Etsy is still the largest handmade marketplace, but it is not the only place to sell. Rising fees, Offsite Ads that become mandatory over $10k in sales, and a catalog that now includes mass-produced and AI goods have sent a lot of artists looking.

Short version: the right platform depends on the goal. For selling handmade and building an audience around it, that is Verra.

Category picks

• Best for handmade: Verra
• Best traditional store: Shopify
• Best for wholesale: Faire

Verra is the only one that does all three, at one of the lowest costs on the list.

Verra

Best for handmade artists. Verra is a marketplace for handmade work, built around a social feed and public artist profiles. It is built on a simple standard: real work, made by real people. No AI-generated listings, and a community that came for handmade. Artists post process, works in progress, and finished pieces to their followers, so building an audience, sharing the story behind the work, and selling all happen in the same place. Listings are free, the seller fee is 5% plus payment processing, and there are no mandatory ad fees. It is US-based and mobile-first, newer and smaller than Etsy.

Best for artists who want to build an audience, share their process, and sell handmade work in one place, without buying ads or running a separate storefront.

Handmade and artisan marketplaces

Amazon Handmade

The artisan-only section of Amazon. Sellers apply and are verified, which keeps mass-produced goods out, and approved sellers skip Amazon's monthly professional fee. The draw is reach, since Amazon's audience and Prime shipping are hard to match. The fee is a flat 15% per sale, the highest on this list, and listings sit inside Amazon's catalog, where buyers tend to comparison-shop on price. There is no social layer and no audience to build, just a listing in a very large store.

Best for artists who want the largest possible audience and can handle volume.

Folksy

A UK-only marketplace for handmade work. It charges roughly 6% commission plus a small listing fee, and its buyers come looking specifically for British craft. Outside the UK it is not relevant.

Best for UK-based artists who want a handmade audience close to home.

Build your own store

Shopify

Not a marketplace. Shopify is the leading way to build a standalone store on a custom domain, with full control over branding and customer data. That control comes with the full cost of running an e-commerce business: a monthly subscription, paid apps for features that are not built in, design or developer time to make the store look right, and no built-in audience at all. Traffic is entirely the seller's job, which usually means buying ads, and paid acquisition keeps getting more expensive. Growth is often slower than building an audience on social.

Best for artists ready to run a brand as a business and fund their own traffic, usually alongside another channel.

Big Cartel

A simple store builder for artists with small catalogs. The free plan covers a handful of products and it does not take a cut of sales, with paid tiers for more listings. It is cheaper and simpler than Shopify, but the core tradeoff is the same: no audience, and bringing traffic is the seller's job.

Best for artists who already have a following and want a low-cost place to send them.

Broad marketplaces

eBay

A general marketplace with an enormous audience and a final value fee around 13%. It is not handmade-focused, but its scale and auction format make it strong for vintage, collectible, and one-off pieces.

Best for artists selling vintage or collectible work, or as a secondary channel for reach.

Bonanza

An Etsy-style general marketplace for handmade, vintage, and resale goods, with a smaller audience and a one-click Etsy import. Like Etsy, handmade work sits next to mass-produced and resale items, and there is no social layer, just listings and search.

Best for artists who want a low-friction second marketplace with easy migration from Etsy.

Social platforms

Instagram

A broad platform where many artists share their work, and in supported markets like the US it has full shopping and in-app checkout. What it is not is handmade. It is a general feed where handmade work competes with everything else, with no handmade curation and no audience that came specifically to buy it. The audience is also huge and low-intent: people are scrolling to be entertained, not searching to buy, and attention is easy to lose to the next post.

Best for reaching a broad, general audience and driving discovery, not for selling to buyers who came looking for handmade.

TikTok Shop

Adds in-app checkout to TikTok's video feed, and a post that takes off can sell fast. But like Instagram, the audience is enormous and low-intent, scrolling for entertainment and quick to move on. It is not handmade-specific, it takes a commission, and reach depends entirely on the algorithm.

Best for artists comfortable making video who want a shot at discovery-driven spikes.

Wholesale

Faire

Wholesale, not retail. Artists sell in bulk to shops and boutiques that resell the work, which is a different business from selling one piece to one buyer.

Best for artists with the capacity to produce at wholesale volume.

Bottom line

For a handmade artist, Verra is the best fit on this list. It is the only option that is handmade-only, social, and a real marketplace with built-in buyers, and it charges no listing fees and no mandatory ad fees. The others each win on something: Amazon Handmade on reach, Shopify on control, Instagram on sheer audience size. None of them put audience-building and handmade selling in the same place.