Shopify eBay Integration: How to Integrate Shopify to eBay and Vice Versa

For some online entrepreneurs, Shopify might be one of their many sales channels.

Popular marketplaces such as eBay and Etsy are also excellent and reliable ways for online entrepreneurs to grow their online businesses and expand their sales channels.

However, monitoring all of these at a time can be challenging.

That’s where Shopify eBay integration finds tremendous use.

Shopify eBay integration lets you monitor your sales and inventory from both platforms on one unified and streamlined dashboard. It also lets you sync your products and sales from both platforms, creating a simpler and less cluttered workflow for you and your staff.

Shopify and eBay: Which one is for you?

The answer mostly boils down to which platform you mainly use.

But if you’re considering migrating, or if you haven’t built a business on either platform yet, there are some key differences between Shopify and eBay you should know.

eBay can provide quicker results, particularly when it comes to sales, given its household name. But the fees associated with each sale can eat up potential margins.

Shopify, on the other hand, gives merchants more tools to establish their online presence. The drawback is that it may take a while for beginning merchants to gain traction with a fresh website.

Weighing these pros and cons can be crucial to determining the best platform to host your e-commerce store. But it’s possible and quite strategic to host your store on both platforms.

What Should You Do Before Integrating eBay with Shopify?

Before integration, you’ll need an eBay seller account and a Shopify account. You can’t integrate if you’re missing one or the other.

For the best integration results, we suggest auditing your product details, finalizing your prices, and aligning your policies before integrating eBay with your Shopify (and vice versa).

Have an eBay Seller Account and a Shopify Account

If your eBay account is limited to buying, you won’t benefit from an eBay-Shopify integration.

Merchants need both:

• an eBay seller account subscribed to a paid plan
• a Shopify account on a paid plan

before they begin with the integration.

Have Complete Product Listing Descriptions and Details

Ideally, your products, whether on Shopify or eBay, should contain the following:

• Product title
• Product description
• Product photos
• SKUs and Barcodes
• Category information
• Weight information
• Inventory location

When adding products to either Shopify or eBay, fill in all possible details about the product. Having this complete information will make product sync seamless and free of headaches.

So go through your product details again and check for any fields that you may fill out.

Align your prices

Ideally, you’d want to keep your prices aligned across Shopify and eBay. This lessens friction and confusion, should customers visit both platforms.

However, the differing transaction fee rates between the two platforms may call for a pricing difference. Perhaps you’d want to price your eBay listings higher than your Shopify products.

The pricing difference may even be an incentive for shoppers to visit the platform where you have lower prices—effectively becoming a source of traffic.

So strategize and finalize your pricing in a way that would best meet business goals. Apply this rule to your shipping costs as well.

Align your policies

Source: Antiguo Leather

Aligning store policies, such as return and refund policies, may seem like a simple copy-paste.

But consider that while you have free reign with your Shopify store, eBay, on the other hand, has some policies that sellers should abide by as well.

For one, you can issue refunds for up to 90 days from the original transaction on eBay. Whereas with a Shopify store, it’s completely up to you if your refund policy goes beyond this timeframe.

Read more: Shopify Marketplace: Everything You Need to Know

Tools for eBay Shopify Integration

There are various tools merchants can use for eBay-Shopify integration.

The Shopify eBay app was unfortunately discontinued first thing in 2023. However, third-party apps can stand in for the discontinued eBay app.

It’s crucial that merchants only use one of these for a clean, uninterrupted integration process. Having multiple integration tools can result in orders being duplicated.

Popular and reliable eBay integration tools include:

Marketplace Connect

This is a Shopify-developed integration app that lets you sync and manage your listings with popular marketplaces, such as eBay, Etsy, and Walmart.

This app is completely free for the first 50 synced orders but will charge a 1% fee per additional synced order. This fee is capped at $99 per month, though.

CedCommerce

This app manages your inventory, orders, and listings from both Shopify and eBay. It has a distinct UI from Marketplace Connect, plus its pricing doesn’t rely on transaction fees.

CedCommerce has a free plan along with subscription plans priced at:

• Bronze $29/month (monthly billing) or $199/year (annual billing)
• Silver $49/month or $499/year
• Gold $79/monthor $699/year

Quick read: How Does Shopify Work?

Shopify eBay Integration: How to Connect Shopify to eBay?

For this guide, we’ll be using the free, Shopify-developed app Marketplace Connect due to its popular use.

Note that these tips can apply to any integration tool, though some features may function and look different.

Step #1: Install Marketplace Connect

Go to the Shopify App Store and install Marketplace Connect.

Then open the app.

Step #2: Link your eBay Account

After installing the Marketplace Connect app for the first time, merchants will be presented with marketplace options they can connect to.

Select eBay.

This will prompt you to log into your eBay account. Make sure to do so.

Click Agree and Continue.

