Magento vs Shopify Plus vs selling on Chewy Marketplace, what wins for pet supplies?

Honest cut, pet-supplies-specific:

Chewy Marketplace, you sell through Chewy. They own the customer, the data, and the auto-ship relationship. You get reach (~24M active pet parents) but Chewy keeps the LTV. Margins typically 10-15%. Use Chewy as a channel, not as your whole business, first-party DTC data is what makes the next product launch work.

Shopify Plus, great for pet brands under $5M GMV with simple subscription (ReCharge or Bold), no Rx diets, and tolerable Shopify app spend ($800, $3k/mo across Klaviyo, ReCharge, Smile, ShipBob app, Loop). Variant limits hit around 100 per product (Plus: 2,000); fine for most pet catalogs. Per-tx fees (~2.4-2.9% on third-party gateways) start hurting at $5M+, that’s ~$120k/yr at $5M.

Magento, wins at $5M+ when (a) Rx-diet authorization workflow needed, (b) catalog above 8,000 SKUs, (c) hundredweight shipping rate math, (d) loyalty + referral tied to subscription tier, or (e) you want to own the data layer for Klaviyo + Postscript without app-fee accumulation. ReCharge, Smartrr, Skio all integrate with Magento; ReCharge has the most mature Magento connector.

The right call: DTC on Magento for first-party data + LTV, Chewy Marketplace as an incremental reach channel, Amazon Subscribe & Save as a third channel. Don’t pick Chewy as the only revenue line, you’re renting a customer relationship that you should own.