Marketplace Comparison: Walmart vs. Amazon from a Seller’s Perspective

Walmart and Amazon are two retail giants familiar to customers worldwide. Both companies allow third-party sellers to join their marketplaces, which opens up exciting sales opportunities. Walmart and Amazon have huge built-in audiences your business can potentially tap into.

But which one of these online marketplaces should you go for? Let’s see how Walmart vs. Amazon fare in a head-to-head competition. 

Walmart vs. Amazon at a glance

Although there are a lot of similarities between the two retailers, there are just as many differences. Before we dive deep into the comparison, here’s a quick rundown of what type of sellers Walmart and Amazon are better suited for.

Who is Walmart best for?

Walmart is a retail store brand that’s most familiar to shoppers in the US, so if your target audience is primarily US-based, Walmart can be an excellent choice. Walmart’s primary business is its physical retail stores, popular places to shop for groceries, household items, and other everyday products. The Walmart ecommerce platform is an extension of that—people buy the same type of items you’d get in a supermarket in wide-ranging product categories, so it’ll be easier for larger brands to stand out there. Walmart’s online store is more popular among women and older shoppers.

Who is Amazon best for?

Amazon is primarily an online shopping business that focuses on product categories like electronics, apparel, books, and niche items customers won’t find anywhere else. Amazon is a well-known brand internationally, so if you’re targeting a global audience, Amazon will be a better fit for you. Amazon’s audience size is larger than Walmart’s, but there’s also a lot more competition, and Amazon’s seller fees are higher.

If you want to learn more details about each platform, read on!

Walmart vs. Amazon: An in-depth comparison

Let’s examine each platform in detail and compare their features, such as audience size, seller expenses, etc.

Seller fees

The Walmart marketplace has a simple pricing structure: it charges sellers referral fees on each purchase, and that’s it. There are no subscription, setup, or other fees. 

The referral fee percentage varies between product categories from 3% to 20%. The referral fees for apparel and accessories range from 5% to 15%, depending on the total sales price of the purchase—lower prices mean lower fees. Note that Walmart charges commission from the total sales price, which includes the product price and all other charges, like shipping.

For new sellers, Walmart offers a 10% referral fee discount when you join the marketplace. More new seller discounts are available if you use their fulfillment, advertising, and other services. These discounts are valid for 90 days.

Amazon’s referral fees for a few product categories. Source: Amazon

The situation is different with Amazon. First, to sell on the Amazon marketplace, you need to sign up for one of its selling plans: Individual or Professional. 

If you plan to use Printful to fulfill products like custom t-shirts, you’ll need the Professional plan, which costs $39.99/month.

Then, on top of the monthly fee, you’re also charged referral fees, which work similar to Walmart’s system. The referral fees depend on the product category and range from 3% to 45%. However, the 45% fee only applies to accessories for Amazon devices—for other categories, the maximum fee is 22%. For clothing and accessories, referral fees range from 5% to 17%, depending on the total sales price.

Like Walmart, Amazon includes shipping and gift-wrapping charges in the total sales price. Amazon has a minimum $0.30 referral fee for most product categories. You’ll pay either the total price percentage or the minimum amount, whichever is greater.

On top of that, Amazon has other selling fees, which may apply in some cases, for example, if you sell media items or have over 100,000 active listings. There’s also a refund administration fee. In case of a refund, Amazon returns the referral fee you paid minus an administration fee ($5.00 or 20% of the referral fee, whichever is less).

Audience size

Estimating each marketplace’s audience size is tricky because neither of them publicly shares its number of customers. Plus, Walmart’s revenue numbers typically include earnings from its brick-and-mortar stores, which form the majority of its earnings.

However, some information is available to help us draw conclusions. Walmart’s global revenue is $642 billion, and its net sales from the marketplace amount to $52.4 billion. Although sales in stores far outweigh Walmart’s online sales, its ecommerce business also brings in considerable revenue.

Meanwhile, Amazon is practically synonymous with online shopping, reflected in its worldwide revenue, which reached almost $575 billion in 2023 alone. Over the years, Amazon has opened some physical stores and acquired the Whole Foods chain in 2017, but most of its revenue comes from online sales.

An encouraging statistic for Amazon third-party sellers is that in 2023, more than 60% of Amazon’s sales came from independent sellers.

If we compare the visitor traffic each marketplace gets, Amazon comes out on top again. Each month, Amazon gets over 2 billion visits to its main website alone, not even counting the online traffic to its regional sites. This makes it the undisputed leader in the ecommerce category. For comparison, eBay, its closest follower, gets around 687 million monthly visitors.

Amazon vs. Walmart in terms of online traffic. Source: SimilarWeb

While competing with those numbers is impossible, Walmart is doing well too. The Walmart marketplace sees almost 393 million visitors monthly, making it the third most popular choice behind Amazon and eBay.

Most popular product categories

Although both Amazon and Walmart sell different types of consumer goods across various categories, the two retail giants have some crucial differences.

Walmart’s main revenue stream comes from its more than 10,000 retail stores worldwide. It’s famous as an affordable retailer where customers go looking for bargains. This means people often expect to see a lower price for their favorite item at Walmart than they’d get elsewhere.

