Daraz vs your own website: where should a Pakistani seller sell?

"Should I sell on Daraz or make my own website?" gets asked as if one answer were right. It isn't. They are different tools for different problems, and plenty of sellers who last end up using both — usually one after the other.

This guide lays out the real trade-offs: traffic you are handed against customers you own, a commission on every sale against a flat subscription, the price competition, and the rules you sell under. Then it covers when each is the right choice, and how the "both, in sequence" pattern works.

We build software for the own-website side of this, so read it with that in mind. We have tried to be fair to both sides, and we deliberately don't quote Daraz's fees or policies here — they change, and the current rate card and policies in Daraz's Seller Center are the only versions to trust.

Renting traffic or owning customers

Almost everything else follows from one distinction. A marketplace has the buyers and rents you a spot in front of them. Your own website has no buyers until you bring them — but every buyer you bring is yours to keep.

The honest summary: a marketplace sells you access to buyers; your own website gives you ownership of them. Which is worth more depends on where your business is right now.

What a marketplace genuinely gives you

It would be dishonest to pretend the marketplace deal is a bad one. For a lot of sellers, at a lot of stages, it is the right one.

• Buyers who are already shopping. People open a marketplace intending to buy. You skip the hardest part of a new store: getting anyone to arrive at all.
• Borrowed trust. A buyer who has never heard of you trusts the marketplace's checkout, delivery and returns. A new website has to earn that trust itself.
• Less to set up. Payment collection and delivery typically run through the marketplace's own system, so there is less to arrange before the first sale.
• A cheap test. Most of the cost arrives as a cut of each sale, so a product that doesn't move costs you little beyond the stock and the time. Check the fee schedule for anything charged regardless of sales.
• Big sale events. Marketplace-wide campaigns bring crowds of buyers that a small store could never attract alone — often in exchange for discounts you fund yourself.

What a marketplace costs beyond the commission

The commission is the cost everyone looks at. It is rarely the one that hurts most.

• You pay again for your own repeat buyers. A customer who loves your product and comes back five times costs you the commission five times, even though nobody had to find them again. On your own site a repeat order carries no commission.
• Price becomes the main lever. With identical listings side by side, buyers compare price and ratings, and there is always someone willing to go lower — sometimes lower than the product can honestly be sold for.
• The buyer remembers the marketplace, not you. Ask where they bought it and they will usually name the marketplace. That makes it hard to build anything beyond the next sale.
• Your ratings don't move with you. Reviews built up over years belong to your listings on that platform. Leave, and they stay behind.
• Rules you don't set. Returns, cancellations, dispatch deadlines, listing rules and which categories you may sell in are the marketplace's to decide, enforce and change. You find out when they change.
• Visibility is someone else's decision. Ranking inside a marketplace follows rules it doesn't fully publish. A listing that sold well last month can slide without you changing anything.
• You're paid on its schedule. The buyer pays the marketplace; the marketplace pays you, net of fees, on its terms. That is a cash-flow question, so check the current payout cycle before you plan around it.

What your own website costs, and what you get back

Your own site isn't free of costs. It has different ones.

What you pay:

• A flat subscription on a hosted platform, or a build and maintenance bill if you go custom — every line item is in what an e-commerce website costs in Pakistan.
• Gateway fees on online payments, charged by the gateway — and check whether your platform adds a transaction fee of its own on top.
• Delivery, which you arrange yourself — see how to choose a courier — plus the COD parcels that come back.
• Traffic. The big one. Part of a marketplace's commission pays for its buyers; on your own site you bring them yourself, through Instagram, WhatsApp, search and eventually ads.

What you get back:

• The customer. Their name, number and email, and a way to reach them again. Every repeat order is margin, not another commission.
• Your own shelf. A buyer on your page compares you with your own range, not with the cheaper listing beside you.
• Your own rules. Your delivery promise, your presentation and your returns — see writing a return and refund policy.
• Your money, directly. On Storecrafto you connect your own EasyPaisa, PayFast card and bank accounts, so payments settle straight to you, with 0% commission and a flat subscription (see pricing).

