Poshmark slipped a bit by finishing 6th place in the 2020 Sellers Choice Awards. This niche fashion app is easy to use, but sellers have to work to get sales.
In January 2020, EcommerceBytes readers rated the marketplaces on which they had experience selling. An introduction to the Sellers Choice survey along with a summary of the overall ratings can be found here, along with links to results for each of the 10 online marketplaces included in the survey.
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Would you recommend:
Poshmark
Year Established: 2011
Description: Mobile selling app with a focus on fashion
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Summary:
Poshmark came in 6th place in the 2020 Sellers Choice Awards for Online Marketplaces.
Easy and free-to-list were some of the positives sellers cited about selling on Poshmark. “Easy to use, no returns and less scam from buyers, higher prices too,” said one seller. However, once an item sells, things can get pricy, some said.
“This is an up and coming site,” wrote another. “They need to keep expanding categories and figure out a way for 1st class mail. I sell well here.”
Not so popular was having to use Poshmark shipping labels, which some said were “overpriced” – particularly problematic for low-priced items. The company needs to figure out a way to offer First Class mail as a shipping option, one respondent said.
One comment that represented some of sellers’ sentiments was the following: “I like Poshmark. Good customer service, fairly easy to use, and I have made some sales. Unfortunately I don’t think the customer base is as large as eBay or Amazon, but they are quickly growing, so I’m sticking with them.”
Some things sell well, others not so much. One way to grow sales is through sharing, but some sellers said that doesn’t work for them. “I just want to list something, have it get picked up by Google, and forget about it. I have a business to run, I don’t have all day to be sharing things I’ve already posted,” said one.
One seller described it as going to extremes, writing, “Posh doesn’t do a lot of promoting so sellers must CONSTANTLY share their entire Shop over and over one at a time to remain relevant. This is very time consuming and quite frankly a waste of time for most business owners. They outlaw or ban bots that share for you but allow you to pay a lot of money to a live person that will share that has to have access to your password and account info including your balance or financial info,” which the seller called a security concern.
The same seller also said Poshmark promotes closet clear outs too much because sellers had to radically reduce their prices to participate, affecting sellers far more than the platform.
One problem cited by numerous sellers: customer service. One seller said forget email or Facebook, use Poshmark’s Twitter customer support.
A number one complaint, according to one seller: they only allow 8 photos. Others said Poshmark needed better photo tools.
A few said buyers tended to be low-ballers (looking for low prices), but sellers also said that once an item is sold, it stays sold.
Another issue cited by one seller: the time it takes to receive funds from a sale. “What I don’t like about Poshmark is that, when I sell an item, we (the sellers) have to wait until the buyer receives that item purchased, and they have to leave us a feedback before we get that money from that purchase. Which means, we have to wait for about a week or until the buyer feels like leaving the feedback to get that money released. The reason why we sell is because we need money RIGHT AWAY, so we don’t have to wait for a whole week nor for feedback to be left to get our money.”
But another seller wrote, “If you accept an offer, then the order goes through and you get paid three days after delivery of package, unless the buyer opens a case, which is rare.”
Poshmark received a 5.16 in Profitability; a 5.44 in Customer Service; a 5.59 in Communication; and a 6.50 in Ease of Use. It received a 5.77 from sellers when asked, “How likely are you to Recommend Poshmark as a selling venue to a friend or colleague?”
Reader Comments:The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Love Poshmark. Super easy to list. Make more on clothes than at a garage sale, to get rid of stuff. Don’t really like the social media part but o well.
Easy to use. No FEE to list. Remains “Fee Free” until sold or item is cancelled.
Easy listing and shipping process and shipping is a bargain for heavier items
Great ease of use and the lack of listing fees are great. It’s a popular platform for buyers, so sales are easy to make. The biggest downside is that you have to use their overpriced shipping label. For low cost items, selling is impossible, because no one is going to pay $8 in shipping for a $4 item, especially knowing that the seller will make a $0.25 profit on that sale. Selling fees are on the higher end.
My daughter was the one who told me about Poshmark and Vinted. I really like PM and is a natural extension of selling when you are on eBay. VERY different than eBay and sometimes CS is super frustrating. But my results have been good and consistent when I am on site.
Easy to list and stuff will sell, if you share and follow, more work than eBay.
This is an up and coming site. They need to keep expanding categories and figure out a way for 1st class mail. I sell well here.
This site is good for name brand clothing. A good opportunity to sell used merchandise in good condition. I sold pricey handbags on this site. As a buyer, I found sellers did not respond to my offers.
High visibility but buyers want to lowball. Some items are profitable while others are a wash.
