Core topic

Why your business must stop depending on marketplaces.

There is one fact most sellers would rather not face: your storefront on a marketplace such as Shopee or TikTok Shop is not your asset. It is rented land.

You spend money, effort, and years building a storefront that draws a crowd. But the landlord holds the keys. The landlord sets the rent, decides who gets to see your storefront, and writes the rules. They can change all of it at any time without asking you. When the landlord locks you out, you lose the entire customer list you thought was yours.

This page does not tell you to leave marketplaces. They are still a good channel for fast orders and new customers. This page is about one thing: never let your whole business hang on something you do not control.

The seller shakeout has begun.

At the headline level the market still looks great. Behind it, the picture for each seller is very different: the market grew, and the number of sellers who can make a living on it fell.
429,700B ₫
GMV (gross merchandise value) across the four biggest marketplaces in 2025, about $17 billion, up 34.75% from 2024 (Metric).
-7.43%
in active storefronts, down to about 601,800, with nearly 48,000 storefronts leaving the market in one year.
~80,000
storefronts left the marketplaces in the first 6 months of 2025 alone, as costs and competition climbed.
-32.1%
Nearly 1/3 of sellers who once had revenue now record none at all.

Marketplace fees are up, and margins are being squeezed

From May 2026, Shopee and TikTok Shop raised seller fees at the same time. On TikTok Shop, the transaction fee went from 5% to 6% and the Voucher Xtra fee from 3% to 4%. On Shopee, the transaction processing fee reaches 6% on prepaid orders, and the fixed fee outside Shopee Mall runs from about 8.8% to 11.7% depending on the category.

23-24%
of revenue goes to total marketplace cost (commission, payment, and service fees), before ads and operations.
35-40%
is the fee threshold at which experts warn up to 80% of sellers could leave the marketplaces (forecast).
97%
of GMV is held by the two biggest marketplaces (Shopee about 56%, TikTok Shop about 42%). They raise fees together, and you have no alternative to switch to.

New law, new tax rules: the playing field is being rebuilt

Vietnam's new E-commerce Law is in force from July 1, 2026. Domestic sellers must verify their identity with the platform through VNeID, Vietnam's national digital ID. For household businesses and individual sellers on marketplaces, Decree 117/2025/ND-CP makes the marketplace withhold and remit tax on every transaction (in effect since July 1, 2025).

In practice, the era of anonymous selling and fuzzy margins is over. Once you have to be transparent and pay full tax anyway, the question is simple: why not sell on a channel where you keep more, own the customer, and do not hand 23-40% to the landlord?

Your profit is leaking in six places

Your money drains out in six places, and you rarely see them all at once. Each leak is slow and steady. Together they are enough to turn a store that looks fine into a burned-out one within a few years.
You do not own the customer
The buyer is the marketplace's customer. No real phone number, no email. Every order is a one-time encounter that vanishes.
Total marketplace dependence
The marketplace changes its algorithm and your visibility drops. It raises fees and your margin thins. It suspends your storefront and revenue goes to 0 overnight.
No website of your own
No home base for Google Ads, SEO, or your brand story. Every visitor you bring in lands in the marketplace's pocket.
Existing customers are hard to nurture
New customers keep getting more expensive to win, yet you cannot use the ones who already bought. Every month starts from zero.
Manual, scattered operations
One screen per channel, orders copied back and forth, inventory out of sync, overselling and order mix-ups. Time and errors both cost money.
Data is scattered everywhere
Numbers sit in Shopee, TikTok, and Facebook Ads, and each one tells a different story. You cannot tell which channel is truly profitable or which product is quietly losing money.
The biggest pain

You win customers but cannot sell to them again.

You paid for the ad, closed the order, shipped it well, and the customer was happy. Then what? You cannot sell to that same customer again, because you never got to keep them. Every time you want a new order, you pay for ads to buy their attention all over again, even from people who already bought.

That is the most expensive way to burn money in e-commerce. You pay full price for every new customer while existing customers, who are many times cheaper to sell to again, slip away.

