Where to Sell Your Custom Techno-Electronics Things

With the proliferation of small-run PCBs & digital manufacturing, it's easier than ever to make multiples of your device a reality. Where to sell is a bit more complicated.

Around a decade ago, I was approached by a company/online storefront called Tindie about writing articles to promote their brand. I was happy to take on the role,¹ and eventually, I also started selling there. Sales there still gross me… multiple figures/year.

JC Devices on SmallRun

That said, things have not been good there recently, as linked in footnote 👉². While I’m not closing up shop entirely at this point, I’m going to largely push other options (e.g. my JC Devices store on SmallRun).

If you have been thinking about selling your custom electro-maker goods, I have some decently informed opinions about where to sell them. Read on to find out how to make massive profits… and/or have fun and help offset your electronics addiction hobby:

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Below I list the three indie storefronts for your consideration (SmallRun, Lectrons, Tindie) in reverse-chronological order of when they were started, a la Twitter/blogs/etc. After that, there are some other ideas, including the really wild method of selling in person!

SmallRun.net

• Standard Features: List products, calculates import duties (VAT etc)

• Special: Import from multiple marketplaces, pre-order campaigns, Build Logs, Discord

• Fees: Free listing, 7% + $.40/order³

• Disbursement: Stripe, Wise, PayPal

• Ownership: Unigration, LLC dba SmallRun / Aron Hoekstra, USA

• My SmallRun store

Estimates per SmallRun. Lectronz and Tindie look about right (though payout fees may or may not be applicable). Wow, eBay is expensive.

As Aron put it when he invited me to list my products on SmallRun on May 24th, 2026:

We aim to be more than just a marketplace but give makers a place to share their build process & logs with users/buyers. Our platform has many shipping options, built-in labels, lots of customizations available for your listings, and you can import your product catalog from other marketplaces with one click. (More from Aron 👉⁴)

My first instinct was to trash the email as yet another offer from… whoever. However, after a bit of back-and-forth emailing, I decided that:

1. It’s nice he invited me and was responsive. A bit of the personal touch reminiscent of… ye olde indie electronics marketplace.

2. I could be among the first stores there, which would be really cool if the platform is successful. It’s still a fairly small group (if YOU want to get in on the ground floor), though I do recognize a few familiar names popping up!

Hey, I know those guys! Image - screencap

I’ve yet to get any sales there (YOU can be the first) but given the low fees, personal touch, and US-basedness, I’m hoping this can become my “domestic hub.” In fact, I even set up my jcdevices.com domain to redirect to go to my SmallRun store, so feel free to try that out and let me know if it’s working.⁵

Lectronz.com

• Standard Features: List products, calculates import duties (VAT etc & IOSS)

• Special: Discord Community, Tindie import, pre-order campaigns

• Fees: Free listing, 5% commission + processing ~4%

• Disbursement: Stripe

• Ownership: OMLZO IKE, Greece / Alain Pannetrat

• My Lectronz Store

As outlined here, Lectronz was born out of the supply chain issues seen circa 2021, making it an established marketplace as of this writing in 2026. One challenge this Greek/Eurozone marketplace set out to meet was automated VAT/tax collection, and they handle IOSS.

According to Founder Alain Pannetrat:

I think the biggest reason to sell on Lectronz is that we build our platform specifically for independent hardware creators. That has shaped many of the features we’ve added, from pre-order campaigns to tax automation and IOSS support, and we continue to develop the platform directly from community feedback. (More from Alain 👉⁶)

As such, one might think of Lectronz as a European-focused entity. However, as shown below and explained in this article, new sellers since the Tindie-downtime-event in North America actually edge out out all other creatively amalgamated country zones below. As far as individual countries go, the US is #1, with the UK behind it (new) sellers-wise.

Image

While I like dealing with a US-based company, it certainly makes sense to use a European marketplace for the relatively large number of orders that I get there. And if you’re not from the US, it probably makes even more sense.

I ship Tindie orders to Europe without taxes paid — with the requisite item value information on the label for the purchaser to take care of — but it seems that this can cause problems. I’d also have to assume it’s a bit of a pain for the end-user, whether it gets there or not.

So the solution here might be to use one marketplace for domestic orders and refer Eurozone orders to a marketplace that takes care of the VAT/taxes/IOSS for you, e.g. Lectronz. At the end of the day, the selling/disbursement process on my two sales⁷ was smooth, as was payment via Stripe. So, in practical terms, Lectronz being in the Eurozone seems to be fine for me as a US citizen and dweller.

Tindie.com

• Standard Features: List products

• Special: most well-known Indie electronics marketplace

• Fees: Free listing, 5% commission + processing ~ 4% + payout fee(?)