It is super easy to set up your closet and being seen if you go to the parties. The only bad part is the fees. Almost $7 added just for shipping regardless if it’s an envelope size package, or a large 5 lb. package. And they take so much of the selling price. So if you’re trying to get a certain price, like the actual worth, you would have to extremely overprice, making it out of range for buyers. On the other hand, the transaction safety and security to the buyers and sellers to make sure everything is completed fairly is welcome.
I do love Poshmark, but I’d make some changes. They need to fix it so we can upload all photos to a listing at once. Also, they really need to add a Vintage market/section. Other than that, I love it but am fairly new to it!
Poshmark is proving to be a pretty good selling channel. It’s still kind of new and has some kinks to work out, but it’s getting better. Problem is it’s a very needy channel, with all of the sharing you’re supposed to do. I just want to list something, have it get picked up by Google, and forget about it. I have a business to run, I don’t have all day to be sharing things I’ve already posted.
Long time user of Poshmark. Sometimes make a little more, frequently less. Again, my ability to commit time does play into profitability. A nice change of pace from eBay
Easy to use. Seems many buyers want to pay very little for items, likely due to Posh’s one rate shipping cost. Would be better if there was shipping options.
Easiest platform to sell on and no fuss with figuring out shipping. Super high shipping rates though on packages over 5 pounds.
I like the fact that people cannot return things for buyer’s remorse. Difficult to get ahold of support when you have a legitimate problem, but very profitable, very easy to use.
Great site to sell on, but no way to reach a person by phone if needed. Also wish they would hurry up and sell world wide
They’re customer service is a form email, but I do love their 3-day return policy. Unlike Amazon, PayPal and eBay with their 30-day return policy, when it’s sold on PoshMark, 99% of the time it stays sold.
Not many sales, but they are no-hassle sales. The shipping kills a lot of the deals for buyers. They need to educate the buyers more on what a seller actually makes on their site. I am not going to accept an offer where I make .05 cents
I’m fairly new to PM and so far I’m ecstatic. The high commission is tempered by the ability to list items so very quickly as compared to eBay and Etsy. My third sale was to a scammer buyer, and PM handled it so professionally – I was quite surprised that I didn’t lose anything like I would have on eBay. I’m not crazy about the social aspect of it all, but I’d rather have that then sites where buyers and sellers are hostile and abusive. I sure hope no corporate creep starts ruining Poshmark.
Fees are high but service is great and there is no monthly charge for a storefront and no listing fees. They do submit your items regularly to Google, a big plus compared to eBay.
Very cool place to sell. Nowhere is perfect though, and again you can’t have cash payments transferred to your PayPal account. This one thing keeps a lot of sellers away from the sites that require access to your bank account.
Poshmark is great. Love not having to deal with returns unless a mistake was made. Everyone is friendly and in most cases kind. Hate the sharing aspect due to taking too much time away from listing new items. New Listing however are super quick to add and revise.
Ease of use is refreshing. Support is not a big issue because it is very transparent in its operations. Rules are easy to understand. When you do have a tech, lack of response to emails is an issue. Incorrect and inconsistent emails is an issue. Emails usually come with repeated requests for more information on subsequent emails adding no value to the problem. Best support comes from their twitter messaging. Facebook messaging is as inadequate as their email support. Both email and Facebook messaging are useless. Twitter messaging support I would give a 10.
Poshmark is great for buying used clothing and shoes, not at all for other merchandise. Change of season shopping is great, other weeks of the year are slow.
Expensive, but very easy to use, and the fees are transparent as you see what you will be charged for each and every sale.
I have been selling at Poshmark for over three years. It’s a site where you as the seller must promote your listings as well as work the site by attending the groups to share and like not only your listings but other sellers’ listings. It’s hard to reach customer service. Again, another site that does not make it easy. Number one complaint they only allow 8 photos. When buyers are visual they need more photos. Please offer more photos. Ridiculous and frustrating to a seller when a buyer wants more and you are at work and can not do photos until the evening or if not working you don’t have the App on your phone and can not answer until your home and able to follow through. Come on Poshmark, let sellers add more photos. A plus now at Mercari since they now allow 12 and loving it.
Poshmark is easy to use. I like the community features they offer. I haven’t had much luck selling, but perhaps I haven’t found the right items to list yet. Poshmark is primarily clothing. I feel it would be better if they expanded their categories and allowed more things to be listed.
Poshmark charges a high 20% Fee, so I raise my prices for items listed there. The traffic on Poshmark is great, but the majority of people are window shopping (not serious about making a purchase). You have to dedicate time on Poshmark to make sales. Listing items on Poshmark is easy and fast. Poshmark quickly responds to a request, but they also don’t provide assistance by phone.
They upfront grab 30%, charge buyer 7.00 shipping, then take another 10% FVF.
Picture app needs to be easier to take full length pictures or crop. That would make it a 10.
