In Turkey, marketplaces are the shortcut into online selling: ready traffic, ready trust. The price tag is just as clear: commissions, price wars and — most importantly — the customer never being yours. Your own e-commerce site is the reverse: you have to earn the traffic yourself, but the customer, the data and the margin stay with you. This guide is for anyone saying "I want my own store": which stack, which costs, which traps?
Strategy First: Marketplace AND Your Own Store
This is not an either-or decision. The healthy setup for most businesses is dual: the marketplace keeps running for revenue and visibility, while your own store grows for brand and repeat purchases. Moving marketplace buyers to your own site with package inserts and campaigns is the game's best-known yet least-played move.
Where WooCommerce Is Enough
For stores with a reasonable product count and a standard sales flow (product → cart → shipping), WooCommerce is a strong start: ready-made integrations with Turkish payment providers (iyzico, PayTR) and shipping companies, unlimited products and variants, coupons and memberships. Everything in the WordPress guide applies here too — maintenance is mandatory, unlicensed plugins are forbidden.
When Custom Software Becomes Essential
Do not force an off-the-shelf system if any of these apply: dealer/wholesale pricing (different prices per customer), quote-based selling, ERP/accounting integration, custom stock or warehouse logic, subscription sales. That is custom software territory; versions built out of plugin stacks crack as they grow. Export selling also demands a custom setup — we described address-based price hiding and the RFQ flow in the ankaratel case study.
The Items Nobody Mentions Upfront
- Payment gateway (virtual POS): the application is made in your name and the bank's commission is charged to you — it is not part of the site price and cannot be.
- Legal obligations: distance-selling contract, cancellation and refund terms, data-protection (KVKK) texts, ETBİS registration. Gaps come back as fines.
- Product content: what sells the store is not the software but the product photos and descriptions; that effort must be planned from day one.
- Continuity: a site with a live payment integration is the last site you can afford to leave unmaintained.
Price It Yourself
The calculator includes both e-commerce bases: WooCommerce and custom build. On top, you tick modules such as online payment, notifications and multi-language and see the total instantly; the legal-texts item is there as well.
The Documents You Need to Open an E-Commerce Site
This is one of the most-searched questions, so here is the clear list: a tax certificate (sole proprietorship or company — founding a company is not mandatory for e-commerce in Turkey; you can start as a sole proprietor), the bank or payment-institution paperwork for the virtual POS application (ID, tax certificate, activity certificate, site details), ETBİS registration (notification is mandatory for sites selling online in Turkey), and the legal texts that must be published on the site: distance-selling contract, pre-information form, cancellation and refund terms, KVKK privacy and cookie notices. A shipping agreement is not a document, but it is a de facto prerequisite.
What to Do to Launch an E-Commerce Site — Step by Step
The correct order is this: (1) tax registration, (2) domain name and platform decision (the main subject of this article), (3) virtual POS application — start it early, approval can take several weeks, (4) shipping agreement, (5) preparation of the legal texts, (6) production of product photos and descriptions — this is usually what sets the timeline, (7) an end-to-end rehearsal with test orders, (8) ETBİS notification and launch. Scrambling this order is the classic cause of those "the site is finished but we can't sell" months.
The decision rule: boutique store with a standard flow → WooCommerce; per-customer pricing, integrations and custom processes → custom software; and in either case, don't close the marketplace — migrate its customers to your own store.
