Shopify Takes on TikTok Shop with a New Partnership
Shopping moved online many years ago, then into apps a few years ago, and recently, into the social feed.
TikTok Shop launched in the U.S. in September 2023 and since then has created a new channel for sellers: live video shopping. Just like QVC on cable TV, but for those who probably don't own a big screen.
And it makes sense. Millions of people are on TikTok every day watching videos. All they needed to do was add a buy button and the social feed turned into a marketplace taking on rivals eBay and Etsy, and threatening the bigger competitor in the space: Shopify.
Shopify's New* Social Platform
Last month, Shopify decided to get into the race, but instead of trying to build its own social network, Shopify partnered with one of TikTok Shop's clearest live-shopping competitors.
Whatnot is a live shopping app that connects sellers and buyers via live video. The company has been around since 2019 but started around collectibles and live auctions, then expanded into a broader live-shopping marketplace where sellers can run shows, answer questions, and sell while buyers are watching.
The app got its big break during the January 2025 TikTok shutdown in the U.S., with downloads more than doubling: 416K in December 2024 to 1.1M in January 2025, according to Appfigures estimates. Around the shutdown itself, daily downloads jumped as well: 26K on January 15, then 52K on January 18 and 50K on January 20.
The ban on TikTok ended but that did not stop Whatnot's growth.
Since January 2025 Whatnot got 39.9M downloads and just wrapped up its biggest month to date with 3.5M downloads in April.
By partnering, Shopify is not only giving its merchants access to a live-shopping app with real top-of-funnel momentum, but is also removing the friction those sellers would have if they wanted to use TikTok Shop because TikTok has its own shop management.
The Whatnot integration lets Shopify merchants sync products, prices, variants, inventory, and orders between the two platforms. The catalog can stay in Shopify, while the live sale happens on Whatnot and the order flows back into Shopify for fulfillment.
That is the important difference. TikTok Shop has the audience and the feed, but it also asks sellers to operate inside TikTok's commerce system. Whatnot gives Shopify a way to bring its merchants into live shopping without asking them to abandon the system they already use to run their stores.
Sellers are Shifting Away from Traditional Marketplaces
I wanted to see if sellers are riding this wave or if it's just consumers so I looked at the apps sellers use to sell on popular platforms as a proxy for the supply side. The numbers suggest sellers have noticed and are shifting!
Starting at the top, Appfigures estimates show TikTok Shop Seller Center was downloaded 1.2M times in May. Shopify's merchant app had 672K downloads over the same period, Amazon Seller had 588K, and Etsy Seller had just 185K.
TikTok had almost as many downloads as all others combined! But that's not all.
Compared to last year, the seller app of every single platform saw downloads stay relatively flat or drop a bit while TikTok rose.
Those numbers put TikTok Shop Seller Center well ahead of the traditional marketplaces in this comparison with Etsy being almost a million downloads lower.
Shopify already has the merchant base and the store-management layer. Whatnot has the live-shopping tech and consumer demand. The integration connects those two pieces at a moment when seller-app downloads are pointing toward video-driven marketplaces as a channel sellers are at least exploring.
Who's Next?
The partnership is pretty new and hasn't seen mass adoption just yet, but I expect to see more Shopify sellers experiment with live video in the next few months so they're ready for the holiday season, which could be very different than previous ones.
And speaking of the holiday season, looking at the numbers, I expect Etsy to join the race next to give its sellers a reason to stay closer to Etsy while TikTok and now Shopify push deeper into live shopping. Unlike Shopify, Etsy already has the marketplace, the audience, and the app. All it needs to do is add a video feed and incentivize sellers to give it a try before the holiday season hits.
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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.
