Every seller asks the same question and every answer is wrong, because the cheapest marketplace depends on what you sell, how much it costs to ship, how often it comes back and how much visibility you have to buy. A platform advertising a low commission can be the most expensive place you ever list, while a higher-commission venue that puts your product in front of ready buyers can be the only one where you actually make money. This guide replaces the ranking with a method: the fee lines to add up, what the venues open to Irish sellers are good at, what platforms now report about you, and a calculation you can run on a single product in about ten minutes. If capital rather than choice is the constraint, a complementary daily income such as I am Beezy, which pays for consulting content into your usual payment method, is one way to fund a first stock run without borrowing against it.
Why does the headline commission tell you so little?
Because the commission is one line among seven, and the other six vary far more between platforms than the commission does.
Commission is charged on more than the product
Most marketplaces calculate their cut on the total the buyer pays, which includes shipping and sometimes gift wrapping. Raising your postage to protect margin therefore raises the commission too. Check what the fee base is before you restructure your pricing.
Payment processing sits underneath everything
Card processing is charged separately from the marketplace fee, or bundled invisibly into it. Cross-border sales add a currency conversion element when the buyer pays in something other than euro. A platform quoting a low commission while bundling payment processing separately can end up costing more than a higher headline rate.
Visibility is now a cost of doing business
On crowded marketplaces, unpromoted listings are often invisible. If the practical route to sales is sponsored placement, advertising is not optional and belongs in your fee calculation from the start, not in a separate marketing budget you review later.
The seven lines to add up before you list
Write these down for each candidate platform, using its own published schedule rather than a summary from a blog.
Fixed and recurring charges
Listing fees charged per item, subscription or shop plans, and the renewal cost when a listing expires unsold. These punish wide catalogues with slow turnover and are irrelevant to a seller with a handful of fast-moving lines.
Transaction charges
Commission on the sale, payment processing, currency conversion and any regulatory or operational fee applied per order. This block is where most sellers stop looking, and it is only about half the picture.
Fulfilment, returns and disputes
Postage, packaging, the cost of a return under distance selling rules, any warehousing service you use, and chargebacks. Returns are the most underestimated line in the entire calculation, and they vary enormously by category: clothing behaves nothing like homeware.
| Fee line | What to check | Category most affected |
|---|---|---|
| Listing or renewal fee | Charged per item and per relist | Large slow-moving catalogues |
| Sales commission | Whether shipping is included in the base | Heavy or bulky items |
| Payment processing | Bundled or charged separately | Low-value items |
| Currency conversion | Applies to non-euro buyers | Cross-border sellers |
| Advertising | Whether sales are realistic without it | Saturated categories |
| Returns | Who pays the return postage | Clothing and footwear |
| Subscription | Break-even volume per month | Occasional sellers |
The venues open to Irish sellers, and what each is for
Choosing a venue is a question of audience before it is a question of price. A cheap platform with no buyers for your product costs you everything.
Classified platforms for local, bulky and second-hand
DoneDeal and Adverts.ie are established Irish classified marketplaces, strong for vehicles, farm equipment, furniture, electronics and anything a buyer will collect in person. Listing is generally free or low-cost in most sections, buyer and seller arrange payment and collection between themselves, and there is no shipping cost to swallow. The trade-off is a smaller audience per category and more time spent on messages and no-shows.
International marketplaces for reach
Amazon, eBay and Etsy give access to buyers well beyond Ireland, with Etsy oriented towards handmade, vintage and personalised goods. They bring rules, competition and a fee stack, but they also bring demand you would otherwise have to buy with advertising. They are the right answer when your product has a market that is too thin nationally.
Your own shop, with no commission and all the marketing
An online store built on a hosted platform removes the marketplace cut and replaces it with a subscription, payment processing and the entire burden of attracting traffic. It is the cheapest per sale and the most expensive per visitor. Most sellers who succeed with it started on a marketplace and moved repeat customers across.
