Manage multiple Etsy shops and Shopify stores without mixing them up

What Etsy allows

Etsy's help article on opening a second shop is direct: "You're welcome to run multiple shops at once on Etsy." It comes with three conditions:

• Each shop needs its own Etsy account with a different email address. One account holds one shop.
• You must list all the shops you run in the Public Profile section of each account.
• Each account must follow Etsy's Seller Policy.

Etsy's Seller Policy sets the limits. Don't create duplicate shops to manipulate search, inflate sales or get around Etsy's policies. And if Etsy suspends or terminates an account, it may do the same to accounts it determines are related. In practice, running a jewelry shop and a vintage shop openly is fine. Opening a copy of a suspended shop isn't, and Multime's acceptable use policy forbids it too.

What Etsy says about helpers

Etsy's article on shop member roles asks you to list everyone involved in running the shop in its About section. On account access it is cautious. It says Etsy doesn't recommend sharing passwords with anyone, and that if you share your login with freelance assistants, you do so at your own risk. Those pages don't describe a separate staff login for Etsy shops.

That means the decision to let an assistant work in your Etsy shop, and the risk, stay with you. If you decide to do it, Multime can make the access narrower and more visible. The assistant opens a signed-in profile without seeing the password or 2FA secret, can't export the cookies unless you allow it, and every open and close is logged. It doesn't remove the risk: while the assistant has the profile open, the session runs on their computer.

What Shopify offers

Shopify does have per-person access. Staff accounts are user accounts you create in your Shopify admin, each with a role that sets what that person can see and do. Collaborator accounts are for Shopify Partners such as agencies, developers and freelancers. You give the partner a 4-digit access code, they request access, and you approve the request and adjust the role. Partners need two-step authentication, their access expires after 90 days without a login, and collaborators don't count toward your store's user limit.

So on Shopify, nobody needs the owner's login. Each helper signs in as themselves, and Multime keeps those sessions apart, store by store.

One profile per shop: what goes in it

Each profile is a separate Chromium-based browser with its own cookies, storage and extensions, so the vintage shop's session never sits in the jewelry shop's window. Profiles reopen the tabs they had open last time, which is handy when you left a half-finished listing.

A realistic setup

A maker runs two Etsy shops, Fernhill Silver for jewelry and Fernhill Finds for vintage, plus a Shopify store for wholesale orders. Both Etsy accounts list both shops in their Public Profile, as Etsy asks.

She keeps four profiles: "Etsy – Silver", "Etsy – Finds", "Shopify – Owner" and "Shopify – Jo". Jo is a part-time assistant with a Shopify staff account limited to orders and products, saved in her own profile. The owner also decided to let Jo answer customer messages in the Silver shop, so Jo's Multime account sees "Etsy – Silver" with the Open only permission and nothing more. The owner's payment and bank logins live in her private workspace, which Jo never sees.

At the end of the month the owner opens the activity log, filters by Jo, and sees each time Jo opened a profile, on which computer and for how long.

One proxy per business location

You don't need a proxy if you and your shops work from the same place. A proxy helps when a business operates from somewhere else, such as a second studio or a partner's warehouse. Give that location its own proxy, and Multime sets the profile's time zone, language and geolocation from the proxy's IP. Multime supports HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS5 and SSH proxies and sends DNS through the proxy. See the proxy manager.

A proxy isn't a way to make related shops look unrelated. Etsy asks you to list your shops on each account, so being open about them is part of the rules.

Set up and stay organized

• Bulk setup. Create profiles in bulk or import them from a spreadsheet, with names, groups, tags, remarks, logins and proxies.
• Existing sessions. If you're already signed in to a shop in your regular browser, you can export its cookies and import them into the shop's profile, or just sign in again.
• Extensions. Add an extension to all profiles or only to the shops that use it.
• Live 2FA codes. Save each account's 2FA secret and Multime shows the current code, so you don't reach for your phone for every shop.

Team access you control

The owner's computer hosts the team workspace, and helpers sign in from their own computers. For each helper you pick the groups and profiles they see and what they may do: open, edit, import cookies, export cookies, see passwords and 2FA keys, run automations. A profile opens for one person at a time, and when a helper closes it, its cookies and chosen browser data go back to your computer. The teams page covers the details.

What Multime doesn't do

• It doesn't hide connections between shops. Etsy asks you to declare them.
• It doesn't add staff logins to Etsy or replace Shopify's staff and collaborator accounts.
• It doesn't protect shops from suspension. Etsy's and Shopify's rules apply to every account you open in it.
• It has no Android or iOS profiles, so mobile seller apps stay on your phone.
• Your computer must be on for helpers to sign in, because it hosts the workspace.

Plans

The Free plan covers 5 profiles with no card, enough for a few shops run by one person. Solo costs $19 a month for 100 profiles. To add helpers, the Team plan costs $49 a month for 300 profiles and 5 VA seats. See pricing.