What Is Shopify Marketplace Connect (and Its Opposite)?
Shopify Marketplace Connect is a free first-party Shopify app, formerly Codisto, that lists your store’s products on outside marketplaces such as Amazon, Walmart, eBay, and Target Plus. It syncs inventory, pricing, and orders in real time from your Shopify admin. It helps you sell on marketplaces. It does not turn your store into one.
That last line is the whole reason this page exists. “Marketplace Connect” and “building a marketplace” sound like the same project and point in opposite directions, so it’s worth getting the distinction straight before you install anything.
What does Shopify Marketplace Connect actually do?
It’s a single sales channel that pushes your existing catalog onto the big external marketplaces and keeps everything in step. You build a listing once in Shopify, connect a marketplace account, and the app publishes it there. When a stock level changes, a price moves, or an order comes in, Shopify syncs it across every connected channel so you’re not editing the same product in four dashboards.
The short version of what it handles:
- Listings created and managed from Shopify, mapped to each marketplace’s categories.
- Inventory updated across Shopify and every channel the moment it changes.
- Orders imported back into Shopify, with shipment status synced out.
- Currency converted automatically so prices show in each marketplace’s local money.
Shopify built it from Codisto, a multichannel tool it acquired in 2022 and rebranded. That’s why it installs as a native channel instead of a bolt-on. It matters because you’re plugging into markets with real scale: third-party sellers make up more than 60% of the units sold on Amazon, and Marketplace Connect is Shopify’s front door to that traffic.
How does Shopify Marketplace Connect work?
Setup runs in a handful of steps, and none of them touch code:
- Install the app from the Shopify App Store. It’s free to add.
- Connect a marketplace account (your existing Amazon Seller, eBay, or Walmart account).
- Map your products to that marketplace’s categories and attributes.
- Publish and sync. Listings go live; inventory and orders flow both ways from then on.
You keep running your Shopify store exactly as before. The app just mirrors your catalog outward and pulls orders back, so fulfillment stays in one place.
How much does Shopify Marketplace Connect cost?
The app itself is free to install, and pricing scales with synced orders rather than a flat plan. Shopify’s pricing gives you the first 50 marketplace-synced orders each month at no cost, then charges a small percentage above that, with a hard monthly ceiling.
| Cost | |
|---|---|
| Install the app | Free |
| First 50 synced orders / month | Free |
| Each synced order after 50 | 1% |
| Monthly maximum | $99 |
Two things people miss. This fee is separate from what Amazon, eBay, or Walmart charge you to sell on their platform, which you still pay to them. And the cap means a high-volume seller never pays Shopify more than $99 a month for the connection.
Shopify Marketplace Connect and Amazon
Amazon is the headline use case. Shopify Marketplace Connect lets you list Shopify products on Amazon, sync inventory both ways, and pull Amazon orders back into your Shopify admin to fulfill alongside your own store’s orders. You link your existing Amazon Seller Central account; the app does not create one for you, and Amazon’s referral and FBA fees still apply.
It’s a solid fit if Amazon is a channel you want to feed from a catalog you already maintain in Shopify. You avoid double-keying products and overselling, which are the two things that make manual multichannel selling miserable.
Shopify Marketplace Connect and Etsy
Here’s where the live product has drifted from what a lot of older articles claim. Etsy is no longer available for new connections in Shopify Marketplace Connect. If you already sync Etsy through the app, Shopify lets you keep that connection running, but you can’t add Etsy fresh anymore. The app’s current channels are Amazon, Walmart, eBay, and Target Plus, with Walmart and Target Plus limited to the United States.
If Shopify-to-Etsy sync is what you came for, use a dedicated connector such as CedCommerce’s Etsy Integration instead. Point being: don’t install Marketplace Connect expecting Etsy and find it missing on day one.
Selling on a marketplace vs. becoming one
This is the part worth slowing down for. Two very different jobs get filed under “Shopify marketplace,” and the right tool depends on which one you actually want.
| Sell on marketplaces | Become a marketplace | |
|---|---|---|
| Your role | A seller joining Amazon, eBay, etc. | The operator others sell on |
| Who lists products | You, from your own catalog | Independent vendors you onboard |
| Where sales happen | On Amazon, Walmart, eBay | On your own Shopify store |
| How you make money | Product margin, minus marketplace fees | Commission on every vendor’s sale |
| The tool | Shopify Marketplace Connect | A multi-vendor app |
If you want the second column, Marketplace Connect is the wrong app. You need software that adds vendor accounts, product syncing, order splitting, per-vendor commissions, and payouts on top of your store. That’s the job of Garnet Marketplace, a Shopify multi-vendor marketplace app: your store stays the storefront, and other sellers list their goods on it while you take a cut. We cover the full picture in is Shopify a marketplace? and show what running one looks like on our guide to building a marketplace on Shopify.
The two approaches can even coexist. Plenty of operators run a marketplace on Shopify and use Marketplace Connect to push their own first-party products onto Amazon on the side. Different tools, different directions, no conflict. If your vendors run their own stores, note that a marketplace app also handles the inbound sync, pulling their catalogs in through vendor and store integrations rather than pushing yours out. And once you become the operator, the tax picture shifts too, which we unpack in whether Shopify is a marketplace facilitator.
Want proof the “become a marketplace” route is real? Our roundup of multi-vendor marketplace examples runs through stores doing exactly that.
