both channels, orders pulled into one panel. You can base it on a middleman like BaseLinker (a Polish multichannel order and stock integrator) or on your own API connection - the differences and traps of both routes I described in the comparison of an integrator versus a custom integration, and connecting a marketplace to a store in the piece on marketplace integration. Then there is accounting - KSeF, Poland’s mandatory national e-invoicing system, now covers every business; how to wire invoices up without retyping data by hand, I described in the piece on integrating WooCommerce with an ERP and KSeF.

How to move to your own store without losing revenue

Moving in stages does not hurt. The order I use:

1. Do not switch the marketplace off - for the first few months it should keep funding the business
2. Build the store and connect the payments your customers know from their phone - Apple Pay and Google Pay shorten the path to payment on mobile to a single confirmation
3. Connect the warehouse - stock and prices from one source, before the first campaign starts
4. Put a reason to come back in the parcel - a flyer with a discount code for the store is the cheapest way to invite a customer to your own place
5. Build an email list and content - slower than advertising, but it does not end with the last zloty of budget
6. Watch the store’s speed - a slow site wipes out a campaign’s results before it has a chance to work; the technical side of that is Core Web Vitals in WooCommerce

Already have a store on another platform and it is the bottleneck? A separate route is migrating to WooCommerce - with a redirect map prepared before the switch, to limit the risk on the SEO side.

Where to start

I start with a free diagnosis: I look at your numbers - platform fees, average basket, how often customers reorder - and say plainly whether your own store makes sense in your case, or whether that money is better left in advertising on the marketplace. I do sometimes advise against building a store, and that is an honest part of the conversation.

If the numbers come out positive, you get the scope and a quote in writing before the start, on a fixed-bid basis. Once it is live, the store can stay under ongoing technical support or be run by you.

Frequently asked questions

Is my own store cheaper than a marketplace? It depends on scale. At small turnover it is cheaper to pay the commission; at larger turnover it is cheaper to run your own store, because its cost is fixed while the commission grows with every order. You work out the crossover point by comparing the annual total of platform fees with the annual cost of a store plus maintenance.

How high are Allegro’s commissions? The rates depend on the category and usually sit somewhere between a few and a dozen-plus percent of the sale value, with fees for promoting listings and funding free delivery on top. Price lists change, so check the current rates in your seller panel before you start calculating.

Can I sell on a marketplace and in my own store at the same time? Yes, and most often that is what I recommend. The condition is technical: stock and prices have to come from one source, and orders from both channels have to land in one panel - otherwise it ends with selling goods you do not have.

Can I move customers from a marketplace to my own store? You cannot move them from a database, because you never get one - but you can invite them. What works is a flyer with a discount code in the parcel, a warranty card with the store’s address and a loyalty programme for returning buyers. It is a job measured in months, but the only one after which the customer becomes yours.

Running a store where something does not work the way it should? I build and rebuild WooCommerce stores - from a single fix to reworking the whole sales flow. Tell me what you are dealing with and I will send back a scope and a price.