Built for Thai businesses
Your own website vs selling on Shopee/Lazada: what your shop actually needs
Marketplaces are the best billboard in Thailand. They make a poor cash register. Here is how to use both without renting away your margin.
Ecommerce · 7 min read
There is a sentence I wish every Thai shop owner heard before their first marketplace sale: you do not pay rent on Shopee, you pay a percentage of every order, forever, and it keeps going up. That is the trade. The platform hands you a flood of buyers, and in return it takes a slice of each one and keeps the customer's phone number for itself.
This is not an argument to quit Shopee or Lazada. They are too good at one job to walk away from. But once you see which job they do well and which one quietly drains your business, the smart move stops being "marketplace or website" and becomes "marketplace for discovery, your own site for the second sale."
The fee you can see, and the four you can't
Everyone knows about commission. Shopee Thailand's base rate sits around 8-15%, Lazada around 10-18%, TikTok Shop around 6-10% before anything else stacks on top (Digital in Asia, 2026). That headline number is the part sellers price around. The trouble is the rest.
Through late 2025 and early 2026 the fees climbed in layers. Both Shopee and Lazada Thailand raised base commission by 1.5%, effective 1 November 2025. On 15 September 2025 Shopee added another 0.6-1 point by category plus a 1-baht-per-order platform infrastructure fee; Lazada raised seller fees by 2 points on 28 September; TikTok Shop added a Commerce Growth Fee of 5.35-6.42% from 1 October. Then in February 2026 Shopee rolled out a 5% technical support fee across Thailand and three other markets, applied to nearly every seller. Add payment processing, the ad spend you need to stay visible, and the flash sales and free-shipping campaigns you get pushed to join, and the effective take rate can reach 20-25% of your post-discount price.
- Base commission: the number you plan around (~8-18% depending on platform)
- The 5% Shopee technical support fee (from Feb 2026, nearly all sellers)
- Payment and per-order fees that look tiny but apply to every transaction
- Ads to stay visible, plus the promos that cut your price for you
What marketplaces are genuinely great at
Discovery. Nothing you build will match it. Around 75% of Thai consumers open Shopee in a given month, 67% use Lazada, and 51% use TikTok Shop (Sellercraft, 2025-2026). Across Southeast Asia, Shopee, Lazada and TikTok Shop together control 98.8% of platform e-commerce sales (Momentum Works, 2025). Thailand's e-commerce market hit 1.1 trillion baht in 2024, up 14% on the year (Nation Thailand / Momentum Works).
That is where the buyers already are, with their trust, their saved cards and their habit of searching inside the app. A new shop with no audience can list a product on Shopee and make a sale the same week. No website does that on day one. So treat the marketplace as paid reach: it is the cost of being found by someone who has never heard of you. The mistake is treating it as your whole business.
The second sale is where you make money
Here is the part the marketplace dashboard never shows you. When a customer buys from you on Shopee, the platform owns that relationship. You generally cannot see their email or phone, cannot build a custom audience from your buyers, and cannot message them directly later (trade.gov; Anchanto). So the next time you want that same person to buy again, you pay the platform a second time to reach them: more ads, more commission, another slice off the top.
A loyal customer is the most profitable thing a shop has, and on a marketplace you rent access to your own loyal customers over and over. Your own website plus LINE flips that. The buyer's contact lives with you. LINE has roughly 51-56 million monthly users in Thailand, about 85.7% of internet users (Statista), so a follow-up message actually lands. The first sale can come from Shopee. The fifth one should come from a channel you own.
PromptPay: the Thailand-specific reason a site wins
This is the proof point that makes direct sales work in Thailand specifically. PromptPay processed around 2.36 billion transactions in a single month by July 2025, has over 82 million registrations, and serves nearly 400,000 businesses (Bank of Thailand). Transfers up to 5,000 baht are listed as free by the Bank of Thailand, and most Thai banks have waived digital-payment fees since 2018 (Wise). Compare that to roughly 3% on card payments and an effective 20%+ on a marketplace.
Make it concrete. On a 1,000-baht sale through a marketplace, after commission, the technical-support fee, payment fees and your ad cost, you might keep 750-800 baht. The same 1,000-baht order on your own site, paid by PromptPay QR, costs you almost nothing in fees, so you keep around 970 baht and the customer's contact. Run that gap across a year of repeat buyers and it is the difference between a shop that survives and one that grows.
- PromptPay transfers up to 5,000 baht: effectively fee-free at most banks
- Card payments: roughly 3% per transaction
- Marketplace: an effective 20-25% take on post-discount sales
- Direct sale on your site: you keep the margin AND the customer data
The honest verdict: run both
If you are just starting and have no audience, do not build a website first. List on Shopee, learn what sells, take the reach. A site with no traffic is an empty shop on a quiet soi. The marketplace earns its cut while it is the only thing bringing people in.
The moment you have repeat buyers, the math changes. That is when a bilingual Thai/English website, a LINE channel and PromptPay checkout stop being a nice-to-have and start being the cheapest sales channel you own. Keep the marketplace as your billboard for new customers. Use your own storefront as the cash register and the customer database for everyone who comes back. The brands that grow in Thailand are not the ones that pick a side, they are the ones that stop paying a fifth of every order to reach people who already love them.
If that second sale is the one you want to own, our ecommerce website service builds exactly that storefront, with LINE and PromptPay wired in.
Frequently asked questions
Should I quit Shopee and Lazada if I build my own website?
No. Marketplaces are still where most Thai shoppers discover products, and a brand-new website has no traffic on day one. Keep listing on the marketplace for reach, and use your own site to hold on to the higher-margin repeat customers.
How much do Shopee and Lazada actually take per sale in Thailand?
The headline commission is roughly 8-18% depending on the platform, but once you add Shopee's 5% technical support fee, payment and per-order fees, ads to stay visible, and the promotions you get pushed into, the effective take rate can reach 20-25% of your post-discount price.
Why does owning the customer's contact matter so much?
On a marketplace you generally cannot see your buyer's phone or email, so to sell to them again you pay the platform again through ads and commission. With your own site and LINE, the contact is yours and a follow-up message costs almost nothing.
Is PromptPay really cheaper than card or marketplace payments?
Yes. PromptPay transfers up to 5,000 baht are listed as free by the Bank of Thailand and most Thai banks waive digital-payment fees, versus roughly 3% on cards and an effective 20%+ on a marketplace. On your own checkout that is near-zero-cost money.
When is the right time to build my own e-commerce website?
Once you have repeat buyers. Before that, focus on the marketplace for discovery. After that, a bilingual site with LINE and PromptPay becomes your cheapest channel because you keep both the margin and the customer relationship.