How to Sell 3D Prints on Shopify (Our Recommended Default)
Own the brand, the customer, and the lowest fees — here is how to set it up right.
Shopify is the one channel where what you build stays yours — the brand, the customer list, the buyer who comes back next year without paying anyone a referral fee. It charges for that with a monthly plan, which is why “is Shopify cheaper than Etsy?” has no single answer. It depends on how many orders you have. Here is the exact number for your price.
Platform cost per sale · Shopify vs Etsy
Past 20 orders a month, Shopify costs you less.
At a $28 price: Etsy takes $3.11 a sale; Shopify takes $1.11 plus its plan spread over your orders.
Your price
Platform fees only, before shipping and before our make cost, which is the same on both. Shopify Basic and US Etsy fees as each publishes them, read September 2026. What this cannot show: Etsy brings the buyers, and on Shopify you bring your own.
The real cost of Shopify
Not the $39. The traffic you have to bring yourself.
The fixLaunch where the buyers already are, and open the Shopify store for the customers who come back.
Four things before the first visitor
- 1
A domain of your own
A branded .com costs about $10–15 a year and reads as far more trustworthy than a yourshop.myshopify.com address. - 2
Product pages that sell without you
Four to six photos each — hero, scale, detail, in use — and titles written the way a buyer searches. See product photos that sell. - 3
Prices from the real make cost
Price from what the part costs to make, and fold shipping into it so you can say “free shipping” — it converts. How to price. - 4
Fulfilment connected
Link the store through Shippo and orders flow to production on their own — no forwarding, no copied addresses.
The store that ships under your name
A Shopify customer is your customer: you can email them, they can find you again, and no marketplace can suspend the relationship or raise its cut overnight. For products built on personalisation and repeat gifting, that is the whole point — so the parcel should feel like yours too. Ours carry your business name on the packing slip and nothing of ours in the carton.
Where the buyers come from
Shopify will not send them, so pick one of these and get good at it before adding a second:
- Short video
- The print growing on the bed, or the product doing its one clever thing. Post the same clip to TikTok, Reels and Shorts.
- Search
- A product page and a few articles that answer what your buyer types. Slow to start, free forever after.
- A small ad budget
- On your single best-converting product only, until you know what one customer is worth.
- An audience you have
- A club, a forum, a newsletter, a hobby following. The cheapest traffic there is.
Then keep what you win: a reviews app for social proof, abandoned-cart email to recover the orders that nearly happened, and a personalisation field wherever the product allows one.
For what the products themselves cost to make, the Make-Cost Index prices thirty-six everyday ones live.
FAQ
Yes, for building a brand you own — the lowest cut per sale and the customer is yours. It is weaker for a fast first sale, because you have to bring the traffic.
The Basic plan is $39 a month, or $29 a month billed yearly, plus 2.9% + 30¢ per online card sale with Shopify Payments (shopify.com/pricing, read September 2026). There is no listing fee.
Per sale, once you have enough orders to spread the plan over. At a $28 price the crossover is about 20 orders a month on the monthly plan; the chart above works it out for your own price.
Connect your store through Shippo to a production partner. Orders sync automatically, and each is printed, checked, packed under your name and shipped.
Your store. Your brand on the box.
Connect Shopify and every order is printed, checked, assembled, packed with your name on the slip and shipped. A price per part in seconds, no account needed.
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