Horrible customer service and communication but ease of use on this site and potential profitability (if I put in the work) is great – Really like Poshmark a lot
Poshmark is a lot more work. The sales are acceptable. Does need work on the way communication presents itself for buyers and sellers.
Product categories too restrictive, they need to broaden the items we can sell to make this competitive.
Sales are driven by social networking and can be slow/difficult without a niche product or high-demand name-brand products.
Easy to use but annoying that you have to constantly share your closet.
FEES are horrible! Sold something recently for $75 and I am only getting $60 of it. That’s highway robbery.
The sharing aspect is ridiculous. I have 71 items listed and it takes too much time to share each item, follow people, share their items, etc. I have tested it both ways and it makes NO difference in my sales. I have sold 4 items to date, which is poor. I mostly go in to delete items that have sold elsewhere. Please offer import from eBay. I will continue to list here on the off chance I might make a sale.
Easy to use, 20% fee is steep, as is the one size fits all shipping charge that is great if you buy 5 lbs of stuff, not great if buying a little t-shirt. Customer service takes too long to respond. Same return procedure as Mercari, sellers are at Poshmark’s will if they allow or not, however there is at least communication between buyer and seller with pictures for that matter. Lots of low ballers on the site and Poshmark needs to give sellers more tools to organize their items, ability to search for their items, etc.
Poshmark makes it too complicated having the social integration. I have used it 2 different times and did okay the first. The 2nd time I gave up having to start all over with the social connections. My number 2 choice though. They have improved allowing more than just clothing items.
No telephone customer service; too many buyer-based emails and meaningless closet cleanout promotion emails; app-based listing creation is not particularly logical or easy. Prompt payment structure.
I have my closet on Poshmark, although I don’t sell much there, the only reason why I like it is because there are a lot of friendly people. What I don’t like about Poshmark is that, when I sell an item, we (the sellers) have to wait until the buyer receives that item purchased, and they have to leave us a feedback before we get that money from that purchase. Which means, we have to wait for about a week or until the buyer feels like leaving the feedback to get that money released. The reason why we sell is because we need money RIGHT AWAY, so we don’t have to wait for a whole week nor for feedback to be left to get our money. I don’t think that’s right. Plus, one more thing, we cannot see the buyers’ feedback UNTIL the sellers put the feedback to the buyer. which means, If a buyer leaves a 1* and poor feedback, then the buyer says: “Excellent buyer, blah, blah, blah, the buyers get a good feedback and after we find out that we got a poor feedback. THAT IS ALSO WRONG. We, the sellers, should be able to see the buyers feedback before we leave feedback for them.
Low ball offers. Selling fees are much too high. However, great exposure. Offer to Likers. Taxes collected.
Easy to use, but wish there was a message link to communicate with a buyer. Sales OK if you play the game of lowering prices. Wish it was a requirement to list measurements.
I found I had to babysit items put on this site and send them to “parties”. I did not understand at all how they functioned and left shortly after signing up because I do not have time for such craziness.
Photo editor could use some more features. Too bloated. The feed page is a bit overwhelming. Too much fees to sell. Great postage rates.
It’s not difficult to list. But all the sharing you have to do to get your items and noticed is very difficult and extremely time consuming.
This site might be good for others who only sell clothing and has the patience to follow up everyday to make sure what they posted is still visible. I don’t care for that, if I post an item and everyone who comes after me posts their items, my items keep moving down, so you post it again to keep it visible and so does everyone else. So you go on the site and see a bunch of items repeated over and over! Not for me.
Limited to clothing, and home goods. Hard to find communication with customer service, as well as “needing” to share. Opens up more possibilities in the clothing, as far as a lower ASP, and need to source “quality”.
If you accept an offer, then the order goes through and you get paid three days after delivery of package, unless the buyer opens a case, which is rare. Seems like they are trying to solve the problems of what people don’t like about eBay. However, getting orders on Poshmark is not easy. They don’t come often, no matter how hard I work. Hoping it will get better.
