E-commerce — what it is, what the Polish market looks like and where to start an online store

What is e-commerce, in one sentence? It's electronic commerce: the sale and purchase of goods or services where the order is placed over the internet or another computer network. An online store is the best-known form of e-commerce, but it isn't the only one — marketplaces, shopping apps and the automatic exchange of orders between business systems all count too.

This article opens our e-commerce section. It starts with the definition, shows what e-commerce looks like in Poland using data from Statistics Poland (Główny Urząd Statystyczny, GUS), Eurostat and Gemius, and then points to the guides: how to start an online store, what it costs, which platform to build it on, and how to run it.

What is e-commerce — the EU definition

The most precise definition of electronic commerce comes from the statistical bodies that use it to measure who buys and sells online. Eurostat's glossary entry for "E-commerce" puts it this way:

> "E-commerce can be defined generally as the sale or purchase of goods or services, whether between businesses, households, individuals or private organisations, through electronic transactions conducted via the internet or other computer-mediated (online communication) networks. The term covers the ordering of goods and services which are sent over computer networks, but the payment and the ultimate delivery of the goods or service may be conducted either on- or off-line. Orders via manually typed e-mails, however, are excluded."

Three practical conclusions follow from that definition:

• The order is what decides whether a transaction is e-commerce. If a customer placed it through a website, an app or a marketplace, it's e-commerce — even if they pay on pickup and collect the goods in a physical shop.
• An order sent as a manually typed e-mail is not e-commerce. Selling through an inbox isn't an online store, even if the listing itself lives online.
• E-commerce isn't only sales to consumers. The definition covers transactions between businesses, with public institutions, and with private individuals.

B2C, B2B and B2G

Eurostat distinguishes sales through websites to consumers — B2C (business-to-consumer) — from sales to other businesses — B2B (business-to-business). In its statistics, sales to businesses are counted together with sales to public administration as a single category: B2B+B2G. Separately, Eurostat tracks EDI-type sales, where orders are placed and processed automatically between computer systems, with no storefront involved.

For a seller, the difference is practical. A B2C store means a cart, payment up front and delivery to the buyer's door or a pickup point. B2B selling usually means customer-specific price lists, purchases on invoice with payment terms, and company accounts with multiple users — which is why the section has a dedicated article on B2B e-commerce platforms.

E-commerce in Poland, in numbers

Data on e-commerce in Poland comes from three sources that measure different things. For every figure below we say whose data it is and for which period.

GUS: who buys, who sells

According to the GUS flash report “Information society in Poland in 2025” of 21 October 2025, 69.7% of people aged 16–74 bought something online in the last 12 months in 2025, up from 67.4% in 2024. In cities the figure was 73.8%, in rural areas 63.7%.

On the seller side the numbers are much smaller. In 2024, 18.3% of enterprises sold online. They sold most often through their own websites or apps (12.9% of all enterprises), online marketplaces (10.2%) and EDI (3.3%). For comparison, 67.5% of enterprises had a website in 2025. Having a presence online and selling online are still two different things.

Eurostat: Poland against the EU

Eurostat collects the same data in every EU country, so it lets us compare Poland with the EU average. Two notes before the figures. Data on individuals refer to the survey year, while data on enterprises refer to sales in the previous calendar year: the “2025” column in the enterprise datasets is sales from 2024. The enterprise survey covers businesses with 10 or more staff, excluding the financial sector.

• People who bought online in the last 12 months (aged 16–74, 2025): Poland 69.73%, EU 73.56% (isoc_ec_ib20). The Polish value matches the GUS data.
• Enterprises with e-commerce sales (sales in 2024): Poland 18.55%, EU 23.59% (isoc_ec_eseln2). GUS gives 18.3% for the same year; the numbers differ in methodology, which is why we cite each source separately.
• Selling through their own website or app: Poland 13.18%, EU 17.72%.
• Selling through marketplaces: Poland 10.69%, EU 9.31% — one of the few indicators on which Polish firms are ahead of the EU average.

Eurostat also shows the structure of sales value through websites and apps: in Poland 66.32% of that value comes from sales to businesses and public administration, in the EU 51.78% (isoc_ec_evaln2, sales in 2024). We write about this at more length in the article on B2B platforms.

