For people who have not started yet
Every platform's own page answers that question with itself. Every guru answers it with the door that pays them. We answer it with your starting point, the platforms' published fees — checked October 2026 — and a verdict we are allowed to make negative.
We don't take money from platforms. No affiliate links anywhere on this site, no sponsors, no course waiting for you at the end. That is not a slogan; it is the reason the finder below can tell you not to start.
Nothing you answer leaves your browser. There is no email box at the end of this, because we are not collecting you — we are answering you.
Seven doors scored: Etsy digital · Etsy print on demand · Etsy handmade & vintage · resale apps · Amazon (the ladder) · Whatnot live · your own store. One of the possible answers is "no door fits yet" — with what to fix first.
Why this exists
Computed, not content
Search "which platform should I sell on" and you get comparisons written by the platforms being compared — one hosting company's comparison crowns its own product best for your own store. Nobody in those results asks you a single question about yourself. The finder above does, and computes from fee tables instead of opinions.
Allowed to say no
Everyone who ranks for beginner questions earns money when you start — on their door, in their course, through their referral link (one platform pays its affiliates up to $150 a head). A "don't start with this door if…" line costs them money, so it never gets printed. Here, it is printed on every door page, in bold.
Dated, or it didn't happen
Ask the internet how much money you need to start selling online and the answers in a single results page disagree by a hundred times over — $200 against $250,000. Our fee dataset carries a checked-on date and a change log, so you can see when a number was true and what it changed from.
The seven doors
$19–$33 to open
Files you make once: planners, printables, templates. No shipping, no inventory — and the most copied categories on the internet.
$55–$95 to open
Your designs, someone else's printing and shipping. The base cost is the quiet tax on every sale.
$60–$175 to open
The door Etsy was built for. Fees are small; materials and your hours are the real budget.
$0–$25 to open
Start with what is already in your house. The fastest first sale on this site, and the cheapest education in selling.
$40–$150 to open
Start small on the plan that only charges when you sell. The gates are the trap; the ladder is how you avoid buying inventory you cannot list.
$90–$265 to open
You are the show. The fastest feedback in selling, behind an application — and only for people who will go on camera.
$69–$400+ to open
Your name on the door, nobody's shoppers inside it. The rent is small; the traffic is the cost. Two reality checkers below exist for this door.
The dataset
Every platform fee we use, with the date we checked it and a change log when a platform moves a number.
How the finder decides
The First Door Kit is the opening, organized: the launch checklist for your matched door, the first-10-listings worksheet, the real-numbers budget sheet, and the gate-and-trap checklists for all seven doors — so the second door is ready if the first one teaches you something.
Included in the $39 First Door Kit
The two reality checkers
Your own store is the door with the loudest marketing and the quietest truth: it comes with no shoppers. Two of our tools exist just to price that truth before you pay rent on it.
Module A
Your audience, your monthly budget → what your first 100 visitors actually cost, channel by channel, and whether the honest verdict is "start" or "not Shopify yet."
Module B
Your product's price and supplier cost → the duty-adjusted landed cost (the duty-free era for China-direct parcels ended in 2025), the return reserve, your break-even ad math — and a verdict that can say "print on demand fits you better."
Head-to-head, with verdicts
One is a search engine for things people collect and make; the other is the world's yard sale with a search box. The verdict depends on what is in your hands.
Rented shelf in a busy market vs your own shop on an empty street. The answer is about traffic, not features.
The giant with gates vs the giant without. Where a no-account beginner's first $100 actually belongs.
Small shelf, right crowd vs the everything store with an approval desk. Your product decides.
Both start from a design file. One ships atoms and eats base costs; the other ships electrons and eats copycats.
The permission question, answered with seller counts and specificity math instead of a pep talk.
The family
FirstDoorCheck picks the door. Each door with a deep problem of its own got a sister site that goes all the way down it — same rule on every one of them: no platform money, and verdicts that are allowed to be no.
Sister site · Amazon
Amazon's gate check for people with no account yet: every category's gate, the exact documents it takes, and the starter ladder of open rungs.
Sister site · Etsy
The Etsy pre-flight: a specificity rubric and a guided demand check that can answer OPEN IT, NARROW FIRST, or DON'T OPEN THIS VERSION — before you pay the set-up fee.
Sister site · eBay
eBay for new sellers, decoded: the selling limits, the new-seller fund holds, and the exact date your first payout lands.
Straight answers
It depends on the door, which is the entire point of this site: $0–$25 opens the resale-apps door, $19–$33 opens Etsy digital, and $154 is the honest typical basket for your own store once traffic is counted. Anyone giving you one number for all doors is selling you the door, not answering the question. The full breakdown, door by door.
One door, yes: resale apps, listing things you already own. Every other door has at least a small cover charge — a set-up fee, a sample order, a first batch. What $0 really buys, door by door.
Because 'best' is a sentence about you, not about platforms. The best door for a camera-shy person with a closet of vintage denim and the best door for a designer with $60 are different doors. The finder takes 60 seconds and answers for your starting point.
No. This site has no affiliate links and takes no platform money. We sell exactly one thing — the $39 First Door Kit — and the free finder works completely without it. That is what makes the don't-start verdicts above possible.
Too late for what, exactly? Too late to be early, yes. Too late to be specific, no — and specificity is the whole game now. The data version of this answer.