Amazon shuts down Amazon Webstore

Amazon is pulling the plug on its ecommerce service Amazon Webstore. A message on its homepage says the “ecommerce solution to build your own standalone website is no longer available to new sellers”. Amazon Webstore customers have more than a year to find a new shopping cart software provider.

Customers from Amazon Webstore already got a mail, which reads: “We are writing to let you know that, effective July 1, 2016, we will discontinue the Amazon Webstore service.” The ecommerce giants hurries to say that the customer’s ability to sell on Amazon.com and their Selling on Amazon account will not be impacted by the change.

‘Your website is important to your business’
It continues: “We realize your own website is important to your business. We will support the Webstore service until July 1, 2016 to give you 15 months to prepare for the change. Please make sure you secure all relevant data from your Webstore by this date, as you will not have access to Amazon Webstore content or features after this date”

The termination of Amazon Webstore comes as a surprise for some merchants, but they could have had it seen coming, as Amazon ended support for the service in Germany last year. Amazon Webstore was mainly being used by small online merchants, but according to Internet Retailer four retailers in the website’s Top 500 Guide (so they are big online stores) used Amazon for at least some of their ecommerce platform work.