Then choose your preferred eBay marketplace. Select the eBay domain containing the country TLD that your ideal customer visits.

After clicking Submit, your eBay account should now be linked to your Shopify account.

You may connect and manage multiple eBay accounts if you wish.

Step #3: Import eBay Listings

This step will import the listings from eBay to Shopify.

Shortly after linking your eBay account, the app displays a checklist of steps needed to properly connect eBay to Shopify.

One of the steps is linking the listings.

If you already have eBay listings, the Marketplace Connect app will scan through them and show which products have matching SKUs and/or titles with your current Shopify catalog.

Source: Shopify

Click on the blue text next to the green Ready to list tag.

Then select Approve for all the matches and then Review Matches.

Review the information displayed on screen. Make sure the product descriptions for both listings (eBay and Shopify) match. For example, they should both be a brown XS jacket.

If they don’t match, edit either the Shopify product or the eBay listing’s SKU to fix the error.

Otherwise, if they match, that means the SKUs and/or titles for both of these catalog items refer to the same item. Proceed by clicking Review Import Preferences.

Source: Shopify

In the screen that follows, you may decide whether to use the existing eBay rules or your Shopify rules for the synced eBay listings.

Choosing Use eBay rules uses the respective eBay listings’ already-set rules.

But choosing Use app rules overrides the eBay listings’ information with that of their Shopify counterpart.

You may decide individual rules for:

• Shipping
• eBay title
• Price & Taxes
• Inventory information
• Return policy
• Description
• Images

Once you’re done deciding the rules, click Link Listings.

Your eBay listings should now be linked to the Marketplace Connect app, where you can manage and monitor them.

You’ll see all the products managed by the app in the Listings section of the app.

If the Listing Status is set to a green Active, that synced and managed listing is live on eBay.

But what if you don’t have eBay listings in the first place? Or what if you want to add your Shopify products to eBay?

Step #4: Export Shopify Products

Navigate to Listings from the Marketplace Connect admin.

You’ll see here all the products and listings managed by the app. This will contain all your Shopify products as well.

Click on an item to view its details.

Underneath the Listing enabled section, click on Enabled to add the Shopify product to eBay. Then hit Save.

But you might want to review the options below as well.

Some crucial fields include eBay title fields, category, price, shipping information, return policy, item location details, item description, and item condition, among many others.

So take time to look through these options.

Alternatively, you may click on Bulk Edit from the listings management screen. This lets you edit all product details and options on one large table.

After you click Enabled and Save, the listing status will change to blue, suggesting that it’s publishing.

After the publishing sequence is completed, you’ll get various results.

If the listing status is set to Active, you have successfully added your Shopify product to eBay.

But if the listing status says Errored, there may be some issues you need to address. Click on the drop-down button next to the status to learn more about your particular issue.

If everything goes smoothly, you will have successfully exported your Shopify products to eBay as listings.

Step #5: Import eBay Orders

To import your eBay order information, go to Settings from the app admin.

Scroll down to the Order import section and choose either All orders or Only orders with linked products.

If you’ve linked all your eBay listings to the Marketplace Connect app, it should make no difference which one you choose.

Then we suggest choosing Pending under order status. That way, you can see from the app when an order comes through eBay.

After you save your changes, you may click on Orders from the app admin to see and manage orders.

Step #6: Add a Logo to your eBay Store

Go to the eBay templates section from Marketplace Connect’s Settings.

Click on Choose file and upload your store’s logo.

This will add your desired logo to all your synced eBay listings.

You may click Preview and edit templates to see how your eBay listings would look.

Step #7: Finalize and Save

Review your changes and click Save to apply them.

What Should You Do After the Integration?

Once you’re done with the integration, coordinate with your marketing department to update your traffic campaigns and your website copy.

Coordinate with your marketing

Once you’re accessible on both platforms, your traffic campaigns might need to be updated.

You may also want to add tracking to both platforms. If you’ve initially only had a Meta Pixel on your Shopify store, you may want to add Pixels on your eBay listings as well.

Update your copy

In line with updating your traffic campaigns, you also ought to update relevant copy.

For example, if you’ve only ever promoted your Shopify store, you may want your social postings to include your eBay listings as well.

If you have a product posting on Facebook, for example, you may want to include both the product page link and the eBay listing link in the post description.

Conclusion

Having an eBay store drives eBay's huge user base into the business.

But it can be challenging to keep tabs on both eBay products and Shopify listings, as well as the orders coming through. So, having one central hub can be beneficial, especially if you have multiple eBay accounts.

Shopify store owners can integrate eBay into their Shopify stores for easier management across multiple online channels. It would be like managing a single store but reaping the benefits of multiple channels.

So start selling on eBay now. Get the help of an integration app and start seeing more customers.

To explore more, check out: Shopify Guide: A Complete Step-By-Step Shopify Tutorial