Commission and subscription have opposite shapes, and that is the fair way to compare them. A commission costs nothing in a month you sell nothing, and grows as you grow. A flat fee costs the same in a slow month, and gets cheaper per order as volume rises. At low or uncertain volume, commission is the gentler deal. Once sales are steady, the flat fee usually works out cheaper per order — as long as you can bring the traffic yourself.

To compare with your own numbers, take a normal month: your orders multiplied by what you currently pay per order in commission and fees, set against a subscription plus gateway fees plus what you would spend on marketing to replace the marketplace's traffic. That last line is the one sellers leave out.

When Daraz is the right place to start

• You have no audience yet, and no budget to build one. Borrowed traffic beats no traffic.
• People search for your product by name — a case for a specific phone model, a standard household item — and want the right item at a fair price, not a brand story.
• You can win on price because your sourcing is genuinely better than that of the sellers beside you.
• You want to test demand before committing to a store, stock and marketing.
• You're not ready to run delivery and payment collection yourself.

When your own website is the right place to sell

• You have a brand — your own designs, handmade work, a product with a story that one listing among fifty can't tell.
• Your buyers come back. Seasonal clothing, skincare, food, anything consumable. The more a customer reorders, the more a per-sale commission costs you.
• Your price can't survive a price war. If matching the cheapest identical listing, after commission, leaves you nothing, you need buyers who come for you rather than for the lowest number.
• You already have an audience. Sending your own Instagram followers to a marketplace means paying commission on buyers you found yourself.
• You sell something a parcel marketplace isn't shaped for — appointments, digital downloads, rentals, made-to-order work. These usually fit your own store better; see selling digital products and taking bookings online.

Doing both, in sequence

For a lot of sellers the answer isn't one or the other. It's an order of operations:

1. Prove the product where the buyers already are — a marketplace, or your Instagram DMs. Learn what sells, at what price, and what comes back.
2. Open your own store with the same catalogue once you know what works.
3. Send your own audience to your own store: your Instagram bio, your WhatsApp Status, the buyers who already know you.
4. Keep the marketplace for discovery for as long as it brings in new buyers profitably.

Three habits make this work, and one rule keeps you out of trouble:

• Don't make your own store the worse deal. If you're cheaper on the marketplace, your regulars will buy there and you'll pay commission on customers you found. You don't have to undercut; free delivery or a small thank-you code for buying direct is often reason enough.
• Keep stock in one place. Selling the last unit twice, on two channels, is the classic mistake. Update both whenever stock moves, or hold a buffer — see inventory management for a small store.
• Price for each channel's real costs. A marketplace price has to carry the commission; your own site's price has to carry your marketing — how to price products walks through both.
• Read the rules before steering marketplace buyers to your site. Many marketplaces restrict putting your website, social handles or phone number in listings and parcels. Check the current seller policy before adding a card to a marketplace parcel; losing the account over a flyer is a bad trade.

Five questions that settle it

1. Do buyers search for your product, or do they need to see it to want it? Search favours the marketplace; discovery favours your own content and store.
2. Can you win on price against an identical listing? If not, you need a brand, and brands are built on their own sites.
3. Will a happy customer buy again? The more often they do, the more a per-sale commission costs you over their lifetime.
4. Do you already have people who follow you? If you do, don't pay commission to sell to them.
5. Can you bring your own traffic yet? If not, borrow it — and start building your own audience while you do. Selling on Instagram is where most sellers begin.

The short version

• A marketplace rents you its buyers; your own website makes you find buyers, then keeps them.
• Commission is gentle at low volume and expensive at high volume; a flat fee is the reverse.
• On a marketplace you pay the commission again every time your own repeat buyer returns.
• Price competition and rules you don't set often cost more than the commission itself.
• Daraz suits search-led, price-led products, sellers with no audience yet, and cheap demand tests.
• Your own site suits a brand, repeat buyers and an audience you already have.
• The common pattern is both, in sequence: prove it on the marketplace, keep the customer on your own store.
• Get fees, payout terms and policies from the marketplace's current documentation, not from a blog.