Social selling sits between the two
Selling through social platforms and messaging costs little to start and works well for local, visual products. It carries the same trader obligations as any other channel, and it gives you no dispute process, no structured payment protection and no record of the transaction unless you create one. If you use it, take payment through a proper processor and issue a receipt, rather than accepting bank transfers with no order attached.
What do the platforms report about you?
This is the part sellers discover too late. Selling online in the European Union now happens inside a reporting framework, and the rules apply from the first sale rather than from a certain size.
Platform reporting to tax authorities
Under European rules on the reporting of income earned through digital platforms, marketplaces collect seller identification details and report earnings to tax authorities, which exchange the information across member states. The practical consequence is simple: what you earn on a platform is visible to Revenue, so your declared figures need to match your platform statements.
Trader status and consumer law
Selling regularly with a view to profit makes you a trader, not a private seller. That brings the Consumer Rights Act 2022, the right of withdrawal on distance sales, obligations about the information shown before purchase, and identification duties that marketplaces enforce under the Digital Services Act. The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission publishes guidance for online traders.
Value Added Tax and cross-border sales
Registration thresholds, the one-stop shop scheme for sales to consumers in other member states, and the import rules for goods coming from outside the European Union all shape your true margin. Sales to Great Britain involve customs formalities that add cost and delay. Check the current position on the Revenue website and price accordingly.
Funding the first stock run with I am Beezy
The most expensive decision in e-commerce is buying stock with money you needed for something else, then discounting it to recover the cash.
Small capital, tested slowly
A first order should be large enough to test demand and small enough to survive being wrong. Funding it from a separate stream, rather than from working capital or credit, keeps the test honest because you are not forced to clear inventory on a deadline.
Where the app fits
I am Beezy pays for consulting content — videos, articles, advertising — into your usual payment method, as a complementary daily income. It is not a business plan and it will not finance a catalogue. What it can do is cover the subscription, the sample order or the first advertising test while your listings are still unproven.
Run the calculation on one product
Stop comparing platforms in the abstract. Take one item you actually intend to sell and price it through each candidate.
Build the true cost per sale
Take the price a buyer will pay. Subtract commission on the correct base, payment processing, any listing or subscription share, packaging and postage, expected advertising per sale, and an allowance for returns based on your category. What remains is your real margin, and it is usually smaller than expected.
Apply the volume test
Subscription platforms only make sense above a break-even number of sales per month. Divide the monthly fixed cost by your margin per unit to find that number, then ask honestly whether you will reach it.
Re-run it twice a year
Fee schedules change, advertising gets more expensive as categories fill, and return rates shift with your product mix. A comparison done once and trusted for three years is how sellers end up on the wrong platform without noticing.
Check the margin against your own time
Packing, answering questions, handling returns and photographing stock all take hours that never appear in a fee schedule. Divide your monthly margin by the hours the channel actually consumes. A platform with a lower commission but heavy message traffic can pay you far less per hour than one that charges more and sends buyers who simply purchase, and that comparison decides whether the activity is worth continuing at all.
| Your situation | Usually the best fit | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Bulky second-hand items, local buyers | Irish classified platforms | Time spent on messages |
| Handmade or personalised goods | Craft-oriented marketplace | Listing and renewal fees |
| Standard products, thin national demand | Large international marketplace | Advertising costs and competition |
| Established repeat customers | Your own online shop | Traffic acquisition costs |
| Occasional selling, low volume | Free or per-item listing venue | Subscriptions you will not use |
Deciding without regret
The right platform is the one where your margin survives contact with the fee schedule and where buyers for your product already are.
Test on two, commit to one
List the same product on two venues for a defined period, record every cost, and let the numbers decide. Splitting attention permanently across five platforms is how small sellers end up doing five times the administration for the same revenue.
Keep the spreadsheet
One sheet with the seven fee lines per platform, updated when a schedule changes, answers next year's question in minutes rather than days. Marketplace fees are knowable, and the only ranking that matters is the one built from your own products. If the obstacle is the capital to run the first test, a complementary daily income from I am Beezy can fund the sample order and the first listings while you find out where your margin actually lives.