• Disbursement: Stripe, Wise

• Ownership: EETree LLC, a Washington State company / Gongyu Su⁸

• I have a Tindie store

As noted, I have a rather lengthy history with Tindie, but at this point they’re not my preferred sales channel. In my opinion — which is probably better informed than most — I suspect that the new owner(s) want to do the right thing, but probably got in over his/their heads. I don’t think it was handed it over in great shape, which is a shame.

At the same time, new-owner-Tindie wasn’t exactly at all forthcoming about what was going on at the time either 😕

Given my reputation on Tindie, it’s a bit sad to start over

On the other hand, I still get most of my sales there. Perhaps it still has the most clout between Tindie/Lectronz/SmallRun as far as the Internet is concerned broadly. Or maybe the many times I’ve linked there in the past is most of what drives my sales.

Frustratingly, they don’t have the easy one-button PayPal payout anymore, but that may not be entirely their fault.⁹ Plus, payout conditions seem to keep changing, which is… well, frustrating.

When asked why one should choose Tindie as a sales platform, they noted:

Tindie gives independent hardware creators a dedicated place to sell directly to a global audience that already understands and appreciates maker electronics. It allows creators to focus on building innovative products while reaching customers who may be difficult to find through general-purpose marketplaces.

Fair enough.

Crowdfunding, eBay, Amazon, Etsy, Your Site, In-person

While Lectrons/SmallRun are the broad focus of this article, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention other ways to sell your products. Some other ideas in quick list format:

• Crowdfunding - For whatever reason, it seems like Kickstarter et al get less attention today than than a few years ago. Maybe the newness has worn off, and/or enough people have been burned that there’s less excitement for hair-brained new ideas. Nonetheless, I have found some success there, making money on my JC Pro Macro II, and roughly breaking even on a set of PCB/transistor coaster. I elaborated on this some time ago on Tindie’s blog.

• eBay, Amazon, Etsy - I’ve done very little on any of these sites, but they do exist and are probably worthy of consideration. Such sites give you access to a much larger pool of potential customers (and competition) than Tindie-ish options.

• Your Site - Since you’re at least a somewhat technical person, if you’re selling your gizmos online, it shouldn’t be rocket science to set up website and collect payment, perhaps with a service like Shopify. While I don’t have a website storefront myself, I am quite familiar with Four Bit Industries and provide assemblies to Clickykeyboards.com. On the one hand, sales through those sites aren’t subject to the same kind of fees as Tindie et al, but one is also responsible for all marketing and site maintenance.

• In Person - If you have something neat to sell, especially in the time period before Christmas, you can often do quite well at a Maker Faire or other similar events. Several years ago, I was next to the Four Bit Industries booth at Maker Faire Orlando. There it appeared people were throwing money at Mr. Four Bits as fast as they could.¹⁰

So where should YOU sell?

TL;DR: if I was advising someone on where to sell, I’d rank the platforms:

1. Lectronz - Well run, years of history, good community

2. SmallRun - Scrappy startup, US-owned

3. Tindie - Over a decade of history, some problems

It saddens me to be largely off the Tindie bandwagon, because I considered the site not so much a place where I sold stuff, but more like a community. Knowing some of the staff personally helped, but I think it was (and maybe even is) easy to get plugged in there.

At this point I would be happy if sales on Lectronz and SmallRun picked significantly. Both seem to have have their plusses, and where you’re located and/or where you sell could also play a factor. I’m kind of rooting for SmallRun, and it’s where I’ve put the most time in developing my store recently. However, I ranked them as #2, largely because they’re still getting established.

I think there is room for more than one hacker marketplace, and that this sort of competition/multiple options is a good thing. And, since I really, really, really try to avoid being negative, Tindie is certainly the more established marketplace, even if their reputation has been tarnished recently. Maybe Tindie can one day be restored to its former glory. -JC

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Addendum/Footnotes:

1. Tindie’s relationship with Hackaday (my first paid writing gig), plus the editor then being Mike Szczys, who I had worked with/under at [HAD], made this seem like a great fit. I enjoyed my time there, though I think I got out at the right time.

I have talked about and/or had (relatively minor so far) business relationships with both Lectronz and SmallRun. Given these interactions with all three companies, I’m not exactly an uninterested observer, but this also means that have a bit of a unique perspective here.

2. While my timeline is a little fuzzy, Tindie was owned by Supplyframe when I got there, which seemed like a good fit. In 2021, Siemens acquired Supplyframe, along with Tindie.

In 2026, Siemens sold Tindie to a mystery person that was eventually revealed as outlined in footnote 7. This coincided with significant downtime, and some rather sketchy goings on since then. I kept track of the downtime and aftermath in the post below 👇 To be fair, the site was performing quite poorly before the sale.

