The best print-on-demand marketplace and the best print-on-demand storefront answer two different questions. A marketplace like Etsy, Redbubble, or Merch by Amazon answers "where do I find buyers who are not already looking for me." A storefront answers "how do I keep everything about a buyer I already have." Most sellers eventually need both, but understanding what each one actually costs in control, not just in dollars, is the real comparison.
Etsy, Redbubble, and Merch by Amazon each bring a built-in audience of browsing shoppers who were not necessarily searching for a specific seller. That is genuinely valuable, especially for a brand new design with no existing audience of its own. In exchange, each marketplace controls significant parts of the transaction: Etsy charges listing and transaction fees per sale, Redbubble sets much of the base price itself, and Merch by Amazon places sellers into production tiers governed by the platform.
| Model | Built-in traffic | Who sets the retail price | Who owns the customer contact | Branding control |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Etsy | Yes, marketplace search | The seller, minus listing and transaction fees | Etsy, largely | Limited, within Etsy's shop template |
| Redbubble | Yes, marketplace-wide product pages | Redbubble sets much of the base price | Redbubble | Minimal, uploads a design to an existing template |
| Merch by Amazon | Yes, Amazon shopper base | The seller, within Amazon's program rules | Amazon | Minimal, listing lives on a standard Amazon product page |
| Bear Grips Pro Shops | No, the seller drives its own traffic | The seller, in full | The seller | Full, a branded shop with its own layout and logo |
On Etsy, Redbubble, or Merch by Amazon, the marketplace holds the buyer's account, email, and order history, and a seller cannot simply export that list to email a new drop announcement directly. On an independent storefront, every sale belongs to the seller's own customer record. For a seller planning to build a repeat-purchase brand rather than sell a single design once, that ownership question usually matters more than the traffic difference.
The realistic setup for many sellers is a marketplace listing for discovery alongside a branded storefront for the buyers who already know the brand and want a full catalog. A new design can go up on Etsy or Redbubble to test demand with no marketing spend, while an established audience (an Instagram following, a gym's member base, a team's parent list) gets pointed straight to a branded shop that keeps the full margin and the customer relationship.
A seller with zero existing audience and an untested design benefits from marketplace traffic first. A seller with any existing audience, even a small one, keeps more of every sale and the full customer relationship by starting with a branded storefront. See the custom t-shirt company comparison for how storefront platforms differ once that decision is made.
No marketplace fees, no shared templates. Set your own retail price and keep the full margin, free plan available.
Start FreeA storefront typically keeps more of each sale since there is no marketplace listing or transaction fee, but a marketplace can produce more total sales for a brand new design with no existing audience.
The marketplace does, largely. Sellers generally cannot export a buyer's contact information the way they can with their own storefront's customer records.
Yes, many sellers do both, using a marketplace for discovery and a branded storefront for an existing audience or repeat buyers.
No. Bear Grips is a branded storefront, not a shared marketplace. There is no shared product template, no marketplace fee structure, and the seller sets the full retail price and keeps the margin.
Bear Grips Pro Shops