Gemius: how Poles shop in 2026

The report “E-commerce w Polsce 2026” (E-commerce in Poland 2026) was prepared by Gemius, Polskie Badania Internetu, IAB Polska and Kozminski University. It is a CAWI online-panel survey of 1,874 internet users aged 15 and over, with data collected on 14–22 July 2026. It therefore measures the behaviour of internet users, not of the whole population as GUS does. The figures that matter most to a seller:

• 93% of Polish internet users visit shopping sites and apps every month, and 53% do so every day;
• 58% of respondents finish their purchases on a phone, 44% of them in an app; on a computer 35%;
• 84% of buyers used parcel lockers in the past year;
• only 20% bought directly through a social platform in the last year.

The same report shows what decides the choice of a seller and what causes concern. A low product price (42%) and free delivery (37%) are, according to respondents, the key factors in choosing a store. At the same time 42% worry about a dishonest seller and 34% about payment fraud — so company details, terms and conditions, clear return rules and familiar payment methods are, in a new store, not a formality but a selling point.

The conclusions for a store are simple: design and test for the phone first, treat delivery to a parcel locker as the standard, and treat social media as a way to reach people, not a replacement for the store.

Where to start an online store

Before you pick a platform, answer four questions. Each has its own article in this section.

How do I start an online store? The step-by-step guide starts with the product, the margin and a cheap demand test, then walks through the legal setup, payments, delivery and a plan for the first 90 days. The formalities include unregistered business activity (działalność nierejestrowana), whose limit has been counted quarterly since 2026 and stands at PLN 10,813.50 (biznes.gov.pl). One number worth knowing before you've sold anything: under Art. 113(1) of the Polish VAT Act, sales by a taxpayer based in Poland are VAT-exempt as long as their value, excluding VAT, did not exceed PLN 240,000 in the previous or the current tax year. Selling to consumers in other EU countries is a second step: above €10,000 a year in distance sales you charge the VAT of each buyer's country and can declare it in a single return through the One Stop Shop (Art. 59c of the VAT Directive, as amended by Directive (EU) 2017/2455).

What does it cost? The article on online store costs separates the start-up cost from the monthly one and lines up platform subscriptions against payment-gateway fees from published price lists.

Can I start for free? The article on free online stores shows what's genuinely free — trials, free plans, open source — and what always costs money.

Which platform? The guide to e-commerce platforms explains the difference between SaaS, open source and headless, the criteria for choosing one, how payment methods change the bill, and the terms for leaving a platform — then leads into platform comparisons, migration, B2B and headless.

Map of the e-commerce section

The section has six guides. Each one gathers the articles from a single area.

• [E-commerce platforms](posts:68df8b49379479525146bb94) — choosing a model and a platform, costs, comparison, free starts, B2B, headless and store migration.
• [E-commerce operations](posts:68df8f08379479525146e515) — fulfillment and omnichannel, e-commerce KPIs, supplier-feed and ERP integration, sales automation, PCI DSS and data protection, and customer service.
• [Payments and logistics](posts:68df929a3794795251473f4c) — checkout, payment-gateway fees and buyer preferences, choosing a carrier, returns and complaints, selling into other EU countries, and marketplace integration.
• [SEO for e-commerce](posts:68df907b37947952514703e5) — ranking an online store, Core Web Vitals, product descriptions, Google Merchant Center and an SEO audit.
• [UX/UI for e-commerce](posts:68df912b3794795251470dd6) — cart abandonment and checkout, the product page, on-site search, store design and accessibility.
• [E-commerce marketing](posts:6915f806bb2f8f91f17607c9) — Google Shopping and Performance Max, Meta Ads, TikTok Shop, price comparison sites, affiliate and influencer marketing, SMS marketing, performance marketing (ROAS and MER), how to sell online, and e-commerce statistics and trends.

If you're not sure which guide to start with, pick it by the problem you're coming with:

Tools and report

These free tools help with the decisions around a store:

• [Quiz: which e-commerce platform](pages:69bfe4fe0d5d51379c34268c) — seven questions and a platform recommendation;
• [Online store cost calculator](pages:69b1d28de5961b9519f27fbc) — a start-up budget estimate;
• [E-commerce TCO calculator](pages:69bfe4fd0d5d51379c34263c) — annual running cost on different platforms;
• [Online store costs in Poland — 2026 edition](pages:6a881b92d619d2695247642d) — 108 publicly available price observations from 70 vendors on the Polish market, collected March–May 2026;
• [UX checklist](pages:69b904affd308268547d6371) and [migration checklist](pages:69b904aefd308268547d6339) — pre-launch and pre-migration checklists.

Compare any prices the tools show against the vendors' current price lists — those are what's binding.