eBay is pulling its app from the Shopify app store 5 years after launching it as an easy way for merchants on the Shopify platform to list their items on its marketplace. It appears that for many months, the app was failing to synchronize listings between the two platforms.
News of the eBay app’s demise appeared on a backend page on ZenDesk on October 4 – it isn’t clear that eBay or Shopify proactively notified sellers of the change.
In fact, anyone visiting the Shopify app store as of Thursday would be unaware that if they began using the app, it would only be available them for 2 months – unless they took the time to read the recent reviews from users.
In the announcement on ZenDesk, titled, “On January 1, 2023, the eBay app on Shopify is scheduled to be discontinued,” eBay encouraged sellers to find another app to use if they wished to continue to post their Shopify-hosted items on eBay.
What it didn’t say was that third-party apps charge fees.
Responding to questions on the eBay discussion boards about the app’s fate on Wednesday, eBay manager Brian Burke said the reason for pulling the app at the end of the year was the seller experience. “The top third party provider apps are rated higher than the EBSH (eBay Shopify app).”
That’s an understatement – eBay’s Shopify app has a 2.7 out of 5 rating, though some of the low ratings came in after the announcement.
What is clear from perusing older reviews is that the eBay app had been failing to sync inventory for quite some time – one of the primary purposes of using an integration app in the first place.
A seller who left a review in June said in part, “the main problem is the lack of sync with eBay – when items are sold and paid on eBay they are not appearing as orders in Shopify – which means we are offering items for sale on Shopify and other channels (Facebook/Instagram etc) that have already been sold.”
In his response on Wednesday, eBay’s Burke said in part: “We encourage sellers to check out these alternative or manage their listings & orders directly on eBay. Check out the top-rated 3PP apps on the Shopify app store or these,” listing the following five third-party apps: Codisto, CedCommerce, inkFrog, Sellbrite, and Magnalister.
On the Shopify discussion boards, some sellers were unsure of what to do, and some said the onus was on Shopify to come up with a free solution. A seller using the handle CouchFrancois wrote:
“Very disheartened to hear that eBay is dropping the eBay Shopify app. It puts my shop in a conundrum. I sell trading cards, so a lot of small transactions and many listings. By far the majority of sales are on eBay, not in my Shopify storefront.
“Solutions like Codisto would be cost prohibitive since I have a large amount of small (> $10) orders. I guess I could write some code on my own to do the work, but not sure I’ll have enough time between my real job and this side gig to write it in less than 3 months.
“Anyone else in the same boat? If so, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Would love if Shopify wrote an eBay integration app. If not, the business decision might need to be if I just go back to eBay only and drop Shopify. I love the customization I can do here, but if 95% of sales are in eBay…
In 2017 when eBay announced the app, its then Vice President of Global Trust & Seller Experience Bob Kupbens had stated: “eBay is focused on delivering the best choice and selection of inventory to buyers across the globe. This new integration with Shopify will bring even more great products to eBay buyers, while offering Shopify merchants the ability to seamlessly drive their business and brand at scale by tapping into our vibrant marketplace.”
Sellers may well wonder what’s changed since then. Does eBay now see Shopify as a competitive threat? Is it that eBay technology does not play well with others?
My guess is Ebay’s system is too glitchy to work consistently with 3rd party tools. Any API is doomed to fail, as the Ebay system seems to have micro-outages almost constantly. So if your item sells during one of these, it won’t end on the other system as the API fails. Tried an API with Ebay on a site called Delcampe many years ago and it was dreadful, with items failing to end on both sides. The fault was with Ebay. If you doubt it, try any bulk edit on Ebay and you will quickly get messages saying a number of items have failed due to server failure. One of the rare occasions Ebay is telling the truth lol