Etsy Adds Shared Shop Access, More Listing Options & Expanded Appeals
Etsy is giving sellers a way to let employees and other helpers access their shops without sharing passwords, while adding more options for personalized listings, expanding variations and making changes to seller finances and listing appeals.
The updates are part of the September edition of Etsy's "Newly Crafted" roundup of recent seller tools and features, which also includes new Shop Stats and Marketplace Insights capabilities, local search options and another iteration of an old experiment for turning digital downloads into physical products.
Shared access allows shop owners to invite up to five people to help manage their business using separate Etsy accounts instead of sharing the owner's login credentials.
Team members can manage orders, including buying shipping labels and adding tracking, create and publish listings and respond to buyer messages. They cannot cancel or refund orders, delete or deactivate listings, or access finances, marketing, Stats, settings, apps or performance information. Sellers can also download an activity log showing changes team members have made to messages, orders and listings.
There is currently no option to set different permission levels for different users, so every team member gets the same access and the shop owner remains responsible for actions taken by anyone they invite. Shared access is also limited to one shop per Etsy account, including draft shops. Anyone helping manage multiple shops will need a separate Etsy account and email address for each one.
Last year, Etsy restricted some third-party tools' access to seller order data and surveyed sellers about interest in native inventory, shipping, accounting and CRM tools. Shared access adds another business management tool directly to Etsy.
Etsy is testing a new Quick list form with a limited number of sellers. The form uses listing photos and descriptions to suggest titles, tags, attributes and other information for sellers to review and edit, with Etsy saying access will gradually expand as the test continues.
Custom options, which Etsy began rolling out earlier this year, are getting more functionality for personalized products. Sellers can now add up to five fields for text, predefined choices or file uploads, reuse Custom options across listings and make changes in bulk, with optional text fields also supporting extra charges for things like engraving, embroidery or custom messages.
Etsy recommends sellers who currently use variations for those charges consider moving them to Custom options instead. Sellers can now add a third variation too, allowing choices like size, color and style to remain separate instead of combining two attributes into a single dropdown.
Seller Payment accounts are getting a redesign, with changes first detailed earlier this month. Balances are now split into Current, Pending and Total, with a new Ready for Deposit section showing payout timing and whether there is anything preventing a deposit.
Etsy is pitching the changes as providing a clearer view of seller finances, though payment reserves have historically been a major source of confusion and frustration for sellers. Under the new design, reserved funds are being folded into the Pending balance and the separate reserve module is going away.
Transaction and payment processing fees associated with an order will now remain pending until the earnings from that sale become available, rather than immediately reducing the amount available for deposit. Other charges, including Etsy Ads, shipping labels, listing fees and subscription fees, will continue to be deducted in real time.
More changes are coming over the next few months, including Current, Pending and Total tabs for transaction history and expandable sales that group order earnings and related fees together rather than showing every charge as a separate transaction.
Etsy is expanding the listing appeal process it began testing last year. Handmade sellers have long complained about legitimate listings being removed for Creativity Standards violations with no appeal available, including cases where sellers believed Etsy may have mistaken copies of their original images elsewhere online as evidence their products weren't original.
When Etsy launched its new Policy Violations page and appeals pilot ahead of the 2025 holiday season, access was limited to some sellers and only listings removed for violating Etsy's Creativity Standards after July 15, 2025 were eligible.
Liz Morton
Now Etsy says it is opening appeals to more policy areas and more sellers, with all sellers expected to have access across most policy areas by the end of 2026.
Shop Stats is getting new side-by-side graphs for visits, orders, conversion rate and revenue, along with performance changes Etsy says should make historical data load faster and update more reliably.
The company is also expanding the beta of its AI-powered Stats assistant, which lets sellers ask questions about their shop performance, while testing personalized Marketplace Insights recommendations based on search terms relevant to a particular shop.
Marketplace Insights launched last year with Etsy search data covering keyword demand, competition and related terms. Sellers get 15 searches per week for free, while unlimited access remains one of the benefits included with Etsy Plus.
Liz Morton
Since then, Etsy has added longer date ranges, price ranges, conversion rates, saved searches and trend data, and is now testing personalized recommendations.
Ads Groups, which rolled out earlier this month, allow sellers to organize advertised listings and view performance by group. On the buyer side, Etsy is adding country and city shipping filters, a "Support makers near you" option on desktop and previews that can show a shop's location, sales and how long it has been on Etsy.
Etsy is testing an option that lets buyers who purchase eligible digital items order physical prints through a third-party print-on-demand provider, with eligible sellers automatically included unless they opt out.
A similar test in 2022 sent buyers to Printify or Shutterfly to place the printing order off Etsy, with the transaction handled directly by the provider. This time, Etsy says the physical item is "sold, printed, and fulfilled by a third-party print-on-demand provider, on Etsy."
Liz Morton
The September update doesn't identify the provider or explain whether the seller whose digital item is being printed receives any additional payment from the physical sale.
