For a UK jewellery business the honest split is: Etsy if you make or curate vintage pieces and have no audience yet, because it charges about 11% of each sale (6.5% transaction, 4% + 20p payment processing, 0.48% regulatory operating fee, plus the $0.20 listing fee, all before 20% VAT on the fees) but brings buyers to you; Shopify if you want your own shop and a till that shares stock with the website, at £25 to £65 a month plus 2% + 25p per online card payment on the UK Basic plan; WooCommerce if you already have a WordPress site and someone who will maintain it, at no licence cost plus hosting and 1.5% + 25p for UK cards through WooPayments. None of the three is built for stock where every piece is unique, and none will produce a VAT margin scheme invoice on its own.

Figures are as of August 2026 from each platform's published UK pricing or fee policy, linked in Sources.

The three, side by side

Etsy Shopify (UK) WooCommerce
What it is Marketplace; Etsy owns the customer Hosted shop; you own the customer Free plugin on your own WordPress site
Fixed cost None; optional Etsy Plus $10/month Basic £25/month (£19 annual), Grow £65 (£49), Advanced £344 (£259); 3 days free then £1/month for 3 months Plugin free; hosting, theme and extensions extra ($29-$299/year per extension per WooCommerce's own page)
Per listing $0.20 per listing, renewed every four months or on each sale of a multi-quantity listing None None
Per sale 6.5% of item price plus postage and gift wrap None None
Card processing (UK) 4% + 20p (Etsy Payments, UK bank account) 2% + 25p Basic, 1.7% + 25p Grow, 1.5% + 25p Advanced; in person 1.7%, 1.6%, 1.5%; extra 2%/1%/0.6% if you use another gateway WooPayments 1.5% + 25p UK cards, +2% international, +2% currency conversion; or any other gateway
Other fees Regulatory operating fee 0.48% UK; Offsite Ads 15% (12% once past $10,000 sales in 12 months, then compulsory); 2.5% if you list in a currency other than your payment account's POS Pro £69/month per location if you want the full till £15 per dispute; £5/month per active card reader
Who may sell jewellery Made by you, designed by you, or vintage (20+ years) that you curated. New manufactured jewellery bought for resale is outside the Creativity Standards Anyone Anyone
One-of-a-kind stock Listing with quantity 1 sells out automatically, but you pay the $0.20 to list each piece Products and variants are SKU plus quantity; a unique piece is a product with quantity 1 Same model; "manage stock" at product level
Shop till sharing stock with the website No (Square reader for in-person, not a shared stock) Yes - basic in-person selling is included with every paid plan, POS Pro is £69/month per location Only via a separate POS plugin
Margin scheme invoice No No; you issue it yourself No; you issue it yourself
UK presence UK site and GBP payouts; fees set in USD, VAT added to fees UK pricing in GBP; UK support Automattic; WooPayments has UK pricing

How much does Etsy really take from a UK jewellery sale?

Work it on a £120 ring with £4 postage, sold to a UK buyer, paid through Etsy Payments, not attributed to an Offsite Ad:

Fee Calculation Amount
Listing $0.20, converted about 15p
Transaction 6.5% x £124 £8.06
Payment processing 4% x £124 + 20p £5.16
Regulatory operating 0.48% x £124 £0.60
Subtotal £13.97
VAT on fees at 20% £2.79
Total about £16.76, or 13.5% of the £124

A VAT-registered seller reclaims the £2.79, so the net cost is £13.97, about 11.3%. If the order came through an Offsite Ad add 15% of £124, another £18.60. Etsy charges the transaction fee on the postage too, which people forget, and for sellers outside the US it charges it on the VAT-inclusive listing price.

Against that, Etsy's search brings buyers who were never going to find a new website. The marketplace is the marketing budget. For a maker starting from zero that is usually worth 11%, and the Creativity Standards are written for exactly that seller: physical items made, altered or assembled by you, your own designs, or vintage pieces 20 or more years old that you personally sourced. A shop reselling new manufactured jewellery does not qualify, and Etsy can ask for evidence of age and source on vintage.

What does Shopify cost a jeweller with a shop and a website?

Shopify's UK Basic plan is £25 a month (£19 billed annually), with online card rates of 2% + 25p and in-person rates of 1.7% through Shopify Payments. Grow is £65 (£49 annually) at 1.7% + 25p. Use a different payment provider and Shopify adds 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced, which in practice forces you onto Shopify Payments.

On the same £124 sale, Basic costs £2.73 in card fees and nothing else per sale. Twelve sales a month on the £25 plan is about £58 all in, or 3.9% - a third of Etsy. At three sales a month it is about 9% and the gap closes. Shopify is the cheaper channel once you have the traffic and the more expensive one until you do.

