Should You Move Off Shopee and Lazada? A Break-Even Guide
By GDI Solutions · Updated 2026-09-01 · 8 min read
Short answer: move when the marketplace fees you avoid exceed what your own store costs to run — including the traffic you now have to bring yourself. After the 2026 fee increases on both Shopee and Lazada, that line sits much lower than it used to. But the right move for almost every Singapore seller is not to leave. It is to add a store you own and shift repeat buyers to it.
What the marketplaces actually cost
Sellers usually quote one number — “commission” — and then wonder why the payout is smaller. There are four layers, and only the first is the one people talk about:
| Layer | What it is | Avoidable? |
|---|---|---|
| Commission | A category-based cut of each sale. Both platforms raised this in 2026. | No |
| Transaction fee | A percentage of order value, typically applied to the item plus shipping. | No |
| Programme / service fee | Optional promo, coins or seller-advantage programmes that buy visibility. | Yes, at a cost |
| Ads & shipping subsidy | In-platform ad spend and the free-shipping thresholds you fund to stay competitive. | Yes, at a cost |
Rates move — both platforms restructured fees during 2026. Rather than trusting any published figure, including ours, open Seller Centre and read your own fee-rates page. Then add your actual ad spend and shipping subsidies to get the real all-in rate. Most sellers are surprised by how much layer three and four add.
The break-even formula
This is the whole decision, and it fits on one line:
(Monthly marketplace revenue × all-in fee rate × share you can move direct) − (store running cost + your own traffic cost)
If that is positive, owning a store pays. The two terms people get wrong are the last ones. Store running cost is real but small — platform subscription, payment gateway, domain and hosting. Your own traffic cost is the honest one: on a marketplace, discovery is bundled into the fee. On your own site, you pay for it in ads, SEO, content or the email list you build. Anyone who tells you a direct store is pure margin has left this term out.
A worked example
A seller doing S$40,000/month on Shopee at an all-in rate of 18% is paying about S$7,200/month in fees. Suppose they can realistically move 30% of sales direct in year one — mostly repeat buyers who already know the brand. That is S$2,160/month in fees avoided, or about S$26,000/year. Against a store that costs a few hundred a month to run plus a modest ad and email budget, the build pays for itself well inside the first year — and every repeat order after that is structurally cheaper.
Run the same arithmetic at S$5,000/month and 10% moved direct and it does not work yet. That is the honest answer for smaller sellers: stay, grow, and revisit.
What you gain that never shows up in the fee maths
- The customer. Marketplaces sit between you and the buyer. On your own store you get the email, the order history and the right to market to them again — the asset that compounds.
- Pricing control. No platform-wide campaigns you are pressured to discount into.
- A brand, not a listing. On a marketplace you are one row in a grid sorted by price. On your own site you control the whole story.
- Data. Real analytics on what people browse, abandon and come back for.
What you genuinely lose
Two things, and no migration can fix either — so plan around them:
- Your reviews. Ratings belong to the platform. They cannot be exported. You rebuild that proof on your own store from day one.
- Free discovery. Marketplace traffic is real. Cutting it off before you have your own demand engine is how sellers get hurt.
Which is exactly why the answer is both channels, not a switch. Keep the marketplaces earning while your own store compounds, and sync inventory and pricing so they never drift apart.
How the move actually works
- Export. Pull your catalogue from Seller Centre using the mass-upload template.
- Map and clean. Translate SKUs, variant matrices, prices, stock and weights into the new platform's model — merging duplicates and stripping marketplace clutter out of titles on the way.
- Move the media. Download every product image, compress it and re-host it on your own store so nothing hotlinks back to the marketplace.
- Launch SEO-safe. Clean URLs, redirects from any existing site, product schema and a sitemap.
- Sync, don't switch. Keep the marketplace listings live and aligned with your own store.
Variants and images are where this usually goes wrong: marketplace variant models do not map one-to-one onto Shopify options, so a naive CSV import silently flattens or duplicates them. It is worth checking that reconciliation properly before you go live.
Where to start
Open Seller Centre, find your real all-in fee rate, and put it through the formula above. If it clears, the build is a straightforward project — see Shopee, Lazada & Shopify migration for what a full move involves, or check your grant eligibility first, since e-commerce adoption is one of the better-supported categories for Singapore SMEs.
Frequently asked questions
How much do Shopee and Lazada actually take per order in Singapore?
You pay a stack, not a single fee: a category commission, a transaction fee on the order value, an optional promotional-programme service fee, plus whatever you spend on in-platform ads and shipping subsidies. Both platforms raised commissions in 2026. Once every layer is counted, most Singapore sellers land somewhere between roughly 10% and 25% of the selling price. Your exact number is in Seller Centre under your fee-rates page — check it before you price anything.
Is it worth moving from Shopee or Lazada to my own website?
It becomes worth it when the fees you avoid exceed what your own store costs to run. Take your monthly marketplace revenue, multiply by your all-in fee rate to get the fees avoided, then subtract your store's running cost and the cost of the traffic you must now bring yourself. If the result is positive at the share of sales you can realistically move direct, the store pays for itself. Most Singapore sellers doing consistent monthly volume with repeat customers clear that bar; low-volume sellers who depend entirely on marketplace discovery usually do not, yet.
Will I lose my reviews if I leave Shopee or Lazada?
Yes. Ratings and reviews belong to the marketplace and cannot be exported or transferred to your own store. This is the single real loss in any migration. The usual fix is to launch your own store with a review system in place and invite past customers to review you there, so you rebuild the proof on an asset you own.
Should I close my Shopee and Lazada shops after building my own store?
Almost never, at least not at first. The marketplaces are a discovery channel: buyers who have never heard of you find you there. Your own store is a margin and ownership channel that converts people who already know you. The strongest position is running both, with inventory and pricing kept in sync, and gradually shifting repeat buyers direct.
How do I move my products from Shopee or Lazada to Shopify?
Export your catalogue from Seller Centre using the mass-upload template, then map the fields into your new platform's structure — SKUs, variant matrices, prices, stock, weights and images. Variants and images are where generic converters usually break, because marketplace variant models do not match Shopify's option model one to one. Your marketplace shop keeps running throughout; nothing is deleted.
Can grants pay for moving to my own e-commerce store?
Often, partly. PSG supports adoption of pre-approved e-commerce solutions for eligible Singapore SMEs, and larger custom builds may fall under EDG. Support levels and eligibility are set by the agencies and change, so treat any figure as indicative until your application is approved.
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