Amazon ⇄ and Shopify

Shopify and Amazon: build the brand store from your listings, then run both from one catalog

Most brands that ask us about a Shopify Amazon integration are not leaving Amazon. Amazon is where a large share of their revenue comes from, and it will stay that way. What they want is a store they own, built from the catalog they already have, with one place to maintain products, stock and orders. This guide covers how we build that store from Amazon listing data, how Shopify becomes the master catalog that feeds Amazon (and eBay, if you sell there too), the Amazon policies that shape what the store can and cannot do, and what the project costs.

Why Amazon sellers add a Shopify store

• The customer belongs to Amazon. Amazon allows buyer data to be used only to fulfill the order, and every contact has to go through Buyer-Seller Messaging with no marketing. Ten years of Amazon sales can leave you without a single email subscriber.
• Margin. Referral fees, fulfillment fees and advertising stack up on every Amazon order. On your own store the same sale costs the payment rate plus your subscription, and a repeat purchase costs nothing to win.
• Brand. A product detail page on Amazon looks like every other one. A store lets you tell the story, bundle, run subscriptions, sell wholesale and build a list.
• Risk. Listing suppressions, account health warnings and suspensions happen to good sellers. A second channel you control is insurance.
• Search. People search Google for your brand name. Without a store, the top result is often an Amazon listing, a reseller, or a competitor’s ad.

How the integration fits together

There is no single Amazon button in Shopify. Shopify retired its original Amazon sales channel in 2021, and the pieces today are separate tools that each do one job well:

Job	Tool	What it does
Build the Shopify catalog from Amazon	Amazon listing reports plus Amazon’s Selling Partner API (SP-API), handled by us	Pulls your titles, bullet points, descriptions, images, variation families and identifiers into Shopify products. This is the part no app does well, and the part we do for you.
Keep Amazon in step with Shopify	Shopify Marketplace Connect (built by Shopify, free to install)	Links each Shopify product to its Amazon listing and syncs inventory, prices and orders. It can also send listing details (titles, descriptions, images) from Shopify to Amazon, and it connects eBay, Walmart and Target Plus the same way.
Ship store orders from Amazon stock	Amazon MCF and Buy with Prime app (built by Amazon)	Fulfills Shopify orders from your FBA inventory through Multi-Channel Fulfillment, in unbranded packaging, with tracking sent back to Shopify.
Offer Prime on your own store	Buy with Prime (same Amazon app, US only)	Shows Prime delivery and Amazon reviews on eligible products and lets shoppers check out with their Amazon account.

Marketplace Connect is free for the first 50 synced orders each month, then 1 percent of each synced order, capped at $99 a month. If you still use Amazon’s older “Amazon MCF: US Fulfillment” app, note that Amazon is deactivating it on September 30, 2026; stores need to move to the current Amazon MCF and Buy with Prime app.

What comes out of Amazon, and what it takes to get it

This is where most do-it-yourself attempts stall. Amazon’s standard reports were designed for inventory management, not for rebuilding a catalog somewhere else.

Data	Where it lives	Notes
SKU, ASIN, title, price, quantity, fulfillment channel	All Listings Report (Seller Central, Inventory Reports)	Quick and reliable, but there are no bullet points and no images. The description column is kept only for backwards compatibility.
The attributes you submitted, product type by product type	Category Listings Report (spreadsheet files)	Contains only what your account submitted, not what the live detail page shows. Large catalogs arrive zipped and can take up to three days to generate.
Live titles, bullets, descriptions, images, variation relationships, identifiers	SP-API Catalog Items API	The complete picture of each ASIN as shoppers see it, including full-size images in order. This is our primary source.
A+ Content and brand story	Seller Central, A+ Content Manager (Brand Registry)	Not exported as structured data. We rebuild the strongest modules as product page sections on Shopify, which usually look better there anyway.
Reviews	Amazon	Amazon reviews cannot be moved to your store. Buy with Prime can display them on eligible products; otherwise the store collects its own through a review app from day one.
Order history and customers	Order reports	Not imported. Amazon buyer data may be used only to fulfill the order, so Amazon customers never become store customers or subscribers.

One detail matters on shared listings: the content on an ASIN is not always yours. Other sellers and Amazon’s own catalog team can contribute to it. We pull the live content and you approve it before it becomes your store copy. Brand owners enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry generally have the most say over what the detail page shows, which matters later when Shopify starts sending content back.

