Amazon informed sellers in March that it was shuttering its ecommerce hosting service next year. Now it is making ecommerce platform Shopify the preferred migration partner of its Amazon Webstore service as Shopify integrates with both Amazon and its FBA fulfillment service.
Shopify said Amazon Webstore sellers can seamlessly migrate their businesses to a Shopify account with no interruption to their online businesses – plans start at $29/month. Amazon Webstore had allowed third-party merchants to set up their own store using its platform, charging them $79/month plus a 2% transaction fee. The decision to close the service came as a surprise to many.
One seller explained in March, “One of the chief benefits of having an Amazon Webstore is the ability to go ONE place to add new products and update the ones that are currently up for both your Amazon Webstore and Amazon.com.”
On Thursday, Shopify announced it was Amazon’s preferred migration partner, and it set up a special page. “We’ve worked closely with the Webstore team to make moving to Shopify simple. In a few steps, merchants can transfer their customer and product data – with zero downtime or service interruptions – and begin taking advantage of an extended 30-day free trial.”
Importantly, Shopify is working to integrate with Amazon so that merchants can sync their Shopify store with Amazon: “Just like other sales channels, any product, customer, and order data from Amazon will be synchronized with Shopify. We’ll have more news to share about the Amazon Sales Channel as we get closer to release.”
Amazon Payments Vice President Patrick Gauthier was quoted saying, “Shopify exemplifies the value of simplicity in an increasingly complex world of commerce services. We are excited to work together with Shopify to create best of class solutions that help merchants integrate Amazon offerings.”
Shopify also announced integration with Login and Pay with Amazon and Fulfillment by Amazon.
Last year eBay similarly announced the closure of its web-hosting platforms Magento Go and ProStores – it chose Bigcommerce as a solution for those who wanted to continue using a hosted service.
Read more about the Shopify solution for Amazon Webstore merchants on the Shopify blog.