Pixel & first-party data
Every customer action is recorded on a system you own, so ads reach the right people and results are measured correctly.
Email & messaging
With a real customer list, you send offers, repurchase reminders, and product launches on your own schedule, almost free compared with ads.
Loyalty
Loyalty points, membership tiers, and private offers turn one-time buyers into customers who come back regularly.
LTV (customer lifetime value)
Sell again to existing customers and each one places many orders over time. As LTV rises, you can afford to win new customers and still make a profit.
Whoever owns the customer controls the profit. On a marketplace, the marketplace owns the customer. In your own commerce ecosystem, you do.

The cost of standing still

The cost of standing still never shows up on an invoice. It is hidden. Put a number on it: enter your revenue and fee rates to see how much you pay the marketplace every year.
Marketplace fee calculator

How much do you pay the marketplace every month?

Drag the sliders to match your store on Shopee or TikTok Shop. Results update instantly.

32M ₫
Total marketplace fees / month (32% of revenue)
Per year384M ₫
Commission10M ₫
Payment4M ₫
Service3M ₫
Ads15M ₫
Every year you pay about 384M ₫ to the marketplace, enough to fund a channel you own.
See how fast your own channel pays back →

Indicative figures based on the numbers you enter.

These are illustrative figures so you can see how the mechanism works. Your real situation will differ, which is why the tool lets you adjust every line. Standing still is not free. It is simply an expense that never gets written down.

How long until a house of your own pays for itself

Marketplace fees are an expense that repeats forever. Your own commerce ecosystem is a one-time investment. Enter the investment, plus the monthly savings and extra profit, to see how many months until payback. Everything after that is yours to keep.
Payback calculator

How long until your investment pays back?

See how many months a one-time investment takes to pay back, based on your monthly savings and extra profit.

Net profit after 12 months
12M ₫
Net profit after 24 months
84M ₫
Payback period
10 months
Net benefit / month6M ₫
After 10 months, everything you save is net profit that builds up in an asset you own.
Estimate your store's cost →

Figures are indicative and based on what you enter. The model is linear and does not account for compound growth.

Want a closer look at your own numbers? Start with the free business assessment.

The way out: build a commerce ecosystem of your own

You do not need to leave marketplaces to stop depending on them. You need a foundation of your own, so the marketplace goes back to its proper role: one channel, not the whole business. ScaleCommerce splits the work into 7 independent modules that fit together.
Rented land or a house of your own: that choice shapes every year that follows. The window to build your own foundation while marketplace cash flow is still healthy will not stay open forever.

Frequently asked questions

Does marketplace independence mean leaving the marketplaces?
No. Marketplaces are still a good channel for fast orders and new customers. Independence means you stop hanging the whole business on something you do not control, and put the marketplace back in its place as one channel.
Why is 2025 called the year of the seller shakeout?
The market kept growing, but active storefronts fell 7.43% and nearly 48,000 sellers left the market. Nearly 1/3 of sellers who once had revenue now record none at all. The market got bigger while the number of sellers who can make a living on it got smaller.
When did marketplace fees go up, and by how much?
From May 2026, Shopee and TikTok Shop raised fees at the same time. TikTok Shop raised its transaction fee from 5% to 6% and Voucher Xtra from 3% to 4%. Shopee charges a transaction processing fee of up to 6% and a fixed fee outside Shopee Mall of about 8.8% to 11.7% depending on the category. Total marketplace cost now runs at about 23-24% of revenue, before ads.
How do the 2026 E-commerce Law and VNeID affect sellers?
Vietnam's new E-commerce Law is in force from July 1, 2026. Domestic sellers must verify their identity with the platform through VNeID, and marketplaces must withhold, declare, and remit tax on the seller's behalf for every transaction. The era of anonymous selling and fuzzy margins is over.

How much are you paying the marketplace every year?

Let us look at your real numbers: the fees you pay and the profit you are losing from existing customers.