How we run a Shopify Amazon integration project

1. Catalog audit. We read your listing reports and the Catalog Items data for every active SKU and report the shape of the catalog: parent and child variation families, SKUs without identifiers, listings with thin content, FBA and merchant-fulfilled split.
2. Build in a free Shopify development store. Theme, checkout, payments, shipping and taxes. As a Shopify Plus Partner we build in a development store, so you pay Shopify nothing until launch.
3. Catalog import. Each Amazon variation family becomes one Shopify product with its variants, keeping your seller SKUs exactly, so the two systems can find each other. Images come across in order at full size. Identifiers (UPC, EAN, GTIN) are stored on the variant barcode field.
4. Rewrite for a store. Amazon titles are written for Amazon search and read badly as product names. We give each product a short name, turn bullets into a scannable feature block, and move specifications into metafields the theme can display and filter on.
5. Link, do not relist. Marketplace Connect matches the Shopify products to your existing Amazon listings by SKU or barcode, so ASINs, reviews and sales rank stay exactly where they are. Nothing is recreated on Amazon.
6. Set the sync rules. Inventory, price rules (a fixed Amazon price or a percentage adjustment), stock buffers, and whether listing details flow from Shopify to Amazon. We switch the content sync on only after you have signed off the rewritten copy.
7. Fulfillment. Merchant-fulfilled listings route Amazon orders into Shopify for picking. If you use FBA, the Amazon MCF app fulfills store orders from the same inventory, and Buy with Prime is added if it suits your range.
8. SEO foundation and launch. Collections, structured data, sitemap, Search Console and Merchant Center, because the store earns its own Google rankings. Then launch, and the reconciliation report.

After launch: Shopify is the master catalog

This is the arrangement we have set up for several clients and it is the reason to do the project properly. Your team edits products in one place, Shopify, and the changes flow outward:

• Stock. One inventory number per SKU. A sale on the store, on Amazon or on eBay reduces it everywhere, with buffers so a slow sync never oversells your last units.
• Prices. Set once in Shopify, with a rule per marketplace if Amazon needs to carry its fees.
• Content. Title, description and image changes are pushed to Amazon and eBay when listing details sync is on. For products where Amazon’s own content is stronger, or where you are not the brand owner, we switch it off per listing.
• New products. Created in Shopify first, then published to the marketplaces from Marketplace Connect, which checks each marketplace’s required fields before it lists.
• Orders. Marketplace orders appear in Shopify for fulfillment and reporting, so you finally see total revenue by product across every channel.

Amazon policies that shape the store

Getting these wrong puts the Amazon account at risk, which is the last thing a second channel should do.

• No diverting Amazon customers. Amazon prohibits sending its customers to another website. That rules out package inserts, messages or emails that promote your store or offer a store discount to Amazon buyers. The store has to find its own customers through search, social, email capture and advertising.
• No marketing through Buyer-Seller Messaging. Messages are for completing the order only, with no coupons and no links to your site.
• Fair pricing. Amazon compares your Amazon price with prices offered elsewhere, including your own store. If the Amazon price is significantly higher, you can lose the Featured Offer (the Buy Box) or the offer altogether. Pricing the store well below Amazon is usually a mistake for this reason; compete on bundles, subscriptions and exclusives instead.
• MCF packaging. Store orders fulfilled through MCF ship in unbranded packaging at no extra cost, so customers do not receive your brand order in an Amazon box.

Sales tax changes more than you expect

Amazon is a marketplace facilitator, so it collects and remits sales tax on your Amazon sales in every US state with a sales tax. Your own store has no such arrangement. Shopify Tax calculates the right rate at checkout and warns you when you approach a state’s economic nexus threshold, but registering and filing are yours to do, unless you add Shopify’s automated filing. Many Amazon sellers have never filed a sales tax return, because Amazon handled it. We flag this in the audit and set Shopify Tax up before the first order.

Timeline and cost

A catalog of up to 500 Amazon SKUs is typically live on Shopify in five to seven weeks, including the catalog build, the store design on Horizon, the channel sync and fulfillment setup. Projects start at $2,500 for smaller catalogs and $3,500 for larger ones, as a fixed price after the catalog audit. Larger catalogs, custom design, B2B or several Amazon regions are scoped individually. Payment is 50 percent to begin and 50 percent once the store is live and you are fully satisfied with the figures. Ongoing costs are the Shopify plan, Marketplace Connect’s order fee above the free allowance, and MCF fulfillment fees if you use it.

Common mistakes Amazon sellers make

• Recreating listings on Amazon from Shopify. Link the existing ASINs instead, or you risk duplicate listings and lose the reviews and rank you have.
• Switching on content sync before the copy is ready. The first sync overwrites Amazon titles with whatever Shopify holds.
• Copying Amazon titles to the store unchanged. Keyword-stuffed names hurt conversion and look like a marketplace listing.
• Putting a store discount card in FBA or merchant-fulfilled Amazon parcels. It breaches the diversion rule.
• Launching the store with no traffic plan. Amazon brings shoppers; a new store has to earn them.
• Forgetting identifiers. Marketplace Connect needs a UPC, EAN or GTIN per product, or an exemption from Amazon for private label goods.

What you get at handover

The catalog ledger showing every Amazon SKU and ASIN against its Shopify product and variant, the before and after copy for each product, the Marketplace Connect configuration documented (which fields sync, in which direction, and the price and stock rules per marketplace), the fulfillment routing, the tax setup, and a recorded walkthrough of editing a product in Shopify and watching it reach Amazon and eBay.

Selling on eBay as well? The same catalog feeds it; see our Shopify eBay integration guide. For a marketplace built on handmade goods, see the Etsy guide.

Frequently asked questions

Tell us about your catalog on the store survey. If you are weighing a full design, our storefront design page shows how we build on Horizon.