3. This “all-in” 7% + $.40/order makes SmallRun the most straightforward platform fees-wise.

4. Aron (SmallRun) continues:

Why use SmallRun? Well I don’t want to bash Tindie, I think the fact I started SmallRun speaks enough to how I feel about it. eBay has a huge audience, but is expensive. Etsy doesn’t necessarily have the *right* audience. That leaves Lectronz which by what I can tell is a very well-run site. But having been a seller myself on most of these platforms, I wanted to build something that focused on the Seller at least as much as the Buyer. That means giving them options they may not have elsewhere. We support 3 different payout methods now (Stripe, Wise and PayPal), support purchases in 6 currencies and with Wise can support payouts in 40 different currencies)

I think we also have the most advanced product configurations and pricing options, including shipping options. Having real-time built in shipping quotes & labels was essential - hopefully simplify the whole fulfillment process for the sellers.

5. Actually, redirect was NOT working correctly all the time before, because many browsers now force https vs http that works with traditional redirects. I finally got this resolved, using Cloudflare and this methodology. I don’t understand all of it, but things seem to be working nicely now.

This could have been costing me some traffic/sales, so you may want to check this out yourself if you’re in a similar situation. I probably need to go through this process with other domain names that I own and redirect.

6. Alain (Lectronz) continues:

In more detail:

- Lectronz is a fast-growing marketplace for open hardware, with over 300 sellers and 1,500 products.

- We allow sellers to launch products with pre-order campaigns. Sellers define a price, funding threshold, and campaign duration. Buyers are only charged if the campaign reaches its goal, making it an excellent way to validate new product ideas before manufacturing.

- Lectronz is one of the few (or only) indie maker marketplaces to support IOSS for imports into the EU, simplifying sales to European customers.

- Lectronz is one of the few (or only) indie maker marketplaces with built-in shipping tools to calculate US tariffs and the new EU small-package duty introduced in July 2026.

- We automate VAT and sales tax calculations for business sellers, based on the location of the buyer (including for US states).

- There’s no marketplace-controlled disbursement schedule: sellers are paid through Stripe Connect and can choose daily, weekly, or monthly payouts.

- We actively develop the platform based on feedback from the open hardware community, shipping new features and improvements continuously. It’s a genuinely collaborative community, and many new features start as seller suggestions.

- We care about user privacy. We don’t run ads and we will never sell or share users’ personal data.

- Sellers can easily import their products from Tindie, making it straightforward to try Lectronz with an existing catalogue.

- We maintain over 99.99% uptime. No 504s from us.

7. I got a third sale there on Lectronz this morning. However, the address provided was more like a descriptive paragraph in what appeared to be a combination of English and Italian than what il mailman might expect. Hopefully that one will find its way there if/when I get a bit more info. Also, VAT/sales tax collected for that order was ~22%. The customer pays it, but wow that’s a big chunk of change (relatively speaking). It is good that Lectronz handles it I suppose.

Update: After asking, the seller provided me with a more… standardized address, and I was able to ship it off. Hopefully he gets his Opta I2C adapter and that it performs whatever function flawlessly.

8. As reported at Adafruit:

Per Washington Secretary of State filings (mirrored at https://www.bizprofile.net/wa/seattle/eetree-llc), EETree LLC was registered April 14, 2023 in Seattle with Gongyu Su as registered agent. There is also a related entity in China, EETree Information Technology Limited (苏州硬禾信息科技有限公司), founded July 15, 2019 in Suzhou, with Su Gongyu as legal representative (per Chinese corporate filings at https://www.cnverify.com/company/Eetree-Information-Technology-Limited). The Chinese entity operates in scientific research and technical services, adjacent to the FPGA/hardware-education space.

9. Out of SmallRun, Lectronz, and Tindie, only SmallRun pays out via PayPal, and that’s a relatively recent development (was not active on May 25th, 2026). Getting that set up was reportedly quite a hassle, or at least very slow!

So 3/3 marketplaces struggle with PayPal, and only 1/3 of them are even able to use the service as of this writing. While none of these entities are huge, multiply this by whatever other companies are struggling for some traction and/or have given up. One has to think this isn’t good for PayPal or their potential customers!

All that said, I had Stripe set up for my business already IIRC, so it wasn’t a big deal for me. Getting paid that way via Lectronz was smooth and convenient, but it is likely more of a pain for those that don’t have easy access to that platform.

10. On the other hand, the next year sales were slower. Mr. Four Bits largely attributed this to the same people being at the show and him not having new doo-dads to show off. So who knows; it’s a bit of a hit-or-miss situation, and you could also be left sitting on a bunch of unsold inventory!