Since Walmart is a supermarket chain, one of its most popular product categories is groceries, followed by other home essentials people buy when they visit a major retail store.

This also applies to its online marketplace. If we look at Walmart’s side menu, the trending products and categories highlighted first are special deals and groceries, followed by seasonal goods, household items, clothing, etc.

Although it’s possible to get groceries on Amazon too, this marketplace is more focused on categories like electronics, arts and crafts, apparel, beauty products, etc. Amazon is also a major book retailer, having originally started as a bookseller and now offering the popular e-reader Kindle.

Source: Amazon

With its many independent sellers, Amazon offers a greater product selection, including niche products. Convenience is one of Amazon’s main benefits—customers can expect to get almost anything in one place. However, due to the many sellers on the platform, Amazon’s prices can vary significantly in the same product category. So, it may be tricky to figure out how to price your items to get sales and have a healthy profit margin at the same time.

Fulfillment methods

Third-party sellers can choose between two methods to fulfill orders from Amazon and Walmart.

In both cases, one option is to fulfill your orders either by yourself or with the help of a dropshipping partner, like Printful. This means either you or your production partner is responsible for packing and shipping the orders and ensuring they reach your customers. However, you as a seller must still comply with each marketplace’s fulfillment and delivery time promises. Otherwise, your account can get penalized or even removed from the platform.

The other option is to use Amazon’s or Walmart’s fulfillment service. You send a stock of your products to these retailers, and they store, pack, and ship your items when orders come in. The sales volume that retailers like Amazon and Walmart handle every day is enormous, so you can rest assured that your products are in experienced hands.

Fulfillment by Amazon. Source: Amazon

Amazon’s fulfillment solution is Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), and a significant bonus is that if you use FBA, your products are included in the Amazon Prime program. This means shoppers who are Prime members can take advantage of Prime benefits for your products as well, including same-day delivery in some locations, free two-day shipping to most addresses in the US, and others.

Walmart has a similar program called Walmart Fulfillment Services (WFS). You prepare your stock, send it to Walmart’s fulfillment network, and they fulfill your orders. Products fulfilled through WFS can benefit from its two-day shipping offer, and similar to the Amazon Prime label, your items are tagged as “Fulfilled by Walmart,” which can increase consumer trust.

Product restrictions

Amazon and Walmart restrict the types of items you can sell on their platforms. Both marketplaces prohibit products like dietary supplements, medical devices, tobacco or drugs, explosives, etc. However, nearly all product categories, including apparel, have specific restrictions (for example, while children’s apparel is allowed, it has to comply with specific regulations).

Both Amazon and Walmart have detailed guidelines on product restrictions, so if you plan on selling something from the restricted categories, read their policies carefully.

All of Printful’s products comply with the policies of both companies, so product restrictions are not something you’ll need to worry about.

Payment processing

The process of receiving your earnings on Amazon is simple. When you set up your Amazon seller account, add your bank account information in the settings. After you get sales, you’ll see when and how much money will be transferred to you in the Payments dashboard.

In Walmart’s case, to get money from your sales, you must sign up for a payment processor: Payoneer or Hyperwallet. Walmart transfers your earnings to your payment processor account, and payments usually happen every two weeks.

Support

If you sell on Amazon, your Seller Central account is the hub for all your Amazon operations, including reaching their support team. To contact them, you must complete an online form providing as much information as possible. You’ll open a support case and get a response from their team. In urgent cases, you can request Amazon to contact you by phone. However, Amazon doesn’t provide a dedicated support phone line you can call yourself.

In Walmart’s case, you can find the support contact form on their Seller Help page. You’ll be asked to pick the topic you need help with and choose a specific issue in your selected category. First, you’ll see a general answer to the most prevalent problems. But if you need more help, scroll down the page to see a question: “Did this solve your issue?” Click “no,” and a link to open a case via email appears.

Seller Support Chat is also available on your Walmart account, but its description on the help center page suggests it’s more likely to be a chatbot than a customer service agent.

Both Amazon and Walmart have extensive help sections specifically for sellers. These sections answer many frequently asked questions about setting up stores, running accounts, costs, etc. Take advantage of this resource—you might find the answer there instead of waiting for the support team to reply.

Amazon also has a Seller Forums section where you can participate in Amazon-related discussions with other sellers, ask questions, compare experiences, and more.

Integrations with print-on-demand services

Amazon and Walmart allow third-party sellers, including sellers working with print-on-demand services like Printful, to offer their products on their marketplaces.

Source: Printful

Printful has integrations with both Walmart and Amazon, so you can sell and automatically fulfill products like custom hoodies, accessories, wall art, etc. However, be prepared that getting approval to become a seller on both platforms can be time-consuming, requiring you to jump through many technical hoops.

Note: the integration with the Walmart marketplace is available only to US sellers.

It’s time to choose your next major marketplace

Walmart and Amazon are two significant players in the online shopping world, and they both help independent sellers reach massive audiences through their platforms. As you can see, each retailer has its pros and cons. For example, while Amazon dominates in audience size, Walmart’s seller fees are more affordable.

Each platform will be better suited for different businesses, so there’s no definite answer to which one you should go for. Amazon and Walmart will require a lot of work from you, but if you find your target audience there, it’ll be well worth it. So, if you’re interested, start your research and see where it takes you!