The real reason jewellers choose Shopify is the till. Basic in-person selling through Shopify POS is included with every paid plan and shares the product catalogue and stock with the website, so a ring sold across the counter drops off the site. POS Pro at £69 a month per location adds the staff and stock features most shops want. That is the closest any of the three comes to solving the stock problem below, and it is why Shopify POS appears in our jewellery POS comparison.

What does WooCommerce cost?

The plugin is free. Everything else is a line item: hosting (WooCommerce's own pricing page suggests $25 to $350 a month depending on provider), a theme, and extensions that WooCommerce prices at $29 to $299 a year each - a decent jewellery site typically runs five to ten of them. WooPayments charges 1.5% + 25p on UK cards, +2% for international cards and +2% for currency conversion, with no monthly fee; you can use Stripe or anything else instead without a penalty. On the £124 sale the card fee is £2.11.

The cost that does not appear on any pricing page is maintenance. WordPress, WooCommerce, the theme and each extension update separately, and a jewellery site that takes payments needs someone to apply those updates and test the checkout. If you have that person, WooCommerce is the cheapest and most flexible of the three. If you do not, the saving disappears into the first afternoon the checkout is broken.

Why is one-of-a-kind jewellery a problem for all three?

E-commerce platforms model a product as a SKU with a quantity. Jewellery is not like that. A second-hand Victorian bangle or a one-off commission is one piece with one cost, one weight and one history, and when it sells it is gone. All three platforms can represent that as a product with quantity 1, and all three will mark it sold out when it sells online. The problem is everything that happens off the website.

  • The piece sells in the shop on Saturday. The website still shows it until someone updates the quantity. Shopify POS solves this if the shop sells through Shopify POS; Etsy and WooCommerce do not.
  • The piece goes to the workshop for sizing, or out on approval, or to a valuer. It is not sold but it is not available. No platform has a state for "in the building but not for sale".
  • The piece is listed on Etsy and on your own site. Two listings, one ring, two places to update.
  • Two listings on two marketplaces plus a website plus a counter is four places, which is where cross-listing tools and back-office systems come in. The platform that sells the piece does not know about the other three.

The practical rule: one system holds the truth about each piece and the channels read from it. If the website is the only channel, the website can be that system. The moment there is a counter or a second marketplace, it cannot.

Can you run VAT margin scheme sales through an online shop?

You can sell margin scheme goods online; you cannot let the platform do the VAT. Under VAT Notice 718 a margin scheme sale must not show VAT separately on the invoice and the invoice must carry the words "Margin Scheme - second-hand goods" and a cross-reference to your stock book. Shopify, Etsy and WooCommerce each either display prices as VAT-inclusive with a VAT line, or treat the product as VAT-free; neither is a margin scheme invoice.

The workable approach is to mark second-hand pieces as not taxable on the platform so no VAT line is printed, take the payment, and issue the proper margin scheme invoice yourself from your stock system, recording the sale against the stock number. For new jewellery sold at standard rate the platforms' VAT handling is fine. Mixing both on one site is where people go wrong, and it is why the stock book rather than the website has to be the record.

Etsy adds a wrinkle: it adds 20% VAT to its own fees for UK sellers, reclaimable if you are registered, and for sellers outside the US it charges its transaction fee on the VAT-inclusive price.

Which should a jeweller choose?

  • A maker with no audience: Etsy first, and keep your own customer list because Etsy will not give it to you. Add Shopify when repeat buyers would rather find you than search Etsy.
  • A shop with a counter: Shopify, with POS, so that the website and the till share stock. Consider Etsy as a second channel for the vintage and handmade part of the range if it fits the Creativity Standards.
  • A reseller of new branded jewellery: Etsy is not open to you. Shopify or WooCommerce.
  • A second-hand and antique dealer: Any of the three for the shop window, but the stock record and the margin scheme invoices must live somewhere else.
  • Someone with a WordPress developer on call: WooCommerce.

What we could not verify

  • Shopify's Starter plan price in the UK. It is not on the main UK pricing page we checked; the table above covers Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus.
  • Etsy's UK listing fee in sterling. Etsy states it as $0.20 and converts at the market rate; the 15p in the worked example is approximate.
  • Exactly which POS features are in the included tier versus POS Pro. Shopify's UK POS pricing page lists POS Pro at £69/month per location and says basic in-person selling is included with every paid plan; the feature split changes.
  • Typical WooCommerce hosting cost in the UK. WooCommerce's own range is $25 to $350 a month; UK hosts vary.

Sources

This is general information, not financial or tax advice, and it is not a quotation. Platform fees change without notice and differ by plan and country; check the linked pages before you budget, and take the VAT questions to your accountant.

Milleso is the system that holds the truth about each piece when you sell across more than one channel: every piece serialised with its all-in cost, listings on Shopify, WooCommerce, eBay and Chrono24 pausing the moment a piece leaves the building, and the margin scheme invoice issued from the stock record rather than the website.