Own online store vs marketplace: your shop compared with Trendyol, Hepsiburada and Amazon Türkiye

Own online store vs marketplace is a question every business runs into once it decides to sell online in Turkey, and it comes up for local producers as often as for foreign brands entering the Turkish market. When you open a shop on a marketplace like Trendyol, Hepsiburada or Amazon Türkiye, you get in front of a large audience that is ready to buy. When you build your own online store, you have to bring that audience in yourself, but the customers who come are yours.

A marketplace works much like renting a unit in a shopping mall, and your own site like opening a shop on the high street. The mall has plenty of foot traffic, but the rules, the rent and the window layout belong to the mall. In your own shop you decide everything, but getting customers through the door is also your job.

A marketplace's biggest advantages are traffic and trust. The customer already shops on that platform, has their payment details saved and trusts the returns process. Your part is listing the product, pricing it right and shipping the order on time. The infrastructure, payments and often a courier deal come ready-made.

The cost side has more lines than it seems at first glance:

• Sales commission: it varies by category, and platforms update their rates from time to time. Check the current rates in each marketplace's seller panel.
• Shipping, service and transaction fees: there can be extra deductions on top of the commission.
• Advertising: to stand out among other sellers offering the same product, you may need a budget for on-platform ads.
• Price pressure: sellers listed side by side on the same product page push the price down.
• Dependence on the rules: listing rules, return policy, campaign terms and account suspension decisions are in the platform's hands.

On your own site there's no commission; there's the payment provider's transaction fee and the hosting cost. But the real gain is control. You decide how the product page looks, which campaign goes to whom, and the shipping and return rules. If a customer agrees to join your email list, you can reach them directly.

The brand side matters too. On a marketplace your product shows up as one row among thousands of similar ones. On your own site you can tell the product's story: how it's made and who makes it. For local, handmade or origin-specific products in particular, that story also carries the price.

The downside is traffic. Nobody shows up the day your site goes live. You need to bring visitors in through search engine optimization, social media, email and, if needed, ads. That's not a one-off task; it's ongoing work. Also, businesses in Türkiye that sell from their own site have to prepare legal texts such as the mesafeli satış sözleşmesi (distance sales contract) and the KVKK aydınlatma metni (privacy notice under Turkish data protection law), and register with ETBİS, the government's e-commerce information system.

There's a measurement advantage as well. On your own site you can see which channel a visitor came from, which product they gave up on and where they abandoned the cart. A marketplace's seller panel shows you sales figures, but not this much detail about how the customer made their decision.

Once you've decided to open your own store, the second question is the platform underneath it. Setting up a store on a ready e-commerce platform such as Shopify, İkas or Ticimax starts at around 20.000 – 80.000 TL, excluding VAT (KDV); the platform's monthly or yearly subscription is not included in that figure. Theme customization, product import, and payment and shipping integration are part of the setup.

Custom e-commerce software starts in the 120.000 – 400.000 TL range. I usually recommend that route when your product structure isn't standard (made-to-measure pricing, subscriptions, wholesale and retail prices on the same site), when stock and orders have to connect to an existing ERP or accounting system, or when the ready platform's subscription and app fees grow noticeably along with your sales volume.

For most small and mid-sized businesses, starting on a ready platform is the right call. Moving to custom software once your sales channel has settled and its limits are clear is less risky than commissioning custom software from day one. I go into this in more detail in my guide on custom software vs off-the-shelf.

When you decide, look at your own business's numbers more than at general advice. Once you answer the questions below, which channel should come first often becomes obvious on its own:

1. 1After the marketplace commission and extra deductions, does your product's margin still leave you a meaningful profit?
2. 2Do your customers buy the same product again regularly? The more repeat sales are worth, the more your own site matters.
3. 3Do you already have customers who know you, social media followers or walk-in shop customers?
4. 4Is your product sold by other sellers under the same barcode, or are you the only one making it?
5. 5Do you have the time or the team to handle orders, returns and customer questions?

If your margin is thin and nobody knows you yet, starting on a marketplace makes sense. If you make your own product, repeat sales are high and people already know you, setting up your own site early pays off more in the long run.

You don't have to choose between a marketplace and your own site. The route I suggest to most businesses is using both, each with a different job:

1. 01

   Be on the marketplace and measure demand

   Learn with low risk which product sells, which price works and what questions customers ask.

2. 02

   Build your own site for the brand and repeat sales

   Offer what you can't on the marketplace: the product story, a wholesale inquiry form, subscriptions or special bundles.

3. 03

   Point people to your own channel from inside the parcel

   Within the platform's rules, introduce your site and social media accounts on a leaflet or card that ships with the product.

4. 04

   Manage stock and orders from one place

   Keeping separate stock for each channel is a source of errors. Pull stock into one place with the ready platforms' marketplace integrations or a custom panel.

Adana and the Çukurova region have a lot of businesses in farming, food and local production. In categories like honey, citrus, tomato and pepper paste (salça) and dried produce, marketplaces offer fast sales, but with so many sellers in the same category, price competition is tough. What sets these products apart is often their origin and their producer, and you tell that best on your own site.

I built a showcase website and mobile app for Tüfekli Arıcılık, a beekeeping business, and a content-managed web platform for the Adana Beekeepers' Association (Adana Arıcılar Birliği). What I learned from those projects: a local producer's most valuable asset online is content that shows where the product comes from and whose hands made it. A marketplace has no room for that content; your own site does.

If you're thinking about opening your own store, or adding a site next to your existing marketplace sales, we can go through your product structure and sales channels in a free discovery call and work out together which setup makes sense.