Why was Amazon Integration removed?

ted73
Visitor
1 0 4

The Shopify sync for Amazon has been a great tool for us and has been effective at managing inventory and converting Amazon customers. I don't know why such a seamless tool would be removed, except for greed. It really is a drag on a small business to have to develop a workaround and incur more costs for a process that was already seamless and cost-effective. I hope this is not the new model for Shopify going forward. It will cause a mass exodus. Does anyone else have a free alternative for simply syncing Amazon Sales and Inventory? I am fine with a one-time fee, but am not interested in another subscription.

Replies 9 (9)

Anto_S
Shopify Partner
148 4 19

Yes this is a tough change, and while I don't have an answer for why the integration was removed, we are trying to figure out a low/no-cost solution. We run an e commerce integration platform at https://comstack.co and are currently developing a low-cost Shopify-Amazon app for small businesses.

We are happy to offer our early users a lifetime free subscription if our eventual solution works - and are on the lookout for some early users to give us feedback & inputs as we build the app. Please drop me a direct message or email on anto@comstack.co if this is of interest, we'll keep you posted.

cheers
Anto

Automating Commerce at Comstack.co
Email: anto@comstack.co

Phil1980
Excursionist
22 0 32

I'm was having the same problem running against the clock. Since I'm an Excel enthusiast, I decided to download and upload information directly, using an app called Matrixify. They are free if you upload or download 10 orders per query - You can do it several times a day or you can pay $20 per month. Now, twice a day I download sales information from my Amazon account, mix it with my product base (downloaded from Shopify), and generate upload outputs. They are uploaded with Matrixify. The same goes for tracking information. 

Well. At the end of the day, I have a fixed cost of $20, but that's it. And I can do the same with other marketplaces (like eBay) if Shopify decides to shut them down too...

 

 

Renars
Shopify Partner
283 31 331

Hello,

Renars here from Matrixify app.
Thank you for mentioning us here @Phil1980 

Seems like you are managing it from Amazon to Shopify. That way it indeed can work, to get Amazon order/sale quantities and make that adjustment in the Shopify store. It of course would still require setting up some sort of Excel sheet with formulas to do semi-automatically or just manually converting files each time.

The best way I can think is, if you have the same SKUs in both platforms, then you could construct a file with just 2 columns:

- Variant SKU
- Variant Inventory Adjust

So then you would need to get total sales for each SKU as a delta number. For example, you sold 4 of SKU "a123". So in the file, you would list "-4" in the Variant Inventory Adjust column so that app adjust inventory by -4.
When importing, the app will find items by SKU and adjust the inventory quantity.

Do you have it set up in a similar manner, if not then please let us and other users know as it could be useful.

For pricing - indeed our app is free to use for imports/exports up to 10 Products at a time, as many times as you wish. If you need to do this regularly, then it might be simpler to take app subscription plan that allows importing the number of products you have.

🙂

Matrixify | Bulk Import Export Update | https://apps.shopify.com/excel-export-import | https://matrixify.app

JoBSC
Visitor
2 0 0

I've been using the Amazon Integration Plus app.. Just deleted it after trying for 5 weeks. It seemed to mess up so many things! I am now sending orders to our FC manually via email and updating stock manually. This is not a long term solution though... 

DonDraper
Tourist
4 0 3

Shopify stock price has gone from an IPO price of $16 to $1470! Yet they are discontinuing a Basic and Needed service from their customers?  Most of their original customers like "ME" came to them as a gift from Amazon when Amazon shut down their Webstore service. Once Shopify set up channel integration it was clear that Shopify would be "The Hub" for all your order processing and sales. What a great tool for online merchants.

Like many of you, we do much more sales on Amazon (Even though we hate it) and it was great to be able to process all orders from one place, shopify. Now shopify want's us to purchase this basic feature from a 3rd party for a very large price, actually almost the same price as the whole hosting price for shopify.

This is a tipping point for me and maybe others, I will now be searching for a new service provider because everything else shopify does is just the same as other providers now. NO ADVANTAGE to using shopify. Mostly they now want to figure out ways to force you to spend more per month and DO NOT have the interests of the customer on the top of their priorities. Maybe they need to justify their over inflated stock price?

I think I will call CNBC and let them know about this change. Maybe the stock will take a big hit!

TimberlineVik
Excursionist
15 0 9

I am in the same boat and have the same sentiment. Multi-channel integration was a great competitive edge that Shopify originally had, but that edge keeps dwindling while paying more. Have you found an alternative to the Shopify Amazon sales channel yet? All in all they didn’t give us a ton of time to find a replacement. 

DonDraper
Tourist
4 0 3

Have not found a replacement but you are correct in the fact that they provided very little notice. Amazon as much as I hate their business plan and how they treat sellers is much more professional. When they closed webstore (AND MADE SHOPIFY WHO THEY ARE) Gave over a year notice. 

I sell more on amazon so I am shifting my focus and my brand to Amazon, adding more products building out my brand page and working on product pages there. 

In the mean time I will have my ears to the ground searching for a replacement for Shopify, they have proven to me that as they grow their customers are now secondary to their growth. POWER is their focus now, and if they really think they can get the "POWER" by bumping the great services their customer have relied on then they are truly wrong. 

I though that Shopify would do well if they continued to be "THE HUB" for online sale using channels to their advantage while also promoting the brand of Shopify and maybe figure out how to create their own market place with a "Backed by Shopify" certified reviews similar to Angies list or one of these types of companies bring together a community of sellers. 

But no, greed and power are their choice which will lead to their demise. I am much more likely to jump ship and find a new provider now that I know Channel support is not on the top of Shopify's list.

Think about it may be it is as simple as the fact that we all do a lot of sales on amazon and that constant flow of data is just a drain on their profit margin? I know they USED AMAZON SALES and the sales channel to boyster the amount of traffic and sales on their system back in 2018 making it look like so many order were coming through but in reality those sales belonged to Amazon. Sure did well for their stock price. 

Best of luck and I hope anyone will post if they find a better solution like Adobe or other market players. 

JordonMMG
Visitor
1 0 0

I'm reallllly new to all of this. I have a books on amazon I want to sell on a shopify site. How do I do that? Any link to tutorial?

DenysYa
New Member
24 0 0

Hey everyone!

 

I found an easy to use and free alternative which called M2E Cloud. It is Shopify to Amazon connector which syncs your inventory and orders with Shopify and Amazon stores.