Why are marketplace seller fees so high?
Marketplace platforms take a heavy cut through transaction and listing fees combined with expensive shipping costs. This eats away at profit margins and leaves sellers struggling to keep their retail prices competitive.
What the numbers show
Counted from the threads quoted below. How we count
- Most of it landed at once — the busiest month was September 2026, with 8 people.
- This comes up 74.4× more often in r/restaurantowners than across the site as a whole.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1trying to start alternative seller-owned cooperatives or marketplacesDid this help you?
- 2Raising product prices to cover shipping costsDid this help you?
- 3Charging the customer directly for shippingDid this help you?
- 4Stopping DoorDash cards when drivers arrive to pay so they eventually remove the restaurantDid this help you?
- 5Putting direct menus in customer delivery packages so they order directly next timeDid this help you?
- 6Canceling the service entirely or banning rude drivers through the appDid this help you?
- 7Using Eventbrite for ticket salesDid this help you?
- 8Canceling the order to avoid paying the advertising fee, resulting in losing the sale entirely.Did this help you?
- 9switching to alternative payment providers like Square or StripeDid this help you?
- 10Reducing the pricing or profit margins of other business services to subsidize platform costsDid this help you?
- 11Escalating the pricing dispute to a platform partner managerDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“It seems like a broken system. We might cancel because it isn’t really our customer base to begin with.”source ↗
“They took our menu and put it on their site with higher prices. We tried to get it removed but they didn't give a flying f×ck.”source ↗
“They could pay me 20% bonus instead of them taking a cut, and I still wouldn’t use them.”source ↗
“how I hate how much Etsy is screwing me over with stupid fees and a ridiculous shareholder based model.”source ↗
“the processing fees on my current payment API are way higher than I expected, and the whole flow after that is painful too.”source ↗
“feels like I'm losing money just trying to receive money.”source ↗
“shipping prices are supper expensive how do y'all keep the prices down”source ↗
“that fee stings even more when it's a custom piece you can't just relist to someone else.”source ↗
“Just been charged off site ads on a unique CUSTOM order because the buyer clicked on a link in the last 30 days. Absolute p166 take!”source ↗
“Our application is a multi-client application, and Salesforce is currently asking for a fee of $145 per client per month, while also retaining a 15% share of the revenue.”source ↗
“At this pricing level, the overall cost becomes quite significant, making it commercially challenging for us to sustain the offering.”source ↗
“It would be helpful to understand if there is any room for negotiation, particularly considering that this is a multi-client application and the proposed per-client pricing significantly impacts its commercial viability.”source ↗
“Also Eventbrite has a pretty big fee. All the apps and plugins I can find for Shopify seem to all be subscription services with a big fee and questionable reviews.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
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- 3Why are hourly professional fees so expensive?
- 7Why do you have to pay thousands to remove team members?
- 15Why is QuickBooks still taking credit card fees from my bank account?