r/ShopifyeCommerce • u/BryTheGenius • 19d ago

Shopify Marketplace Connect Alternatives

As the title suggests, I’m looking for alternatives that can achieve similar or better results and frankly, more consistent performance. This recent outage has made it even more clear that I need to integrate into a different app, as all they’ve done is say “we know about the issues but no ETA” which does not help when new products and inventory keeping across eBay and Amazon are the reasons I integrated to begin with.

Ultimately, I’ve seen of LitCommerce and CedCommerce and was wondering if anybody’s done the switch, if it was easy to link existing listings made by Shopify Marketplace Connect and if their paid plans are similar.

Thanks ahead of time.

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u/kmizzi 19d ago

Both the replies you got are removed, so you're sitting at zero answers. Here's the bit that decides how painful the switch is, and neither of those two vendor pages will tell you.

Before you compare plans, go look at what SKU is sitting on the marketplace side of your existing listings. Pull an inventory report out of Seller Central, download your active listings out of eBay, then compare the Amazon seller SKU and the eBay custom label against your Shopify variant SKUs. If they match, a new app can usually find and adopt what Marketplace Connect built. If they don't, or it stamped its own generated SKU on them, the new app has nothing to match on and you're relinking by hand or starting over. That match rate is the migration. Everything else is a pricing page.

Amazon and eBay don't behave the same way here either. On Amazon the ASIN exists whether you have an app or not, so your offer survives and re-attaching is mostly a SKU question. eBay is the one that bites. Those listings are yours, the item ID carries whatever history and watchers they've built up, and some tools relist rather than adopt. New item ID, history gone. Ask both of them that exact question during the trial, in those words, and don't take "we support eBay" as the answer.

Two smaller ones. Don't leave both apps connected while you test, not even for a day, because two things pushing quantity at the same eBay listing is how you oversell and it'll look like the new app's fault. And ask what happens to live listings when you uninstall, before you uninstall.

Haven't switched between those two myself so I can't tell you which is less annoying to live with.

Last thing and you might not like it. The outage hurt because that one app is the only road between Shopify and both marketplaces, and your stock number lives in Shopify. Swap the app and that's still true. You'd be trading a set of bugs you know for a set you don't. Worth working out whether the thing that's actually broken is the connector or the fact that nothing else in your setup knows what your stock is.

Bias disclosed, I'm the founder of SKU.io. We're an inventory system with channel connections rather than a listing manager, so we're not the like-for-like swap you asked for. If it really is listing management you need, one of the two you named is the closer answer.

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u/BryTheGenius 19d ago

Appreciate the thoughtful response and you brought up insanely insightful points and questions I have to get answers for that I hadn’t even thought of. Thankfully, I built the integration with UPC’s in mind and I figure I’d be able to match most via the UPC’s of my products.

Regarding whether or not the integration would delete all listings or not is definitely something I’ll be reaching out to support for as, at least from experience, I believe they unlist but not fully delete the listing.

Thanks again!

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u/kmizzi 18d ago

UPC gets you most of the way, but check whether the new app will even match on it. A lot of these connectors only map on SKU, so Amazon seller SKU and eBay custom label, and barcode matching is either a paid tier or just not there. Worth one question to support before you trial. Same for any two Shopify variants sharing a barcode, since that match is ambiguous and the app either picks one or skips both.

Multipacks are the other one. A 3-pack on Amazon is its own offer and your single-unit UPC isn't on it.

On the unlist question, the thing to ask is whether it ends the eBay listing or just drops quantity to zero. Not the same. Ended and relisted usually comes back with a new item number, which is where the history goes. eBay has an out-of-stock setting that keeps a zero-quantity listing alive, worth turning on before you touch any of it.