Flippa vs Empire Flippers vs Acquire.com: which venue fits
Most comparisons of these three argue about fees. The fee is the smallest number in the deal. What separates them is who they attract, how hard they screen, and what you are holding the week after you sign.
We buy ecommerce businesses and then run them, across the US, Canada, the UK, the EU, and the UAE, so we watch all three of these venues as a buyer rather than as a reviewer. We're also not one of them, which is worth knowing before you read our comparison of them.
What each one is actually for
Flippa is the open end of the market. Anyone can list, and the inventory runs from a few thousand dollars upward with an enormous range of quality inside it. That breadth is the product. You will see more businesses here in an afternoon than anywhere else, and the filtering work transfers entirely to you.
Empire Flippers sits at the curated end. Businesses are screened before a listing appears and the firm publishes how much it turns away. You see fewer options and each one has cleared a bar, which suits a buyer who would rather spend their time on three real candidates than on three hundred listings.
Acquire.com serves software. SaaS and tech-enabled startups. The buyer pool and the diligence conventions there are built around recurring revenue and code, so an ecommerce brand with inventory and suppliers is slightly out of place, and so is a software buyer on the other two.
Where they actually differ
| What you are comparing | Flippa | Empire Flippers | Acquire.com |
|---|---|---|---|
| Selection | The widest | Deliberately narrow | Narrow, software-weighted |
| Screening before listing | Light, you verify | Heavy, published rejection rate | Moderate |
| Typical asset | Anything online | Established ecommerce and content | SaaS and tech-enabled |
| Who sets the price | Auction and bidding | Listed multiple, negotiated | Listed, negotiated |
| Who runs it after close | You | You | You |
Read the bottom row again, because it's the one that decides how the first year goes and it's identical across all three.
The question none of the three answers
A marketplace introduces you to a business and manages the transaction. That is the service, and all three do it competently. What none of them can do is keep the business running, because the person who knew how to run it has just been paid to leave.
Whether that matters depends entirely on you. If operating it is the point, it isn't a gap at all and any of the three works. If you want the asset without the job, it's the whole problem, and comparing fee schedules will not touch it.
Where Ecomma sits, and where we do not
We buy ecommerce businesses and run them, then sell them on. Buyers can choose to keep our team running the marketing and operations afterward, or take it in house. 80+ acquisitions since 2022. That's the difference: you're buying from the operator rather than being introduced to a stranger.
We're the wrong call in some ordinary situations, and they're worth saying plainly. If you want to survey the whole market, Flippa shows you more in an afternoon than our own deal flow will in a quarter. Where you want competitive bidding to discover the price, one counterparty gives you a negotiation instead. And for software, Acquire.com is simply the right venue and we are not.
Questions people ask
Is Flippa or Empire Flippers better for buying an ecommerce business?
They answer different questions. Flippa lists far more businesses across a much wider price range, so you do the filtering. Empire Flippers screens before listing, so the shortlist arrives smaller and more consistent. Breadth against curation is the trade, and neither is the right answer for everyone.
Where does Acquire.com fit against the other two?
Acquire.com is where software and tech-enabled startups trade. If you're buying a SaaS product it's the natural venue, and if you're buying a physical-product ecommerce brand it isn't, because the buyer pool and the diligence norms there are built around software.
What do all three have in common?
Every one of them is a marketplace. They introduce you to a business somebody else owns, handle the transaction, and step back once it closes. The operating work becomes yours on completion day, whichever venue you used.
Which one has the lowest fees?
Check each firm's current schedule on its own site rather than any third-party figure, this page included. Rates move, they vary by deal size, and out-of-date numbers circulate for years. The fee is also rarely what decides the outcome next to who runs the business afterward.
Keep reading
For the wider list rather than this head-to-head, see Empire Flippers alternatives. If you arrived here because Shopify closed its own marketplace, that story is in Shopify Exchange closed in 2022, and what Shopify stores for sale can mean covers the gap between a template and a trading business.
To talk to us instead of browsing a venue, start the buyer intake, or see what buying from Ecomma involves and how the operating side works after close.