Poshmark is one of my top platforms for followers. I have 88K followers and do pretty well. Poshmark customer service is horrible and they never help. They have by far the worst rating system of any platform and they tend to give free money to buyers that scam regularly. If a buyer opens a claim for $20 or under most time they are granted a refund and so is the seller. This encourages dishonesty and repeat claims. Poshmark is very good about removing bullies or racial, hate, violent stuff but that is literally all support does. They use the community of sellers to do most of their work for them. This includes, marketing, authentication and so much more! Most people that do authentication for the app are in direct competition with the person they are suppose to be fair and judge. Big shock having sellers decide whether other seller break policy is just a bad idea. Many competitors report whole profiles as counterfeit for spite and it’s freely spoken about in the Facebook seller groups! Posh doesn’t do a lot of promoting so sellers must CONSTANTLY share their entire Shop over and over one at a time to remain relevant. This is very time consuming and quite frankly a waste of time for most business owners. They outlaw or ban bots that share for you but allow you to pay a lot of money to a live person that will share that has to have access to your password and account info including your balance or financial info.. Sharing daily or paying someone to many times a day is the only way to consistent sales on the platform. Some don’t have a couple hundred extra a month for a live person to spend 8 hours a day sharing while having access to your full account and financial info. That should be a security concern but it’s not really a concern for them. They like everything else claim it’s on you to release themselves of accountability. Sharing is a huge advantage or disadvantage and it makes it breaks sellers daily. The more you share the more you sell! They have tons of flaws. They also promote sales far too much. Example being the offer to likers they have and closet clear out. Almost every other day to every three days they promote closet clear out. This means a seller must reduce their item 10% each time to participate. Then Poshmark offers 4.99 shipping when a seller reduces 10%. Catch is that it stores your historical or overall lowest price, meaning every closet clear out (every few days) you must reduce it another 10% to participate. To be quite frank this is Disgusting for any platform to do to a seller. Sellers must constantly reduce their item price to participate and it greatly effects seller far more than Posh. Posh made a billion in sales off the backs of sellers they do not support nor do they help make a profit. Poshmark leeches off sellers and deliberately encourages buyers to disrespect sellers by low offers abd or their mentality that everything should be 80% off any price listed. Posh attracts a lot of cheap buyers that are buying into the little marketing that they do. Posh is not designed for sellers to make a huge amount of profit unless you really are business savvy. Most aren’t and fail quickly. The closet clear outs are a huge benefit for their numbers and have nothing to do with helping or assisting a seller. It’s 10000 percent in favor of the buyers just like the horrific rating system. Buyers can rate anything uncontested and sellers do not get to rate at all?!?. If you share daily for 3 hours or more you will make sales daily but you also have to participate as much as possible. This means very time consuming hours being in their hosted parties, sharing and etc. it’s literally an 8 hour time commitment to posh. The community Has a lot of very catty women that will constantly comment and be very rude on your profile. People constantly spam or promote their closets on others intro post even though it is against policy and support never removes those. Support also never removes the items they list as prohibited or illegal. Support really is not helpful. The live posh parties they have are Posh employees that literally play the MEAN GIRL HIGH SCHOOL cattiness to the highest level, even though they are all clearly like 35-40! Posh is not at all in anyway grateful for the sellers that made them. In fact at every turn they insult them with the hey it’s been 3 days reduce 10% or constantly relist these items. I think that’s why they do closet clear out and offer to likers so much. Because sellers must relist frequently to not constantly have to low ball themselves or they list at 60% to 70% more than the item is worth to accommodate these every few day sales that if sellers participate in they get a boost but if they don’t they will again be penalized by less views and algorithm hits. Posh is a tool nothing more! Sellers need to treat it as such and they will do well. They even charge 20% commission yet do nothing to earn the respect or loyalty of their sellers in fact the betray them at almost every turn. If used correctly again it can be a profitable tool nothing more.
Little sales on this site, but it is not set up specifically for vintage. Easy to use, but little movement in sales. Have to underprice items in comparison to my other sites.
I really want to sell on Poshmark but they do not yet allow Canadians to ship to the US. I would love to see them change that policy.
Easiest platform to list on, hardest place to get sales on in my opinion. In fact I’ve never sold anything on it. Been there about a year and half. I don’t have that many listings though. I hate the whole sharing with followers every few days or going to all the posh parties. I just want to list and sell and get paid. I can go to Facebook for social stuff. I can’t rate the customer service since I’ve never dealt with that.
A bunch of shopaholics emptying their closets at a loss. I’m a professional seller and this isn’t the site for pros. They send too many damn emails for no reason.
Very poor seller support. Requires a lot of work for few sales and average selling price is lower than other venues.
This site must stop its youth-only market as older shoppers are seeking quality clothing and misc. The marketing of this is the fad like influencer selling. Too much time expected to interact while prices are low. Not enough room to describe and must make sellers disclose pets to smoking. Poshmark needs input from 45 to 69 age group. They are missing a strong buying market, and to focus on youth clothing and disposable trends is questionable.
Really hate that I can’t combine shipping when a customer places separate orders, and the fees are pretty high. Sales are lackluster at best.
The site is very easy to use and list on, but navigation could be less wonky. For example, when editing shop listings, I have many unnecessary clicks to make small changes.
The automatic shipping fee is a total turnoff to buyers I think and being able to price my items at a reasonable price for buyers yet allowing me to make a profit is very slim at best. To entice a buyer, the selling price has to be so low to compensate for the high shipping price charged by Poshmark.
Sellers Choice Awards:
We thank all readers who took the time to rate the marketplaces. If you have comments about the Sellers Choice Awards, please feel free to post them below.
